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Alabama and Clemson players should boycott Monday's game

BiffTannen said:
You agree with that? Without the top 50 or 100 HS kids every year you'd be watching glorified high school basketball. I'm not spending any time watching that. It would be as bad as college baseball. Worse actually.
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I guess it depends on why you watch. I am a fan of Wake Forest. I watch to see how we do against the teams we play - especially against our traditional rivals. I watch to pull for us to win. I watched less (but still watched a lot) during the bzaster years - but not because we were bad - because we were bad IN RELATION TO the teams we were playing - so we had little to no chance of winning. If all the teams were a little worse because the best players weren't coming to college, but we were still competitive, that wouldn't impact my watching at all.

Now I admit that there is a limit - if all of a sudden all decent players were going elsewhere - Europe, NBA, NBA-D, whatever - there could come a time where it was difficult to watch and my interest would wane. Just like I would rather gouge my eyes out than watch middle school girls' games.
 
TheReff said:
No, AAU basketball has hurt college basketball. The product is not there. I have seen it every night on the high school floor since the mid-90's and hey are the ones heading to the college floors. No fundamentals. They don't learn the skills need in AAU needed anymore. All the parents want to see their kids do from 12+ on is learn how to shoot the 3 [even tho they can barely heave the ball up to the rim] and dribble behind their back. Then as soon as a 14 year old kid can dunk the ball, the fans start oohing & ahhing and coaches start forgetting about the kid that can play defense, pass and feed it into the post. The don't work on their shooting fundamentals, free throw shooting or anything else associated with great basketball except for long range 3's and dunking. No fun to watch.
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One of the best posts on the subject that I have ever read.
 
Those claiming that the name on the front of the jersey > the name on the back are just wrong, or incredibly disingenuous. There is a recruiting arms race for players by the schools because they know that players drive their success. We see attendance lag when the players are substandard (end of Grobe era). We see a lack of interest in small programs - sometimes even by their own alumni - who have their own rivalries, that do not play at the highest level. ie, FBS > FCS.

About the only exception I can see to this is the Army/Navy game where sentiment for our service academies exceeds the quality of play. Even then, that is only one game a year.
 
awaken said:
Those claiming that the name on the front of the jersey > the name on the back are just wrong, or incredibly disingenuous. There is a recruiting arms race for players by the schools because they know that players drive their success. We see attendance lag when the players are substandard (end of Grobe era). We see a lack of interest in small programs - sometimes even by their own alumni - who have their own rivalries, that do not play at the highest level. ie, FBS > FCS.

About the only exception I can see to this is the Army/Navy game where sentiment for our service academies exceeds the quality of play. Even then, that is only one game a year.
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You are confusing different issues, I believe. Attendance lagging due to poor performance (e.g. Wake revenue sports) is a different problem. That is because we are bad relative to the teams we are playing - thus have little chance to win. The hypothetical we are talking about is all schools losing access to the very best players (because they go pro instead). That means that the overall level of play would drop - that is different. My point was that I would still be just as interested if MY team still had the same relative chance of being competitive and winning - even if the overall level of play dropped.
 
So you are really making a player argument then, right? People stop supporting the front of the jersey on the condition of the players. Did Wake fans show up to the games against bad teams? Those were competitive games.

Also, FBS > FCS supports argument for player driven league. FCS teams are competitive among themselves, and yet....
 
awaken said:
So you are really making a player argument then, right? People stop supporting the front of the jersey on the condition of the players. Did Wake fans show up to the games against bad teams? Those were competitive games.

Also, FBS > FCS supports argument for player driven league. FCS teams are competitive among themselves, and yet....
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The argument is not that fans are going to support college teams unconditionally, no matter the record of the team. That's not the case, and there's a lot of evidence to support that not happening. Rather, the argument is that if the top 25, or 50, players skipped college and therefore the quality went down a little across the board, there would still be high levels of interest and fan support because the fans are supporting the college, rather than the individual players.

Another way to look at it - individual pro players develop a brand and following, and when that player changes teams a lot of fans keep following the player (as happened with Lebron, Jordan, Peyton Manning, etc.). In college, if a player transfers then fans of that player don't cheer for a different team (except for the player's mom). There are no fans that switched their allegiance from Duke to Maryland because Rasheed Sulaimon now plays for Maryland.
 
I think we can already say that the best college football players go to the NFL, yet the college game remains very popular. College isn't suffering because it has an inferior talent pool relative to the NFL. I personally don't think that is an excuse to not pay them, just addressing that isolated portion of the argument. The players are definitely an important part of the equation as programs invest so much into recruiting them and we know alumni pay so much to help attract them (over and under the table).
 
The best college players go to the NFL after 3 years. The vast majority of the best players stay for 4 or 5 years.
 
Yep. The colleges definitely get to lease the best talent before it moves on to the NFL, and they are pretty much the product. And it's not just future professionals that help make money for the schools.
I also agree that a big draw for many fans is their connection to the school. Without that, a pre-NFL league would not be nearly so profitable. It's fair that the schools get to cash in on that loyalty from it's fans. It's the schools, the coaches and the players at a select few schools generating lots of many. 2 of the 3 get to cash in on that, while the last gets "comped" a few years.

I don't know what the exact right answer is and how far out/down it extends. I do feel very strongly that those schools shouldn't be able to generate millions on the performance of these kids, then justify not sharing more of it with the players because they are students if they don't provide them the opportunity and all necessary support for the education they want. I think we can all agree that the NCAA should at least start doing for the players what they claim they do. I am a little leery about class sections opened to accommodate athletes bc of the UNC nonsense. However, if Tommy needs a class that conflicts with the practice calendar, then the program either needs to work its schedule around the classes or pay to open another section of the class at a time the allows for Tommy. The education can't be the payment if they are getting stiffed on that, too. Let's at least start with making sure they get a valuable education.
 
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