In many ways, yes!
Personally, I prefer Japanese automakers, but if I couldn’t afford a Japanese car, or GM was offering my kid a free Camaro, I’m not too proud to drive one (or allow my kid to do so).
And even though I think they’ve produced inferior cars for far too long, I don’t think it would have been a good thing to allow them to fail.
@LucieTheLakie, being susceptible to human nature doesn’t make you a hypocrite. You were quite up front in identifying your bias. I’m sorry if I came across as being on a high horse.
There are a lot of things wrong with the American college system as it stands today. I won’t go into them, but there are things that we can learn from other countries, and they from us. We turn out a pretty good “product,” but there sure is a lot to be improved in terms of fairness.
I guess I wouldn’t be so quick to let the NCAA off the hook. Not knowing what any of us can do about it is one thing, but giving in to it as inevitable and unchangeable seems to be the wrong answer.
That’s okay, @IxnayBob. And I didn’t mean to suggest anybody let the NCAA off the hook. Maybe when Joe Nocera’s book comes out next year there will be a groundswell to further challenge the NCAA’s “illegal cartel.”
Personally, I would also love to see the NFL and NBA forced to subsidize college football and basketball, given that college athletics serves as the de facto minor league system for their professional teams. Maybe the NCAA will take up that challenge to avoid further anti-trust suits.
It bothers me that college football players are full time athletes in an incredibly lucrative sports franchise, but they are not being paid for their work. It’s unconscionable. If colleges want to have a professional sports league, they should have to pay the players with money.
Cardinal Fang,
They line up to play sports in college at the D1, D2 and D3 level. And you feel sorry for them? You don’t think they are being compensated with, in the case of D1 jocks, full rides and now with new NCAA rules stipends? Who exactly is forcing them to provide their services without being paid? If it so bad why do some many want to do it?
Because for many, it’s their only realistic ticket out of poverty and the chance to go to college.
As far as stipends, they were changed because of that fact that many players couldn’t feed themselves on the weekends in some cases, and expanded because, well, college is expensive. $3600 over a year could easily be spent on groceries alone for a healthy diet if they don’t want a meal plan. Once again, a lot of this is outlined in the U. Basically see my first post #24. But stipends aren’t some amazing thing.
Yes, they get full rides. But with sport schedules and the amount of time they have to put in at some schools, it’s not possible even to attend every class. Not all schools are offenders of this, but particularly big programs in D1 often are. I don’t think we’re talking D2 and D3 here.
It’s not being forced by the school: it’s under the same vein as unpaid internships: it’s exploitation. Many top D1 programs make over 25M a year easily. In those big programs, assuming a 1M coach salary, and 100ish players, that’s at least 200k per player they are bringing in for the school. Their full ride, with stipend, is worth easily half to a quarter of that.
I don’t think it’s clear cut that they should be paid, but to not acknowledge their role and situation is a bit far. The arguments against paying them is that that money will go to improving the school, which is true and valid. But I think there’s a medium in there somewhere. 200k a year is probably a bit much, but they could easily pay them a fraction and still use the money for academic purposes as well. I don’t know where I stand on how much personally, but I would say the new stipends are a bare minimum.
If you pay them they will have to pay taxes on that which is another argument against it. They apparently have plenty of time to play video games and hang out in bars all hours of the night but, other than that, you are right, they don’t have “time” to go to class. That is a crock.
It doesn’t matter if you think D1 athletes do or don’t get enough comp in the form of scholarships.
What matters is that the NCAA rules which mandate that as the max compensation are going to be found illegal by a judge. See Kessler case.
Once that happens, the comp will thereafter be determined by negotiation among the players (and their union) and the schools and conferences. Schools and conferences will be free to have different arrangements providing more or less or different than what is done today.
Players don’t necessarily have the right to get paid. But they do have the right to negotiate.
Also, athletic scholarships will remain mostly tax free as they currently are unless and until the IRS changes its rules on that. [FYI, under current law athletic full rides are already partially taxable.] The athletes would be happy to pay taxes on any new salary dollars that would come their way.
Does that work for you? You don’t want a raise because if you got a raise you’d have to pay taxes on it? I thought not.
@dstark if he’s 80 pounds larger than her, why the heck was she hitting him? Johnson shouldn’t have let her hit him; that doesn’t show self-respect at all. Nor should he be crucified by people like you who think he’s wrong for defending himself. Maybe he shouldn’t have punched her, but any way to make the woman stop. She is totally in the wrong, he shouldn’t have much of a punishment at all.
Let’s not forget, he’s a black man up against a racist white woman. He’s going to lose every time.
On another note, every SEC school (outside of Vanderbilt, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina) is a complete joke academically. UNCW would smoke any SEC school besides those four in an academic decathlon. In fact, it would only lose to the first two, and be evenly matched with the other two.
That’s absurd. You know this HOW exactly?
How about we keep the “sports competition mindset” out of discussions where they don’t belong? This is as useful as discussing which superhero would win in a fight.
"Does that work for you? You don’t want a raise because if you got a raise you’d have to pay taxes on it? I thought not. "
Fang – the argument (which is flawed) is that if the players become employees then they would have to start paying taxes on the value of their currently (mostly) tax-free scholarships, which would be a step backwards net after tax.
The flaw is that one does not flow from the other. Academic and athletic scholarships are/are not tax free because the IRS says so, not because of employee/student status.
Lots of college kids today have tax free scholarships and then also get paid taxable salaries for jobs they have on campus. Also, a portion of current full-ride athletic scholarships are already taxable under current IRS rules. So the tax argument is a red herring in this debate.
@LucieTheLakie I can most certainly assure you that this is NOT absurd in the slightest. Just compare the admitted student stats and the graduation rates. Besides the four I mentioned, UNCW is far academically superior to all the SEC schools. Fact.
I’ll stand up for the NCAA. The outliers are always going to get the press, but there are thousands upon thousands of NCAA athletes who are very happy with the deas they get for scholarships, and most genuinely like competing in their sports and going to college. As a parent, I was thrilled with the structure and rules my daughter had to live under, including study tables and no drinking for periods before games and practices. She has benefited from playing, from being part of the team, from the structure being a student athlete provides. She loves to work out, and does so for 2-3 hours a day in the summer. Should the school pay for her to do that? I have no problem with DD being required to put in a lot of time for the amount she received in scholarship, even though it wouldn’t be minimum wage if I counted the hours invested. I think many of the NCAA rules are too strict, and very much disagree with some of the penalties, but schools have cheated and lied and ignored them for so long that the NCAA doesn’t really have a choice but to be harsh in every case. I think things were better when the schools did have ‘football’ dorms and training tables. So what if football players got steak two or three times a week while other students got hamburger helper. To me, that’s better than handing them cash, because then some get $$$ and others get little. I don’t agree with the stipends being different amounts, as to a 17 year old the difference in $3000 and $5000 per year is big. Schools with the $5000 offers have more power.
The thing I disagree with is that the NBA and NFL won’t let college aged players into the professional sport until a year/three years after high school graduation. Why? If a team doesn’t want a 17 or 18 year old, don’t draft him. If the player doesn’t want to go to college, don’t make them sit out. Separate the NCAA from professional sports, and have each player make a decision that is right for himself. Swimmers don’t have to wait to go pro. Baseball players don’t have to wait. Football players shouldn’t have to wait. Those who really don’t want to be in college will not go to college. Colleges can say ‘here’s the deal - scholarship, room and board, stipends - take it or go pro.’
I am going to standup for the NCAA. They are one step up from FIFA.
Maybe some athletes will no longer go to bed hungry.
http://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2014/4/15/5618236/new-ncaa-rules-meals-snacks-SNACKS
@dstark, when my son was getting recruited last year, I had a conversation with a dietitian about the new unlimited food rules. The old rules were just crazy. Bagels, but no cream cheese. Only certain kinds of fruit, nuts only in certain circumstances, no real protein at all. One school (I can’t remember which one) got n trouble for providing cookies with icing on them. The cookies were ok, but the icing was a violation. The rules as they existed might have allowed a school to give a light breakfast to a gymnast or golfer, but my son is a 270 pound offensive lineman. A bagel and banana isn’t really doing much for him. The unlimited meals rule is certainly a step in the right direction, as are full COA scholarships.
@twoinanddone, I too was a college athlete, and I agree with you that there are many, many benefits to sports in general and the structure provided by a good college program. But the fact is that big time football, and to a certain extent basketball, as the revenue sports, are simply different. The time commitments are larger, the pressure is greater, and the spotlight is brighter. Does anyone believe the FSU kid would have been arrested if he was a normal student? We should acknowledge that playing quarterback at Michigan in front of 107,000 people every week is a different experience than playing golf at Wisconsin for example. And FWIW, schools are still doing training table. That is really what the unlimited food rule was about. And I looked it up and you are technically correct that there are no more athletic dorms, although as long as a dorm has more non athletes than athletes in residence, then it does not qualify as an athletic dorm, even though all of the football players live there. So colleges are exploiting the obvious loophole, as described here http://www.elevenwarriors.com/college-basketball-recruiting/2014/06/36633/where-everything-is-an-arms-race-college-athlete-housing-has-entered-the
In the olden days, the players had plenty of food. Then the NCAA decided to be pc and got rid of football dorms, training tables, and declared athletes needed to be treated like any other student. Some schools have unlimited dining plans and all students can eat as much as they want IN the dining halls, but football players can’t always make it to the dining halls during the hours the halls are open. Food couldn’t be brought to the training centers except for the 3 meals per day, and non-scholarship players couldn’t eat or snack with the team. That changed this year and everyone is happier and fuller, and I don’t think it has hurt the general student population one bit.
I working in the dining hall that the football players ate at when I was a student. They ate breakfast in the regular cafeteria, and lunch/dinner in their own dining room. For breakfast, the didn’t even show an ID, just muttered ‘foo-ball’ as they checked in (although it really wasn’t hard to pick them out). They’d line their trays with 6 glasses of milk, a plate of eggs, another of pancakes. They ate a mountain of food. They were happy. I think they also had snacks at their study tables at night. Why the NCAA thought this needed to change is beyond me. I don’t care that a player at Oklahoma gets food 6 times a day and one at Wake Forest may have only had access to 1 snack a day. I’m okay with a football dorm having better TVs than the one the freshman are assigned to. I think there was more control in those days.
@Ohiodad51, your son weighs 270 pounds? That’s what my oldest daughter and my son weigh added up.
Now my mon may be close to 270 pounds. 
I like your anecdote.
Does full COA scholarships include housing? Can a student athlete live on a full COA scholarship?
There is a young woman in the community who comes from a broken home. After age 15, her parents left the scene. (Don’t know why). She helped raise her two younger siblings with a little help from the community.
She got into UC Berkeley. That is pretty amazing. On a scholarship. The problem is the scholarship doesn’t cover housing, food, clothes, transportation, etc.
She has $700 a month to pay for the above.