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Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

nytimes.com

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Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#221

Post by _edo »

sverige wrote: post #219
_edo wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's profitable only because the players aren't paid. No. The NFL minimum salary is under $500k and by your own admission these players aren't that good. Even a generous $200k/yr and a generous 100 player roster only adds up to $20 million, and there are teams with over $50 million in profits.

First, there are not many teams with over $50 million in profits, only the top 13 as of 2018. [0] Second, you're assuming that even the top players would only make the minimum, which you have arbitrarily set at $200k, assuming that they would be paid less than the minimum NFL salary. The more accurate measure would be to pay them some percentage of the average NFL salary, which was $1.9 million in 2018. [1] So assumi…

The average college football player, with their 2% chance of making it to the NFL, is worth the median NFL salary of roughly $800k? This has gone a little too far off track for me.

The core issue here is claiming that profits are derived from not paying players. There are plenty of teams not paying players and losing money. The top teams could pay players well and still make profit. There's a small Goldilocks zone where what players should be paid lines up with the team's level of profit. The old "profits come from not paying workers" canard is a story with little to no explanatory power here.

Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#222

Post by kube-system »

partialrecall wrote: post #179
the_watcher wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And in cases like this, where students are leaving the game early, it's perhaps not an activity that students enjoy after all. This is completely misunderstanding what's happening. They're leaving early because the game is already decided . When the score is 62-10 in the 4th quarter, you're no longer watching a competition.

If the game is meant to entertain the students, and the students are no longer entertained by that particular instance of the game, then why is it so important to the school that students remain inside the stadium? It really seems to me that the school has somehow made these student/spectators a product in some way. Perhaps it looks better to network television if the stadium stays packed the entire game?

Yes, it obviously is a better image to have your school look engaged, rather than absent, on national TV.

But the other reason (for schools with prominent teams) is that the number of seats available is often less than the number of students who might want to attend, so to be fair to students who actually want to attend, it becomes necessary to disincentive people from requesting tickets if they’re not serious about attending.

It’s pretty common for schools to give out tickets in a lottery system, and then penalize your future ability to successfully get a ticket if you show a pattern of not actually using the tickets. Back when I was in school, this was tracked by scanning the tickets when you entered.

Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#223

Post by tptacek »

harryh wrote: post #59
ramphastidae wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate how you think that applies to this discussion? Seems like you are arguing semantics to me. The Church of Scientology is a considered a non-profit institution in the U.S. as well. Do you believe that The Church of Scientology is a benevolent actor? I don't. I believe their primary purpose is profit and they are taking advantage of their followers and the U.S. taxpayer in the same way these universiti…

You said the motivation was "profit" which means that the owners of the organization make money that they can go spend on themselves as they please. This literally does not happen for the vast majority of universities. What you are describing is more like "growth." And maybe the kinds of growth universities are investing in isn't great right now. That's a fine conversation to have. This isn't just a semantic distinct…

I agree with you but want to pick the nit that while ownership can't treat a nonprofit as a slush fund, management generally can.

Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#224

Post by kube-system »

guywaffle wrote: post #220
partialrecall wrote: post #3

It's not at all clear to me why we allow American football and universities to have such a perverse relationship, when it's plain to see that football itself has nothing to do with education, except insofar as it's an activity that many students enjoy (but there is no shortage of other non-academic activities that many students share, such as baseball...) And in cases like this, where students are leaving the game ea…

The ncaa is just legal slavery. That includes college baseball.

College athletes participate voluntarily.

Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#225

Post by tracer4201 »

grogenaut wrote: post #65

The university I went to is in the top 20 (top 8 when I went)(this is just for context not to start an argument about rankings). The school is also in the top 20 in endowments. When I was there they did an analysis of alumni donations. One thing they found out was that if you did 2 or more activities in high school you were likely to do 1 or more activities in college. (these numbers are ballpark) If did ANY activiti…

I donate nothing to my school. Student loans kept me drained for quite a while after graduation. My school spent a ton of funds on landscaping and general appearance but our engineering college had cabinets and tables that hadn’t been so much even dusted in at least a decade.

Looking back, so many electives I was required to take were pure fluff and had no connection to reality or life or income skills. As for classes that mattered, a good portion were taught by TAs.

So yeah thanks but no thanks - I’m certainly not going to offer them a penny. If anything, the college model is egregiously expensive and exploitative. We need innovation and a better alternative to what these institutions provide.

Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#226

Post by asdff »

klenwell wrote: post #89
tlrobinson wrote: post #37

Alternative less-clickbaity headline: Alabama incentivizes students to stay at games by offering improved chances of getting playoff tickets. When I first read the headline my mind naturally jumped to the most extreme interpretation: Alabama was using some sort of involuntary tracking technology to lower students' GPAs if they don't attend football games. Obviously very far-fetched, but knowing how much Alabama loves…

The current NY Times headline (did it change?) doesn't mention penalties but emphasizes the creepy tracking part: Orwellabama? Crimson Tide Track Locations to Keep Students at Games But for that gross invasion of privacy, I'd say this was a pretty clever solution.

"allow location only while using the app" boom.

Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#227

Post by asdff »

tlrobinson wrote: post #37

Alternative less-clickbaity headline: Alabama incentivizes students to stay at games by offering improved chances of getting playoff tickets. When I first read the headline my mind naturally jumped to the most extreme interpretation: Alabama was using some sort of involuntary tracking technology to lower students' GPAs if they don't attend football games. Obviously very far-fetched, but knowing how much Alabama loves…

Pretty great deal to be honest. I went to a huge football school and they had a pure lottery system. Everyone applied, and most people just flipped their ticket for a couple hundred bucks.

Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#228

Post by Porthos9K »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #201
Porthos9K wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I thought the premise was self-evident, I would not have wasted my time challenging you. The review you cited covers effects of participation in team sport on physical well-being and certain markers of psychological well-being, but you claimed that sport builds character. Perhaps I assumed a different meaning from the one you intended, but when I hear people going on about sport building character, they're usually…

social skills, empathy and understanding rules in social context. I've no idea how morality got into this.

You dragged morality into this when you talked about "character" instead of saying exactly what you meant. :)

Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#229

Post by magduf »

rpmisms wrote: post #115
magduf wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Hanging around and drinking a lot, and being around a bunch of noisy, drunk people, is something that most Americans greatly enjoy.

Well, most of us are Irish and German, so it does stand to reason that we would enjoy those things.

My genetic background is mostly from those places too, yet I'm not like that. Those things are cultural, not genetic. Americans are loud and boorish because they choose to be.

Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#230

Post by cafard »

yumraj wrote: post #157
impendia wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why can't the American football industry run itself more like the American baseball industry? I am a very strong opponent of the overwhelming sports culture at American universities, and of the absurd sums of money spent to sustain it. (Example: Dabo Swinney was just given a $93 million contract to remain the football coach of Clemson.) This >Defenders of the current system will often claim that football is profita…

> successful football programs generate positive publicity for the school Maybe for lower tier colleges, but I sincerely doubt that anyone gives a rodents behind how the football teams of Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, Harvard, Princeton, CalTech and others top-tier Universities are, before applying to them.

Northwestern is a pretty good school, but apparently its sudden appearance in bowl games years ago did boost the applications.
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