McMurfy
Posts: 13792
Joined: 7/31/2007
From: Portland, Oregon
Status: offline
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ORIGINAL: djskillz Exactly. I'm not arguing the value of an education. I'm someone who has had over $100K in loans and that's while getting about 2/3 to 3/4 of my college and law school education paid for by scholarships. So I get that. Though let's be real about how institutions actually treat "education" for most of these athletes. BUT these schools are generating billions of dollars off of these athletes (collectively) and the athletes have no real other viable option. I think it's tough to create a system of massive amounts of cash to the players through the institutions, but I do think players of all sports should get some form of stipend, etc. I think the real answer though, is allowing the athletes to market themselves. I'm with Jay Bilas on this subject. Michael Phelps can still be an "amateur" athlete while generating millions of dollars through endorsements. Why should it be different for college athletes? A great college musician on a full ride scholarship can still make all the money they want producing an album. Why can an athlete not sell their autograph or likeness while the universities can through TV rights, jersey sales, videogames, tickets, etc? That is about as un-American as it gets. That would also solve the disparities between college athletes' values. If you're the benchwarmer on the lacrosse team, guess what, you're not going to make even close to what the star QB makes through marketing and endorsements. That's life. I don't think the longsnapper on Florida or USC think they deserve the same opportunities that Matt Leinart or Tim Tebow did. And to that point, especially with football, we are talking about an incredibly dangerous endeavor with life-threatening consequences. That can potentially be the height of that 20 year old's earning power in their life, yet they don't get to use it. That doesn't make any sense to me. And this is all under the hypocritical eye of the NCAA, where you can eat bagels but it's a violation to eat cream cheese with them. Honestly, what kind of anarchy are we running here? And as coaches like Urban Meyer have said, it's their job and responsibility as a 40-year old with a job to know these rules, but their punishments as coaches/administrators are much lighter than they are for 18 year old kids who in a lot of cases have come from nothing? I get the argument that boosters/companies will just make sweetheart deals with colleges/athletes in that scenario to entice them to play for them, but it's naive to think that isn't happening right now anyway, and at least that would be a lot more transparent. So pay the players/don't pay the players, but give them their full marketing/endorsement rights to do as they wish with their likeness. Anything less is incredibly unfair. That's a good take. I still think the simplest way is to take school out of the equation. You don't need to go to school to do many layman type jobs, why does a football player have to? He doesn't Art, once he's 20 he can try out for pro and semi pro leagues. No matter how you slice it, it's still a de facto minor league to the NFL. And the NFL loves it because it costs them nothing ... doesn't compete with them ... it's basically like stealing cable. Well then let's pay High School kids for feeding the College System. Hell, why stop there, I'll sign my sons up for Pop Warner and the NFL can send me a check, and the NCAA, and the OSAA.
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The Curse of Mauer is gone!
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