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National Collegiate Athletic Association vs. Alston [pdf]

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Re: National Collegiate Athletic Association vs. Alston [pdf]

#31

Post by jfb »

Scaevolus wrote: post #2

Alternate headline: "Supreme Court unanimously sides with former college players in dispute with NCAA about compensation" (from ESPN). Note that this is a narrow ruling about the NCAA limiting educational compensation and what scholarships can encompass-- but some justices gave indications that they disagree with the NCAA compensation restrictions at large.

Kavanaugh's concurrence is 100% an invitation for a broader restraint-of-trade suit, and honestly, it is long overdue. The NCAA is dead, they've got to settle, but there isn't going to be any real interest in half measures.

As someone who detests the Plantation League, this is long, long, long overdue.

Re: National Collegiate Athletic Association vs. Alston [pdf]

#32

Post by jackschultz »

yupper32 wrote: post #11
fiftyfifty wrote: post #7

The solution in my opinion is to do away with college athletic scholarships and preferred admission for athletes. Let school's field their sports teams from their normal student bodies and ensure that those teams are truly amateur and the participants really are "student-athletes". Let the NBA and the NFL field their own semi-professional minor leagues like baseball does. If these schools have to start paying their f…

This would end up killing a bunch of smaller sports, and hurting the larger ones. NCAA covers a massive number of sports. The vast majority of those who go pro in any US sport, first go through an NCAA team. Think about a scenario in the current world: You're a pretty good golf player in high school. You commit to Stanford for golf and a degree in some STEM field. The school already has a system in place to make sure…

This comment is getting downvotes and given my experience playing D1 college, getting a STEM degree, this scenario is in no way possible.

Stanford on its own is one of the top golf programs in the country. Its practice facility is absurdly good (my team was able to use it once when we were out there. The reason we were in the bay area? Because we took our spring breaks to go play fancy courses with rich alumni to get them to donate to the athletic department, which is another part of money you don't see but athletics gets.) You need to be really, really good to play at Stanford.

Second, college golf is a case where, because of the niceties like practice facilities, tournaments, where you don't pay for any of that, it's a feeder to the main tour. In fact, PGA Tour University[0] came out to help get guys who were good in college to the Tour quicker. The quality of guys in lower level tours is crazy, and this is a deserved bumper for the good guys. Guys play in college first because that's where you grow.

I'm very anti-NCAA. Each sport is different in terms of growing to the professional level though, and how engrained the NCAA is in most cases though makes it tough to have an overall solution.

[0] https://www.pgatour.com/university/what-you-need-to-know-faq...

Re: National Collegiate Athletic Association vs. Alston [pdf]

#33

Post by slg »

Loughla wrote: post #26
slg wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you had to pay the athletes in these sports, then there'd be less money to go around for other teams that don't generate revenue. This relies on the assumption that sports are somehow separate from a school's educational mission and therefore must be funded by the profit from other sports. There are a maximum of only 2 or 3 dozen athletic departments that are self sufficient in the manner you suggest. The rest fu…

Your math doesn't work out here. I can't major in football, I absolutely can major in drama and/or music. From my experience, club sports and clubs such as the theater club are funded via student fees, whereas departmental projects such as drama and music are funded via tuition. In theory, the major areas are self-funding because of the tuition costs.

>Your math doesn't work out here. I can't major in football

Literally, no you can't major in football. From a practical standpoint many of the athletes who go to a school like Alabama to play football do end up majoring in it. Maybe their actual degree will say something sports specific like kinesiology or sports management, maybe their academic advisers will point them to general education classes specifically targeted for athletes and they will end up with a super generic business or communications degree, but either way football is the primary focus for many of them.

>From my experience, club sports and clubs such as the theater club are funded via student fees, whereas departmental projects such as drama and music are funded via tuition.

The point is who funds a play or a concert at universities? Do they all need to be financially self-sufficient or do we accept that these pursuits have value outside of the number of people who will pay to watch them?

>In theory, the major areas are self-funding because of the tuition costs.

This isn't true. The costs to teach different subjects varies wildly and departmental budgets are therefore not always inline with the number of students in each specific program. For example, tuition from an English department would likely go to help subsidize a more expensive Physics department.

Re: National Collegiate Athletic Association vs. Alston [pdf]

#34

Post by danvasquez29 »

Loughla wrote: post #26
slg wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you had to pay the athletes in these sports, then there'd be less money to go around for other teams that don't generate revenue. This relies on the assumption that sports are somehow separate from a school's educational mission and therefore must be funded by the profit from other sports. There are a maximum of only 2 or 3 dozen athletic departments that are self sufficient in the manner you suggest. The rest fu…

Your math doesn't work out here. I can't major in football, I absolutely can major in drama and/or music. From my experience, club sports and clubs such as the theater club are funded via student fees, whereas departmental projects such as drama and music are funded via tuition. In theory, the major areas are self-funding because of the tuition costs.

you kinda can in a lot of universities with big programs. There's a lot of "sports marketing" and "sports science" majors now that get a little loose with requirements and rigor. when done right, they can be good tools to prep athletes for life after playing (agents, marketing, phys ed instructors and coaches, etc.) but they also run the risk of being places for the football team to sleep through class and get an A for working out and attending video.

Re: National Collegiate Athletic Association vs. Alston [pdf]

#35

Post by yupper32 »

jackschultz wrote: post #32
yupper32 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would end up killing a bunch of smaller sports, and hurting the larger ones. NCAA covers a massive number of sports. The vast majority of those who go pro in any US sport, first go through an NCAA team. Think about a scenario in the current world: You're a pretty good golf player in high school. You commit to Stanford for golf and a degree in some STEM field. The school already has a system in place to make sure…

This comment is getting downvotes and given my experience playing D1 college, getting a STEM degree, this scenario is in no way possible. Stanford on its own is one of the top golf programs in the country. Its practice facility is absurdly good (my team was able to use it once when we were out there. The reason we were in the bay area? Because we took our spring breaks to go play fancy courses with rich alumni to get…

You're getting bogged down in the details of my example. I know a good amount of people who played D1 sports. One went pro and is competing in the Olympics this year. The others used their degrees to get "normal" jobs when they weren't able to go pro (or had no intention to in the first place). All of them would not have had the opportunity to compete at a high level in their sports without forgoing their higher education.

Re: National Collegiate Athletic Association vs. Alston [pdf]

#36

Post by danvasquez29 »

triceratops wrote: post #15
yupper32 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would end up killing a bunch of smaller sports, and hurting the larger ones. NCAA covers a massive number of sports. The vast majority of those who go pro in any US sport, first go through an NCAA team. Think about a scenario in the current world: You're a pretty good golf player in high school. You commit to Stanford for golf and a degree in some STEM field. The school already has a system in place to make sure…

Sounds like that's a problem for the pro sports leagues to solve. They have the money to do it, so they'll be fine. Baseball does an adequate job with its system of minor league teams. Pretty much every other country in the world manages to have professional sports leagues without having universities be their feeder teams. Even in your scenario, there's nothing stopping the aspiring golfer from attending Stanford par…

baseball arguably does a terrible job at solving this.

the minor league system pays significantly less than poverty wages. incentivizing kids to go that route instead of getting an education is terrible.

which is why so many dont, and go to college on scholarships anyway, which leads us right back where we started.

the right analogy to make IMO is ice hockey, especially the canadian model. There, you have well funded and professional-like "minor leagues" (called juniors close to same thing). you can't get paid but in the tier 1 leagues you have very little if not zero personal living expenses, it's like being on a full-ride at a big college program with room and board included. In canada, it's seen as the route potential NHLers take instead of continuing with school. you're not allowed to be paid, but there's a rule in place that for every year you play in that league you're owed one full year of college paid for. If you age out of the league and dont make it as a pro, you at least get 2-4 years of free college to go get the rest of your life together as compensation.

The US Junior system has some of those attributes but is more geared towards getting kids into NCAA scholarships. The thing there though, IMO, is that the money involve in that sport is right about at that sweet spot where i'd argue a full ride to school like notre dame or penn state is about right for the level of compensation owed.

all opinions above are my own, in the context of a former D1 ice hockey athlete who thinks the football players should probably be paid.

Re: National Collegiate Athletic Association vs. Alston [pdf]

#37

Post by cortesoft »

yupper32 wrote: post #21
triceratops wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like that's a problem for the pro sports leagues to solve. They have the money to do it, so they'll be fine. Baseball does an adequate job with its system of minor league teams. Pretty much every other country in the world manages to have professional sports leagues without having universities be their feeder teams. Even in your scenario, there's nothing stopping the aspiring golfer from attending Stanford par…

NBA? Sure. NFL? Yeah. They can probably fund and figure out the logistics for an operation like this. What about all the other sports? At the moment, we've figured out a way to elevate less lucrative sports like track & field or swimming into a potential profession without making young people take massive risks by skipping higher education.

Why is skipping higher education to try to play professionally a massive risk? If it doesn’t work out, you can go to college after. Lots of people get jobs right after high school, then go back to school later. Not only that, but those people are usually going to jobs with a lot less upside than being a professional athlete.

Re: National Collegiate Athletic Association vs. Alston [pdf]

#38

Post by csa »

chrisseaton wrote: post #18
handrous wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 2-3 huge money-maker sports tend to fund all the rest. Paying athletes real money will cut into those profits (especially if a strong labor market for student athletes develops) with a plausible result being that other sports will be cut as budgets tighten. The only ones that would be for sure safe would be whatever women's sports are needed to achieve Title IX parity with the income-generating men's sports. Of c…

> tend to fund all the rest How much 'funding' does an amateur university sport need? I don't think my fencing club at university had any 'funding' we just met and fenced. Occasionally we borrowed a van to go to a competition. We had a coach we paid from a few pounds of membership fees we collected from ourselves.

In the US, in no particular order:

- equipment

- coaches

- travel/hotel/per diems, sometimes long distance depending on league

- trainers

- workout facilities (typically shared)

- practice facilities (might be shared)

- game facilities

- additional dining options to accommodate training

- nutritionists

- doctors

- scholarship money for tuition

- scholarship money for room and board

- video review areas and equipment (shared)

- video recording equipment and videographers

- insurance

- announcers for events

- recruiting

- tutoring

- event management

- publicity/advertising

- title ix compliance official

Note that at some universities (even some high schools), there are self-funding booster clubs that will pay for a lot of this stuff for some sports. That said, there is still some stuff that the university has to pay for directly.

As a simple example, Alabama football (big program that makes tons of money) also funds Alabama’s championship teams in golf, softball, and gymnastics (and many other sports that have not led to national championships).

Re: National Collegiate Athletic Association vs. Alston [pdf]

#39

Post by camgunz »

chrisseaton wrote: post #18
handrous wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 2-3 huge money-maker sports tend to fund all the rest. Paying athletes real money will cut into those profits (especially if a strong labor market for student athletes develops) with a plausible result being that other sports will be cut as budgets tighten. The only ones that would be for sure safe would be whatever women's sports are needed to achieve Title IX parity with the income-generating men's sports. Of c…

> tend to fund all the rest How much 'funding' does an amateur university sport need? I don't think my fencing club at university had any 'funding' we just met and fenced. Occasionally we borrowed a van to go to a competition. We had a coach we paid from a few pounds of membership fees we collected from ourselves.

I think OP is referring to the spectacle that is collegiate football/basketball/baseball; not that there won't be these teams, they just won't be multi-billion dollar enterprises.

Re: National Collegiate Athletic Association vs. Alston [pdf]

#40

Post by cortesoft »

yupper32 wrote: post #35
jackschultz wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment is getting downvotes and given my experience playing D1 college, getting a STEM degree, this scenario is in no way possible. Stanford on its own is one of the top golf programs in the country. Its practice facility is absurdly good (my team was able to use it once when we were out there. The reason we were in the bay area? Because we took our spring breaks to go play fancy courses with rich alumni to get…

You're getting bogged down in the details of my example. I know a good amount of people who played D1 sports. One went pro and is competing in the Olympics this year. The others used their degrees to get "normal" jobs when they weren't able to go pro (or had no intention to in the first place). All of them would not have had the opportunity to compete at a high level in their sports without forgoing their higher educ…

I was friends with quite a few D1 athletes when I was at college. Their sports took up so much of their time that they were only able to put minimum effort into academics. In fact, the coaches and staff would help guid them into known easy classes, so they would be able to maintain their grades while working 40+ hours a week in their sport.

It would make so much more sense for them to just hold off on school, go try to make it as a professional athlete, and then go back to school if it didn’t work.

No other country ties sports and athletics like the US does. Good soccer players in other countries sign contract at 10 years old, and play for the academy while getting paid.

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