Terrelle Pryor tears himself away from college life

The immortal LSU Freek strikes again, courtesy of EveryDayShouldBeSaturday.com:

 

Brilliant.

 

And unless the NCAA changes its rules, and unless student-athletes in ALL sports get paid, or unless the Supreme Court overturns Title 9, 100 years from now, college football and basketball players will not not have been paid. What part of this are you not getting?

 

Dan Wetzel's book "Death to the BCS" explains this in great detail and provides pages of examples. I suggest everyone pick up a copy. Also dabbles in the topic of paying college athletes.

 

Dabble away. Not. Going. To. Happen.

 

Not officially by the school. But if the NCAA allows the athletes to keep their marketing rights and to look for ancillary income outside, some of them will be making money.

 

You might want to re-read my post, einstein--what I laid out is that all student-athletes in all sports would get paid.

And we're not going to have to wait for the NCAA to change their rules. The day will come where they will be ordered to change their rules.

 

Absolutely, positively, 100% this. Terrelle Pryor could have made quite a bit of money hitting the card show/autograph circuit in Ohio...so could have Brandon Saine, Chim Checkwa, Boom Herron, andd pretty much any starter for the Buckeyes (heck, even most reserves could make money. Ohio is insane about Ohio State and people would pay money to get autographs of the JB Shugarts and Jamaal Berrys of the world). And it would not cost the university a penny...the promoters of these shows pay the fees.

I see, at sportscard and memorobilia shows at malls in Ohio, people set up with booths selling Ohio State autographs. These are the scummy people that lay in wait at the hotel lobbies after games and in the parking lots after practice to get the players to sign their footballs, photos, etc. Even these losers are making money off the players.

If you let the players capitalize on who they are they would be less apt to cheat, in my opinion. If Terrelle Pryor wants a tattoo, why should he not be able to make the money to get one? The NCAA rules sure as hell capitalize on the players' names...why shouldn't the players be allowed to as well? When the Ohio State bookstore sells Pryor, Saine and Herron jerseys it is a little hard to say the players should not be able to make money on themselves just like the school is.

Sure, the scholarship is nice and has some value...but compared to what the universities make off these players the value of a full ride is a pittiance.

And, the most shocking development, I am on the same page as Baron. I may have to take another look at it.

 

All student-athletes get paid? How the hell is that going to work? Universities across the country are already using their general fund to cover athletic department expenses, and you want to add millions of dollars of payroll to that tab. Mmmm hmmm.

 

I can't imagine any scenario that would have the NCAA violating antitrust laws. Kids can shop themselves to the 120 FCS schools, and to FBS schools if there are no openings left in FCS, or they can walk on at an FCS school. With no antitrust violations, I can't imagine what would possibly force the NCAA to pay players. Title IX, in fact, would make it prohibitive to pay all athletes, which you would have to do.

 

Not my problem if universities that are charging 10K, 20K, 50K a pop per year for tuition can't figure out their financial model to make money. Maybe they figure a way to be fiscally more responsible with some of their other spending after a chunk of their revenue that their athlete/employees are providing is rightfully given to them. Colleges have a captive, virtually guaranteed consumer base to generate a stable and ever increasing revenue stream--maybe they need to learn to run the expense side of their business more like a for profit business.

And it's not like you're paying tons to eveyr athlete. If you use the revenue sharing approach, most athletes who play sports that generate very little or no revenue would get very little pay--basically just a minimal stipend. The athletes responsible for bringing in millions get to share in the millions.

 

There's no way to do this equitably and, more to the point of the discussion at hand, IMHO it's a bad idea all the way around. Certainly the Heisman-winning quarterback is different than a backup on the kickoff coverage team. You can make the argument, or not, that they're both responsible for bringing in millions.