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Antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Dick Whitman, Mar 17, 2014.

  1. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    There are lots of people like this in the tech world. The NYT recently had a story about how the economist Gary Becker's grandson is torn between college and going straight to Silicon Valley.

    Letters? William Faulkner never graduated high school.
     
  2. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    Right. Granted.

    But what other extracurricular activity requires amatuer status? Any?
     
  3. heyabbott

    heyabbott Well-Known Member

    None, nothing. Aside from tuition and federal research grants (which are dwindling) what brings in more revenue to Universities than athletics?
    Which is spent only on athletics and is not shared with the education portion of the institution.

    Depending on the state, a University football coach or basketball coach is the highest paid State employee in at least 40 states. And in all 50 states I'd say that football AND basketball coach is on the top 6 highest paid state employees.

    You can cover the White House for the New York Times and write for your school paper. You can work at DuPont and be part of your school's intramural chemistry competition. You can work for Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab and also be part of the school's It's Academic Team.

    But not inter-collegiate athletics. And no one benefits more than the coaches. mike krzyzewski is probably the leader in the club house for lifetime earnings by a college coach, if you consider salary, shoe contracts, speaking engagements, books, endorsements and camps. He, and his ilk, have absolutely nothing to gain by financially empowering his players.
     
  4. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    Really well put.

    What a total fucking scam.
     
  5. Alma

    Alma Well-Known Member

    My contention -- and I'm really not interested in arguing this whole thing out because it's long and boring and I'd rather just lose the argument and see the marketplace play out -- is that end of amateurism in college sports would eventually be a holistic net loss for the majority of athletes.

    But I suspect we will find out one way or the other.
     
  6. Flying Headbutt

    Flying Headbutt Moderator Staff Member

    Well then it's up to colleges to decide if they want to be big corporations or educational institutions. Are you willing to eschew big bucks for the betterment of your athletes?

    FWIW, you'll notice it's never the track or swim teams who file these sort of lawsuits. Pretty sure there's a good reason for that.
     
  7. Baron Scicluna

    Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

    Those teams are too afraid they'll get axed if they do.
     
  8. heyabbott

    heyabbott Well-Known Member

    amateurism is alive and well in college. I know a dozen or more kids playing college sports right now, from a West Point Cadet playing club soccer to women's lax and field hockey players, cross country runners, golfers, sailers at the D1 and D3 levels. They do play for the
    Ove of a game and the competition and being part of a team. You can watch some on TV, lacrosse, swimming, diving, wrestling, soccer, tennis gymnastics volleyball. The stands are full of parents and friends and no one else and most of the time tickets are less than $10 and that goes to buy equipment.

    It's only the FBS schools and and top basketball programs that pimp kids for profit. And to be even more honest, most of the kids in the programs understand what is truly going on.
    But 95% of the kids are true student athletes. Balancing class and practice. So fuck Coach K and his builder of men, it's real easy to cherry pick 3 kids a year while making $5 million off of them. John Feinstein can rub so e people the wrong way, but he's right about the Patriot Leagues and The service academies. All those nonFBS schools full of football players who'll never see a nickel, all those non revenue student athletes that will never see their name in agate but play as if their game will get banner headlines.
     
  9. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    Kids at Duke don't play hard? They don't love the game?
     
  10. heyabbott

    heyabbott Well-Known Member

    they love their job and play hard, they earn their scholarship. They are professionals in all but name. They enjoy amazing training facilities, state of the art treatment and medical care. Chartered trips, great hotels, free clothing, deferred exams, tutors, excused absences from classes. Nothing about their lives on campus, especially basketball players, is remotely like regular students or the nonprofit sports. Does the soccer team at Texas get the same training table as the football team? When the Michigan wrestlers travel is the same as the basketball team?

    The Duke players are paid and pampered to play, kids who play at near by High Point do it because it's a game. The duke kids are paid to love it, the others just love play. Which is more more pure?
     
  11. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    The Duke kids are just better at basketball than the High Point kids, who would gladly be pampered were that available to them.
     
  12. JayFarrar

    JayFarrar Well-Known Member

    You know an interesting debate has begun in higher ed circles over the need for college for the exceptionally bright, computer kids.

    Those kids know they don't need college but the colleges need them or at least the alumni donations they'll give in a few years.

    When I was reading about that I thought of how the athletic gifted are treated by the colleges.
     
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