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National Collegiate Athletic Association vs. Alston [pdf]

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

#81

Post by oh_sigh »

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.

Just a second hand anecdote, but a professor of mine at my small liberal arts college with a D3 football team - mentioned over a few glasses of wine that he had moved on from teaching at Virginia Tech because he was pressured by the administration to give passing grades to Michael Vick, who never attended a single class or completed any coursework of his.

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

#82

Post by csa »

chrisseaton wrote: post #61
chrisBob wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Other countries don’t even remotely approach social university sports teams like this and still have fun and generate elite athletes.

Outside of the US, elite athletes are often members of non-university clubs. These clubs are supported well and often have very good funding.

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

#83

Post by jalgos_eminator »

moate wrote: post #78
jalgos_eminator wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, I think that players should be offered what they are worth. At this point the cat is out of the bag. College head coaches are getting paid millions per year (look it up, its all public), the assistants are getting paid 200k-800k. The athletic directors get paid $400k-$800k. Strength and conditioning coaches are getting $150k. Every year coaches leverage the public nature of their salaries to get better offers. Apparently the free market works great for everyone except the athletes. Strange how that works.

For some reason, the schools don't complain about how much money they are paying the coaches. They don't complain about how much money they are spending on facilities. They don't complain about how much money they spend on marketing. But for some reason, when the public starts talking about paying players, they start complaining and making excuses. If you want them to play for the love of the game, then get rid of scholarships. If you want them to be professionals, then pay them.

And yes, that will create inequity among players. That's fine. I wasn't worth the same to my team as our star quarterback (who now is a backup in the NFL). Its the way the world works, especially the world of sports.

edit: grammar

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

#84

Post by slg »

chadash wrote: post #77
slg wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

>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?

I think completely open bidding on players will cause more problems. Like I said, you can have teammates in which one is worth millions and the other is worth nothing. They would both be putting in the same amount of work and ostensibly be doing the same job, but one is just drastically better than the other. That might be worse for public perception than them all getting nothing.

I imagine any system of paying players would probably come with both a floor and ceiling for how much a school can compensate a player.

Also this isn't really the point of your comment, but like many athletes Mahomes has never and potentially will never sign a true free market contract with a team. He was drafted by the Chiefs so they had exclusive rights to negotiate with him. His huge extension was negotiated with the Chiefs during his initial contract which means he couldn't field offers from other teams. If he was a true free agent, he would have received even more money. He was willing to take a discount on that value for the added security of signing the contract now and guaranteeing some portion of that money. It is endorsements where someone like Mahomes can see his true free market rate because he can have the Nikes, Adidas, Gatorades, etc of the world competing against each other. Giving college players NIL rights gives them the opportunity to cash in on those free market endorsement deals.

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

#85

Post by Zimahl »

slg wrote: post #84
chadash wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 o…

>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? I think completely open bidding on players will cause more problems. Like I said, you can have teammates in which one is worth millions and the other is worth nothing. They would both be putting in the same amount of work an…

Just to add, the NFL is even more closed-market in that each team has a salary cap. So giving Mahomes more means someone else on the team gets less.

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

#86

Post by slg »

Zimahl wrote: post #85
slg wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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? I think completely open bidding on players will cause more problems. Like I said, you can have teammates in which one is worth millions and the other is worth nothing. They would both be putting in the same amount of work an…

Just to add, the NFL is even more closed-market in that each team has a salary cap. So giving Mahomes more means someone else on the team gets less.

True and superstars like him are often guilted into taking less than their true value so the team still has enough to pay other high quality players.

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

#87

Post by jalgos_eminator »

oh_sigh wrote: post #81
colinmhayes wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just a second hand anecdote, but a professor of mine at my small liberal arts college with a D3 football team - mentioned over a few glasses of wine that he had moved on from teaching at Virginia Tech because he was pressured by the administration to give passing grades to Michael Vick, who never attended a single class or completed any coursework of his.

Yeah, I would only be mildly surprised if this happened a time or two while I was in school. There are some guys that just don't want to go to school, but college football is their only pathway to make it to the NFL. The academic counselors have their hands full just trying to keep all their athletes eligible, let alone enabling them to thrive in an academic environment.

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

#88

Post by triceratops »

yupper32 wrote: post #68
jldugger wrote: post #25

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? I'm really struggling to come up with a reason this is the academy's problem to solve.

Its society's problem to solve. We shouldn't do away with college sports without a replacement avenue for people to get into high level sports. Most people who want to do away with college sports seem okay with killing their professional leagues. We shouldn't be okay with that.

> Most people who want to do away with college sports seem okay with killing their professional leagues.

Not at all. I just believe professional leagues will be fine with or without near-professional-quality college teams. There's far too much money in professional sports for them to die out just because universities don't field teams. I refer you to European soccer leagues for an alternative model.

Moreover de-facto professional athletes playing for a pittance and getting a poor education on top of that makes my blood boil. Pay them proper wages and don't screw up their education. College football and basketball teams also have a tendency to suck up resources and attention away from the actual purpose of a university - which is to perform research and educate people.

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

#89

Post by triceratops »

twiddling wrote: post #50
triceratops wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do countries that are "not the US" produce swimmers or track and field athletes?

often through direct state sponsorship

I think Olympic athletes get government funding in the US as well.

There's also the possibility of firms like IMG funding athletes' expenses and training, in return for a cut of future earnings.

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

#90

Post by jessaustin »

csa wrote: post #73
jessaustin wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, I know about club sports since, as I said above, I played on a club team. All college sports should be operated as club sports. Since that's not going to happen for football and men's basketball in USA, it also won't happen for women's basketball and say, probably, women's soccer. Everything else that we're supposed to clutch our pearls about, however? Swimming, track, tennis, baseball, and various other even less watchable sports? Those are club sports. That is not an injustice to swimmers and tennis players. If they had what it takes to be "the best", they wouldn't be wasting their time on a college team.
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