NCAA Can't Stop Athletes from Profiting from College Sports

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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How many times have you wished for the opportunity to see your favorite college players linked up with your favorite sports video game? Chances are now good that you will get your wish in the near future and you will have Federal Judge Claudia Wilkins to thank for the common sense. :cool:

Wilken's ruling directly challenges the rules laid down by the NCAA back in 1956, which governed the compensation of college athletes. Those rules limited student payments to scholarships, and prohibited profits beyond "commonly accepted educational expenses."
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GonzoP said:
It was only a matter of time
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I wasn't so sure. The establishment is damn strong when it comes to sports that make hundreds of millions or billions.

Anyway good for the players. Some of the foot-in-mouth statements made by the NCAA that have been parodied on Maher, Stewart and Colbert have made for great comedy- "Well the players are getting a great education. Isn't that enough?"
 
DPI said:
I wasn't so sure. The establishment is damn strong when it comes to sports that make hundreds of millions or billions.

Anyway good for the players. Some of the foot-in-mouth statements made by the NCAA that have been parodied on Maher, Stewart and Colbert have made for great comedy- "Well the players are getting a great education. Isn't that enough?"
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What surprised me was reading about how many people actually support the NCAA in preventing college athletes from profiting from their skills.
 
DPI said:
I wasn't so sure. The establishment is damn strong when it comes to sports that make hundreds of millions or billions.

Anyway good for the players. Some of the foot-in-mouth statements made by the NCAA that have been parodied on Maher, Stewart and Colbert have made for great comedy- "Well the players are getting a great education. Isn't that enough?"
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Yeah I guess I should have said "its been a long time coming"
 
It's a joke that sports are even considered to be a part of higher education.
 
South Park nailed the situation with NCAA years ago. They laid it out as a bunch of rich white people who make money off the hard work of black(etc) people without having to pay them a dime. It's the modern equivalent of slavery.

A lot of these athletes get kicked out of school if they get a career ending injury playing sports, as their scholarship is revoked. Couple that to required practice and team time, and you get a 50+hr work week that equals out to no pay.
 
Spidey329 said:
South Park nailed the situation with NCAA years ago. They laid it out as a bunch of rich white people who make money off the hard work of black(etc) people without having to pay them a dime. It's the modern equivalent of slavery.

A lot of these athletes get kicked out of school if they get a career ending injury playing sports, as their scholarship is revoked. Couple that to required practice and team time, and you get a 50+hr work week that equals out to no pay.
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The only people I see making big money are are the coaches and the media and while many schools make a lot of money on football they're lucky to break even once non-revenue sports are factored in. While some NFL bound players don't care about getting an education others do and for those not NFL bound(most) a diploma is very valuable. Players also don't come out of high school ready for the pros, the coaching and facilities they have access to as a player is what prepares them for the NFL so even the NFL bound ones that don't care about a diploma are getting a valuable education.

I've never heard of an injured player losing their scholarship, schools are allowed to honor the scholarship of a player that retires for medical reasons without it counting towards the limit. The only issue I'm aware of is that a handful of schools oversign and then force players that don't pan out to take a medical retirement so their scholarship doesn't count towards the limit. *cough* 'Bama *cough*

I don't know where you got that 50+ hour/week number because NCAA limits are 20 hours/week during the season and 8 out of season. Some schools might push that a little and some players might spend more time training on their own but 50+ hours of forced practice/team activities is just not within the realm of reality.

I tend to think of the situation being similar to an internship, I had to do a couple internships to get my diploma and while one them was a paid internship I made less than $1/hr. I didn't consider it slave labor though because it was a learning experience and the companies spent more time teaching me than they would with a normal employee.

From what I've read it sounds like an increase in the stipend for living expenses is appropriate and I would also be in favor of loosening the rules on product endorsements. The main issues I see with paying college football players is that many schools would be forced to drop football and/or non-revenue sports which isn't good for anyone.
 
Ebernanut said:
I tend to think of the situation being similar to an internship, I had to do a couple internships to get my diploma and while one them was a paid internship I made less than $1/hr. I didn't consider it slave labor though because it was a learning experience and the companies spent more time teaching me than they would with a normal employee.
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The main issue with this comparison is that your work during your internships probably did not generate tens of millions of dollars (or more) for the company that you interned for. Also, I am curious to know what field you are in that your internships paid so little (or nothing at all). I am an optical engineering major in graduate school and every internship that I am aware of in my field (including the ones I have had) all paid quite well. My internship at Corning paid $20/hr plus overtime, moving expenses, and a housing allowance. This was explained as legally necessary since my work would benefit Corning financially in some small way. Similarly, since the athletes are the primary reason why a university is making money from sports, they are entitled to more than just an education (which, depending on the school, might not be worth anything at all).
 
IMO, college sports need to be banned entirely. The schools become nothing more than platforms for multi-million dollar sports, and it has absolutely nothing to do with academics.

The athletes should be professionals, and if they want to go to school while they are playing baseball or football or whatever, that's great, but they will earn salaries just like any other job and eliminate the corruption in schools and get them back to the task of, oh I don't know, EDUCATING PEOPLE with actual career choices (professional football is not a long term career choice for 99.99% of their applicants).

And if its about school pride, then how about holding competitions that are RELEVANT to your student's career paths and education? For example, Formula SAE racing teams for example make sense for mechanical engineers to partake in for their schools. For business schools, have entrepreneur competitions and the like. Unfortunately, anything that requires even the smallest amount of cerebral involvement won't capture a large audiences attention, and without that, there's no money. People just want to paint their faces, get drunk, and go "herp derp he dun runned with the ball but then the other guy was all WHAMO and tackled him and gave him a concussion, LAWL!"
 
tybert7 said:
What surprised me was reading about how many people actually support the NCAA in preventing college athletes from profiting from their skills.
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Hell you should get something for guaranteeing arthritis by 30.
 
The argument that profiting off the "good sports" helps those sports that don't make money is laughable at best. While yeah it does help those sports, the amount of money they make with those sports eclipses what they spend on other sports by many orders of magnitude, if they spent the same amount of money that they put into basketball or football that they do for something like field hockey then sure, but they don't come anywhere close to that.
 
I believe the law regarding pay for internships varies by state, there were ones available that paid well but it didn't seem like I would have learned as much from them. The work I did was of real value however my work took me a little longer than a regular employee, I required more oversight(including evaluations and other paperwork required by the school), and I learned quite a bit about how things work in the real world vs academia.

I'm also not sure if it's primarily the players that make the money. In college I think the coaches are more important to winning since the players require more development(Mack Brown wasn't fired because he didn't get enough elite talent). Unlike the NFL most of the money comes from wealthy donors that want their school to do well not people buying tickets to watch their favorite player.

The value of a diploma is somewhat subjective but the cost isn't and most 4 year degrees at out of state or private schools cost north of $100k, if I had the talent to get a football scholarship I would have jumped at the opportunity to avoid student loans. I also see nothing wrong with NFL bound players paying their dues similar to how most pro baseball players spend a few years in the minor leagues making hardly anything. There's also no college requirement for the NFL it's just highly unlikely to make it without the training, experience, and exposure that comes with playing college football.
 
Spidey329 said:
South Park nailed the situation with NCAA years ago. They laid it out as a bunch of rich white people who make money off the hard work of black(etc) people without having to pay them a dime. It's the modern equivalent of slavery.
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it has nothing at all in common with slavery. It's wrong not to pay students for sports, but it's definitely not akin to slavery.
 
Ebernanut said:
The only people I see making big money are are the coaches and the media and while many schools make a lot of money on football they're lucky to break even once non-revenue sports are factored in. While some NFL bound players don't care about getting an education others do and for those not NFL bound(most) a diploma is very valuable. Players also don't come out of high school ready for the pros, the coaching and facilities they have access to as a player is what prepares them for the NFL so even the NFL bound ones that don't care about a diploma are getting a valuable education.

I've never heard of an injured player losing their scholarship, schools are allowed to honor the scholarship of a player that retires for medical reasons without it counting towards the limit. The only issue I'm aware of is that a handful of schools oversign and then force players that don't pan out to take a medical retirement so their scholarship doesn't count towards the limit. *cough* 'Bama *cough*

I don't know where you got that 50+ hour/week number because NCAA limits are 20 hours/week during the season and 8 out of season. Some schools might push that a little and some players might spend more time training on their own but 50+ hours of forced practice/team activities is just not within the realm of reality.

I tend to think of the situation being similar to an internship, I had to do a couple internships to get my diploma and while one them was a paid internship I made less than $1/hr. I didn't consider it slave labor though because it was a learning experience and the companies spent more time teaching me than they would with a normal employee.

From what I've read it sounds like an increase in the stipend for living expenses is appropriate and I would also be in favor of loosening the rules on product endorsements. The main issues I see with paying college football players is that many schools would be forced to drop football and/or non-revenue sports which isn't good for anyone.
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Oh please. Out of a THOUSAND college athletes, how many will wind up in the pros?

The VAST MAJORITY of college athletes, even with all the support and training they get, are NEVER going to turn pro. So cut the pretense with that lottery winner class carrot and just PAY them for the work they do while in college. They should get a cut of ticket sales and general profit from games. Period. If I was an athlete, I'd much rather get a baseline degree on top of tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars as a cushion when I finished school.

For those that turn pro great, but all the rest get nothing but a free degree, if that. GREAT deal for the slave own... I mean the ncaa, but it is exactly as Cartman calls it here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2lSDetRrNk
 
spintroniX said:
it has nothing at all in common with slavery. It's wrong not to pay students for sports, but it's definitely not akin to slavery.
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It's share cropping. Not slavery. Just work for FAR less than your labor is worth. Oh, you want more compensation? But we can't do that, the NCAA forbids us.
 
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