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Spurrier - College is for Football, not Academics

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by qtlaw, Aug 6, 2007.

  1. Pastor

    Pastor Active Member


    When recruiting the engineering student, what is going to push him or her from one school to another? Will it be the opportunity to obtain work with NASA or because the football team (which will drag down the GPA) plays well?

    CK, I believe it was Forbes that did the research and it said that college football programs are money losers. This isn't about funny math, this is about the draining of resources into a program that just doesn't generate the same revenue.

     
  2. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    The whole concept of the "amateur athlete" is complete bullshit.
     
  3. Layman

    Layman Well-Known Member

    Jay, I think (again....really getting outside my comfort zone here) the difference is the tax-exempt status of the institution itself. The feds have really clamped down on this is in the past couple of audit cycles, but examples of this can be found in any department on any campus. In our office, we employ a significant number of work-studies during the school year. In the summer, though, their status gets pretty muddy. They will often hit their max dollar cap for an individual financial aid award year, at which point we'd have to actually bring them on as university employees for the remainder of the summer. Again, the athletic department does not operate in a vacuum. They just another part of a larger organism, ruled by the same set of regs.
     
  4. Johnny Dangerously

    Johnny Dangerously Well-Known Member

    When I'm president of the United States, my smartest staffers might come up with some brilliant plan to fix all of this, but my position will remain that anything that devalues the opportunity to attend college for four or five years tuition-free is something my administration will have no part of.

    In case nobody's noticed, we're losing our grip on a lot of things we used to say we did better than anybody else in the world, and educating our children isn't exactly exempt from that list. The day we say college athletes aren't fairly compensated by a full scholarship, expert medical, nutritional and tutorial care and the kind of networking dooley mentioned is the day I'm sending everyone back to school -- so they can have a college experience they fully value (as opposed to the one they obviously think was worthless).

    Whether or not you think there's no such thing as a student-athlete (which would be delusional thinking; I can introduce you to many), the choice to play football on scholarship at a college in this country comes with every opportunity to build a better life for yourself and your family. Sorry, but anyone who doesn't take advantage of that has only himself to blame.

    Oh, and if you think we can pay only the players on teams that make money and pay nothing to the athletes on teams that break even or lose money, you'd better hope you don't end up having to cover the lawsuits that would create. You'd be busy for a long, long time.
     
  5. Layman

    Layman Well-Known Member

    Oh, and if you think we can pay only the players on teams that make money and pay nothing to the athletes on teams that break even or lose money, you'd better hope you don't end up having to cover the lawsuits that would create. You'd be busy for a long, long time.
    [/quote]

    Or, frankly, anyone else who is attending the same institution on a merit / talent / gifted based "scholarship", for that matter......
     
  6. Johnny Dangerously

    Johnny Dangerously Well-Known Member

    I touched on that briefly on Page 2. Yes.
     
  7. Captain_Kirk

    Captain_Kirk Well-Known Member



    Or, frankly, anyone else who is attending the same institution on a merit / talent / gifted based "scholarship", for that matter......
    [/quote]

    One difference: those other scholarships, for the most part, aren't generating revenue as a result of their services. That revenue generation factor should be a differientator that could allow for that difference in a legal manner.

    The other sports that do generate revenues;that could be a little trickier. Perhaps a set percentage of revenues from any revenue generating sport would be designated for the athletes.

    There are ways, people, there are ways
     
  8. Pastor

    Pastor Active Member


    You are kidding right? Those other scholarships, the ones going to the best and the brightest, are done so that those best and bright students will go to their school, bring up the GPA, increase the schools educational reputation and bring in the ONLY thing that schools use to build revenue... government research money.

    Whether it is building spy satellite lenses beneath football stadiums or the testing of satellite parts, universities get their money from the government. This money is then lost on the athletic field.
     
  9. Layman

    Layman Well-Known Member



    And from a legal standpoint.......in the eyes of the Federal DOE......there's absolutely no difference at all.
     
  10. Captain_Kirk

    Captain_Kirk Well-Known Member

    Students on scholarships aren't bringing in government research money. Employees of the institution are doing that.
     
  11. Pastor

    Pastor Active Member


    Who do you think is working on the government research? Have you ever seen or been inside one of these labs?

    They are run by the university but use the government research grants to fund the classes in order to determine a result. The universities are able to obtain a larger amount of grants based on the educational level of the school.
     
  12. Kevin Morales

    Kevin Morales Member

    This is right on the money. When someone posts something about athletes not getting paid or athletes being so under compensated, etc., it makes me think that person hasn't spent a great deal of time around a major university lately.

    The athletes get the best housing around, probably $1,000/mo. places, for free. They get all their meals for free. They get free transportation, usually mopeds or cars. They receive spending money every time they're on a road trip. Oh yeah, then they get that whole education thing for free as well. Sure, some of these guys might be on teams that raise millions of dollars for the school, but don't have pity for the athletes, they've got it better than 99 percent of the other people on campus.

    And for the big-name guys who know they're going to turn pro but have to spend the rest of the year going to class or whatever, they pretty much do get paid. When I went to the U of Minnesota, I remember Marion Barber driving around this 'pimped out' Navigator after his junior season. Now, this is a guy who wasn't even supposed to be a high draft pick, but he was able to get that money from somewhere, probably an agent. So don't kid yourselves into thinking these guys don't receive compensation as they go along.
     
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