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

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

#71

Post by drewg123 » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 8:50 PM UTC

yupper32 wrote: post #27

drewg123 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that college sports mostly loose money for schools[1], why do we think its OK to ask students and (for public colleges) taxpayers to subsidize professional sports' feeder system? I went to a large state school (SUNY Buffalo) where the administration wanted to go division 1 when I was there in the early 90s. Transitioning to division 1 came along with a large (to us) mandatory athletic fee. The student body vote…

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…

Speaking from experience, the administration's disregard for the wishes of the student body pissed me off enough that I didn't donate anything to them for 15 years or so after graduation (until William Greiner, the president who presided over this had retired). Others in my peer group felt the same way, and I imagine did the same thing.

In terms of the impact of the fee: When I went to school, the tuition was $675/semester, and the fee was over $100 (I don't recall if that was per semester or per year). So that was at least a 7% increase in cost. Its sad the tuition has gone up so much.

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

#72

Post by labcomputer » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 8:54 PM UTC

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.

From a US perspective:

Most "rec sports" are self-funded university-affiliated student clubs. I was the treasurer of one such club for three years.

My school's cycling team ran about a $20k-$25k/year budget to cover race transportation, motels, entry fees, coaching and an annual 2-night training camp. That was for a full collegiate road season with an average of 6-8 riders and about 75% of a MTB season with 2-3 riders.

Funding came from sponsors (mostly selling space on the team jersey), selling jerseys and bibs to alumni and donations. Most of the sponsors were alums with local businesses, but we also had a couple bigger brands (energy bars and cycling clothing) who gave "in-kind" donations of steep discounts on merch (>50%).

Team members paid for their own equipment. We did discuss buying a couple team bikes to bring in people who could not afford them, but budget constraints and concerns about damage/jealousy/competitiveness nixed the idea.

I'd guess that you could run a competitive "varsity" cycling team, including everything I mentioned above plus mechanics and equipment but excluding scholarships, for around $40k-$50k/year (assuming mechanics are paid a day rate at races and piecewise for maintenance and the coaching staff is not full-time university employees).

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

#73

Post by csa » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 8:57 PM UTC

jessaustin wrote: post #58

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…

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…

At most schools, what you are describing are called “club sports”. These sports have much less funding from the university, and they are ubiquitous.

The next logical question is probably “why aren’t all sports club sports?” The short answer is that varsity football and basketball are often direct or indirect money makers for the school that warrant funding for competitiveness, and title ix that says that there has to be access to sports at equal levels (typically this means a university needs a few women’s sports that have equivalent quality equipment, facilities, etc. as football and basketball).

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

#74

Post by jalgos_eminator » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 8:59 PM UTC

colinmhayes wrote: post #70

dan_quixote wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you manage the technical degree and full-time athlete duties? Did they occur at the same time?

There was a starter on the football team in my graduating class at umich cs. The only explanation of how he found the time I can think of is he had tutors do most of the work for him.

I think its unfair to assume that about him. There were a decent number of athletes in engineering degrees when I was in school and they absolutely worked their asses off, myself included.

Although there were special athletic academic tutors, there weren't any available that could tutor for engineering subjects so I doubt any athletes were getting assignments done for them. Regular tutors wouldn't have played along with that game. Also, the professors (at least most of mine) were pretty skeptical of athletics, so I was on a short leash for what I could get away with (missing classes, moving exam dates, asking for extra time on projects, etc). If they sniffed that I was cheating, they would have brought the hammer down without thinking twice. That's just my experience at my school though.

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

#75

Post by fiftyfifty » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 9:05 PM UTC

handrous wrote: post #12

chrisseaton wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it will be the absolute death of virtually every other men's sport at the college level Why's that?

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…

Yes! This is exactly what I was alluding too in my original comment. I will also add that there are a number of demographic factors that are going to come to a head over the next 10 years or so that are going to put a serious squeeze on non-revenue men's sports:

First college enrollment is likely going to drop significantly starting around 2025 due to severely declining birthrates in the US that started during the 2007-2008 financial crisis. It is expected that 2025 will be the smallest graduating high school class in the US in the last 30-40 years. Every college and university is going to be fighting over a smaller pool of applicants. Fewer people are going to attend games and fewer people will be watching college sports on TV which means smaller TV contracts.

The percentage of men attending college has been declining, in 2017 57% of college students in the US were women: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=98

And it looks like the declining rate of men in higher education is only speeding up: https://hechingerreport.org/the-pandemic-is-speeding-up-the-...

College men and male alumni disproportionately support college athletics, they attend games and donate to the athletic department more than their female counterparts. Fewer men on campus in the long term likely means less money for the athletic department as a whole: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/nvsm.34

Lastly, Title IX only requires that sports opportunities for both men and women be proportional to the percentage of men and women in the student body. With only 43% of college students nationwide being men now, and football being the juggernaut of college athletics that it is (with typically over 100 players on a college football team), there will be little room left for any other men's sports in college athletics, and no incentive for the athletic department to keep them around.

Over the next decades many men's sports will likely become nearly extinct at the D1 level: tennis, golf, rowing, wrestling, hockey, volleyball, swimming and diving, cross country, even track and field and baseball look to be in big trouble as athletic departments try to keep the revenue from college football flowing in while dealing with these challenging demographic factors.

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

#76

Post by csa » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 9:06 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?

It’s a business decision and it’s law.

1. If a certain sports outcome (e.g., beating a rival, league championship, etc.) will lead to an increase in alumni donations, then it might be considered prudent to invest some money into that program.

2. Title ix creates weird incentive structures for athletic programs, with a default assumption being that the university is guilty of discrimination if there isn’t a lot of equal treatment for all sports (both men and women). Note that this has helped funding for women’s sports a lot (the disparity was almost comical in the 80s and prior), but it has also led to the elimination of some fringe men’s varsity sports (some of which became clubs).

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

#77

Post by chadash » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 9:10 PM UTC

slg wrote: post #56

chadash wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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.

Fair, but a few schools would be disproportionately affected by paid athletes. Ohio State and Alabama would probably pony up a lot, just as they spend tons on their athletic departments right now. Northwestern probably wouldn't, except maybe in rare cases.

> 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.

Agree this sounds like a good first step. It's utterly ridiculous that they can't.

> That allows the free market to better assess their value and reward them for it.

Why is this better than schools bidding on player contracts? Would you argue that when Patrick Mahomes got a $150 million contract, that wasn't the free market making an assessment of his value?

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

#78

Post by moate » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 9:21 PM UTC

jalgos_eminator wrote: post #54

moate wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fre…

My first point was less of a "200K/year" and more of a "whatever the market dictates the value of their skills would be" vs "a tiered set scale". Basically, do you think that Bama should be able to drop 2 million a year in player salaries while West Nowhere can only offer partial coverage scholarships.

And the under the table money is real, but less secret bags of cash left in their dorm and more "the AD bought a new car but realized he doesn't like the interior, do you want it?" IDK where you went to college, but several high profile programs lost championships and got sanctions for creative ways they "recruited" players. The ruling opens up more levers for schools to use to funnel goods and services towards players, even if they can't give them actually currency.

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

#79

Post by elpakal » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 9:30 PM UTC

Zanta wrote: post #46

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…

An argument presented in this case is that increased pay to college athletes will incentivize them to spend more time on their athletics and less on their academics. How convincing do you find that argument, applied to athletes in a) Top Tier D1 Football programs, b) D1 programs but for less hyper-commercialized sports (say track, or volleyball), and c) D2 or D3 athletes with little-to-no aspirations of a future in p…

former D2 athlete here, never had aspirations to go pro. I don't think it's possible to spend "more time on their athletics" even at D2 level (can't speak for D3, though from my friends playing D1 it seems to be more time consuming).

my experience was waking up before the crack of dawn to pre-train, going to school in the morning, and then spending the rest of any free time I had after training (be it weights, cardio, practice etc). and then you watch film. all for the love (scholarships were nice) - so anyone that suggests there is more time to spend on athletics at these levels, and that paying athletes will somehow encourage them to do so vs academia, deserves a flan in the face.

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

#80

Post by hervature » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 9:36 PM UTC

fiftyfifty wrote: post #67

hervature wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you assume that paying the athletes will have any meaningful impact on expenses? I will be using my numbers from [1]. Coming in at 65 on expenditure, University of Kansas spends $14 million on football. At the time of the article, they hadn't been to a bowl game in a decade and the drought has since continued. I'm sorry Jayhawks, but the program isn't good at all. First, no school is going to remove scholarshi…

We saw during Covid that as soon as there was a tiny bit of financial stress on athletic departments they immediately started cutting non-revenue sports, here's a fairly complete list from the last year: https://businessofcollegesports.com/tracker-college-sports-p... You can see from that list that the vast majority of sports that were cut were non-revenue, men's sports. $1.05M lost to paying the football team could…

I wouldn't constitute COVID "a tiny bit of financial stress". That list is clearly temporary cuts. Stanford "cut" all sports programs and now they are all back. Your second article states that fans just prefer to watch on TV. Thus, the schools will make it back in more lucrative TV contracts.

But your entire argument lacks the essential point that salaries will be market driven. That, already, most programs cannot pay for their athletes. That scholarships and world class facilities and coaching are more than sufficient compensation. Scholarships again being pennies on the dollar for the university. We're talking on the order of a dozen schools that are willing to pay and 100 players that will realistically get any type of meaningful compensation.