National Collegiate Athletic Association vs. Alston [pdf] • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by Ekaros » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 8:02 PM UTC

danvasquez29 wrote: post #36

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…

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…

In capitalist system, if the sport league doesn't make money should the workers be paid anything more than minimum wage?

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

#52

Post by Ekaros » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 8:03 PM UTC

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.

If they can't make money to pay athletes, maybe they do not deserve to survive. We don't subsidise aspiring people in most other fields, why should sports be any different.

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

#53

Post by twiddling » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 8:04 PM UTC

danvasquez29 wrote: post #36

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…

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…

The Canadian Major Juniors are a great model. Of course, there also players who try out at MJ camps with their names obscured as not to jeopardize their NCAA eligibility.

Baseball's history of labor abuse ( read up on the history of free agency ) is why the Minors are a terrible mechanism.

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

#54

Post by jalgos_eminator » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 8:08 PM UTC

moate wrote: post #44

jalgos_eminator wrote: post #41

I think sports is a big blind spot for most HN users, so I would like to offer an informal Q&A with me here in this thread. I am a former top-level division 1 football player that got a technical degree and now work in the IT/software space. I like to do these every once in a while because there is so much incorrect information and bad assumptions about high level college athletes that I feel the need to combat this…

How, and how much, do you personally feel student athletes should be compensated? Should anyone actually care that West Nowhere State can't afford to compete against Alabama in football or KSU in basketball, since they never could have in the first place? How much under the table money will these just be getting above board/visible to laymen (and isn't this a good thing when it comes to large state schools being acco…

I think the point of all this is that my opinion of how much college athletes should be compensated isn't relevant. My opinion on how much a software developer should be paid isn't relevant either, because the market sets the rate of compensation for software developers.

The problem right now with college athletics (at least football and basketball) is that the schools found a cash cow and the pro leagues found a free farm league that produces top talent. Its a symbiotic relationship and neither one wants to rock the boat. There's a reason the NFL players have their own union after all.

Regarding your second question, West Nowhere State is an ant in an elephants world. There are plenty of D3 programs (that give no aid or preferred admission) that have football programs that lose hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. They'll keep doing it even if Alabama is able to pay their players above the table.

As far as under the table money, I'm not sure. I never saw nor heard about those things, and with the way athletes like to boast it would surprise me if they were all able to keep their mouths shut. I think its less money going to less athletes than people would like to think.

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

#55

Post by yupper32 » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 8:09 PM UTC

Ekaros wrote: post #52

yupper32 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If they can't make money to pay athletes, maybe they do not deserve to survive. We don't subsidise aspiring people in most other fields, why should sports be any different.

> We don't subsidise aspiring people in most other fields

Yes we do. It's called merit based scholarships.

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

#56

Post by slg » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 8:09 PM UTC

chadash wrote: post #45

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…

> There are a maximum of only 2 or 3 dozen athletic departments that are self sufficient in the manner you suggest By the same token, there's only a few dozen athletic programs with athletes who would probably be paid if not for NCAA rules banning pay.

No, that is a poor conclusion. Athletes are not distributed in the nature you are suggesting. There are profitable players who exist on unprofitable teams and there are profitable teams that exist in unprofitable athletic departments. The reverse is also true.

Honestly the biggest stumbling block for me to be in support of paying college athletes are all these details on deciding who gets paid and how much since they don't all provide uniform value. There are situations in which one person might be worth millions and their teammate might be worth absolutely nothing. That is one of the reasons why I think allowing players to profit of their name, image and likeness (NIL) rights seems like the first step. That allows the free market to better assess their value and reward them for it. Roughly half the states have already passed, are currently debating, or have recently debated laws allowing college players to profit of their NIL rights.

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

#57

Post by Ekaros » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 8:11 PM UTC

ecshafer wrote: post #28

yupper32 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in-state tuition at UB would be around $4850 instead of $5200 without sports. Out-of-state would be around $13,750 vs $14,100. Would life be significantly better without sports at UB, if students were given back a few hundred dollars? Would alumni donations go down without the occasional March Madness appearance? Or Bulls games? When people make this argument, they make it seem like schools would all of a sudden b…

It sounds like life would be significantly better without sports. 5200 vs 4850 is $350. That is the difference of a month of rent in Buffalo for your room, snow tires on your car that year or not, text books or not.

So around 24 hours of 15$/h minimum wage labour so that someone else can do something they could be doing on their own dime... That sounds very excessive burden to be placed on students. For something they gain very little from...

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

#58

Post by jessaustin » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 8:11 PM UTC

csa wrote: post #38

chrisseaton wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

If money is unlimited, you could come up with reasons to fund all of the junk you've listed. For GP's example of a college fencing team, they need 1) occasional use of a well-ventilated room with a hard floor [and one or two electrical outlets if they're using that fancy electronic scoring] and 2) storage for their equipment when they're not using the room. Literally nothing else is needed. Few fans would ever pay to see fencing, so these actual student-athletes don't need any more compensation than the room and the storage. Equipment can be funded by donations and dues. Coaches should mostly be volunteers, but if someone needs payment that can also be from dues or donated.

(Source: I played on my college club kendo team. If anything the needs of fencing are less than those of kendo.)

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

#59

Post by chrisBob » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 8:12 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #49

csa wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I just don’t get why a university amateur golf team needs anything but a few people and their golf gear. Why take it so seriously?

That is an easy argument for an outsider to make in virtually any situation. The answer is probably similar to the reason you aren't doing your programming job on an 11" chrome book.

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

#60

Post by yupper32 » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 8:14 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #49

csa wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I just don’t get why a university amateur golf team needs anything but a few people and their golf gear. Why take it so seriously?

Because everyone else you're competing against is taking it seriously.

Please try to step back and understand why people take it seriously and truly care about sports. You don't seem to understand and don't seem to be actually trying to understand. It's exhausting trying to have conversations like the OP topic when people come in and degrade high level sports at its core.