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

It's a chicken and egg thing we could go round and round on forever and never come to a conclusion.
The coaches, ADs, schools, commentators, etc., who are "feeding at the trough generated by the unpaid student athletes," does their livelihood exist solely because of the slave labor of 20-year-old college kids?
Or is the opportunity to be an "unpaid student-athlete" there solely because of the support system created by millions of dollars in university expenditures?
How much value does Johnny Football have as a Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback backed by millions of Texas A&M's dollars, as opposed to Johnny Business Major? How much money will Johnny Manziel make, and how good will his life be for the next 50 years, because he won a Heisman Trophy at Texas A&M?

 

The NCAA can get around this by not licensing video games (they've already stopped making NCAA basketball games) and by selling non-specific merchandise.

Sure there might be someone cheesed off because they can't get a No. 4 Victor Oladipo jersey, but most fans wouldn't give a shit if they had IU No. 6. Most buy merchandise for the school identification, not player identification.

 

Not in many cases. Maybe in none. I'm still trying to think this through.

But, Nike paid Jordan more than the Bulls ever did.

If a kid is a dominate player, might they want him to -- and pay him enough to -- stay on the college stage, where he can be a superstar?

Especially if the kid is projected to be the top pick, they could manipulate where he goes. The kid would have more leverage, since he could remain in school, and still have big bucks coming in.

So, maybe Nike engineers a trade of the number one pick to the Lakes or Knicks. Or, maybe the kid sticks around for another year, instead of going to play in Sacramento.

 

A pro team/league has no other purpose than to make money by being as competitive as possible or to otherwise provide entertainment to paying customers. Sports at college, on the other hand, are supposed to be just an ancillary facet of an institution whose main mission is education. So this is not a one-size-fits-all thing, and colleges are under no obligation to act in a way the pros do. Have things gotten way out of proportion at a lot of colleges? Heck yes. I'm all for rooting for Missouri club football and basketball; would much rather have that than see players who are compensated extra for things that have nothing to do with the reason they should be at college.

 

Athletes were able to have scholarship opportunities for decades without schools getting millions of dollars in TV, video game and sneaker money.

 

I have typed this before...

Make all athletes employees of the university with varying pay grades that would be negotiated at signing. Give the player the option to receive a free education while playing and cap the years played at four with the optional fifth year for redshirt/injury.

Players may use their position/status for profit if they can.

A swimmer would be paid at Grade One for example which would be $1,000 for the year. They would most likely be using the free tuition/room/board like always.

The Four-Star RB would possibly get $50,000 a year and might not ever step foot in the classroom. But they might as well. They now have the option and professors would not feel compelled to pass them. They would also get the free room/board and whatever a booster deems enough to give them as a bonus.

So if we have 100 players on a football payroll (a shit ton) with an average salary of $20,000, that would be $2,000,000 in player salaries. Not that much when you look at the salaries of some college coaches.

 

God, I hope this doesn't affect the colored blazer guy at the middle-tier bowl games. If he loses his 7 figure salary, I just don't know what I'll do!

 

Essentially it comes down to this: College athletics generates billions of dollars in revenues. Rational people think the labor should receive a bigger slice of the pie, and however that gets sorted out is secondary.

On the other side, we have morons who put their fingers in their ears and shout "La la la la! I think these players should be happy about the education they're getting while their entertain me which is a 40 hour a week job) and I pretend there is some purity involved because the billions of dollars are going to someone else."

They should have blown up the NCAA the minute they decided to let Olympic athletes take endorsement money. The whole ruse of amatuerism in this country is a joke, and the people who champion bullshit like "life experiences" while assholes like Mark Emmert light their cigars with $100 bills dipped in Kevin Ware's blood are part of the fucking problem.

 

This is a tangent, but an important one -- athletes do not get the top medical care.

Salon just did this piece about it, a roundup of other prior pieces, tied to Kevin Ware's injury:

http://www.salon.com/2013/03/31/will_ware_be_stuck_with_the_bill/

It was a bit too speculative to be tied to Ware -- for one thing, it looks like he'll be back playing so his scholarship will be renewed anyway. But it highlights the fact that athletes who get hurt during games or practices often aren't covered and are left holding a very hefty bill. So you should remove that argument from your holster immediately. Most of the crap should be out of there -- particularly the part about the privilege of getting up at 5 a.m. to practice, yay! -- but the myth about the finest medical care should be gone immediately.

 

Fine, I'm widya. Let's not renew any of those big TV contracts, and let the N.F.L. have their own farm system, and make the D-League something other than a dumping ground. I would love that day to come when universities were just universities and not farm teams.