Slate: Time to pay the college athletes

Why can't the system continue to work for the overwhelming majority while also being right for the small handful?

Most college athletes probably wouldn't get much in endorsement or booster money. But for those who can get it, why shouldn't they be allowed to, besides some antiquated ideal of amateurism?

 

Surely you jest. Johnny Manziel isn't in college learning more for the NFL. When he gets to the NFL, he's going to have to un-learn almost everything he's doing now. That's how it is at every position when it comes to college versus the NFL. Good thing Tebow stayed all four years so he was ready, right?

There are tons of lesser-known players than LeBron, Kobe and Garnett who have done just fine as NBA players. But the bigger point is, they were in the NBA making money when they had zero interest in being in college in the first place. Don't act like there's some learning curve that these guys are on. They are there so the NBA and NFL gets ready-made rookies and storylines for the draft.

 

So, basically, you're saying no player ever learns anything in college, and every player who is good enough to be a college star can go straight from high school to the NFL?
Quarterbacks don't have to learn how to read defenses, progress through multiple options, and a million other tiny technique things that will make them successful.
Defensive players instinctively know how to operate in certain defensive schemes, how to cover receivers, how to beat a block.
Running backs have no bad habits they need to break, and know how to hit a hole and run pass routes.
Offensive linemen know every single blocking scheme they'll ever need to know when they come out of high school.
Bull. crap.
There are hundreds of things you have to learn in college before you can play football, at any position, in the NFL. It's like saying because you can shoot off a model rocket without blowing yourself up, that you can build one that'll go to the moon.

 

Hope the NCAA is litigated out of existence, within my lifetime.
Of course, there's a chance football could be, as well.
But the death of the NCAA would be worth rejoicing.

 

Look at baseball. Look at hockey. Those sports have their own developmental programs. And they greatly, greatly prefer to get players at age 18 before they've picked up bad habits from playing essentially a different sport.

If the NFL had the opportunity to grab guys at age 18 and teach them the pro game, they'd grab it in a heartbeat. Even if those guys didn't see the field for two years.

 

I'm not so sure the NFL would want to spend the money it would take to field entire developmental farm teams when the colleges are doing it for them for free.

And although some small number of players would get big checks out of high school to go play minor league football, a lot more would rather go to college than make a piddling salary to play some minor league football no one cared about.

It works for baseball because college baseball is not really an appealing alternative. College football is.

 

Say what you want about age restrictions and whether players generate the $$ or not, no one is looking out for the welfare of the athletes. The system is not to protect them.

In Europe the teams get to harvest youth basically unrestricted.

 

I didn't say farm teams. I said if they could get an 18-year-old quarterback, put him on their practice squad for two years and have a 20-year-old ready to go, they'd gladly do that.

Of course they wouldn't want to pay the cost of the whole team. I was just answering to Batman's point about all the great stuff that's in it for the kids developmentally. There are far better ways of accomplishing that goal for both player and pro team.

 

Who cares? That's their "problem."

Journalism students can drop out and go work at the Plain Dealer any time they want; why shouldn't athletes?

Of course this whole "problem" could be solved by the NCAA allowing athletes to return to college if they did not appear in a regular-season game for a professional team.

Go to training camp and get cut in preseason? Go back to school and get ready for next season.

 

For college basketball, allow the players to declare for the draft, and if they don't get drafted in the first round and/or sign with an agent, they can go back to school and not lose eligibility. Let them be able to do it once, so some guy doesn't declare each and every year. Just like baseball and hockey.

For the NBA team that drafts a guy in the second round who goes back to school, they retain his rights unless he gets redrafted in the first round. Then the new team has to give the first team a second-round draft pick.

Problem solved.

 

The issue shouldn't be about what happens at the next level for the elite performers.

It should be about the equitable allocation of the revenue generated in the present for those who generate it.

The industry of football is essentially the same for the NFL and college--revenues generated from ticketing, TV contracts, licensing, etc. Costs from infrastructure (stadiums, training facilities, etc), participant contracts (or scholarships), marketing, sales, insurance and so on.

So, if we look at participant payments, why does the percentage paid to those who coach vs those who play vary so much between the pros and colleges? The players in the NFL get the much larger portion of the pie than their coaching counterparts in the league; not so in college or certainly nowhere close, even factoring in the scholarship value.

To me, that's the disparity that needs to be reckoned with--both for college football and basketball. Decades and decades ago, this wasn't an issue. But, when the TV contract money starts adding up to billions instead of millions, well the game, the economic game, has altered the landscape.

 

Northwestern players are petitioning the NLRB for union representation.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/college/chi-northwestern-football-players-labor-union-20140128,0,182603.story