Reimagining College Sports

[DanOregon]

The rumors of a Big 10 breakaway and other sports and conferences facing peril made me wonder what a full reboot could be like, should be like. Pay players? Conference realignment? Relegation? A national Super League? Reclassify all sports except football and basketball (and the scholarship womens sports) to something like a "club plus" model? Coaching salary caps?

I'm surprised there hasn't been a Title IX challenge to some of the football buildings on campus used to entice recruits. You spend $40m on a building women can use?

 

[qtlaw]

I went to a major university with DII athletics. Still a fun and great school. Same for law school. Big time athletics is superfluous and just over compensating for academics shortcomings.

 

[tapintoamerica]

The rumors of a Big 10 breakaway and other sports and conferences facing peril made me wonder what a full reboot could be like, should be like. Pay players? Conference realignment? Relegation? A national Super League? Reclassify all sports except football and basketball (and the scholarship womens sports) to something like a "club plus" model? Coaching salary caps?

I'm surprised there hasn't been a Title IX challenge to some of the football buildings on campus used to entice recruits. You spend $40m on a building women can use?

Coach salary caps won’t work. They tried a form of it 30 years ago and lost in the courts. Restraint of trade. Re: Title IX, I don’t think the law requires equality in all spending.

 

[DanOregon]

I don't know - think about Brown v. Board of Ed - the sorry state of black schools compared to the white ones. Not saying women's facilities are shabby, but they are separate and unequal.

 

[heyabbott]

College students will get drunk, high and laid with or without college sports.

 

[maumann]

"Big time" college sports have needed a complete overhaul, probably since Teddy Roosevelt "saved" college football from itself in 1905 (even though 22 more kids would die playing the sport in the following two seasons). How the idea of "amateur university athletic competition" has morphed into de facto minor leagues for the NFL and NBA (and lesser, the NHL and MLB) is worthy of its own dusty library of books on the subject on every college campus.

We all know the current system is busted. Universities won't -- or can't afford to -- just divest themselves of sports that generate a profit for everybody but the athlete. Let's face it, that genie's not getting stuffed back into the "purely amateur" bottle, not with billions of TV dollars at stake.

In this case, Gil Scott-Heron may indeed be wrong. The Revolution Will Be Televised, because TV can, and will, control what gets shown and paid for. It's already begun to some degree, with conferences running their own cable networks and working their own cable deals with networks.

We're in an era of corporate merger and acquisition. There's no reason why college athletics shouldn't be mirroring that. If the NCAA collapses under its own archiac weight, there were be some vestiges of NCAA 2.0 to control everything below P5 and G5 schools.

But how the 80 or so "big money" schools solve New Year's Day Bowls and March Madness if they break away from the NCAA, while still trying to fund Olympic and women's sports? I have no guess.

 

[Starman]

First, there's going to be a major die-off of colleges as functional institutions. My guess is 20 percent will go belly-up in the next five years.

After that, the survivors will figure out what to do about sports -- dramatic cutbacks at all levels, most likely.

 

[Alma]

Not saying women's facilities are shabby, but they are separate and unequal.

Are they? My experience is generally that whatever a men's basketball team has in terms of practice facility, the women do, too.

There is no comparable sport - men's or women's - to football.

But in sports where are men's and women's teams, I doubt there's much difference. Softball fields are smaller, of course, but they're damn nice.

 

[tapintoamerica]

I don't know - think about Brown v. Board of Ed - the sorry state of black schools compared to the white ones. Not saying women's facilities are shabby, but they are separate and unequal.

As usual, this is complicated. I’m right in saying Title IX does not require equality in facilities spending, but it does appear to have more to say about facilities than I thought.

Q. Does Title IX require identical athletics programs for males and females?

Title IX does not require identical athletics programs for males and females. Rather, Title IX requires that the athletics programs meet the interests and abilities of each gender. Under Title IX, one team is not compared to the same team in each sport. OCR examines the total program afforded to male student-athletes and the total program afforded to female student-athletes and whether each program meets the standards of equal treatment. Title IX does not require that each team receive exactly the same services and supplies. Rather, Title IX requires that the men and women's program receive the same level of service, facilities, supplies and etc. Variations within the men and women's program are allowed, as long as the variations are justified.

 

[DanOregon]

Lawyers have bought vacation homes with less standing.

 

[goalmouth]

There is apparently no end to the federal spigot for college loans subsidizing all manner of monkey shines by schools. You heard it hear last.

 

[Inky_Wretch]

Disassociate sports from college. Make them true minor leagues. Have professors teach players basics on accounting and investing. Maybe some PR/marketing courses.

That’s for football and MBB. The rest go back to being glorified club sports/feeders for the Olympic program.

 

[Sam Mills 51]

The other positive?

It would bring to a screeching halt the "student fees" that universities with Division I program assess each and every student because it feels it cannot compete without paying head football and basketball coaches multi-million-dollar salaries.

That cannot end soon enough. If your champagne tastes continue to grossly exceed your beer budget, it might be time to reassess.

 

[rtse11]

I don't know enough about the "European model" to render an opinion. Would it be better than what we have now? What are its drawbacks?

 

[PCLoadLetter]

I don't know enough about the "European model" to render an opinion. Would it be better than what we have now? What are its drawbacks?

Pro sports teams have their own academies where they sign and develop young players. The best ones go on to play for the club or are sold to other clubs.

I'd prefer it to what we have now because I'd prefer to see universities get back into the business of education.

The "drawback" is that it would kill the golden goose, so it won't happen.

 

[maumann]

Pro sports teams have their own academies where they sign and develop young players. The best ones go on to play for the club or are sold to other clubs.

I'd prefer it to what we have now because I'd prefer to see universities get back into the business of education.

The "drawback" is that it would kill the golden goose, so it won't happen.

Agreed. I don't know you evolve from the current model to an academy model this far down the road. Will people care as much that Durham Basketball Academy beat Chapel Hill Basketball Academy, compared to Duke-Carolina, never mind the lack of a rabid student section or wealthy alums? Would it just be a more talented NBA G League?

March Madness makes a massive amount of money for the NCAA, CBS, Turner, schools, venues, surrounding businesses, hotels and gamblers. How do you resolve 230 D1 schools, of which roughly 60 percent don't really have any business being D1, without watering down the brackets with seventh, eighth and ninth best Power 5 schools? Would you fret about your bracket if that 8-9 matchup features 11-18 Mississippi and 12-16 Northwestern?

That's part of the beauty of the tournament: the Cinderella factor of some no-name conference champion giving a No. 1 seed a huge scare on Thursday or Friday, or the typical 12-5, 13-4 stunners. If you reduce the eligible teams or lose the school affiliation, can you still sell it?

Schools never should have gotten into the sports entertainment business in the first place but that horse left the barn a long time ago. As @Sam Mills 51 said, keeping up with the Joneses (or Dean Smiths) by building bigger, more expensive facilities for higher-salaried coaches at the expense of actually using funds for education is a fool's errand.

The house of cards is already leaning.

 

[Noholesinone]

I guess I’m the only one in the world who rues the demise of amateur sports. So be it.

 

[PCLoadLetter]

Agreed. I don't know you evolve from the current model to an academy model this far down the road. Will people care as much that Durham Basketball Academy beat Chapel Hill Basketball Academy, compared to Duke-Carolina, never mind the lack of a rabid student section or wealthy alums? Would it just be a more talented NBA G League?

March Madness makes a massive amount of money for the NCAA, CBS, Turner, schools, venues, surrounding businesses, hotels and gamblers. How do you resolve 230 D1 schools, of which roughly 60 percent don't really have any business being D1, without watering down the brackets with seventh, eighth and ninth best Power 5 schools? Would you fret about your bracket if that 8-9 matchup features 11-18 Mississippi and 12-16 Northwestern?

That's part of the beauty of the tournament: the Cinderella factor of some no-name conference champion giving a No. 1 seed a huge scare on Thursday or Friday, or the typical 12-5, 13-4 stunners. If you reduce the eligible teams or lose the school affiliation, can you still sell it?

Schools never should have gotten into the sports entertainment business in the first place but that horse left the barn a long time ago. As @Sam Mills 51 said, keeping up with the Joneses (or Dean Smiths) by building bigger, more expensive facilities for higher-salaried coaches at the expense of actually using funds for education is a fool's errand.

The house of cards is already leaning.

Yeah, to switch from the current mode to the academy is to just walk away and leave all of that money on the table. Not gonna happen.

To put it in perspective, Ajax in Amsterdam is widely regarded as the best youth soccer academy in Europe. Ajax used to be more of a soccer power but there just isn't the income in the Dutch league to consistently compete with clubs like Barcelona and Man City these days.

Ajax sets themselves apart by having a tremendous academy that develops great players for the main club who are then sold to the Barcelonas of the world for tens of millions of dollars.

The academy team is called Jong Ajax. It's not quite the equivalent of Alabama in college football, but it's where a lot of great players got their start. The Dutch national team is pretty much a roster of Jong Ajax alums.

Here's what a Jong Ajax game looks like:

Not really the crowd you get for college football.

 

[User 150927]

Let athletes major in their sports, throwing in business and marketing classes, and pay some kind of stipend for games.

 

[DanOregon]

When you see how few programs actually post a "profit" despite the millions and billions of TV dollars - (free advertising aside) - you wonder if it's worth it. But then you think of the apparel deals, the colleges getting alums to return to campus (and donate), it's like the Colorado River which powers half of the West but is barely a trickle when it finally reaches the Gulf of Mexico.