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

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

#91

Post by nradov » Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 2:12 AM UTC

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.

Maybe students should be able to major in football? There are music and theater arts performance majors. Is football less important?

There are already football adjacent majors already like sports administration and sports broadcasting.

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

#92

Post by derbOac » Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 2:14 AM UTC

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #3

Kavanaugh hits the nail in the head in his concurring opinion. > In my view, that argument is circular and unpersuasive. The NCAA couches its arguments for not paying student athletes in innocuous labels. But the labels cannot disguise the reality: The NCAA’s business model would be flatly il- legal in almost any other industry in America. All of the restaurants in a region cannot come together to cut cooks’ wages on…

So, I really disagree with this opinion, although I see this as a "reasonable people can disagree" sort of thing.

The problem with the analogy is that restaurants aren't primarily functioning as educational institutions with a restaurant business on the side. Hospital nurses aren't providing nursing care as a side activity. Camera crews are not secondary to the mission of a movie studio. With universities, the sports teams are at least ostensibly in theory, student extracurricular activities secondary to the primary mission of the university.

Let's say a university had a student dining center, and agreed to let people work in the center in exchange for free tuition. Would that be a violation of antitrust? I think not.

I admit universities are currently full of practices where nonprofit endeavors are hijacked for for-profit engorgement in a tail-wagging-the-dog sort of phenomenon. Sports are another example of many. But I don't think antitrust is really the appropriate concept to introduce -- or if it is, it has far greater implications than people realize.

What's maybe slipping under the radar is that by this argument, any nonprofit organization that tries to establish rules pertaining to scope of professional activities is operating as an inappropriate monopoly. Where does the argument end? Isn't the American Medical Association an illegal monopoly under this argument, as it conspires to control how people practice professionally? I doubt the Supreme Court would follow its reasoning to its logical conclusion, which raises the question about what's different with college sports. Why single it out?

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

#93

Post by jessaustin » Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 2:28 AM UTC

yupper32 wrote: post #60

chrisseaton wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's fine to care about sports. It's fine to devote most of your time to preparation for competition. It's unseemly for institutions dedicated to academics to divert vast funds to non-academic pursuits. Most of the spending on collegiate sport generates tiny performance gains, and since all college teams are spending this money there is something of a Red Queen situation so those tiny performance gains change cumulative results not at all.

Also, for nearly every sport except football and women's basketball, the real talent in the college age group isn't even playing college sports. Sports are meaningful with or without access to the latest most expensive amenities.

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

#94

Post by yupper32 » Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 3:28 AM UTC

triceratops wrote: post #88

yupper32 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's exhausting to have to remind people in this thread that I'm talking about way more than the money maker sports.

There's not "far too much money" in professional swimming or track & field. Killing the college sports, subsidized by the money maker sports, may very well kill the professional leagues for many sports.

D1 basketball athletes be able to be paid. Absolutely. That doesn't change my opinion that college sports benefit society and are often worth the extra cost.

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

#95

Post by yupper32 » Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 3:30 AM UTC

triceratops wrote: post #89

twiddling wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

This is incorrect.

"Unlike other national Olympic organizations, [Team USA] receives no government funds. It pays for its operations and helps fund athletes and the national governing bodies of its sports through the sale of media and sponsorship rights and some modest fund-raising." - NYT

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

#96

Post by triceratops » Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 4:05 AM UTC

yupper32 wrote: post #94

triceratops wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It's exhausting to have to remind people in this thread that I'm talking about way more than the money maker sports. There's not "far too much money" in professional swimming or track & field. Killing the college sports, subsidized by the money maker sports, may very well kill the professional leagues for many sports. D1 basketball athletes be able to be paid. Absolutely. That doesn't change my opinion that college s…

If professional swimming or track "benefits society", why doesn't the government fund it directly? That's how it works in most other countries. Why are universities shouldering that burden?

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

#97

Post by tzs » Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 4:11 AM UTC

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…

> Even in your scenario, there's nothing stopping the aspiring golfer from attending Stanford part-time while they try to make it in pro-golf.

Does Stanford allow part time undergraduates? A brief Googling suggests that generally they do not, unless there are special circumstances, but it wasn't clear what would count as special circumstances.

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

#98

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 12:45 PM UTC

yupper32 wrote: post #69

chrisseaton wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People take sports seriously in other countries as well. I took sports seriously. I just didn’t have an expectation of professional facilities for a social sports team in spare time at uni.

I don't know what more to tell you. If you want to compete at a high level in the US you often need to fulfill that long list of requirements a few posts above, unless it's a very niche sport. You can also play pickup basketball down the street with nothing more than the court and a ball. There's nothing wrong with that, but don't expect that to convert to any kind of high level play.

[deleted]

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

#99

Post by danvasquez29 » Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 5:01 PM UTC

Ekaros wrote: post #51

danvasquez29 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

minimum wage is minimum wage (IMO?), the business losing money only dictates how long that position will exist for, not change the compensation owed for performing employed work.

in minor league baseball, who's indepent teams may be anywhere on the spectrum of losing or making money but who are also affiliated with parent organizations that make hundreds of millions, there is a plethora of literature lately that accuses them of paying significantly less than US minimum wage. In many cases it appears the players pay them for the right to play when it's all done.

in the college hockey example i referred to, the D1 teams/leagues usually have decent revenue from tickets and tv deals but it's not a ton and i'd take a shot in the dark that most programs are pretty much breaking even after scholarships, staff, and facilities are accounted for. In that environment, having an athlete get "paid" maybe a $40k/year total package in scholarship, room and board, playing equipment and facilities use, and cash per diems on road trips is both above minimum wage and probably no more than they could reasonably expect if the league was "pro" and had nothing to do with college.

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

#100

Post by yupper32 » Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 7:16 PM UTC

triceratops wrote: post #96

yupper32 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's exhausting to have to remind people in this thread that I'm talking about way more than the money maker sports. There's not "far too much money" in professional swimming or track & field. Killing the college sports, subsidized by the money maker sports, may very well kill the professional leagues for many sports. D1 basketball athletes be able to be paid. Absolutely. That doesn't change my opinion that college s…

If professional swimming or track "benefits society", why doesn't the government fund it directly? That's how it works in most other countries. Why are universities shouldering that burden?

If you think "benefiting society" is how the US government chooses to fund things, I've got a bridge to sell you :)