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Good, then universities can get rid of intercollegiate athletic programs and regain huge chunks of their budgets to use for actual academics. One coach's salary can fund an entire department.
You do realize all big time athletic departments are self funded. They provide a huge net benefit to the school too with marketing. I hate the current system but cost to the university isn’t a good argument.
> all big time athletic departments
And then at the other end of the spectrum are fake schools who get a little stipend to play road games against bad DII teams.
https://www.tampabay.com/news/education/college/at-college-footballs-lowest-rung-games-are-matter-of-faith-and-creative/2204711/
This is true. When you factor in salaries of coaches, ADs, support staff and then factor in travel for Olympic sports that don't generate revenue, most programs are losing money.
Maybe not a strict P and L statement, but for many institutions, college sports serves as a method of recruiting and advertising for non-athletes. Especially with NCAA Division I private universities.
When I was in HS out in California in the 90s, the one thing that got people interested in applying (and going) to Duke, for example, was the college basketball team. On a smaller scale, Steve Nash's Santa Clara upsetting Arizona back then in March Madness got people at my school interested in going there. Even though I grew up pretty close to Santa Clara, it was an expensive private school nobody thought of until Nash led that upset. Similarly, back then barely anyone wanted to go to St. Mary's in Moraga, CA. But I understand now the kids out there do heavily consider it.
Things like that.
There are perhaps two sports at any school that are recruiting tools/sweeteners for academic applicants. Football and basketball.
The vast majority of sports from golf to swimming to sailing to gymnastics attract small crowds, sell little merch, receive no tv time, and generate negative returns.
Title 9 is one of the greatest solutions in sports in that it requires money be spent on women’s sports and that in turn forces the schools to trickle down support for additional men’s programs - everyone wins.
But don’t kid yourself, absent Title 9 almost every sport would have shitty facilities or cease to exist outside a handful of high visibility or revenue generating sports.
The amount of money we are talking about at a major program is stunning. The Texas Longhorns football program generated $183 million in 2023 alone. Football in Texas is a tent pole but the vast majority of sports at UT generate little to no revenue.
https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/2024/01/18/university-of-texas-athletic-revenue
I'm going to guess that a history of Gonzaga U. would show considerable recruiting and financial impact from the rise of its men's basketball program to near-constant elite status. I'm going to guess that their acceptance rates have dropped noticeably. Anyone who pays any attention to basketball knows the little Jesuit school in Spokane.
College sports are for the enrichment of the athletes and students for the vast majority of colleges and teams.
In my experience, most college teams don't even sell tickets because there's not enough demand to make people pay.
Going to be interesting to see the first players who challenge employment contracts that bar them from playing for another school for a few years due to non-compete clauses.
This is why there needs to be collegiate players unions (one for Olympic sports, one for football, one for basketball) because there needs to be collective bargaining to establish the rules such that they are enforceable in court.
I mean the tricky part is that by virtue of the system, a player has 4 seasons to play. Solidarity is hard to ask for when a strike can lose you a quarter of your career. Especially if you’re a senior already being scouted for other leagues.
I'm not talking about unions for power sake.
I'm talking about unions from a "this is what will legally be required to make this type of employment system even work or be legal to operate at all"
If athletes are employees, then the employers will be forced to follow the laws as they relate to the students as employees. Their contracts will have to be enforceable in court.
Without collective bargaining, pretty much any restriction on players after they leave a school will not be allowed. Restrictions on transferring? Restrictions on how many years you can play? Restrictions on taking outside money? None of these will be enforceable in a situation where you have individual players negotiating with essentially parallel actors within a cartel. Right now the NCAA is an explicit cartel, and the courts have been smacking them over and over again because of it. Without legislation, the NCAA won't exist in 5 years because it won't have any power.
Yes. The union will be weak, they won't really be able to strike, they won't have much power. BUT without player unions, the court decisions that have happened and are about to happen will completely destroy college sports. Not in a "the sky is falling" way, but in a "none of this is even legal anymore" kind of way.
I actually think it is about power. For one, there are more ways to express power through your union than striking, but also - exactly to your point - defining the terms and conditions that will define this as a workplace. There’s a lot of power in collective bargaining. The first contracts in any of these places are going to be tough, but the wins will be massively empowering per your point
The issue is that you cannot have college sports function like a job, without separating the sports from the college. I know people don’t like that, but that’s a money/capitalism problem.
This issue is only going to get more heated as more and more athletes demand NIL or other compensation. But the days of paying ball for “free” are coming to an end. At least at the D1 level.
I think men's college basketball has a bigger problem that needs to be resolved (basketball and football). Or navigated some way.
I went to UTEP (University of Texas at El Paso). When I was there, we had a starting lineup that included Tim Hardaway, Greg Foster, and Antonio Davis. And a few other really good college players (they didn't have successful NBA careers, but they were really good college athletes).
I got to follow Hardaway, Davis, and Foster play from their freshman year to their junior/senior year. They were "our players." We (the students) became invested in them as students of the University and representatives of the school.
You saw them on campus walking by or at the student union, where we hung out when not in class. Hell Tim was the same height as me. I went to a high-school sports power house (my school was ranked either as the #1 or #2 basketball team in the nation many years). So I saw, played with, and played against some extraordinary athletes and future professionals.
Not to mention, we got student tickets to sporting events. So I saw a lot of college sports. Tim Hardaway (and Anthony Davis) were some of the best basketball players I had ever seen live. The shit Hardaway could do on a basketball court was sick. At 5'11" or however tall he was, he could do anything he wanted on a basketball court. Go to the basket in the paint, cross-over anyone, and shoot mid-range jumpers at will. NOBODY could stop him.
When you see players progress for 3 or 4 years, they ARE your team. It's like the Kaitlyn Clark phenomenon. She WAS a Hawyeye.
I hold hardly think college athletes should get paid. But the "one and dones" and the football players leaving every year to get the best "deal" take away from that. I have no idea who plays where. One year, a player is your star quarterback, and they next they play for a rival. You see a freshman phenomenon on your basketball team, and the next year, they are riding the bench in the NBA.
Unless you can get at least some stability in men's college sports, I think the popularity of their sports will deteriorate. I'm not sure how that can be rectified as NIL is figuring itself out.
Agreed, I think college sports are going to get crushed in the coming years due to NIL and the transfer portal. I went to Washington State and we are now on the outside after the Pac-12 collapse. After the football season ended a ton of players transferred out. We had a bball team make the NCAAs for the first time in a decade and immediately after they got bounced from the tourney, the coach left and a bunch of players entered the portal. Makes it hard to invest in college sports when it becomes so transactional.
The transfer portal is awful for college sports.
I get the benefit to the student, but for sports in general, it sucks. And I don't mean students shouldn't be able to leave. But they also should have some limits. They shouldn't be able to do 4 schools in 4 years IMO, always chasing a better deal and more playing time.
I say this as someone who rooted for a team whose best player was a transfer. But you need some kind of regulations, not the wild west as it stands.
Because you are right, it becomes really hard to get invested in people who pop in for a year then are gone.
College sports for the good of colleges should just be done away with (outside of “club” capacity), but we can’t now with the current culture and investment. Best result would probably be that the NFL swallows their pride and greed and subsidizes a developmental professional spring/summer league, with a mix of veterans and 18+ college age prospects, maybe starting the week after the NFL draft.
[That time of year would help carry the football cycle year round and not compete with college&NFL (late august through early feb) + draft season/FA (march through April 28). Play 10 weeks + 2 week playoff maybe (ending in late July.) preseason starts with HOF game for NFL first week of august, rinse and repeat.]
The problem is, NFL thinks they deserve a free developmental league (college) because they’ve built a multibillion dollar a year profit off of just that and tax subsidized stadiums.
But pair that developmental league with a pared down college bowl system. However many it will sustain, like 10 + big 12 + SEC + ACC + pac 12 whatever, 60 schools with biggest followings coffers and brands?
Basketball is harder because there’s a lot more parity, and with less starters you can really see a talented player standout even on an inferior team. The g league already exists though and maybe if it was getting an influx of small college developmental talents it would become a bigger / better product
The problem is any way you slice it that it’ll gut all the smaller schools, destroy revenues (based on the current system) reduce the prospect pool and largely ruin the college sports experience as people know it. The smallest sports will get the shaft in any reductions for sure, but frankly college competitions for all sports outside the end of year tournaments should all be run more locally (more efficiently.) But that may be unavoidable anyway - we’ve already seen conference realignments, and we’ll see more - we are seeing the transfer portal move players annually - NIL deals impacting players - and streaming as it impacts broadcast rights / deals.
I thinks it’s a bubble that will slowly crumble whether any major revolution occurs or not, and that’s probably the most likely outcome.
Well said. The bubble has been bursting slowly for years, and continue to do so. Capitalism is the creator and destroyer of all things.
College sports is slowly being consolidated into a very small group of elite teams, an ever shrinking “mid” group and then a giant Olympic pool of lesser teams fighting for scraps.
Agree. I think all college varsity sports should be ended. Make proper minor leagues in all sports. Stop pretending to care about kids' education when you're really milking their bodies for profit. Colleges would benefit by vacating all the space eaten up by "students" who aren't there to learn.
Colleges are centers of learning, knowledge sharing, and scientific advancement, sports are merely an extra service provided. Now you want colleges to add an entire staff of athletes along with the professors they pay 6 figures plus for. The payment for these players is going to be coming out of the pockets of the other students because most sport programs don’t make money. Now as a normal student who wants an education, you have to pay for the professors, facilities, and the athletes. I’m paying for an education not for sports entertainment.
There. is. so. much. money.
First, full-ride scholarships have real costs and real deductions, so athletes are already being compensated in a direct form that is tracked in dollars spent, even if no money goes to an athlete's bank account.
Second, large university athletic programs are well-funded directly through broadcast rights, ticket and concession sales, and merchandise. They additionally use their University's success in sports to fundraise from alumni, so even more money.
The system is flush with cash.
I went to the University of Arizona, where the basketball and football teams already operate as (very successful) minor league teams would. The other sports receive a pittance. Only title IX keeps at least some money flowing to women's athletics, but many other men's sports at UofA are run as clubs, regularly hold fundraisers, etc (I played rugby there. We had to raise money, pay dues, sell our own merch, and we were generally not supported by the University monetarily at all).
I think that's how all university sports should be - clubs that raise their own money, share facilities, and generally are run as an active hobby for interested students. We don't live in that world, and won't for awhile yet. There's just too much money in the system to quit. So yeah, give these professional athletes who make a shit-ton of money for their universities their due and pay them what they're worth. The whole charade is sickening otherwise.
the revenue sports make plenty of money. Schools play accounting games to show that all that money is right here ... and its gone. Coaches aren't getting 7 figure salaries on the backs of students.
The only schools that make money off of men's football and basketball are the absolute tip of the iceberg. the vast majority of D1 schools do not make any money off their sports and will suffer for this.
Is it really "for free" though? They get to attend the college without paying a tuition, which is probably at least $30k/year in value. That's tax-free too.
A different model would pay them all $30k, which they would then have to pay taxes on, and then make them buy their college education the way everyone else does.
30K a year(~14$ equivalent for full time normal employment) to work your ass of and even put your body on the line so that your school and a host of other companies (merch, previously video games, shoes, food, ADs, hell someone has to make the stickers!) get rich and if you so much as even receive a gift, or should your mom die and your coach buy you a plane ticket home, end up costing you your scholarship and potential future career.
Free education though so yea probably good trade.
Any system where teams agree with each other to pay athletes a set amount (e.g. $30k) will run afoul of anti trust laws and won't last.
The issue with the current system isn't that players aren't being compensated, because they are, as you point out. The issue is that schools are agreeing on a cap for that compensation, and punishing anyone who exceeds it. That's not allowed.
That's why any pro sport with a salary cap needs to collectively bargain an antitrust exemption with their players.
I can't put a dollar value on it, but nobody is lining up to sleep with the guy at University of Alabama who wrote the doctoral paper on the migration of waterfowl species and how to benefit local ecosystems.
The guy who threw six TD's against Texas though?
She's the kind to pull, "It'd be a real shame if our memory of events didn't line up and a phone call was made to the local Sheriff's department."
Really make an *implication*!
It's 100% a negative ROI and certainly benefits the average scholarship athlete over the school. Most sports don't make the school money and are a net cost.
I was a scholarship D1 swimmer, and I promise you I didn't make the program any money. I just did it because I liked it, and it was a good tradeoff for the scholly.
A big issue would be the DOE’s rules for what constitutes full time work
Student employees are limited to no more than 20 hours per week - which is low enough to interfere with practice + training + games to the point a lot of teams will likely suffer.
Also a huge deal would be faking hours worked (IE not reporting weight training or conditioning and trying to argue that is personal) - which would constitute fraud and potentially even tax evasion (not reporting hours but deducting fees or costs of athletic facilities would be a *huge* no-no).
In the end, a lot of why this hasn’t already happened has to do with the FLSA, DOE, and tax laws - they are also the reason it will likely never happen.
One (minor) update for the future :
Dept of Education = ED or DoED
Dept of Energy = DOE
Bigger things :
NCAA rules already limit student-athletes to 20hrs practice a per week, max 4hrs per day. (Plus I think 8 hours for tape, meetings, etc) But only 1-2 sports use all 20hrs (and neither are major sports)
Student-athletes if shifted to being seen as employees would probably be considered full time non-exempt, separate from the educational aspect. Which means the ED won't really be involved, the DOL will be. Under FT non-exempt... That 20hrs now becomes 40hrs and the DOL has to determine what "compensable time" is as an athlete. Anything over 40hrs becomes overtime pay. (Different story for exempt employees, but that would require Congress and I think that won't happen purely because of the hassle of it. But you never know, especially with the $$$ being thrown around)
The NLRB has already recommended/suggested student-athletes been seen as employees. Something the court case under the FLSA that is currently in the courts will probably pay attention to and use.
The issue will be the required working hours will go far beyond what is allowable. I was a manager for the athletic department and we were provided scholarships instead of getting work-study stipends because during football season we easily put in 40 hours/week.
It'd be at least 3-4 hrs for practice Monday-Thursday, Fridays would be about 8 hours for home games to get everything set, game day would be about 12-16 hours depending on the time of the game, and then Sunday to break it down and gear up for the weekend be another 4-8 or so. If we had to travel with the team (not every one travels for every game) then you can add in basically 50 hours since we'd leave Friday morning and get back sometime early Sunday and have to load and unload buses.
I don't know how the hell I did it.
Some types of job have different hours rules. IE, staff at overnight summer camps are sort of always on call even when they aren't explicitly working. If you broke down their hourly they'd be working like 80 hours a week. Also gig workers like roadies, audio/lighting techs, and performers can end up on the job for 10+ hours for several days straight for one gig and still have other work the other days of the week.
The caveat is that there are (at least for some jobs) job specific protections to make sure they have plenty of real downtime during the day, are properly compensated for longer hours, etc.
Like it or not the players _are_ workers and the only thing you are doing bu denying them that legal status is denying them ability to properly be legally protected. Denying that they are workers is just further shortchanging them not fixing the problem.
The issue is that they are students. Work-study only allows you to work so many hours per week and it's far below the time commitment that being an athlete or even a student manager needs.
There's also the inverse setting precedent; many jobs will cover tuition expense as part of their benefit programs and only ask that you maintain a minimum GPA and continue working at the company for some designated amount of time following graduation.
I would say that's all you need to say student athletes should be getting paid; sports is their job, college education is a benefit, but they still need a salary to live on. Given how much money is in basketball and football, those salaries should be reflective of the value the players bring.
The issue is that schools aren't paying the gymnasts and rowers who already lose the school money, so everything but football and basketball (and a handful of women's sports for Title IX) goes away
Something needs to be set in place to not pass along that cost to students. Students shouldn’t have to experience higher tuitions because a school wants a bigger or better sports program.
The primary source of “funding” here will be slashing non-revenue (especially women’s) sports, I think. Women’s sports programs are so robust in American colleges because Title IX requires equal numbers of athletic scholarships for male and female athletes.
Football especially has been one of the biggest boons to women’s athletics; top level Division I FBS football teams carry over 80 male scholarship athletes, which means that 80 female scholarship athletes need to be added elsewhere in the school’s athletic programming. Unlike basketball where men’s scholarships are usually just offset by scholarships for the women’s team, there aren’t women’s football teams to absorb those 80 scholarships, which where sports like field hockey and volleyball especially have benefitted enormously (the SEC infamously is an amazing women’s soccer conference, whereas nearly no member schools have men’s soccer teams at all).
If football and basketball players become paid employees, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re carved out from the student-athlete scholarship pool. If schools no longer need to carry 80-90 male scholarship athletes, then I wouldn’t be surprised if those scholarships for women’s athletes will also disappear. Sports that are largely female-only in the US at the collegiate level are going to be hit hard by the evolutions in football and men’s basketball.
At this point what is the harm in having these pro teams have youth academies like international football teams literally everywhere?
The whole model of college athletics is archaic for basketball and American football but I get why they’re not really trying to overhaul it
Because it won't have the same following.
Look at the NBA G league vs. March Madness.
I have a "connection" to my alma mater. I'll watch them and root for them in a way I probably wouldn't watch and root for an academy or minor league team of my favorite pro teams.
I think it honestly would be a very difficult shift for a lot of people. Sure when "juniors" is already established there is a following, I just don't know that it will happen quickly. I think you'd basically lose a generation. People grew up watching their parents college team play. If you don't have that, it will take decades to catch on probably.
It simply wont. And theyve already fucked up some of their model with the conference shake ups. Going the way of MTV, lose your soul squeezing every penny and destroy the long term brand.
Eh, check out the Canadian Juniors system for hockey. The age is actually a bit lower (16-20), but it’s definitely big in Canada/the US states that have a team.
I'm not saying no one will watch.
I just don't see it having the same impact. Especially for big schools. I went to a Big 10 school. Me and my friends try to get to a football game at least once every couple of years, and I know a lot of alumni do. And its because we have a connection there. Just throwing a minor league team up won't be the same.
The interesting thing about Canadian Juniors is that they’re *not* minor league affiliates. They’re wholly separate teams and leagues (though, some nhl owners own chl teams, but that’s the only connection).
It does lose out on the alumni factor, but in my opinion, it mirrors the heavy “local interest” focus that especially English football has where even small towns have these culturally important teams.
The alumni factor though is the biggest source of revenue for the school. That’s the difference. Why would a school relinquish the ability to get tens of millions (each) billions or more collectively.
That is fair. And I guess I can understand how, if you are a small town who doesn't have a sports team, you would adopt that juniors team. But I'm in Chicago. Why would I care about a team in Central Illinois?
I mean, why *would* you care about a team in central Illinois, that’s a valid question.
The NCAA system definitely manufactures a level of interest that might otherwise be non-existent. Which is cool, but if we’re interfacing with some tough questions about fair pay for college athletes, then we also have to interface with the idea that… Maybe the NCAA system manufactured an unsustainable system backed by underpaid labor.
Why are you interested in a team from central Illinois? For one, because at one point, *you were* an Urbana-Champaign local. But also you’re into the Illini basketball team *because you were told to be.* Not in some nefarious “every decision you make isn’t actually you,” kind of way, but more in that it’s good for the school if you continually support their athletics program. The institution wants you to be a fan, so they manufacture interest in the student body in the hope that when you’re an alumnus making money and living in Chicago, you travel back and to the school, spending money and (hopefully) donating.
No one will watch that stuff. You just gutted a billion dollar industry and asked a multitude of other sports owners to step in and help fund/rebuild the structure. There’s a reason why a lot of the best international athletes in various sports who aren’t pro level come to the states to grab a college education. Those people no longer come. Enrollment numbers at universities fluctuate wildly closing universities. Existing infrastructure rots as we have billions of dollars in stadiums across the country essentially worthless.
We can keep going
Like I said I get why they’re not trying to overhaul it. Because sports entertainment isn’t about the sport it’s about the money.
We can keep going once you bring up reasons that will actually be detrimental to the sports in question.
I think the best outcome is that college basketball/football essentially becomes that, just under the umbrella of universities. There could be different categories for players who are there to be pros and those that are genuinely pursuing academics.
Honestly, we just need lower leagues with independent teams. Like the UFL, only for kids out of high school. Maybe closer to the english pyramid. People will support a local professional team, especially if it's its own thing. No team will match the support of a Ohio State or whatever, but at least the kids will get paid and the pros can still draft them.
If that's the case, is everyone prepared for a +90% of varisity collegiate athletic teams to fold? If athletes are now employees, the only ones who are going going to retain their jobs are men's basketball players and football players.
I've enjoyed the heck out of college sports (with the pretense of amateurism). But at a lot of destination campuses, it's unnaturally holding the university together at the undergraduate level. Remove associate of sports and the undergraduate experience and something new will be a lot more efficient to replace it. The US is the only place in the world with this sort of structure.
Colleges who exploit athletes and fans to fund educational services are excellent.
If your head coach or college president has a salary big enough to run for congress in ten years, you done fucked up.
As of right now they are still student athletes so if the NCAA wants to just enforce a certain GPA requirement to be able to transfer. Not a 4.00 but not some weak shit like a 2.00. Make it a 2.7 which is literally a B- average and you can go.
The vast majority of college sports teams cost more money than they generate. Only a handful of athletic departments operate in the black. 90%+ lose money. The only two sports that are profitable are men's basketball and men's football. Is mens basketball a job but women's basketball isn't? It's a huge title 9/civil rights issue if you pay men but not women for doing the same job.
If you start paying athletes for unprofitable sports, where does it stop? Should the golf team be paid? Is golfing a job? It's something people pay to do. Same with most of these sports. If you want a running coach and an athletic trainer and travel to a bunch of big races it's really expensive. Look at club sports. They all have dues to pay for the costs of playing the sport. It can cost up to 5 grand an athlete per season to row on a club team. Why the hell should a varsity team, that gets to do it for free, be considered a job and not a privilege?
Paying athletes is going to come at the expense of the non revenue generating sports. If you pay your mens football and men's basketball players you're going to be doing away with the volleyball team, the gymnastics team, the track team, the rowing team, the fencing team, the golf team, etc. Why do we want to do away with those sports just to make future multimillionaires richer now?
Does anyone really look at professional athletes and think "man these guys don't get paid enough, I wish we could've taken money from the gymnastics team to pay them more when they were in college?"
To the Dartmouth men's basketball team. You know what you get for playing basketball for Dartmouth? You get in to Dartmouth. That's the deal. You don't even have to keep playing for them after you get in. You're choosing to play basketball because you enjoy doing it. When you choose to do something because you enjoy doing it that's not a job. That's a hobby or volunteering.
And they do get paid. It’s called “a scholarship”. All these athletes acting like they don’t get paid - while they get a free education and get to play ball for free - smh. I’m all for endorsement deals and video game likeness payouts for collegiate athletes if they can get those on their own, but paying them a salary on top of all that is ridiculous. Don’t think you have it good enough? Go tough it out in the G league and then come back to me.
It is extremely hard to be a D1 athlete and get a STEM degree. Only 5% (42) of all D1 men's basketball players got a STEM degree last year. 9% (358) for men's football. As compared to 38% for men in the overall student body. The vaste majority are taking the easiest degree possible or are placed in special degrees that they put together for athletes. So "scholarship" doesn't mean the same thing for a D1 athlete as it does does for a normal student. When you look at the typical practice schedule it becomes very obvious why this is the case. It's more of a "here is a token degree and free food and house, come play for us", which, honestly, when you consider just food and housing, is probably pretty close to what they make in the G leagues.
> It is extremely hard to be a D1 athlete and get a STEM degree. Only 5% (42) of all D1 men's basketball players got a STEM degree last year.
I'm not sure your numbers "prove" your argument. They are only correlated. Another explanation is that the overlap between high school kids capable of getting a STEM degree and top high school athletes is very small - perhaps just 5%.
You do bring up a good point - many of the top NCAA athletes do not actually get degrees, so in that sense, they're not really getting anything. But that is more of an argument to decouple athletics from college than anything else.
There are definitely advantages of having it coupled - the college connection does increase interest - but by focusing on the athletic part, it has become kind-of a joke, and the compensation piece is a natural outcome of that. It wouldn't be much different if the colleges simply hired non-student athletes.
They don't all get a scholarship. There's an average of 128 players per D1 football team and each team is allowed 85 scholarships. A school is required to fund at least 90% of those scholarships. Roughly 40% of everyone you see on a D1 football sideline is paying to be there.
True, but would that change if the athletes suddenly became paid? They certainly wouldn’t all be paid at the same rate - the athletes on the field would get a significantly higher salary than the ones on the sidelines. It might make a small difference in their lives but not a significant one.
They may as well split men’s basketball and men’s football (which is what we are essentially talking about here) into a system entirely separate from colleges - like baseball and hockey already do, and have them play in regional farm teams and get paid the market rate for those regions. It should have nothing to do with college, amateur athletes could choose if they want to go play for a AAA basketball team with the possibility of getting pulled up to an NBA team or go to college and not play, but get an education. Trying to achieve both at the same time always comes at the expense of the education anyway, and as another respondent pointed out, often precludes them from getting a more useful degree, like in a STEM field. The entire system seems stupid to me.
And ya I know the next question is “well how would they pay for college without a sports scholarship” and the answer is that college tuition prices are already criminally overinflated due to the moral hazard of having student loans backed by the federal government no matter what. Remove that, bring tuition rates down to an affordable rate that normal people can afford without getting price gauged on books, housing, and all the other bullshit fees that go into it.
Removing non-revenue sports won't bring down tuition in any appreciable amount. Most athletic departments get most of their funding from football and basketball, not from the general education fund.
Exactly. How many minor league baseball players making 11k/yr do you think would rather be playing college ball with their meals and housing provided for?
Nah, that's not 'paid', it's reimbursement at best. Playing a sport has nothing to do with education.
I shouldn't have to apply for a 50k student loan FOR THE CHANCE to play ball professionally and hopefully be reimbursed.
The draft is a stupid hiring process. If anything, the NFL and NBA should be funding these players before they enter college sports, or just pluck them out at any point once they turn 14.
Professional sports in the US will never get rid of the draft.
It's their only mechanism that ensures even a modicum of competitiveness between teams. No one wants to go back to the system where the Yankees can sign any baseball player it wants.
> Paying athletes is going to come at the expense of the non revenue generating sports. If you pay your mens football and men's basketball players you're going to be doing away with the volleyball team, the gymnastics team, the track team, the rowing team, the fencing team, the golf team, etc. Why do we want to do away with those sports just to make future multimillionaires richer now?
The counterargument to this is that the football and basketball players are generating a ton of revenue for university athletics, and they should be compensated for that -- like how NFL players get 48% of NFL revenues. The number of D1 players who go on to play professionally in the NFL or NBA is pretty small, so they should get paid for what they are worth at the college level.
Further, everyone else around the revenue generating sports is getting paid (Kalen DeBoer's new salary as Alabama football's head coach is $10.9M/year), so why shouldn't the players? Playing $100k/year on average to the 85 scholarship players on the team is still less than the head coach's salary.
In any case, why should the revenue generating sports subsidize the non-revenue generating sports? If it is that important to a university to have a varsity rowing team, they can fund it out of their operating budget.
Some football and basketball players are generating a ton of revenue. I'll give you a hint, it's the ones that are likely to go pro. Why should we distribute that revenue equally to all football/basketball players? Why should the backup corner make as much as the starting QB?When were distributing athletics revenue evenly, why are we stopping at football/basketball players? Why not just give it to all athletes?
I don't think they should. In the NFL the star QB gets paid more, and so should the star QB at the college level. We already see the same thing with NIL anyway -- Caleb Williams gets paid more than your 3rd string WR, but the 3rd string WR should get something.
I think paying players and having them sign contracts directly with the university would actually regularize the wild-west that we currently have with NIL -- which is effectively paying players without contracts.
^This. Please repeat the first sentence for the people in the back. Everyone assumes the majority of schools make a lot of money off of sports but it's completely opposite when you realize how many schools do not have top tier programs. Look at your local private universities that have a football and basketball program. I bet there are people on their campus that want the Athletics department to dissolve to utilize resources elsewhere.
Only 2% of college athletes go pro, and current college athletics are so practice intensive that many college athletes feel they don’t really get an education.
It's really time for teams that provide talent for professional sports to also be professionals. Create the legal framework for minor league football and basketball teams just like MLB has. There can still be college teams (just like baseball) but they won't receive most of the top talent and won't take so much of the resources of the college. They won't be as demanding for the students who therefore won't need to be paid just like other sports at college.
The logical endpoint of big money college sports is to separate them from the school. The school can license their name and likeness to the independent minor-league team. But it does not own it, does not offer scholarship to the athletes, does not pay the coach or staff, and does not share in the profits/losses. This independent league could require a minimum salary that would cover tuition, room and board, and other education related expenses. But it would be paid by the independent team, not by the school.
Universities are places of education first. And if they want to have athletics departments that compete against other local universities for pride, go for it. But keep television and national conferences out of it.
The Logical End Point is it makes no sense for colleges to employ professional athletes. The professionalism of college sports should lead to their abolition.
My question, which may be misinformed, is once an athlete is payed for their talent, in any form, can or should they be identified as an amateur? I mean even when sponsored someone is believing they can gain from that talent.
So, college athletes are not the first undergrad workers to
first) demand to be recognized as workers and earn the right to unionize.
or
second) have to bargain within the framework of financial aid, the dual relationship with your employer as a customer (in this case student) and figure out reasonable compensation within that framework.
What’s interesting here is at the D1 level, you also may end up engaging with additional collective bargaining agreements with additional employers (perhaps conferences like the SEC or perhaps even bigger like the NCAA) which could then involve conversations around sharing in tv deals and the like. For any of these things, I’d certainly recommend having a union.
As the organizing director for a union that has taken an active and collaborative interest in this non-traditional organizing, and actually represents undergrad workers. I’d be more than happy to advise anyone who takes an interest in unionizing. Feel free to shoot me a message
Why can I have a scholarship for computer science and sell autographed copies of my CS193P binder, but if I'm on a basketball scholarship I can't even sell my jock?
God this is all so stupid. Universities are for higher education and research.
Let professional American football and basketball leagues run development leagues for athletes. Why on Earth are pre-professional athletes clogging up classrooms at American universities? This has reached a level of absurdity that surpasses almost anything else in America. The only people served by this stupid system are the NFL and NBA who don't shoulder the cost of running development leagues. Top athletes are wasting time pretending to study French Lit. Real students have to suffer these non-students on campus. And small towns across America are missing out on the opportunity to cheer on a local "minor league" team. Just stop all of this.
I’m going to be honest with you. Many of the collegiate level sports teams sell more tickets and make more money than any development level league would ever make. The marketability of people attending a college or living in the town of a college sells far better than any minor level affiliate team ever could.
That's simply because the alternative (development leagues) don't exist. You're saying this nonsense is justified because the system brings money into the athletic departments of these universities. But to what end? I never hear about groundbreaking academic research coming out of the University of Alabama. I couldn't name one academic department for which the University of Connecticut is well known. I'm not being a snob. I'm saying these universities have lost the plot and lost sight of their missions. The athletes are wasting their time. Nobody benefits from this absurd system except the NFL and NBA.
I don’t get why players can’t just major in their sport. E.g. you get a bachelors degree in gridiron football or even an associates degree in basketball (where players tend to spend less time in college before going pro). Sports are a legitimate industry that requires education to be successful at, just like what everyone else is going to college for. Practices and games could be considered “labs”. Core coursework could focus on essentials needed by every player in that sport: x’s & o’s strategy, financial literacy for pro athletes, etc. Student athletes could be required to pick a concentration like coaching, sports media, physiology, sports finance/management, etc that would give them a path to success after their playing careers are over. And having a larger academic sphere on all of those topics would enhance the sport for everyone.
Sports management is a popular major for athletes, but unfortantlly for the majority, they will never see a professional sports setting so getting a education through sport is their shot.
But there are other careers in the industry of sports. Student athletes coursework could be tailored to these careers, with options based on the path you’re following, like any other major. A student athlete’s course schedule could include a mix of strategy and analytics for their sport, classes preparing them for coaching or orchestrating youth programs, working in alternative roles within professional sports organizations, sports broadcasting, filming, and editing-I think there are a world of opportunities. Obviously this wouldn’t be the default major of every athlete-you can still go to wherever on a soccer scholarship with the real goal of a diploma in a more traditional major-but it would be a good program option for the schools with very serious D1 programs, which attract individuals who really want to put a sport at the center of their life.
This is one of the best ideas I've seen yet. Solves an issue of athletes attending BS classes just because they have to and getting preferential treatment in these classes because of their status as an athlete. Its a valuable product for the school to offer as payment as the athletes get something useful pertaining to their field on top of their NIL money, and they can make practices and games count as credits to enhance the deal. I know music majors can focus and get a degree in the instrument they play (my fiance got her bachelor's in bassoon performance, for example), so I don't see why it couldn't be the same for athletes. And if an athlete chooses, they can instead still major whatever else they want, for those that may be in sports but aren't stars or don't plan on making a career out of their athletics.
Move it all to a professional minor league. It’s really become a bunch of bullshit and college sports, minus this year’s women’s basketball, have become unenjoyable. Let the kids who want degrees go to college and these pros/wanna be pros go play high level minor league ball for a year or two then get them drafted from there
If your "labor" brings in Millions upon Millions to an institution - you are probably going to want a cut of it. Take the mask off America and accept College and its Athletics for what it has become. Business.
Universities that want to have major sports teams should spin those teams off to a corporation, and license the University name and logos, etc to that corporation. Then the players can be an employee of the athletic corp.
Those schools that can't afford it should get out of the sports business.
All direct university sports should be inter-mural.
Here in Canada our university sports are pretty much not followed at all. We have the CHL, where the best young hockey players play and are paid like shit despite the leagues popularity. College sports is just that but with the NCAA doing everything they can to not be officially that.
It is entirely possible - maybe even likely - that the structure of college sports would have to change massively, to the point, perhaps, being unrecognizable, as the result of treating players as workers and paying them appropriately. it may even lead to the end of some programs. This is completely separate and totally independent of whether or not players are workers and need to be treated and paid fairly. You don’t get to keep an unfair illegal system just because you like it and it makes you feel good and it’s fun.
I question how you would determine an appropriate payment. Would all athletes across all sports make the same salary?
I'd find it a hard sell for you to say that a 3rd string football player should make the same as an NCAA wrestler.
Is it based on how much money the sport brings in? Ok, well at most schools, men's basketball brings in significantly more than women's (yes I said most, not all). So are you ok with that discrepency.
That's not my point or my problem. What I am not ok with is *not paying workers for their labor* full stop. That's where we are now. Workers are *forbidden* to bargain for their labor. I'm not OK with that. That's unethical and wrong and bad for all labor everywhere. The consequences, the details of how that shakes out - not my problem! Up to them! I am not designing a system. I'm just pointing out that the current one is unacceptable. You're pointing out that the current sports may not be sustainable in their current form if you start paying people. I already said that's totally separate from the only question that matters: Are workers being paid fairly for their labor? Are they able to bargain freely? If not, I don't give a fuck what you're doing. I'm never ok with it.
And like pro sports the taxpayers subsidize those salaries and facilities. Absolute bullshit. I know that is probably an unpopular criticism but I stand by it.
The salaries and stadiums are usually pretty self sustaining in major college sports. I realize that’s without paying student athletes.[But they’re fully funded by tv deals, sponsors, and ticket sales.](https://www.businessinsider.com/college-sports-revenue-ncaa-ohio-state-buckeyes-texas-football-2024-1)
[University of Michigan paid $41M to renovate their football stadium from funds created by the athletic department recently.](https://www.mlive.com/wolverines/2022/03/michigan-athletics-seeks-approval-for-new-41m-scoreboards-at-big-house.html)
They don’t extort cities like pro sports to subsidize their stadiums since they can’t threaten to leave.
The workaround to taxes paying for player salaries is to make all sports teams clubs that are officially sponsored by the schools. The club would pay a licensing fee and a facility rental to the school but the club would keep all the revenue generated from tickets, merchandise, and advertising.
The clubs could then organize themselves into a league with divisions roughly based on the big 4 with an at-large division. SEC, ACC, Pac 12, Big 10, and then your others like Notre Dame, military academies, etc. Put it in a 50/50 revenue split and I think everyone except the rich old white dudes who have a monopoly would be happy.
The obvious solution is that colleges need to stop providing free developmental services for billion dollar football and basketball leagues. Let the players be pro athletes, be paid collectively-bargained salary for their time and effort, and cut the fiction that they’re somehow obtaining an academic education in the process.
Anything to reform the higher “education” system in America. It’s been unsustainable for quite some time.
Education in quotation marks because the amount of money & scholarships that big schools spend on sports compared to academic investments and scholarships is laughable.
The money corrupts every aspect these universities and distracts from their mission. Pre-pro sports degrades these universities in many ways, aside from just clogging classrooms with student who aren't actually students... and don't ***actually*** clog classrooms because they don't attend classes. The money mostly stays inside the athletic department. It's not funding new chemistry labs or chaired professorships in the history department. It's a giant cancer on American higher ed.
Development leagues (like in *EVERY OTHER COUNTRY ON EARTH*) would be so much better for sports fans. Look at the support for lower level football clubs across Europe. Small towns support their teams with passion and pride.
Absurd. Universities are for higher education and academic research. If their athletic talent is marketable and deserving compensation, I'm sure the NFL and NBA can quickly spin up development leagues that could employ them.
We really need to get these non-student "students" off of our campuses and onto the athletic fields where they can focus on their craft. It's such a waste of time for them to be pretending to sit in lectures, reading books, and struggling to write papers. We sure as hell shouldn't be paying them.
ppl be like: “we can’t let college sports dissolve in favor of minor league NFL/NBA!!!” then also be like “we need to pay college athletes!!!!!” can’t have it both ways buster.
also, get ready for swim and tennis to lose all their funding so schools can pay football and basketball prospects. also prepare for a general dilution of school/team loyalty as transfers become even more common because student athletes will leverage transfer threats to make more money (what nick saban and izzo have been complaining about)
lastly, do people forget these student athletes ARE getting paid, in scholarships?? they are getting 100k+ $ degrees for free/heavily discounted
Yeah they don't want that. Right now it's a free for all. If they go the route of being paid by the school they'll have far more regulations and prolly have to sign contracts. Those will likely say they have to play a certain amount of time at that school.
If these young adults are making money for the schools and it’s for profit, then there should be an expectation that these students who are also then workers…
Receive financial compensation.
Perhaps, put the funds into trusts that they can’t touch until after university onwards.
There we go.
2yr minimum commitment contracts with signing bonus…
I’m from the era of boosters, pretty flirting girls that never loved you and bagmen…
This has been a long time coming…
Now coaches gotta coach sans mind games or Nick Saban it and ghost… 🤷🏽♂️🤣
They get paid by their tuition being paid. Give them a stipend, sure, but paying them like professional players means that college sports ***should*** be extinguished for the waste of money it already is.
The Logical End Point is actually the end of D1 athletics.
College sports in big name programs -- even Football and Basketball -- [lose tons of money](https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2024/01/12/college-athletics-costs-are-affordability-issue-opinion). If these players were workers, they'd be laid off. If D1 teams were companies, they'd be out of business.
I don’t get why they don’t even get like a stipend even. Not a ton of money, but enough to where payers don’t have to get a part time job in the offseason to have pocket money.
Took the US a while to realize college sports and the whole sport college pipeline is dangerously close to child exploitation, much like beauty pageants and talent shows.
What is college sports really? Did it start at something small for students to do for fun or was it always a way to make money? Besides money, why do schools needs sports for education? We get P.E. 1st-12th grade. Why does someone need to toss a ball well or move well to have the chance at a free education?(I know other scholarships exist) When I take money out of it, I don’t see a good reason for it. Intramural sports were available at my school.
They already do, it's called athletic scholarship and most of them don't even have to show up to class and they're in some easy major like Broadcast Journalism. Iwas asked to be a note taker for some athletes at a D1 school for Business. They can now get NIL deals to boot.
They'll have to come up with separate rules for different levels of competition, because otherwise this will effectively be the death of 75% of college sports. Only probably the top half of D1 can afford to pay athletes.
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And there will be contracts to keep them there longer than half a year
Yep. And then they can treat college ball like it really is. Minor league sports.
Good, then universities can get rid of intercollegiate athletic programs and regain huge chunks of their budgets to use for actual academics. One coach's salary can fund an entire department.
You do realize all big time athletic departments are self funded. They provide a huge net benefit to the school too with marketing. I hate the current system but cost to the university isn’t a good argument.
> all big time athletic departments And then at the other end of the spectrum are fake schools who get a little stipend to play road games against bad DII teams. https://www.tampabay.com/news/education/college/at-college-footballs-lowest-rung-games-are-matter-of-faith-and-creative/2204711/
Not even close to all of the big time departments are self funded. The largest 20-30 are self funded and that’s about it.
This is true. When you factor in salaries of coaches, ADs, support staff and then factor in travel for Olympic sports that don't generate revenue, most programs are losing money.
This “fact” is thrown around a lot but I would like to see some actual evidence. I have looked and it’s all pretty hazy.
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Most college sports never make money.
I think only a handful of programs even come close, and it's often a single sport funding the entire school system.
Maybe not a strict P and L statement, but for many institutions, college sports serves as a method of recruiting and advertising for non-athletes. Especially with NCAA Division I private universities. When I was in HS out in California in the 90s, the one thing that got people interested in applying (and going) to Duke, for example, was the college basketball team. On a smaller scale, Steve Nash's Santa Clara upsetting Arizona back then in March Madness got people at my school interested in going there. Even though I grew up pretty close to Santa Clara, it was an expensive private school nobody thought of until Nash led that upset. Similarly, back then barely anyone wanted to go to St. Mary's in Moraga, CA. But I understand now the kids out there do heavily consider it. Things like that.
There are perhaps two sports at any school that are recruiting tools/sweeteners for academic applicants. Football and basketball. The vast majority of sports from golf to swimming to sailing to gymnastics attract small crowds, sell little merch, receive no tv time, and generate negative returns. Title 9 is one of the greatest solutions in sports in that it requires money be spent on women’s sports and that in turn forces the schools to trickle down support for additional men’s programs - everyone wins. But don’t kid yourself, absent Title 9 almost every sport would have shitty facilities or cease to exist outside a handful of high visibility or revenue generating sports. The amount of money we are talking about at a major program is stunning. The Texas Longhorns football program generated $183 million in 2023 alone. Football in Texas is a tent pole but the vast majority of sports at UT generate little to no revenue. https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/2024/01/18/university-of-texas-athletic-revenue
I'm going to guess that a history of Gonzaga U. would show considerable recruiting and financial impact from the rise of its men's basketball program to near-constant elite status. I'm going to guess that their acceptance rates have dropped noticeably. Anyone who pays any attention to basketball knows the little Jesuit school in Spokane.
I am not Catholic, nor do I follow basketball, but even a troglodyte like me knows of Gonzaga (because of their basketball program).
You probably even know how to pronounce it! (Bonus points for also being able to pronounce "Spokane.")
Now I’m hoping it’s “can” not “cane.” Otherwise I have to start rethinking life choices I have made.
Majority of football teams, not even the other 35 sports, don’t make money. Gotta remember there more than 20 big names in the NCAA
College sports are for the enrichment of the athletes and students for the vast majority of colleges and teams. In my experience, most college teams don't even sell tickets because there's not enough demand to make people pay.
Going to be interesting to see the first players who challenge employment contracts that bar them from playing for another school for a few years due to non-compete clauses.
This is why there needs to be collegiate players unions (one for Olympic sports, one for football, one for basketball) because there needs to be collective bargaining to establish the rules such that they are enforceable in court.
I mean the tricky part is that by virtue of the system, a player has 4 seasons to play. Solidarity is hard to ask for when a strike can lose you a quarter of your career. Especially if you’re a senior already being scouted for other leagues.
I'm not talking about unions for power sake. I'm talking about unions from a "this is what will legally be required to make this type of employment system even work or be legal to operate at all" If athletes are employees, then the employers will be forced to follow the laws as they relate to the students as employees. Their contracts will have to be enforceable in court. Without collective bargaining, pretty much any restriction on players after they leave a school will not be allowed. Restrictions on transferring? Restrictions on how many years you can play? Restrictions on taking outside money? None of these will be enforceable in a situation where you have individual players negotiating with essentially parallel actors within a cartel. Right now the NCAA is an explicit cartel, and the courts have been smacking them over and over again because of it. Without legislation, the NCAA won't exist in 5 years because it won't have any power. Yes. The union will be weak, they won't really be able to strike, they won't have much power. BUT without player unions, the court decisions that have happened and are about to happen will completely destroy college sports. Not in a "the sky is falling" way, but in a "none of this is even legal anymore" kind of way.
I actually think it is about power. For one, there are more ways to express power through your union than striking, but also - exactly to your point - defining the terms and conditions that will define this as a workplace. There’s a lot of power in collective bargaining. The first contracts in any of these places are going to be tough, but the wins will be massively empowering per your point
The issue is that you cannot have college sports function like a job, without separating the sports from the college. I know people don’t like that, but that’s a money/capitalism problem. This issue is only going to get more heated as more and more athletes demand NIL or other compensation. But the days of paying ball for “free” are coming to an end. At least at the D1 level.
I think men's college basketball has a bigger problem that needs to be resolved (basketball and football). Or navigated some way. I went to UTEP (University of Texas at El Paso). When I was there, we had a starting lineup that included Tim Hardaway, Greg Foster, and Antonio Davis. And a few other really good college players (they didn't have successful NBA careers, but they were really good college athletes). I got to follow Hardaway, Davis, and Foster play from their freshman year to their junior/senior year. They were "our players." We (the students) became invested in them as students of the University and representatives of the school. You saw them on campus walking by or at the student union, where we hung out when not in class. Hell Tim was the same height as me. I went to a high-school sports power house (my school was ranked either as the #1 or #2 basketball team in the nation many years). So I saw, played with, and played against some extraordinary athletes and future professionals. Not to mention, we got student tickets to sporting events. So I saw a lot of college sports. Tim Hardaway (and Anthony Davis) were some of the best basketball players I had ever seen live. The shit Hardaway could do on a basketball court was sick. At 5'11" or however tall he was, he could do anything he wanted on a basketball court. Go to the basket in the paint, cross-over anyone, and shoot mid-range jumpers at will. NOBODY could stop him. When you see players progress for 3 or 4 years, they ARE your team. It's like the Kaitlyn Clark phenomenon. She WAS a Hawyeye. I hold hardly think college athletes should get paid. But the "one and dones" and the football players leaving every year to get the best "deal" take away from that. I have no idea who plays where. One year, a player is your star quarterback, and they next they play for a rival. You see a freshman phenomenon on your basketball team, and the next year, they are riding the bench in the NBA. Unless you can get at least some stability in men's college sports, I think the popularity of their sports will deteriorate. I'm not sure how that can be rectified as NIL is figuring itself out.
Agreed, I think college sports are going to get crushed in the coming years due to NIL and the transfer portal. I went to Washington State and we are now on the outside after the Pac-12 collapse. After the football season ended a ton of players transferred out. We had a bball team make the NCAAs for the first time in a decade and immediately after they got bounced from the tourney, the coach left and a bunch of players entered the portal. Makes it hard to invest in college sports when it becomes so transactional.
The transfer portal is awful for college sports. I get the benefit to the student, but for sports in general, it sucks. And I don't mean students shouldn't be able to leave. But they also should have some limits. They shouldn't be able to do 4 schools in 4 years IMO, always chasing a better deal and more playing time. I say this as someone who rooted for a team whose best player was a transfer. But you need some kind of regulations, not the wild west as it stands. Because you are right, it becomes really hard to get invested in people who pop in for a year then are gone.
College sports for the good of colleges should just be done away with (outside of “club” capacity), but we can’t now with the current culture and investment. Best result would probably be that the NFL swallows their pride and greed and subsidizes a developmental professional spring/summer league, with a mix of veterans and 18+ college age prospects, maybe starting the week after the NFL draft. [That time of year would help carry the football cycle year round and not compete with college&NFL (late august through early feb) + draft season/FA (march through April 28). Play 10 weeks + 2 week playoff maybe (ending in late July.) preseason starts with HOF game for NFL first week of august, rinse and repeat.] The problem is, NFL thinks they deserve a free developmental league (college) because they’ve built a multibillion dollar a year profit off of just that and tax subsidized stadiums. But pair that developmental league with a pared down college bowl system. However many it will sustain, like 10 + big 12 + SEC + ACC + pac 12 whatever, 60 schools with biggest followings coffers and brands? Basketball is harder because there’s a lot more parity, and with less starters you can really see a talented player standout even on an inferior team. The g league already exists though and maybe if it was getting an influx of small college developmental talents it would become a bigger / better product The problem is any way you slice it that it’ll gut all the smaller schools, destroy revenues (based on the current system) reduce the prospect pool and largely ruin the college sports experience as people know it. The smallest sports will get the shaft in any reductions for sure, but frankly college competitions for all sports outside the end of year tournaments should all be run more locally (more efficiently.) But that may be unavoidable anyway - we’ve already seen conference realignments, and we’ll see more - we are seeing the transfer portal move players annually - NIL deals impacting players - and streaming as it impacts broadcast rights / deals. I thinks it’s a bubble that will slowly crumble whether any major revolution occurs or not, and that’s probably the most likely outcome.
Well said. The bubble has been bursting slowly for years, and continue to do so. Capitalism is the creator and destroyer of all things. College sports is slowly being consolidated into a very small group of elite teams, an ever shrinking “mid” group and then a giant Olympic pool of lesser teams fighting for scraps.
Gary Anderson has entered the chat
They were also there because the rules conspired to keep them there. Look at it now that they have freedom of movement.
Agree. I think all college varsity sports should be ended. Make proper minor leagues in all sports. Stop pretending to care about kids' education when you're really milking their bodies for profit. Colleges would benefit by vacating all the space eaten up by "students" who aren't there to learn.
>you cannot have college sports function like a job, without separating the sports from the college Why not?
Colleges are centers of learning, knowledge sharing, and scientific advancement, sports are merely an extra service provided. Now you want colleges to add an entire staff of athletes along with the professors they pay 6 figures plus for. The payment for these players is going to be coming out of the pockets of the other students because most sport programs don’t make money. Now as a normal student who wants an education, you have to pay for the professors, facilities, and the athletes. I’m paying for an education not for sports entertainment.
There. is. so. much. money. First, full-ride scholarships have real costs and real deductions, so athletes are already being compensated in a direct form that is tracked in dollars spent, even if no money goes to an athlete's bank account. Second, large university athletic programs are well-funded directly through broadcast rights, ticket and concession sales, and merchandise. They additionally use their University's success in sports to fundraise from alumni, so even more money. The system is flush with cash. I went to the University of Arizona, where the basketball and football teams already operate as (very successful) minor league teams would. The other sports receive a pittance. Only title IX keeps at least some money flowing to women's athletics, but many other men's sports at UofA are run as clubs, regularly hold fundraisers, etc (I played rugby there. We had to raise money, pay dues, sell our own merch, and we were generally not supported by the University monetarily at all). I think that's how all university sports should be - clubs that raise their own money, share facilities, and generally are run as an active hobby for interested students. We don't live in that world, and won't for awhile yet. There's just too much money in the system to quit. So yeah, give these professional athletes who make a shit-ton of money for their universities their due and pay them what they're worth. The whole charade is sickening otherwise.
the revenue sports make plenty of money. Schools play accounting games to show that all that money is right here ... and its gone. Coaches aren't getting 7 figure salaries on the backs of students.
The only schools that make money off of men's football and basketball are the absolute tip of the iceberg. the vast majority of D1 schools do not make any money off their sports and will suffer for this.
Is it really "for free" though? They get to attend the college without paying a tuition, which is probably at least $30k/year in value. That's tax-free too. A different model would pay them all $30k, which they would then have to pay taxes on, and then make them buy their college education the way everyone else does.
30K a year(~14$ equivalent for full time normal employment) to work your ass of and even put your body on the line so that your school and a host of other companies (merch, previously video games, shoes, food, ADs, hell someone has to make the stickers!) get rich and if you so much as even receive a gift, or should your mom die and your coach buy you a plane ticket home, end up costing you your scholarship and potential future career. Free education though so yea probably good trade.
Any system where teams agree with each other to pay athletes a set amount (e.g. $30k) will run afoul of anti trust laws and won't last. The issue with the current system isn't that players aren't being compensated, because they are, as you point out. The issue is that schools are agreeing on a cap for that compensation, and punishing anyone who exceeds it. That's not allowed. That's why any pro sport with a salary cap needs to collectively bargain an antitrust exemption with their players.
They needed to be separated from the schools a long time ago.
I dont see the issue. I had an on campus part time job with the environmental society, and it didnt require practices or a minimum GPA.
Interesting points, there is a difference between jobs and scholarships.
Ooooo good point. Id love to see what the ROI per dollar is for university is with scholarships. Can somebody McKinsey this out for me
I can't put a dollar value on it, but nobody is lining up to sleep with the guy at University of Alabama who wrote the doctoral paper on the migration of waterfowl species and how to benefit local ecosystems. The guy who threw six TD's against Texas though?
I bet Dee is, because she looks like a FUCKING BIRD
She's the kind to pull, "It'd be a real shame if our memory of events didn't line up and a phone call was made to the local Sheriff's department." Really make an *implication*!
Speak for yourself, plow me bird man
It's 100% a negative ROI and certainly benefits the average scholarship athlete over the school. Most sports don't make the school money and are a net cost. I was a scholarship D1 swimmer, and I promise you I didn't make the program any money. I just did it because I liked it, and it was a good tradeoff for the scholly.
Bain has entered the chat.
I've seen on-campus jobs that can include a scholarship, or grants eligibility for certain scholarships. Don't think it's anything unprecedented.
A big issue would be the DOE’s rules for what constitutes full time work Student employees are limited to no more than 20 hours per week - which is low enough to interfere with practice + training + games to the point a lot of teams will likely suffer. Also a huge deal would be faking hours worked (IE not reporting weight training or conditioning and trying to argue that is personal) - which would constitute fraud and potentially even tax evasion (not reporting hours but deducting fees or costs of athletic facilities would be a *huge* no-no). In the end, a lot of why this hasn’t already happened has to do with the FLSA, DOE, and tax laws - they are also the reason it will likely never happen.
One (minor) update for the future : Dept of Education = ED or DoED Dept of Energy = DOE Bigger things : NCAA rules already limit student-athletes to 20hrs practice a per week, max 4hrs per day. (Plus I think 8 hours for tape, meetings, etc) But only 1-2 sports use all 20hrs (and neither are major sports) Student-athletes if shifted to being seen as employees would probably be considered full time non-exempt, separate from the educational aspect. Which means the ED won't really be involved, the DOL will be. Under FT non-exempt... That 20hrs now becomes 40hrs and the DOL has to determine what "compensable time" is as an athlete. Anything over 40hrs becomes overtime pay. (Different story for exempt employees, but that would require Congress and I think that won't happen purely because of the hassle of it. But you never know, especially with the $$$ being thrown around) The NLRB has already recommended/suggested student-athletes been seen as employees. Something the court case under the FLSA that is currently in the courts will probably pay attention to and use.
If there is a required minimum GPA requirement then is going to class and study time employment time?
Scholarships will disappear within most sports. I truly think they will need to separate the pro sports from the Olympic sports.
I had a research assistant job in grad school that gave me both a half scholarship and pay. It can be both!
Did you get a 1099 or W2?
The issue will be the required working hours will go far beyond what is allowable. I was a manager for the athletic department and we were provided scholarships instead of getting work-study stipends because during football season we easily put in 40 hours/week. It'd be at least 3-4 hrs for practice Monday-Thursday, Fridays would be about 8 hours for home games to get everything set, game day would be about 12-16 hours depending on the time of the game, and then Sunday to break it down and gear up for the weekend be another 4-8 or so. If we had to travel with the team (not every one travels for every game) then you can add in basically 50 hours since we'd leave Friday morning and get back sometime early Sunday and have to load and unload buses. I don't know how the hell I did it.
Some types of job have different hours rules. IE, staff at overnight summer camps are sort of always on call even when they aren't explicitly working. If you broke down their hourly they'd be working like 80 hours a week. Also gig workers like roadies, audio/lighting techs, and performers can end up on the job for 10+ hours for several days straight for one gig and still have other work the other days of the week. The caveat is that there are (at least for some jobs) job specific protections to make sure they have plenty of real downtime during the day, are properly compensated for longer hours, etc. Like it or not the players _are_ workers and the only thing you are doing bu denying them that legal status is denying them ability to properly be legally protected. Denying that they are workers is just further shortchanging them not fixing the problem.
The issue is that they are students. Work-study only allows you to work so many hours per week and it's far below the time commitment that being an athlete or even a student manager needs.
There's also the inverse setting precedent; many jobs will cover tuition expense as part of their benefit programs and only ask that you maintain a minimum GPA and continue working at the company for some designated amount of time following graduation. I would say that's all you need to say student athletes should be getting paid; sports is their job, college education is a benefit, but they still need a salary to live on. Given how much money is in basketball and football, those salaries should be reflective of the value the players bring.
My on campus job paid us $10/hr, surely college athletes will get the same? /s
The issue is that schools aren't paying the gymnasts and rowers who already lose the school money, so everything but football and basketball (and a handful of women's sports for Title IX) goes away
Something needs to be set in place to not pass along that cost to students. Students shouldn’t have to experience higher tuitions because a school wants a bigger or better sports program.
The primary source of “funding” here will be slashing non-revenue (especially women’s) sports, I think. Women’s sports programs are so robust in American colleges because Title IX requires equal numbers of athletic scholarships for male and female athletes. Football especially has been one of the biggest boons to women’s athletics; top level Division I FBS football teams carry over 80 male scholarship athletes, which means that 80 female scholarship athletes need to be added elsewhere in the school’s athletic programming. Unlike basketball where men’s scholarships are usually just offset by scholarships for the women’s team, there aren’t women’s football teams to absorb those 80 scholarships, which where sports like field hockey and volleyball especially have benefitted enormously (the SEC infamously is an amazing women’s soccer conference, whereas nearly no member schools have men’s soccer teams at all). If football and basketball players become paid employees, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re carved out from the student-athlete scholarship pool. If schools no longer need to carry 80-90 male scholarship athletes, then I wouldn’t be surprised if those scholarships for women’s athletes will also disappear. Sports that are largely female-only in the US at the collegiate level are going to be hit hard by the evolutions in football and men’s basketball.
At this point what is the harm in having these pro teams have youth academies like international football teams literally everywhere? The whole model of college athletics is archaic for basketball and American football but I get why they’re not really trying to overhaul it
Because it won't have the same following. Look at the NBA G league vs. March Madness. I have a "connection" to my alma mater. I'll watch them and root for them in a way I probably wouldn't watch and root for an academy or minor league team of my favorite pro teams.
I think there would be a lot more of a connection if a kid has been signed to your team since he was like 12 and debuts you for guys at 17 or 18.
I think it honestly would be a very difficult shift for a lot of people. Sure when "juniors" is already established there is a following, I just don't know that it will happen quickly. I think you'd basically lose a generation. People grew up watching their parents college team play. If you don't have that, it will take decades to catch on probably.
It simply wont. And theyve already fucked up some of their model with the conference shake ups. Going the way of MTV, lose your soul squeezing every penny and destroy the long term brand.
Eh, check out the Canadian Juniors system for hockey. The age is actually a bit lower (16-20), but it’s definitely big in Canada/the US states that have a team.
I'm not saying no one will watch. I just don't see it having the same impact. Especially for big schools. I went to a Big 10 school. Me and my friends try to get to a football game at least once every couple of years, and I know a lot of alumni do. And its because we have a connection there. Just throwing a minor league team up won't be the same.
The interesting thing about Canadian Juniors is that they’re *not* minor league affiliates. They’re wholly separate teams and leagues (though, some nhl owners own chl teams, but that’s the only connection). It does lose out on the alumni factor, but in my opinion, it mirrors the heavy “local interest” focus that especially English football has where even small towns have these culturally important teams.
The alumni factor though is the biggest source of revenue for the school. That’s the difference. Why would a school relinquish the ability to get tens of millions (each) billions or more collectively.
That is fair. And I guess I can understand how, if you are a small town who doesn't have a sports team, you would adopt that juniors team. But I'm in Chicago. Why would I care about a team in Central Illinois?
I mean, why *would* you care about a team in central Illinois, that’s a valid question. The NCAA system definitely manufactures a level of interest that might otherwise be non-existent. Which is cool, but if we’re interfacing with some tough questions about fair pay for college athletes, then we also have to interface with the idea that… Maybe the NCAA system manufactured an unsustainable system backed by underpaid labor. Why are you interested in a team from central Illinois? For one, because at one point, *you were* an Urbana-Champaign local. But also you’re into the Illini basketball team *because you were told to be.* Not in some nefarious “every decision you make isn’t actually you,” kind of way, but more in that it’s good for the school if you continually support their athletics program. The institution wants you to be a fan, so they manufacture interest in the student body in the hope that when you’re an alumnus making money and living in Chicago, you travel back and to the school, spending money and (hopefully) donating.
The fact you have to tell people to check it out gives you your answer. I dont need to tell you to check out March Madness or the Rose Bowl.
No one will watch that stuff. You just gutted a billion dollar industry and asked a multitude of other sports owners to step in and help fund/rebuild the structure. There’s a reason why a lot of the best international athletes in various sports who aren’t pro level come to the states to grab a college education. Those people no longer come. Enrollment numbers at universities fluctuate wildly closing universities. Existing infrastructure rots as we have billions of dollars in stadiums across the country essentially worthless. We can keep going
Like I said I get why they’re not trying to overhaul it. Because sports entertainment isn’t about the sport it’s about the money. We can keep going once you bring up reasons that will actually be detrimental to the sports in question.
I think the best outcome is that college basketball/football essentially becomes that, just under the umbrella of universities. There could be different categories for players who are there to be pros and those that are genuinely pursuing academics.
Honestly, we just need lower leagues with independent teams. Like the UFL, only for kids out of high school. Maybe closer to the english pyramid. People will support a local professional team, especially if it's its own thing. No team will match the support of a Ohio State or whatever, but at least the kids will get paid and the pros can still draft them.
If that's the case, is everyone prepared for a +90% of varisity collegiate athletic teams to fold? If athletes are now employees, the only ones who are going going to retain their jobs are men's basketball players and football players.
add in Title IX for another fun wrinkle to have to figure out.
I've enjoyed the heck out of college sports (with the pretense of amateurism). But at a lot of destination campuses, it's unnaturally holding the university together at the undergraduate level. Remove associate of sports and the undergraduate experience and something new will be a lot more efficient to replace it. The US is the only place in the world with this sort of structure.
No they just would exist as is. D2 and D3 have sports and club sports are a thing
Colleges who exploit athletes and fans to fund educational services are excellent. If your head coach or college president has a salary big enough to run for congress in ten years, you done fucked up.
As of right now they are still student athletes so if the NCAA wants to just enforce a certain GPA requirement to be able to transfer. Not a 4.00 but not some weak shit like a 2.00. Make it a 2.7 which is literally a B- average and you can go.
The vast majority of college sports teams cost more money than they generate. Only a handful of athletic departments operate in the black. 90%+ lose money. The only two sports that are profitable are men's basketball and men's football. Is mens basketball a job but women's basketball isn't? It's a huge title 9/civil rights issue if you pay men but not women for doing the same job. If you start paying athletes for unprofitable sports, where does it stop? Should the golf team be paid? Is golfing a job? It's something people pay to do. Same with most of these sports. If you want a running coach and an athletic trainer and travel to a bunch of big races it's really expensive. Look at club sports. They all have dues to pay for the costs of playing the sport. It can cost up to 5 grand an athlete per season to row on a club team. Why the hell should a varsity team, that gets to do it for free, be considered a job and not a privilege? Paying athletes is going to come at the expense of the non revenue generating sports. If you pay your mens football and men's basketball players you're going to be doing away with the volleyball team, the gymnastics team, the track team, the rowing team, the fencing team, the golf team, etc. Why do we want to do away with those sports just to make future multimillionaires richer now? Does anyone really look at professional athletes and think "man these guys don't get paid enough, I wish we could've taken money from the gymnastics team to pay them more when they were in college?" To the Dartmouth men's basketball team. You know what you get for playing basketball for Dartmouth? You get in to Dartmouth. That's the deal. You don't even have to keep playing for them after you get in. You're choosing to play basketball because you enjoy doing it. When you choose to do something because you enjoy doing it that's not a job. That's a hobby or volunteering.
And they do get paid. It’s called “a scholarship”. All these athletes acting like they don’t get paid - while they get a free education and get to play ball for free - smh. I’m all for endorsement deals and video game likeness payouts for collegiate athletes if they can get those on their own, but paying them a salary on top of all that is ridiculous. Don’t think you have it good enough? Go tough it out in the G league and then come back to me.
It is extremely hard to be a D1 athlete and get a STEM degree. Only 5% (42) of all D1 men's basketball players got a STEM degree last year. 9% (358) for men's football. As compared to 38% for men in the overall student body. The vaste majority are taking the easiest degree possible or are placed in special degrees that they put together for athletes. So "scholarship" doesn't mean the same thing for a D1 athlete as it does does for a normal student. When you look at the typical practice schedule it becomes very obvious why this is the case. It's more of a "here is a token degree and free food and house, come play for us", which, honestly, when you consider just food and housing, is probably pretty close to what they make in the G leagues.
> It is extremely hard to be a D1 athlete and get a STEM degree. Only 5% (42) of all D1 men's basketball players got a STEM degree last year. I'm not sure your numbers "prove" your argument. They are only correlated. Another explanation is that the overlap between high school kids capable of getting a STEM degree and top high school athletes is very small - perhaps just 5%. You do bring up a good point - many of the top NCAA athletes do not actually get degrees, so in that sense, they're not really getting anything. But that is more of an argument to decouple athletics from college than anything else. There are definitely advantages of having it coupled - the college connection does increase interest - but by focusing on the athletic part, it has become kind-of a joke, and the compensation piece is a natural outcome of that. It wouldn't be much different if the colleges simply hired non-student athletes.
They don't all get a scholarship. There's an average of 128 players per D1 football team and each team is allowed 85 scholarships. A school is required to fund at least 90% of those scholarships. Roughly 40% of everyone you see on a D1 football sideline is paying to be there.
True, but would that change if the athletes suddenly became paid? They certainly wouldn’t all be paid at the same rate - the athletes on the field would get a significantly higher salary than the ones on the sidelines. It might make a small difference in their lives but not a significant one. They may as well split men’s basketball and men’s football (which is what we are essentially talking about here) into a system entirely separate from colleges - like baseball and hockey already do, and have them play in regional farm teams and get paid the market rate for those regions. It should have nothing to do with college, amateur athletes could choose if they want to go play for a AAA basketball team with the possibility of getting pulled up to an NBA team or go to college and not play, but get an education. Trying to achieve both at the same time always comes at the expense of the education anyway, and as another respondent pointed out, often precludes them from getting a more useful degree, like in a STEM field. The entire system seems stupid to me. And ya I know the next question is “well how would they pay for college without a sports scholarship” and the answer is that college tuition prices are already criminally overinflated due to the moral hazard of having student loans backed by the federal government no matter what. Remove that, bring tuition rates down to an affordable rate that normal people can afford without getting price gauged on books, housing, and all the other bullshit fees that go into it.
Removing non-revenue sports won't bring down tuition in any appreciable amount. Most athletic departments get most of their funding from football and basketball, not from the general education fund.
Exactly. How many minor league baseball players making 11k/yr do you think would rather be playing college ball with their meals and housing provided for?
Nah, that's not 'paid', it's reimbursement at best. Playing a sport has nothing to do with education. I shouldn't have to apply for a 50k student loan FOR THE CHANCE to play ball professionally and hopefully be reimbursed. The draft is a stupid hiring process. If anything, the NFL and NBA should be funding these players before they enter college sports, or just pluck them out at any point once they turn 14.
Professional sports in the US will never get rid of the draft. It's their only mechanism that ensures even a modicum of competitiveness between teams. No one wants to go back to the system where the Yankees can sign any baseball player it wants.
> Paying athletes is going to come at the expense of the non revenue generating sports. If you pay your mens football and men's basketball players you're going to be doing away with the volleyball team, the gymnastics team, the track team, the rowing team, the fencing team, the golf team, etc. Why do we want to do away with those sports just to make future multimillionaires richer now? The counterargument to this is that the football and basketball players are generating a ton of revenue for university athletics, and they should be compensated for that -- like how NFL players get 48% of NFL revenues. The number of D1 players who go on to play professionally in the NFL or NBA is pretty small, so they should get paid for what they are worth at the college level. Further, everyone else around the revenue generating sports is getting paid (Kalen DeBoer's new salary as Alabama football's head coach is $10.9M/year), so why shouldn't the players? Playing $100k/year on average to the 85 scholarship players on the team is still less than the head coach's salary. In any case, why should the revenue generating sports subsidize the non-revenue generating sports? If it is that important to a university to have a varsity rowing team, they can fund it out of their operating budget.
Some football and basketball players are generating a ton of revenue. I'll give you a hint, it's the ones that are likely to go pro. Why should we distribute that revenue equally to all football/basketball players? Why should the backup corner make as much as the starting QB?When were distributing athletics revenue evenly, why are we stopping at football/basketball players? Why not just give it to all athletes?
I don't think they should. In the NFL the star QB gets paid more, and so should the star QB at the college level. We already see the same thing with NIL anyway -- Caleb Williams gets paid more than your 3rd string WR, but the 3rd string WR should get something. I think paying players and having them sign contracts directly with the university would actually regularize the wild-west that we currently have with NIL -- which is effectively paying players without contracts.
So what, are schools supposed to offer a dollar figure when they recruit athletes? Are they supposed to renegotiate every year?
They do now, just through the "NIL" collectives.
^This. Please repeat the first sentence for the people in the back. Everyone assumes the majority of schools make a lot of money off of sports but it's completely opposite when you realize how many schools do not have top tier programs. Look at your local private universities that have a football and basketball program. I bet there are people on their campus that want the Athletics department to dissolve to utilize resources elsewhere.
Only 2% of college athletes go pro, and current college athletics are so practice intensive that many college athletes feel they don’t really get an education.
It's really time for teams that provide talent for professional sports to also be professionals. Create the legal framework for minor league football and basketball teams just like MLB has. There can still be college teams (just like baseball) but they won't receive most of the top talent and won't take so much of the resources of the college. They won't be as demanding for the students who therefore won't need to be paid just like other sports at college.
The logical endpoint of big money college sports is to separate them from the school. The school can license their name and likeness to the independent minor-league team. But it does not own it, does not offer scholarship to the athletes, does not pay the coach or staff, and does not share in the profits/losses. This independent league could require a minimum salary that would cover tuition, room and board, and other education related expenses. But it would be paid by the independent team, not by the school. Universities are places of education first. And if they want to have athletics departments that compete against other local universities for pride, go for it. But keep television and national conferences out of it.
At that point, why require the athlete to go to school? I also don't see a lot of schools licensing out their name without control over the product.
Ya, I’m sure this argument was never made in the decades of them arguing for pay
The Logical End Point is it makes no sense for colleges to employ professional athletes. The professionalism of college sports should lead to their abolition.
My question, which may be misinformed, is once an athlete is payed for their talent, in any form, can or should they be identified as an amateur? I mean even when sponsored someone is believing they can gain from that talent.
If players are workers schools will be able to fire them
So, college athletes are not the first undergrad workers to first) demand to be recognized as workers and earn the right to unionize. or second) have to bargain within the framework of financial aid, the dual relationship with your employer as a customer (in this case student) and figure out reasonable compensation within that framework. What’s interesting here is at the D1 level, you also may end up engaging with additional collective bargaining agreements with additional employers (perhaps conferences like the SEC or perhaps even bigger like the NCAA) which could then involve conversations around sharing in tv deals and the like. For any of these things, I’d certainly recommend having a union. As the organizing director for a union that has taken an active and collaborative interest in this non-traditional organizing, and actually represents undergrad workers. I’d be more than happy to advise anyone who takes an interest in unionizing. Feel free to shoot me a message
Why can I have a scholarship for computer science and sell autographed copies of my CS193P binder, but if I'm on a basketball scholarship I can't even sell my jock?
God this is all so stupid. Universities are for higher education and research. Let professional American football and basketball leagues run development leagues for athletes. Why on Earth are pre-professional athletes clogging up classrooms at American universities? This has reached a level of absurdity that surpasses almost anything else in America. The only people served by this stupid system are the NFL and NBA who don't shoulder the cost of running development leagues. Top athletes are wasting time pretending to study French Lit. Real students have to suffer these non-students on campus. And small towns across America are missing out on the opportunity to cheer on a local "minor league" team. Just stop all of this.
I’m going to be honest with you. Many of the collegiate level sports teams sell more tickets and make more money than any development level league would ever make. The marketability of people attending a college or living in the town of a college sells far better than any minor level affiliate team ever could.
You could argue that a lack of Collegiate teams would then spur growth in development leagues. Similar to everywhere else in the world.
That's simply because the alternative (development leagues) don't exist. You're saying this nonsense is justified because the system brings money into the athletic departments of these universities. But to what end? I never hear about groundbreaking academic research coming out of the University of Alabama. I couldn't name one academic department for which the University of Connecticut is well known. I'm not being a snob. I'm saying these universities have lost the plot and lost sight of their missions. The athletes are wasting their time. Nobody benefits from this absurd system except the NFL and NBA.
I don’t get why players can’t just major in their sport. E.g. you get a bachelors degree in gridiron football or even an associates degree in basketball (where players tend to spend less time in college before going pro). Sports are a legitimate industry that requires education to be successful at, just like what everyone else is going to college for. Practices and games could be considered “labs”. Core coursework could focus on essentials needed by every player in that sport: x’s & o’s strategy, financial literacy for pro athletes, etc. Student athletes could be required to pick a concentration like coaching, sports media, physiology, sports finance/management, etc that would give them a path to success after their playing careers are over. And having a larger academic sphere on all of those topics would enhance the sport for everyone.
Sports management is a popular major for athletes, but unfortantlly for the majority, they will never see a professional sports setting so getting a education through sport is their shot.
But there are other careers in the industry of sports. Student athletes coursework could be tailored to these careers, with options based on the path you’re following, like any other major. A student athlete’s course schedule could include a mix of strategy and analytics for their sport, classes preparing them for coaching or orchestrating youth programs, working in alternative roles within professional sports organizations, sports broadcasting, filming, and editing-I think there are a world of opportunities. Obviously this wouldn’t be the default major of every athlete-you can still go to wherever on a soccer scholarship with the real goal of a diploma in a more traditional major-but it would be a good program option for the schools with very serious D1 programs, which attract individuals who really want to put a sport at the center of their life.
This is actually a fantastic idea.
This is one of the best ideas I've seen yet. Solves an issue of athletes attending BS classes just because they have to and getting preferential treatment in these classes because of their status as an athlete. Its a valuable product for the school to offer as payment as the athletes get something useful pertaining to their field on top of their NIL money, and they can make practices and games count as credits to enhance the deal. I know music majors can focus and get a degree in the instrument they play (my fiance got her bachelor's in bassoon performance, for example), so I don't see why it couldn't be the same for athletes. And if an athlete chooses, they can instead still major whatever else they want, for those that may be in sports but aren't stars or don't plan on making a career out of their athletics.
Great idea
The problem is there aren’t enough jobs in football.
Move it all to a professional minor league. It’s really become a bunch of bullshit and college sports, minus this year’s women’s basketball, have become unenjoyable. Let the kids who want degrees go to college and these pros/wanna be pros go play high level minor league ball for a year or two then get them drafted from there
And since college tuition is already so cheap, it would be really easy just to fund this by raising tuition rates. Hooray!! /s
this is a fucking mess…😂
If your "labor" brings in Millions upon Millions to an institution - you are probably going to want a cut of it. Take the mask off America and accept College and its Athletics for what it has become. Business.
Universities that want to have major sports teams should spin those teams off to a corporation, and license the University name and logos, etc to that corporation. Then the players can be an employee of the athletic corp. Those schools that can't afford it should get out of the sports business. All direct university sports should be inter-mural.
Or maybe they transform college sports into non-profits and stop turning students into commodities.
South Park did an episode on this
It’s no longer about education!
[Some college athletes play like adults, read like 5th-graders](https://www.cnn.com/2014/01/07/us/ncaa-athletes-reading-scores/index.html)
Here in Canada our university sports are pretty much not followed at all. We have the CHL, where the best young hockey players play and are paid like shit despite the leagues popularity. College sports is just that but with the NCAA doing everything they can to not be officially that.
It is entirely possible - maybe even likely - that the structure of college sports would have to change massively, to the point, perhaps, being unrecognizable, as the result of treating players as workers and paying them appropriately. it may even lead to the end of some programs. This is completely separate and totally independent of whether or not players are workers and need to be treated and paid fairly. You don’t get to keep an unfair illegal system just because you like it and it makes you feel good and it’s fun.
I question how you would determine an appropriate payment. Would all athletes across all sports make the same salary? I'd find it a hard sell for you to say that a 3rd string football player should make the same as an NCAA wrestler. Is it based on how much money the sport brings in? Ok, well at most schools, men's basketball brings in significantly more than women's (yes I said most, not all). So are you ok with that discrepency.
That's not my point or my problem. What I am not ok with is *not paying workers for their labor* full stop. That's where we are now. Workers are *forbidden* to bargain for their labor. I'm not OK with that. That's unethical and wrong and bad for all labor everywhere. The consequences, the details of how that shakes out - not my problem! Up to them! I am not designing a system. I'm just pointing out that the current one is unacceptable. You're pointing out that the current sports may not be sustainable in their current form if you start paying people. I already said that's totally separate from the only question that matters: Are workers being paid fairly for their labor? Are they able to bargain freely? If not, I don't give a fuck what you're doing. I'm never ok with it.
And like pro sports the taxpayers subsidize those salaries and facilities. Absolute bullshit. I know that is probably an unpopular criticism but I stand by it.
The salaries and stadiums are usually pretty self sustaining in major college sports. I realize that’s without paying student athletes.[But they’re fully funded by tv deals, sponsors, and ticket sales.](https://www.businessinsider.com/college-sports-revenue-ncaa-ohio-state-buckeyes-texas-football-2024-1) [University of Michigan paid $41M to renovate their football stadium from funds created by the athletic department recently.](https://www.mlive.com/wolverines/2022/03/michigan-athletics-seeks-approval-for-new-41m-scoreboards-at-big-house.html) They don’t extort cities like pro sports to subsidize their stadiums since they can’t threaten to leave.
The workaround to taxes paying for player salaries is to make all sports teams clubs that are officially sponsored by the schools. The club would pay a licensing fee and a facility rental to the school but the club would keep all the revenue generated from tickets, merchandise, and advertising. The clubs could then organize themselves into a league with divisions roughly based on the big 4 with an at-large division. SEC, ACC, Pac 12, Big 10, and then your others like Notre Dame, military academies, etc. Put it in a 50/50 revenue split and I think everyone except the rich old white dudes who have a monopoly would be happy.
Which also means a giant employee discrimination lawsuit since they spend 90% of the money on male “employees”
The obvious solution is that colleges need to stop providing free developmental services for billion dollar football and basketball leagues. Let the players be pro athletes, be paid collectively-bargained salary for their time and effort, and cut the fiction that they’re somehow obtaining an academic education in the process.
Anything to reform the higher “education” system in America. It’s been unsustainable for quite some time. Education in quotation marks because the amount of money & scholarships that big schools spend on sports compared to academic investments and scholarships is laughable.
The money corrupts every aspect these universities and distracts from their mission. Pre-pro sports degrades these universities in many ways, aside from just clogging classrooms with student who aren't actually students... and don't ***actually*** clog classrooms because they don't attend classes. The money mostly stays inside the athletic department. It's not funding new chemistry labs or chaired professorships in the history department. It's a giant cancer on American higher ed. Development leagues (like in *EVERY OTHER COUNTRY ON EARTH*) would be so much better for sports fans. Look at the support for lower level football clubs across Europe. Small towns support their teams with passion and pride.
Good. Pay them.
Absurd. Universities are for higher education and academic research. If their athletic talent is marketable and deserving compensation, I'm sure the NFL and NBA can quickly spin up development leagues that could employ them. We really need to get these non-student "students" off of our campuses and onto the athletic fields where they can focus on their craft. It's such a waste of time for them to be pretending to sit in lectures, reading books, and struggling to write papers. We sure as hell shouldn't be paying them.
ppl be like: “we can’t let college sports dissolve in favor of minor league NFL/NBA!!!” then also be like “we need to pay college athletes!!!!!” can’t have it both ways buster. also, get ready for swim and tennis to lose all their funding so schools can pay football and basketball prospects. also prepare for a general dilution of school/team loyalty as transfers become even more common because student athletes will leverage transfer threats to make more money (what nick saban and izzo have been complaining about) lastly, do people forget these student athletes ARE getting paid, in scholarships?? they are getting 100k+ $ degrees for free/heavily discounted
Yeah they don't want that. Right now it's a free for all. If they go the route of being paid by the school they'll have far more regulations and prolly have to sign contracts. Those will likely say they have to play a certain amount of time at that school.
Wait, they're not students? I thought they were students?
If these young adults are making money for the schools and it’s for profit, then there should be an expectation that these students who are also then workers… Receive financial compensation. Perhaps, put the funds into trusts that they can’t touch until after university onwards. There we go.
Yes.
That's the idea, yes.
Cartman has entered the chat
2yr minimum commitment contracts with signing bonus… I’m from the era of boosters, pretty flirting girls that never loved you and bagmen… This has been a long time coming… Now coaches gotta coach sans mind games or Nick Saban it and ghost… 🤷🏽♂️🤣
They get paid by their tuition being paid. Give them a stipend, sure, but paying them like professional players means that college sports ***should*** be extinguished for the waste of money it already is.
The Logical End Point is actually the end of D1 athletics. College sports in big name programs -- even Football and Basketball -- [lose tons of money](https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2024/01/12/college-athletics-costs-are-affordability-issue-opinion). If these players were workers, they'd be laid off. If D1 teams were companies, they'd be out of business.
Aren't they already paying them in scholarships?
It’s work study right? They’re no different than tour guides!
And the cavern between the haves and have nots widens even further.
Yes...
I don’t get why they don’t even get like a stipend even. Not a ton of money, but enough to where payers don’t have to get a part time job in the offseason to have pocket money.
Took the US a while to realize college sports and the whole sport college pipeline is dangerously close to child exploitation, much like beauty pageants and talent shows.
It should only be required for schools that profit from the sport, or else many will lose the opportunity to participate
What is college sports really? Did it start at something small for students to do for fun or was it always a way to make money? Besides money, why do schools needs sports for education? We get P.E. 1st-12th grade. Why does someone need to toss a ball well or move well to have the chance at a free education?(I know other scholarships exist) When I take money out of it, I don’t see a good reason for it. Intramural sports were available at my school.
Stan Smith” played a little ball”
They already do, it's called athletic scholarship and most of them don't even have to show up to class and they're in some easy major like Broadcast Journalism. Iwas asked to be a note taker for some athletes at a D1 school for Business. They can now get NIL deals to boot.
Scholarship is payment
They'll have to come up with separate rules for different levels of competition, because otherwise this will effectively be the death of 75% of college sports. Only probably the top half of D1 can afford to pay athletes.
But only for the work they do, and or are capable of on a given day or night.
Then they shouldn’t get scholarships. I thought the scholarships were their “pay”.
College sports…ruined
And they can stop alumni donations from being a tax write-off.
If players are also students, you'll have to pay all students. Right?