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Reggie Bush ain't looking too clean

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by The Big Ragu, Sep 14, 2006.

  1. JayFarrar

    JayFarrar Well-Known Member

    And if you wanted to fund an assistance program? Take one percent of the television contract money, one percent of the branded product sales, an amount that would be in the ten's of millions, then dole it out based on some formula based on projected professional success and how they have done in college.
    Plus the superstars get a cut of their own jersey sales.
    Money goes into a fund. Professionally managed and the players get a supervised, regular stipend. Meaning they can't run out and buy their dream Hummer while still in college.
     
  2. Oz

    Oz Well-Known Member

    Because this isn't the NFL, this is a school. Trust me, I not naive to the fact that the NCAA is a business which makes its killer profits off kids who don't see any many, but rather hit the books. I know this, you know this, we all know this.

    So why keep the charade going in its present form? Because the moment kids taste agent money, they become pros. No way could you justify scholarships when they're getting paid on top of that. I would immediately ask the kid to give back (or maybe I would simply take back) that scholarship and give it to someone else who really needs it. Let the studs who collect agent money pay their own way. No excuses, they're getting paid now. (If it's true that Bush snagged $100,000 while at USC, yeah, he could have paid his own way there.)

    And Jay, yes, studies show the enrollment increases that come with successful athletics. So why penalize a stellar swim or gymnastics team that wins conference titles annually and reward the 2-9 football program that might make more money, but failed to add to the school's successful athletics? Or that 10-20 men's basketball team? I would hope all that money wouldn't stay with the big four sports while everyone else fails to get a cut because they're not money sports.

    Long answer short, paying athletes would open a whole can of worms. And no one would agree on how to properly divide what's there, only creating more headaches than answers.

    At least that's how I see it. As dog said, we probably just have to agree to disagree here.
     
  3. Columbo

    Columbo Active Member

    Yeah, one has talent, and the other one is dead [/whitlock]

    Seriously.... Yahoo is milking this story at this point. The living arrangements piece back in March was the get. The rest of the cutesy documentation now is remora work after that big shark bite before the draft.
     
  4. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    Be real. The concept of the "student-athlete" is a farce. If Reggie Bush could have gone right to the NFL, how important do you think that free education would have been to him? Why did he leave after his junior year, if it wasn't about positioning himself for NFL money not about the education? If these are all nice student-athletes (and I am talking about football and basketball players, not the volleyball player who is riding a scholarship to an education), why do we have the NCAA Clearinghouse? Why do we have one set of admission standards for athletes, another for non-athletes?

    This is a business. A good chunk of those kids are not students. They wouldn't be students, if not for the football. And even if Reggie Bush was in it for the education, as you suggest, it still doesn't change the fact that he saw everyone around him getting rich off of his talent. His free education doesn't even begin to pay back what USC and the NCAA made off of him.

    You are correct. Because Bush can run fast, he is now a multimillionaire. So what? He's got nothing to apologize for. He didn't come to you to ask for more. He didn't steal. He didn't do anything illegal. He broke some hypocritical NCAA rules--BEFORE he was made a multimillionaire--not the law. I am just putting it in perspective. What the Saints are paying him today, has nothing to do with what the NCAA was taking from him two years ago.
     
  5. pallister

    pallister Guest

    I think athletes should get paid on a sliding scale. The revenue generators (the stars in the big sports) would get paid top end, while the players for secondary sports would get much less. Then, the scholarship money (from an athletic standpoint) would be based on an inverse scale. The majority of athletes, who do not generate much, if anything for the university, would still be eligible for full scholarships. But on the high end, if you're "gettin' paid," then that's your job, and you only get scholarship money if you earn it academically, just like the non-athletes who either earn their scholarship academically or have to work to pay for it.
     
  6. Michael_ Gee

    Michael_ Gee Well-Known Member

    Using college athletics as a farm system is illogical. The Euro club team idea would be better. But this is the system we have. And I stopped worrying about its morality as a young child.
    The first college sports cheating took place the day the first college sports rule was enacted. There were practices common in the Roaring Twenties (like playing for about seven schools in five years) that dwarf Reggie Bush's actions.
    Anyone who's covered or followed sports for more than a day knows that everyone cheats. Harvard cheats its own admissions standards to get hockey and football players into Harvard.
    If everyone breaks the rules, maybe the rules are the problem. Why have them at all? Why do people here get so upset at these "scandals", which harm no one, by the way? Who freakin' cares?
    Schools that tolerate thiefs and thugs on scholarship (Hi! Jim Calhoun) bother me, because I might get robbed or mugged. Whether or not some agent gave Bush money has no effect on me or anyone else I can see.
     
  7. TigerVols

    TigerVols Well-Known Member

    Actually, I use yahoo sports as my sports delivery site b/c I'm not bombarded w/ loud and obnoxious ESPN mobile adds when I click on it!
     
  8. TigerVols

    TigerVols Well-Known Member

    I wonder if Ornstein can file some sort of legal action against Yahoo for having somehow accessed his credit card information w/o authorization.
     
  9. Football_Bat

    Football_Bat Well-Known Member

    Unless a fraudulent purchase was made, I don't think Ornstein has a leg to stand on. Your credit info is available to anyone at a price.
     
  10. Layman

    Layman Well-Known Member

    Can't believe I'm about to step into this particular conversation, but at least I'm (semi) qualified. I've spent my entire career in some form of enrollment management, mostly in the financial aid field (thus, forgive the non-existent writing ability). I've worked at the D-1, D-3 & NAIA levels, and been the athletic department liaison, as well.

    While we can all knock around the "it's not fair / the schools are milking these kids" angle all day, there's a pretty (arguably, at least) good reason why schools won't pay these kids. They can't. I've been part of numerous conversations on this subject (ok, many over beers at FA conferences....THERE'S a rockin' bunch), but that seems to be the consensus opinion.

    Base theory (albeit very simplified....you could write a book on what I'm about to share) goes something like this:

    At it's core, the athletic scholarship is nothing more than a financial aid package. A big one (at least at the D-1 level), but one that comes under the exact same federal and state regulations as every other student.No different, at least in THEORY, from any other talent based (academic, music, etc) award. You receive it based on previous performance (you show exceptional talent in HS), and are able to keep it as long as you "perform" up to the standard (carry the ball well, keep your spot in the marching band, keep your GPA above 3.5) the institution sets. That's the deal.

    When you talk about a stipend, though, you move in to an entirely different ballgame. You've moved from in-kind support (tuition, books, room and board) to, literally, work. As in, the student is now being paid, in exchange for a service rendered. Why is this different? Because now, the student (arguably...but there's a GREAT argument to be made) becomes an employee.

    Serious can o' worms. Taxes (yes, they'd have to pay....and no it can't come from under "work study". Now you're involving the U.S. Department of Education, various individual state regulations, not to mention warping the pay rate structure of the entire school's WS program), liability, VERY likely unionization. If a player is at a state university, are they a state employee? The issues that would arise, would be simply staggering.

    By the way, even if there WAS some way of making this happen, the "sliding scale / revenue sport" idea simply won't fly. It'd be a ticking time-bomb, with Title IX implications. Maybe even more significantly, once this got rolling, there'd be no way of holding the line at the athletic department. There's be plenty of legal grounds for ALL talent based award recipients to expect a stipend. The potential cost would be incredible, and likely the end of college athletics as we know them (Yeah, yeah. Doomsday scenario. But, realistic).

    Ok, that's the general concept.....in a GROSSLY simplified fashion. I fully expect to be told I'm full of it. That's cool. Either way....order up!! This round's on me!!
     
  11. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    So basically you are making the case that the NCAA should not be the farm system for the NFL. Some other entity would be playing that role. And of course, if it was reallly about the student-athlete experience, and not the millions of dollars the NCAA rakes in off of football and basketball, they'd have no problem stepping aside. They'd just let in the true scholar-athletes, and not worry about whether they were the best players or not.

    And then you wouldn't have to go through the farce of pretending that you are dealing with "student-athletes," when there is at least a small chunk of kids who have no interest in the education--just the potential stepping stone to the NFL, and another chunk that didn't perform anywhere academically well enough to have gone to the school under any other circumstance.
     
  12. Flip Wilson

    Flip Wilson Well-Known Member

    I would assume Ferrell is just supporting his alma mater. He was a sports information major at USC.
     
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