This may not be popular here, but this is a viewpoint (Re: NCAA)

[615dawg]

The NCAA sucks. That we can agree with. It was originally created as a government entity (Think about that for a second), and it has developed into what it is today - a hypocritical governing body that goes after a women's soccer player in Oregon for washing her car at the coliseum but lets things like Cam Newton and Johnny Manzeil happen with no penalty.Mark my words - Manzeil will not miss a snap due to all of this.

And this is why the NCAA sucks. If they would do their job and administer championships (something they do very well) and enforce rules evenly whether its the small school or the big school, then I wouldn't have a problem with them. They don't need to be selling merchandise unless its for one of their events like the Final Four or the CWS.

I think its a lost cause at this point. They've lost the respect of most college sports fan. I think we are going to inevitably see the break off of about 75 schools (SEC, ACC, Big 10, Big 12, Pac 12, and Basketball Big East) and they are going to play their own game. The USM's and ULM's of the world are going to be a lower division with the Delta State's and the North Alabama's. The top tier is going to get bigger and richer, and it is going to kill a lot of regional schools that are doing better all around because of athletics. The new association is going to pay players a stipend and that is wrong. I will never agree with paying players to play college sports - because its supposed to be at least as much about college as it is sports. And its not.

Three Points to Consider:

Quality of Student

Yes, the graduation rates of athletes is on par with the normal student body. But the normal student body is lower than it needs to be. MSU and Ole Miss are the easiest BCS-conference schools to gain admission to. Mostly due to the Ayers case, but how many really believe that a 2.25 High School GPA and a 16 ACT is ready for a four year college? Move out of MSU/Ole Miss for a second. The non-athlete with those credentials could not gain entry to any other BCS university other than MSU or Ole Miss. None. Zero. And there's only a handful of regional universities (mainly in the South) that would accept them.

Add to all of this that the quality of student has diminished over the past 20 years. I read a study in the COHR that in 1995, only 13% of respondents' grades given were A. In 2011, that percentage was close to 35%. Are kids that much smarter than they were 20 years ago? Absolutely not. College has gotten a lot easier under pressure to keep enrollment numbers sky high (and federal student aid rolling in). Think about our own alma mater, all of the improvements to campus over the past 10 years is amazing, but we're basically letting anyone with a pulse in, and federal aid is paying the bills. We're about 10 years away from this being a major problem, but that's a different subject for a different day.

Paying Players

As I said, I don't support giving players a dime. We're already giving them a $100,000 education that a lot of them don't care about. Johnny Manzeil is taking online chump classes. And does anyone really think if we were giving players a $300 monthly stipend they would turn down $180,000 in Newton's case or $25,000 to sign some autographs. Hell no - it won't change a thing, it will just make certain people feel better.

And we're paying coaches way too much. Jackie SHerrill was hired at MSU for $75,000. Just over 20 years later, there are only a handful of Division II coaches that don't make that, and many high school coaches make more than that. Its hard to attract a ton of great professors at MSU because of two things - (1) Starkville schools and (2) Among the lowest paid at a major research university. But we're paying assistant volleyball coaches for 2 conference win teams more than we are paying our best professors.

The price of a season ticket in 1995 was as low as $50. Lower level, too. The first college football game I ever went to was Penn State at Alabama in 1999. I still have the ticket stub. $10. You can't take a family of four to an MSU football game for under $250. Multiply that by 7, and you are spending north of $1500 for a season. People are doing it, so there's not much I can say, but for a lot of people, its too much. Paying players will be passed on in higher ticket prices.

The Unfair Treatment of Student-Athletes

I think the Dean of Students at every major college should step down immediately. Student-athletes can get away with just about everything short of murder nowadays. My freshman roommate was kicked out of MSU for possessing paraphernalia on campus.

Every day we read about players getting arrested. We have Marshall Henderson thugs doing just about everything they can and still retaining their scholarship. Its ridiculous. We have what happened at Penn State happening. Ohio State. And people wonder why the intellectual side of a college campus has disdain for athletics. If you start paying them, its just going to add to it.

Just my two cents. Be easy on me.

 

[johnson86-1]

Everything you say you want is basically available at the Div III level. If you want true student athletes and no benefits to players other than scholarships that's available now.

 

[615dawg]

But are Division I universities not universities?

I have no problems with athletic scholarships. I just think that we've dumbed down the college experience for all for a few.

I do have a problem with athletes being paid in excess of their athletic scholarships.

And to your point of D-III - Mississippi College (who is moving up to Division II) gives out "Leadership Scholarships" like candy.

Oh you play football, you are a leader worth full tuition
Oh you were student body president and have a great academic record, you are a leader worth $1,000.

 

[johnson86-1]

What does it matter whether Division I universities are universities? If you want to cheer for teams where athletes are only paid in the form of scholarships, you have to watch athletes that don't generate more value than what their scholarships are worth. This isn't hard to do. You can be a fan of basically every DI, DII, and FCS school and probably plenty of FBS schools. But as long as there are players that bring much more value to their school than what their scholarship is worth, then players are going to be paid. It's a mostly impossible task to prevent mutually beneficial trade. You can push it underground, but good college athletes create a tremendous amount of value for their universities and people are always going to be willing to pay market rates, even if it's blackmarket.

As far as the NCAA, it's pretty good at what it does. It's job is to take the value created by athletes and funnel it to NCAA administrators and to the universities and their administrators. It's not the NCAA's fault that in a tournament setting like NCAA football, teams are always going to spend resources to compete where they can. So to the extent they are successful in preventing direct payments to players in order to gain a competitive edge, it shows up in competition for coaches' salaries or indirect competition for recruits in the form of facilities. In addition to be limited by the law in its ability to collude (at least other than in the area of player compensation), the NCAA is also limited by public perception. The NCAA is pretty much as corrupt and hypocritical as it can possibly be given the limits placed on it by its need to maintain the illusion that preventing value from flowing to the athletes is somehow legitimate. You're problem is not with the NCAA; it's with the reality that it is not really feasible to have a multibillion dollar enterprise where you can pretend it's not a multibillion dollar enterprise.

 

[Felonious Junk]

I have no problems with athletic scholarships. I just think that we've dumbed down the college experience for all for a few.

I do have a problem with athletes being paid in excess of their athletic scholarships.

And to your point of D-III - Mississippi College (who is moving up to Division II) gives out "Leadership Scholarships" like candy.

Oh you play football, you are a leader worth full tuition
Oh you were student body president and have a great academic record, you are a leader worth $1,000.

Yeah but no one buys a ticket to watch a student take his chemistry exam.

 

[futaba.79]

Ever heard of Work Study..........

Plenty of kids attend school on grant money. They also work 20 hours a week and make around $400 a month. You think they work harder than the athletes?

 

[DerHntr]

Welcome to capitalism mixing it up with public entities

 

[WeWonItAll(Most)]

You're wasting your time with this post. I tried all day yesterday.

 

[Hump4Hoops]

Nailed it.

Yeah but no one buys a ticket to watch a student take his chemistry exam.

Anyone who thinks cutting coaches salaries and slashing ticket prices is the solution needs to think a little harder.

 

[615dawg]

Not everyone in work study is on full scholarship

I disagree with work study as well, but that's off topic.

Their payment is in the form of a free college education. Some in academia will go as far to say that in itself is ridiculous - I won't.

 

[CEO2044]

Oh Lord.

It's simple. Give them whatever money you are wanting to give. BUT, take away every perk they get and let them pay for it instead. No free tuition, housing, bills, clothes, shoes, equipment, training, etc.

Let them pay for it like others would have to.

 

[Bulldog Bruce]

Colleges and Universities are the biggest scam put upon the American people today. There was a time when there were many paths to a Job/Career. Skills schools, apprenticeships, and just good ole experience and ability were much more viable paths in the past. The American public has been sold the de facto path now is through Colleges/Universities. More people are being trained for jobs that do not exist than ever before. They build up a large debt with no guarantee of a future in what they trained for.

My wife had worked as a teacher's assistant for kindergarten for 5 years while my kids were still in school. Her final year she actually had to teach the class because her teacher had to take a leave of absence due to a family tragedy. The principal thought so much of her that they hired another assistant and had my wife do the teaching. She loved it and decided she wanted to continue to do that so she looked into getting a teacher's degree/certificate. Now here is someone who has been doing the job for 5 years and she had to start from scratch. She would even have had to do a semester of unpaid student teaching. No school was willing to look at her experience and give her credit for it. Why? Because they wanted all the money. They would not look at what she already knew and enhance that. She should have been able to get a degree in 1 year.

You can harbor jealousy of the perception you have of student-athletes but the bottom line of all your statements is that ANY STUDENT OTHER THAN A STUDENT-ATHLETE can earn as much money as they possibly can while still attending school. The NCAA cannot come and tell you you can only earn $3,000 a year if you are a regular student. They are not in the average students pocket, so get out of the athletes pocket. Let the IRS handle the policing. They have subpoena power. Pete Rose went to jail for not paying his taxes on autograph income. SO if they choose to make money outside their school commitments, let them. What they can police is to not let the athletic department setup any jobs and that should be how the rule is written.

 

[ckDOG]

I agree, these are all problems. There's not much that can be done though.

There are a lot of dollars at stake, so we get what see today. People love to spend money on college athletics. As long as that holds true, we are going to have a jacked up balance between the athlete and non-athlete and we will see Universities and their alumni base spending massive amounts of money on things that have little or nothing to do with the true mission of a University.

It really goes hand and hand that many of the major Universities (even the schools with solid reputations) are nothing but degree factories and have been for a couple of decades now. The real strategy of these schools resembles more of a for-profit business with a product to sell than an entity focused on quality of education/research. I understand you have to protect the bottom line to sustain the mission into the future, but somewhere along the way our major Universities transitioned from well run institutions that have the student's best interest at heart to degree factories with massive enrollments of low quality inputs and outputs. It's a scam for a lot of students and degrees/career paths.