Costly change is coming: Pat Haden expects NCAA to lose Ed O'bannon suit

Interesting that of all the thousands of times I've watched big time coaches bail for another job, they always end up getting paid in cold, hard cash.

If that fucking scholarship were so frigging valuable, you'd think, JUST ONCE, a coach would ask for payment in scholarship - so they could get that Master's degree. Or doctorate.

 

At 18-22 years old, a scholarship and job training ought to be better in the long run for someone than the cash equivalent. If it's not, why do we all waste so much time going to college and hyping its benefits in the first place?
You go to college to get a job, right? To better prepare yourself for a specific profession? That's what these athletes are doing. If they're turning pro early (which affects a lot of graduation rates, LTL), then they're likely getting paid handsomely for their work -- something they couldn't have done without the exposure they got from the university, and something that's the end goal of the process anyway. The NBA and NFL don't require their players to have college degrees, just to prove they can perform at a high level. Same as most jobs.
If an athlete is staying four or five years, doesn't graduate and gets nothing of value from their college career, shame on them. Playing college sports is a golden opportunity. Asking an athlete to sacrifice some time and money on the front end to provide the foundation for that opportunity (in the form of an education, better facilities and coaches, etc.) isn't too much to ask in my eyes.

 

That's not what this case is about. This is about colleges and the NCAA obtaining revenue from an individual's image without their consent or cutting them in on it. If they did it to some student in the physics department on a scholarship you could be damn sure the kid would've already sued and collected.
The arguments posted here for the current system make no legal and less moral sense.

 

I understand the time demands that student-athletes have to deal with.

But if you spend 4-5 years at any sort of decent university and claim you have received nothing of value in exchange for your time and sweat, that's your own damn fault. Go to class, study, take advantage of all the extra support services offered to athletes for free that everyone else has to pay for. Enjoy the travel, make contacts with people in administration, media, training staff or whatever area interests you the most.

I could argue that the mere existence of athletic scholarships goes against the university's stated educational mission. But as long as they are handing them out, it's a damn fine deal if you can get one.

 

You should look up the word "paternalism." It isn't related to Joe Paterno, although he was a master practitioner of it.

Athletes should sacrifice the money that the school is making off their jersey because of all the awesome neato things they're going to get in 20 years. That's rich. I wonder how much money Marcus Lattimore sacrificed last year as he ripped up his knee working for free.

 

Ah, we're back to the old argument that the players get a scholarship and they should be grateful for it and not want anything else. That would be great, if academics and school spirit were the primary goals of big-time D-I sports. Only it's not. It's a business.

Let's break this down, piece by piece:

A scholarship in which they are limited in what they can study if their classes conflict with practice. And don't bring up free clothing. Coaches and schools get paid to use those athletes as billboards. There was an SI article years ago about a Big 10 basketball player who was wearing the wrong sneaker company clothing on campus. Sneaker rep threw a shit fit, and sure enough the kid was made to change his wardrobe. What does the kid get out of that?

Like the commercial says, there are over 350,000 athletes who go pro in something else. The odds are extremely slim that an athlete can become a professional.

Very few get these opportunities as well. And they don't get to cash in on the marketing of their names while they are in school.

This one's just laughable. How many days do you think the players in the Final Four have actually been in class in the last month? When you're watching Duke on Thursday at noon, do you ever wonder why the kids aren't in class?

Outside the once a year trip to the Carribean for a holiday tournament or to Florida for a bowl game, what life experiences? Most of the time, these kids hop on a plane, fly halfway across the country, hop on a bus, go to a hotel, eat meals, have practice/walkthroughs, go to the arena, play the game, hop back on a plane home, get home at 4 a.m., and, if they're really studious, go to class 5 hours later. For the amount of time they put in their sport, they can get a job, earn money, and go to the Carribean/Florida for spring break and not have to obey a fucking curfew.

Why can they make more than the thousand-fold? This is a capitalistic country, is it not? And why should owning the rights to their own likeness be based upon ability?

True and true on the point and legal case. And it doesn't do a lot of good for that goose to be golden if he's not benefiting from it. There's not even supposed to be a golden goose, if you follow the purpose of NCAA athletics. It's supposed to be pure amateurs playing for the love of competitioin and their school. Only, there's an awful lot of people benefiting from this business. The only people who will be hurt are the people who are already making money off of unpaid athletes.

 

Don't most colleges require athletes to sign some sort of a waiver? When I was an SID years ago, we did. It basically said that if you represent us in competition, we own you. We can use your image, likeness, voice, whatever whenever we damn well please...... media guides, scorecards, newspaper and television promotional (season ticket) campaigns. Basically, we own you for those years and that's the tradeoff for us awarding you the privilege of wearing our jersey, much less accepting a financial grant-in-aid. If you don't like it, go someplace else or stay home.

Sort of like when I enter some contest to win something, the fine print always states I allow company to use my likeness for promotional purposes or whatever. Do schools not do that anymore?

 

I don't think it is an understatement that the lawsuit has the potential to be bigger than Title IX. If this thing goes down figure athletic departments will have to at least compensate athletes at the same level of TAs and researchers. Throw in the growth of non-revenue sports being televised on conference cable channels and that opens the "pie" up to every student athlete, not just basketball and football.
Figure one result might be some kind of trust fund players will be able to access once they've graduated. Though with athletic departments almost universally operating in the red even after tapping student funds probably not a lot left.
I'd love to see one of those pie charts showing where the dollars go TV dollar, ticket dollar etc, using various schools from different conferences.
Really hard to believe FGCU barely broke even on its tourney run. No matter what the eventual distribution breakdown, schools shouldn't have to worry about taking a short-term budget hit to participate in an event the NCAA is getting paid more than a billion for.

 

Hey dumbshit, that's why Ed O'Bannon is suing.

 

Part of the point, with the O'Bannon suit, is that there isn't a way for athletes to negotiate the clause, although I suppose an athlete could refuse to sign the LOI.

The idea, also, is publicity. NCAA is supposed to be a non-profit. It's one thing to pose for a picture for a media guide. It's another thing to have the likeness be sold for money.

What's more interesting is how Oscar Robertson and Bill Russell are involved. Unless their LOIs are still around and have the publicity clause in there, the NCAA's going to have a heckuva time proving that they have a right to their likenesses.

EDIT: Also, if I'm understanding correctly, the company that runs the LOI is not affiliated with the NCAA. Which means that, say, if an athlete signs one, they can argue that they're not under NCAA jurisdiction.

 

Stuff like this makes me wonder why on earth schools give scholarship for anything other than football and basketball (and, maybe in isolated corners, baseball and hockey)? It costs more to field teams than they will ever bring in.

So if we are going to look at this from a financial standpoint, let's close up shop and go home now. The NFL can fund its own farm system the way the NHL and MLB do and we can draft kids straight out of high school and let them develop in the minor leagues and get paid whatever the market will bear.

 

Oh, I don't know, the law??

WHERE IN THE F DO WE GET THESE POSTERS?