Yeah, college athletes are already getting paid

Steven Godfrey pushed out a great story on SBNation today behind the scenes with SEC "bag men," the people who help finance the football players' lifestyles.

The access is great, as is the revelation into how much power those bag men can have in making a head coach a lame duck.

http://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2014/4/10/5594348/college-football-bag-man-interview

 

But, but, AMATEURISM!!!

 

Five bills above the table is better than five bills under it. Give the kids a modest sum and go on with it.

 

While I agree they definitely should be compensated, "five bills over the table" doesn't eliminate the five below it.

 

There's only a finite amount of money. If the boosters wanted to give 10 bills, they would already be doing so.

 

If you read the story, the boosters aren't the ones paying. The rich people give to the school so the bathrooms can get painted, or so said a quote from the story. Those people aren't likely to pay players.

The ones who typically do so are those with about $10-15K of extra income per year that they can use to recruit high school players and keep satisfied current college players.

 

These guys probably give their share to the school.

Did the writer quote one guy or many guys? As the story went on, attribution disappeared.

 

Many guys. There is a video at the bottom.

 

I wondered about this, too.

 

I think the third paragraph of the story pretty much answers this:

"Technically, this conversation never happened, because I won't reveal this man's name or the player's, or even the town I visited. Accordingly, all the other conversations I had with different bag men representing different SEC programs over a two-month span surrounding National Signing Day didn't happen either"

 

The story is great, and it's worth watching the interview at the bottom, too. Godfrey explains why he took the approach he did, and even the cloak-and-dagger stuff he had to do while reporting. These guys are really, really secretive, so they couldn't be seen looking like he was interviewing them. So Godfrey would excuse himself to go the bathroom, and leave himself voicemails or write down stuff on toilet paper or napkins to remember for later.

 

Godfrey is having an AMA on Reddit at 1 p.m. ET today:

http://www.reddit.com/r/CFB/comments/22qvkr/upcoming_ama_meet_the_bag_man_writer_journalist/