" And then when you are a red shirt junior say if you are not performing as expected out the door you go and your scholarship is not renewed for one reason or another. Or you use up your fourth year of eligibility and realize you are still a dozen or more credits shy of a degree."
But they’ve fixed this, at least in the big programs. Now the scholarships are almost guaranteed at least if you’ve played 2 years. Once you start that 3rd year, the Power 5 conference schools are guarantying that you can finish your degree for free (come back and finish if you leave to go pro or if you don’t finish within the 4-5 years), if you quit you’ll still get the scholarship, if you are injured you still get the scholarship. You might be off the team, but you still get your scholarship. Do I feel bad the the U of Kentucky basketball team is almost all ‘one and done’? No. If they want an education, they have the opportunity to get one.
I agree with LucieTheLake that it is not a bad deal even if you only get a scholarship for a year. My daughter only gets a partial scholarship, year to year, and I still think it is a good deal. Her spring season is pretty jam packed and while her coach doesn’t schedule her every waking moment, she schedules a lot of them. There are 20 hours of practice, 8 or so of conditioning, film to watch, travel to games, the games themselves, 8-10 hours of study tables for those who didn’t make grades the first semester…all worth it to DD.
I think you misunderstand my point. I am in awe of the kids who can play at Michigan, Georgia, USC, Texas A&M, etc and come out in four or five years with a degree. I could not have done that. And while the SEC has taken over the title of the “dodgiest” conference from the old SWC, they are far from the only schools exploiting these kids (Pete Carroll and USC ring a bell?) And, poor weak hypocrite that I am, I enjoy watching college football on my big screen hi def tv two or three times a week in the fall. I just think the deck is stacked against the kids and they are being taken advantage of.
I propose we call Power 5 football what it is. It is a minor league for the NFL, with only a loose affiliation with the school itself. I think that the move towards full cost of attendance scholarships is a positive, and should go farther. I think the Power 5 conferences will try and move that way at the August NCAA meetings, but how that works is complicated because few schools (particularly outside of the Power 5 with their TV money) can afford the Title IX match required. I personally would de-couple football from Title IX, because football is just altogether a different animal than other sports. This would allow the NCAA to not only provide a real stipend to football players, often among the most economically disadvantaged students on campus, but to take some of the profits from football and instead of ( no offense to anyone here) funding women’s field hockey, equestrian and fencing teams (in order to get 85 “counters” for Title IX purposes), establish a real fund to provide things like insurance for players who face medical issues later in life, career counseling services, etc. I think some of the money should go to funding scholarships which last until a player graduates, assuming they maintain satisfactory academic progress, or at least mandatory four year scholarships and strict guidelines about medical ineligibility scholarships.
If you look up the decision of the NLRB board in the Northwestern case, you will see that the NLRB regional board found that Northwestern players were devoting approximately 50 hours a week to football from August through December (assuming the team makes a bowl game, which pretty much all of the top 25 do (the schools included in the new America study). In the off season, players spend approximately 20 hours a week on football. That is at Northwestern, one of the very few schools that graduates its players. I guarantee you that the time commitment at Alabama, Ohio State, FSU, etc is larger. I personally know kids at a half dozen Power 5 schools right now (including Northwestern and Ohio State among others) and it is impossible to overstate how much time those kids put in. There is really no comparison to what a football player at a big time school goes through compared to a normal college athlete, let alone a normal student.
So, while the kids are doing all this work, Northwestern’s football team cleared 7.3 million after expenses in 2012 (last available data). Alabama cleared roughly 45 million. Ohio State cleared 35 million. And Ohio State had to get a special exemption from the NCAA to provide plane tickets to player’s parents to fly them to the National Championship game last year. Kudos to Meyer for pushing the issue and getting it done, but the whole system is a joke.
And yes, Northwestern graduates 90% of its players, which is laudable given what is required of the kids. But Alabama graduates somewhere between 30-40%, and I believe Ohio State graduates @60%. I think busting your butt on average 30-40 hours a week for five years (four eligible plus a red shirt) so that someone else can make hundreds of millions of dollars (over your five years) in exchange for a roughly 50% chance at a degree which may not even be very marketable is not a very good deal.
I believe what passed last year is that once you have completed two scholarship years, you can not lose your scholarship for performance reasons. You can still have it pulled for violating a team rule, an NCAA violation, academic ineligibility, etc. Not sure it applies if you quit the team, but don’t know for a fact.
As someone already mentioned, The U is a great ESPN 30 for 30 documentary about this issue and what’s at its core. Personally, while FSU certainly is doing a great job screwing this one up, I think the issue is a much bigger systemic one, one that the aforementioned documentary shows well. This isn’t inherent of the school or the sport, it’s inherent of the conditions of how someone gets involved in the sport (through scholarships that aren’t really focused on the academics, etc), and larger social issues.
If FSU actually wanted to make a change, they would deemphasize their football program and put hard grade standards on recruits to actually encourage learning. Most college football players will not be NFL players: schools need to treat them as students first, and players second.
Even NFL players need education and skills for after the NFL. The average career in the NFL will net 7 Million, but most players don’t know how to properly manage and spend it, and have to deal with their injuries as well. Most end up needing a degree or full time employment shortly after “retirement” from the NFL.
So yeah, FSU is really messed up, but its one school in the spotlight of many that have similar problems.
You all probably would not believe the amount of resources schools like FSU devote to educating jocks on life skills beyond sports. But some of the athletes screw up anyway and more often than not alcohol is involved (no shock there).
The first FSU football player this year to hit a female is a very good kid without any previous legal troubles and he just snapped and made the proverbial “bad decision.” He was a freshman and hasn’t even attended classes yet. He is probably 18 years old, from Jacksonville, about 150 miles from Tally, and had a bright future. Now he is dismissed from his dream school and, since it doesn’t matter, I won’t mention that the female he hit was aggressive towards him in the bar when it happened. He screwed up but there are mitigating factors. Let’s ignore all that because it is easier to trash the entire university and judge the kid based on preconceived notions. Let’s shut down the whole football program.
The second player that allegedly hit a female probably didn’t even do it but, for the sake of discussion, lets assume he did. He has a rap sheet and he also got cited for abusing animals last year. He might be bad news but like a lot of jocks he comes from nothing and he could be turned into something positive. He also happens to be a big time player. He will make an NFL roster if he doesn’t blow it first. I follow FSU sports closely as an FSU grad and I lived in Miami for 5 years so know all about the “U” and their issues throughout the 80’s winning NC’s and breaking laws left and right.
These are not choir boys, no question about it. In some cases, as self serving as it sounds, these guys don’t have much going for them outside of football. I will tell you the FSU fan base is seriously tired of all the black eyes the jocks give the university and fully support FSU’s new president’s efforts to clean things up and also fully support FSU HC Jimbo Fisher. JF is also in the $5 million plus club for coaching a sport. That is obscene on the face of it but these jocks are hardly getting exploited, they live like kings, while developing their NFL skills. You’d be surprised at how many of them make NFL rosters. This isn’t U Penn football so the odds are much different. And without football? Well, some of them could be good at something but lots of them go into coaching or whatever after their bodies slow down some. The problems start way before they get to FSU, let me put it that way, and even a place like Vanderbilt had 6 football players involved in a rape scandal recently. Yes, Vanderbilt.
Less than 2% of NCAA football players make an NFL roster for even one year. While I agree the odds coming out of FSU are higher than coming out of pretty much anywhere else, they ain’t all that good. Nothing any sane person would bet on anyway. From 2013 to 2015, FSU had 29 players drafted, the most of any school during any three year period. Even with that insanely high number, you are looking at less than 50% of each class getting drafted, let alone sticking with a team. There are 52 Seminole alums active in the NFL right now. Assuming they span @10 recruiting classes, that means about 20% make the NFL. Like I said, not great odds.
“Earlier this month, the Big Ten announced that it would become the first conference to guarantee its athletic scholarships for four years, a change from the widely followed practice of offering a single-year scholarship that can be renewed. Effective immediately, the Big Ten will ensure that none of its recruited athletes — in any sport — can lose their financial aid because of injury, poor play or coaches’ judgment.”
This article said the Pac 12 also announce that it would require all schools to issue the 4 year scholarships. Yes, academic eligibility is required, as well as team/university rules must be followed (that only seems fair to me).
I read that the Pac 12 rule was that once the student had completed 2 years, the scholarship could be used for finishing a degree even if the player left the team. Has it been used yet? I don’t think so.
@twoinanddone, after the autonomy vote last spring or summer, the P5 schools (SEC, Big Ten, ACC, PAC Twelve, Big Twelve and Notre Dame) adopted a rule about four year scholarships that is very similar to the PAC Twelve conference rule. FWIW, the SEC voted almost unanimously against it. Again, I am not aware that the P5 rule says you can quit the team and still keep your scholarship. A concern I have heard expressed about the P5 rule is that one of the ways you can lose a scholarship is by violating team rules. Which means if you are late for a meeting, or if a coach says you are late, you can theoretically get your scholarship pulled. Also, a large chunk of these guys red shirt, so you can get your scholarship pulled with a year of eligibility left. Spurrier does that routinely at South Carolina, btw.
You know football and you are right with your numbers. But I bet less than 10% of the folks here are working with those numbers and think 1 out 10 FSU football players makes an NFL roster like at the U. of Iowa or something. No, not even close. Like you said 29 drafted over the last three years and while all of them did not make an NFL roster, and the ones that do will last on average 4.5 years, those odds are SIGNIFICANTLY higher than they are at just about any other school in the nation. FSU recruits and develops the cream of the crop football wise.
Do they screw up now and then? Yes. There are 85 kids on scholarship so most of them are working out and getting ready for the NFL and, now and then, attending class. It isn’t like Jimbo Fisher just fell off a tomato truck. He knows how things work and he, and his staff, and support staff, are constantly preaching to these guys but young men, especially privileged testosterone driven jocks, sometimes ignore the positive messages they receive. It doesn’t help that they are faced with temptations that the normal student doesn’t have. It is easy to judge unless and until YOU are faced with those kinds of temptations. Elite athletes are like rock stars. They live by different rules so let’s not act all shocked when they get in trouble. The last time I checked, rock stars screw up all the time.
I think NCAA football was better when they treated the freshmen recruits like army recruits - all arrived on campus together, lived together, ate together, took classes together, partied within reason together. There was a reason they didn’t let them make a lot of decisions on what to do in their free time (or to limit their free time) -18 year olds aren’t that great at handling the new freedoms.
On the other hand, I think we now judge everything as a major infraction. It was a bar fight. Wrong, no question, but
the 18 year old new graduate was provoked (she balled her fist first, and I understand she kneed him in the groin and made racial remarks. Wrong wrong wrong to throw a punch, but no weapons, no attack that went on for minutes. It was seconds. I think this kid should have a punishment, but not this great of one.
@gonoles85. Yep, Fisher has recruited well. Be interested to see if he can keep it going. I just think we can do more for the kids who don’t get drafted.
@twoinanddone I think you make a good point. When I went to college as a freshman, we all showed up a month before school started, had one week of freshmen two a days and then three weeks of regular camp. There wasn’t a lot of time to get in trouble as freshmen. Now with all the early enrollees and everyone doing summer school, these kids have a lot of idle time and little guidance from the program until at least summer camp.
There is a video of the FSU player hitting the woman in the face. She may have provoked him. She was upset about something and tried to hit him. But then he hit her in the face. And that punch…the guy is lucky he is not in more trouble.
If someone shoots a squirt gun at an asomeone else, we don’t think the person is justified in shooting a real gun back. And similarly, if a woman tries to punch a football player of the quality of FSU recruits, we shouldn’t think the player is justified in punching her back. His punch is not equivalent to her punch any more than a real gun is equivalent to a squirt gun. He is using way too much force.
Yes, he is. And even the most diehard FSU football fan will not defend what he did. He has been dismissed from the football team. The only issue now is how much he will be punished and will the punishment fit the crime or not. The only other issue is how much punishment will come from the justice system and will he get a second chance at FSU or not. The other player who allegedly hit a female is a far more valuable player to the team FWIIW.
FSU’s fan base is sick of the dumb ass things the football players do. I am sure Jimbo Fisher is as well. But now one is going to cancel football season and if the “key” is the type of players you recruit maybe we can pitch in and get Jimbo a crystal ball for Christmas. No one knows which of these guys is going to screw up and all of them are recruited by every major football power across the nation so believe me other schools would have taken these exact same players out of high school like FSU did in a heartbeat. That is part of the problem … these schools BEG these guys to play there. They are used to having smoke blown up their you know whats.
Dalvin Cook, the second player, has had more than one mistake and he needs to wake up. Quickly. Or else he is gone. It will be a terrible shame because he is a for sure NFL player if he just stays out of trouble.
4 players- and not recently at all. The main defendant was brand new on campus (incoming freshman) and had not yet played on the team. The other three were redshirts. The horrific incident happened in June 2013. All were recruits of the prior coach, who is now the head coach at Penn State. I assure you this is not the culture in the Vanderbilt athletics department. I know quite a bit about the case (being a lawyer in the Nashville area) and it is just horrible. There was a trial (first 2 defendants) and a conviction, but, unfortunately, due to a juror issue, there will be a new trial. Any Vanderbilt athlete who hits a woman or is guilty of sexual assault will not be playing for Vanderbilt.
Noles- I know you want to defend your school, but there is a huge problem. I hope for everyone’s sake that it will truly be addressed. I am a college sports fan and I hate to see these things happen to the victims AND to have the reputation of schools and coaches harmed by this kind of conduct.
I don’t think anyone is saying the kid was right to hit her. But the fact that she struck the first blow should mitigate the consequences of his subsequent conduct. And she should be in as much trouble as he is.
I heard 6 Vandy football jocks were involved. You won’t hear much about it on ESPN since ESPN and the SEC have a little love affair going on but any transgression by FSU will be front page news. Regardless of whether it was 4 or 6 the point is the problem goes way beyond FSU and, with all due respect, for any SEC fan to point the finger at FSU is laugh out loud funny. The SEC makes cheating a business as usual thing. Not to turn this personal. I am hardly even defending FSU. I feel bad for the first FSU player because I know he made one mistake and I could care less if the second one ever plays for FSU again or not. He is a stud but we have plenty of running backs.