Slate: Time to pay the college athletes

Agreed on the ban, and I would have no problem with seeing it disappear. I'm not sure it would make a huge difference in football, where few people are ready to make the jump early. The simple solution is for the NFL to expand the practice squad size and put developmental players there. God knows they could afford it.

 

Is it a ban, though, or a job requirement? Lots of occupations require a minimum of training or a college degree before they'll consider you. In our business, you can be the second coming of Red Smith and have a hard time landing a job without a degree, or at least a few years at the Podunk Gazette to hone your craft. No law firm on earth will hire someone as a lawyer who hasn't been through law school, and there's even more rigorous requirements for medicine, engineering and a dozen other professions.
For the NFL, those 3-5 years of college experience are the credentials required for the job. There's more to being an NFL player than being able to jump really high and run really fast. There's a huge mental learning curve players have to endure before they're NFL-ready.

 

I used to be a HUGE proponent of paying college athletes. Now, I think the NFL should develop a minor league system for college and high school kids, similar to baseball.

I think it's a much better everybody wins - and makes money - scenario

 

What is the required certification to be an NFL player? Do these guys show up at the combine with a checklist? Is there a minimum number of cheerleaders they must bang to qualify for the NFL? No law firm will hire someone who hasn't been through law school because you need to be a licensed member of the bar to practice law. Same as the requirements for all the other professions you list. BTW there are tons of people in high levels of journalism who don't have college degrees.

If the New York Times wants to hire an 18-year-old out of high school, it's free to do so. If the New York Giants want to hire an 18-year-old quarterback, they can't.

 

The author fails to mention the distinct possibility that paying players might turn college athletics departments into corporations -- and therefore subject to taxes -- in the eyes of the IRS. Combine the tax burden with the loss of tax deductibility for donors and you would, in fact, have a problem. So what if the payments were made by private individuals rather than the schools? Then donors would spend all their money on direct football and basketball player payments and would not give to the athletics departments in general. And then you'd see sports whacked left and right.

 

It's a bullshit, nudge-nudge wink-wink job requirement.

It does not exist because the players need to learn. It exists because (a) the NBA wants more marketable rookies, and (b) the NFL wants the players to live in a weight room and bulk up, and wants it to happen before they're on the payroll. Few players are physically ready for the NFL before they've spent time in college, but being mentally ready isn't an issue. Neither is an issue in the NBA, but it's mutually beneficial for the NBA and NCAA, so they created the requirement. No one looks at LeBron, Kobe or Garnett and says "Just think how good they'd be if they went to college!"

I know people who have worked in newspapers of TV news since they were 17. Individual shops may well decide they need to require a degree, but for an entire industry to do it, there'd better be a damn good reason. Look at it this way: if it was up to individual teams to decide, do you think any of them would have a minimum required level of college experience? (The answer: not a chance.)

 

Eliminate the pro league restrictions and see what happens to the college game

Be honest and ask who creates the product that generates billions in revenue, players it coaches/administrators them see how much is given to which group collectively.

No doubt tilted against players.

Very easy math.

 

Eliminate the pro restrictions on the NBA and you get NCAA basketball of a few years ago. Not terribly different from today, but with a less interesting NBA draft.

Eliminate the pro restrictions in football and there's very, very little difference. Manziel and Clowney probably would have come out last year. Otherwise things would be virtually unchanged.

And don't kid yourself about who creates the product. People root for laundry and a name. You could blow out the entire roster of every D1 team and start fresh and it would barely be a blip on the radar. Alabama fans are Alabama fans first, AJ McCarron fans second. Take away McCarron and they'll be a fan of whoever replaces him.

The university and Nick Saban make Alabama football what it is. In the big picture, the players are just cogs in the wheel.

 

I always find it interesting how Title IX is brought up when the discussion is about college athletes making money. But what isn't brought up is that boosters and sponsors aren't beholden to Title IX.

To put it another way, if Nike wanted to pay Jameis Winston to wear its shoes, do they also have to pay a female athlete at Florida State to wear its shoes? I'd doubt it, because Nike is a private business and can choose who they wish to endorse their products. The same with boosters. A Bobby Lowder wanted a good football team at Auburn. If it was legal for athletes to get money, he could pay for football players, but not have to pay female athletes.

Not necessarily. What the schools would have to do with the minor sports is make them exactly that. Minor sports. Instead of jetting the golf and wrestling teams across the country, they'd have to stick closer to home and ride buses and vans. D-I schools would have to stick to tight budgets for the minor sports, like D-II and D-III teams do.

 

Baron, I think if you dig deep into the finer points of OCR interpretations regarding outside funding you will find it a much murkier legal area than you propose.

 

It's not a civil rights or Title IX violation if the men's basketball coach makes more money than the women's basketball coach, so how would it be a civil rights violation if a private business wanted to only have a football player hawk their product?

 

LeBron, Kobe and Kevin Garnett are three Hall of Fame talents. For every one of them, there were three other high school players who made the leap to the NBA and washed out within two or three years. It's one of the big reasons the NBA put that rule in (and yes, I know some of it is protecting the owners from themselves).

What you said about the NBA wanting marketable rookies, and the NFL wanting guys to be physically ready has some truth. But to say there isn't a mental aspect of the game that players need to learn -- concepts, schemes, techniques, strategy -- before they're ready for the pros is silly. Johnny Manziel won the Heisman in his first season, could've won it again this year, and there's still people saying he's not good enough to succeed in the NFL.
The guys who are ready to make the leap before playing one or two years of college ball are ridiculously rare. There might be one or two players per year. Is it worth blowing up a system that works on a lot of levels, for the overwhelming majority of players, just because it might not be right for a small handful?