O.J. Mayo took money from an agent before college? Shocked, I tell you.

They are receiving more than their newspaper counterparts: Free room and board, free tuition and free books, based solely on their athletic ability. Can't think of any college that's doing that for J-majors based solely on their journalistic ability.

My point was this: Nobody's trying to offer extra rewards to student journalists (free cars, money, no-show jobs that pay well) just so their college of choice can have a better newspaper. We know boosters, if unregulated, will go out of their way to do so for athletes in the two primary college sports — football and men's basketball. For that reason, comparing college athletes to the staff of the newspaper, yearbook, radio station, &c., is a comparison between apples and oranges.

 

I agree that boosters ruin everything. I do. But making it worse is that for many of these athletes, their options are to 1.) Not take anything, have both themselves and their families suffer through lower class in the meantime, hope they're good enough to make it to the pros, and then and only then finally pull themselves out of the gutter. or 2.) take what they can get, realizing they're only an injury away from losing it all, and possibly leave their school hanging four years from now when everything comes to life.

I don't know about you, but if I were a poor black college kid who had the option of a free car, free money, e.t.c vs. having nothing and hoping to one day succeed, it might be tough for me to say no.

I'm not saying pay the kids $30,000 a year to play football. I'm just saying that a little stipend comparable to other organizations might make it a little easier to hold out for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

 

This is an utterly illogical place for you to be reopening this argument, given that the Mayo situation works entirely against your point.

Mayo wasn't cheating because he hasn't been in college long enough, he was cheating because that's what happens when you force talented players to go to college who have no interest in being there. And making players like Mayo stay in college for more years would undoubtedly only result in more cheating and corruption of this nature, not less.

 

The point of the post at 5:55 was that the system sucks, but in the last four hours I have seen the light.

Everything is better when Mayo goes straight to the pros.

When they get it right, ESPN will televise the AAU finals so you can see who will be in the NBA.

 

ESPN's networks and FSN already show top prospects high school games, plus ESPN also shows the the Jordan and McDonalds All-American games/dunk contests/3-point shootouts.

I'm sure you've forgotten how many times we saw LeBron James in his senior year of high school.

 

But we need to see AAU.

Just wait until kids stop playing for the high schools because it conflicts with the AAU games.

 

What do you mean 'wait until'? Shit's happening, dude.

 

I'm sure you meant that as sarcasm, but it brings up other valid questions: Should educational institutions (high schools and colleges) should be doing double duty as community sports franchises? Would both the schools and their athletic departments be better off if split apart?

 

It's way off the intended topic of this thread, but that is an interesting topic for debate somewhere. In Europe and most countries, they have club systems where sports and education are generally divided, and I think that way is more honest and invites less corruption.

 

It costs way too much money (equipment and insurance) to play football.

I've never heard of AAU fotball.

 

DING! http://www.aaufootball.org/

 

This already happens in other sports.