Study: D-I football, men's hoops players worth at least six figures per year

Just because you're sick of talking about it and (accepting your facts as true) the fact that the bottom 80 cannot afford it, its okay to exploit the others? Please that's not acceptable.

If you care so much about the bottom 80 (of the 100) then treat them accordingly. Treat the other 20 $$$ machines as something altogether. But do not use the plight of Slippery Rock as justification for the exploitation by the OSU/LSU/ND, etc.

Charge the kids for use of the facilities? Yeah, they're exploiting the universities. Yep. Good luck with the facts on that.

You want true amatuerism? Treat them accordingly. Give them the true choice of either a minor league feeder or a bare bones athletic scholarship. See what you get. But don't pretend that they are getting the good end of the bargain. I'm sure the guy who blew his knee out and got cut from his scholarship got the great end of the bargain.

 

The other athletes in swimming and gymnastics will just get their $1.50 can of soda. The star QB will get his six-figures and his fancy car.

Title IX requires schools to treat athletes equally. They can do that with the scholarships. But it doesn't require anyone else to treat the athletes equally.

It wouldn't be me getting it through the courts naturally , but I could definitely see a star athlete or group of athletes getting something through.

The NCAA got slammed in the late 90s when they had the restricted earnings assistants. Since then, they've been pretty hesitant to take anything to court. You had the Darnell Autry case, where they tried to prevent him from acting in a movie as part of his theater major. NCAA backed down in that case.

Few years back, a basketball player threatened to go to court when they wanted to transfer and their original school wouldn't release him from the scholarship. The NCAA backed down there. When Jordan's kid wanted to wear a different brand of sneakers, the school tried to stop him, and Little Jordan threatened to sue. The school backed down.

And now, you have the Ed O'Bannon case. The NCAA's going to get hammered there.

A few star athletes take the NCAA to court, you bet there's going to be a will to find a workable system then.

 

Every player I've known of that gets injured and is done still gets to finish his degree for free.

How exactly do you plan to have this pay system for just 20 schools? Are they in a league by themselves? If they are paying they have to be because otherwise every top player will only sign with them and they will be completely stacked.

And where is the cut off? Do players at OSU make more than those at others because that school makes more than others? If a team has a bad year for revenue and don't turn a profit do they still have to pay and cost the school millions?

Don't bother answering those questions. They are rhetorical because there is no answer that makes it work.

 

But I don't think there is a workable system if they have to pay the kids. Already, major state universities are sending millions of general-fund dollars to their athletic departments. Your idea of an Olympic-style solution of moving from amateur to pro, and letting the athletes be free to earn what they can on the open market, would be the point where we'd have to ask "WTF are we doing with these sports linked to education anyway?" Not that that isn't a valid question to begin with. But any school that prides itself on being an academic institution simply wouldn't accept having professional athletes playing in their name.

It's all a myth and a sham, the amateurism and "FREE EDUCATION!!!" arguments. I get that. But it doesn't change the situation.

 

Every top player already signs with the top schools, with the occasional rare exception (like Jimmer). There are also a limited amount of roster spots. You may get an occasional Fab Five, but you're also going to see kids deciding that they'd rather be a star on a mid-major than sitting on the pine for a BCS school.

How else to pay? That dirty word. Socialism. Coaches get five- and even six-figure bonuses for taking their team to bowls, while the players get a free DVD player and a lousy T-shirt. There's money out there. It just goes to the coaches and administrators.

 

You think all players get is a DVD player an iPod and a T-shirt in those bowl goody bags? Hardly.

 

Baron, I think you have a better chance of getting CEOs to shower the factory floor with their own $100 bills than you have of getting any money reallocated from coaches to players.

 

Well yeah. I highly doubt they're going to volunteer their money (with the exception of Spurrier). But the argument of "There's no money to pay the players" is inaccurate.

There are revenue streams that either weren't around 20 years ago or were just a fraction of what they are now. More marketing, bigger sneaker deals, Internet revenue, more TV money. Where's it all going?

The NCAA's going to need to settle this up, and pretty quickly. They need to learn the lesson of Major League Baseball when they tried to cling to the reserve system.

 

What lesson was that and how does it apply to collegiate student-athletes?

 

Here's the nut graph and the idiotic apples-and-oranges part of this story ...

"A national college athletes' advocacy group and a sports management professor calculate in the report that if college sports shared their revenues the way pro sports do, the average Football Bowl Subdivision player would be worth $121,000 per year, while the average basketball player at that level would be worth $265,000."

Pro sports teams don't have to worry about supporting a minimum of 10 other sports to maintain "elite" status. Pro sports teams don't have to balance the money they make on some sports versus the money they lose on others. Pro sports teams don't have to worry about the Title IX considerations and entanglements that occur as a result.

More to the point, not every pro sports league shares revenues the same way. Ask baseball how it "shares" its revenue. What an idiotic construct for a study.

And one that, as mentioned, applies only to the largest of Division I universities.

I mean, $265K per Division I basketball player? That's ludicrous. The team I cover doesn't pay its coach $265K.

I'm all for liberalizing some of the draconian shit the NCAA does, but to claim players should theoretically get six-figures per year is insane.

Moreover, how does this advocacy group expect to square the compensation circle between football and basketball players versus tennis and track athletes, etc.?

 

There are so many holes in that group's theory, it's difficult to know just where to start.

But I'll add just one thing, qt. You'd better consider the Slippery Rocks. And you'd better consider the Western Kentuckys. Creating a "pay-for-play" model for the 20-30 elites only is a non-starter. It will be shot down as quickly as it is considered.

 

Problem with this is you are thinking in hindsight. A top player is going to say I don't care they have already signed three players rated close to me at my position. I'm better than them and will get the starting spot while making $100,000. He isn't going to say, well shucks, I may not start let me sign to play for no money at a mid-major.

And even some of the top basketball teams that sign top 100 kids don't make a profit.

There's the whole women's issue when including basketball as well.