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Athletes being "paid"

Thanks for your response. I embedded my discussion below.

Deacon923 said:
Several reasons. First, they set up an adversarial relationship between labor and management. I can't see that being positive in the context of 18-year old kids and their coaches. Your last paragraph explainsi well why there would be an adversarial relationship, and that is the school's fault. I could definitely see an NBA scenario where star player > coach, which would inhibit the character building ability of the coach. Hopefully, since star athletes are already paid under the table (per Bagman article), legitimizing their pay via a union won't change the nature of their relationship. But yeah, there will be pampered athletes crying to the union at the drop of a hat.

Second, it would make the relationship of college athletes to their schools much more like the relationship of NFL or NBA players to their teams - much more mercenary, much less invested in the school itself. This would manifest, among other things, in less post-college connection between alumni athletes and their schools. With one and dones and Cam Newton type players, we're pretty much there already. This would be an acceptable downside to unionization for me.

Third, when the inevitable strikes or lockouts occur, it doesn't just harm a bunch of filthy rich owners - it directly impacts all the non-revenue sports that rely on the revenue from football and basketball, and it impacts the college experience of all the non-athlete students, who have a much deeper investment in their athletic teams than your average Panthers fan. Definitely see your point here. But I think this is a school issue more than a union issue. Someone asked on this thread why we have college athletics and Europe does not. Back in the 19th century, college presidents decided that athletic competition was character building and should be offered on educational merits. So they funded their teams. Football and basketball became revenue sports and were able to financially cover all non-revenue sports. But that's incidental when you look back at their original intent. Do you hear them say "We can't have a science department - that would cost money!!" Either these sports are part of their educational mission or they are not. Second, I'm not a fan of exploiting one student to benefit another. Hopefully, the exploitation can end without a union, but I doubt it. If a non-revenue student has their sport interrupted by a revenue sport strike, I'm good with that.

I don't know of any industry that can really be said to have improved in the long run as a result of US-style unions (the Nordic-style labor system is an entirely different question). That's not to say unions are evil, it's just to say that when an industry treats its employees so crappily that their only recourse is to organize, that industry is reaping what it sowed and it's probably going to have rocky labor relations forever. I'm watching how they respond to the Northwestern U union requests, and hoping for the best.
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I think one of the long plays is for the colleges and athletic unions to get money from the NFL and NBA for being their minor league system. The NFL has tried and failed several times to develop their own, and the NBADL is a joke. If they could agree to withhold players from the draft, they could get a substantial fee for talent identification and development.
 
awaken said:
Thanks for your response. I embedded my discussion below.



I think one of the long plays is for the colleges and athletic unions to get money from the NFL and NBA for being their minor league system. The NFL has tried and failed several times to develop their own, and the NBADL is a joke. If they could agree to withhold players from the draft, they could get a substantial fee for talent identification and development.
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all fair points re the union. it may be the only way to effect change, but I think a better end result for all parties could be reached if the NCAA and the schools voluntarily undergo reform without having it forced on them through collective bargaining.

The kind of relationship you describe between the pros and college would make a lot of business sense and common sense. To make it happen would probably require some statutory changes. That kind of fee income, under current law, would definitely be unrelated business income to the schools and would be taxed, and receiving it might cause the tax authorities to question whether other kinds of income received by the schools (i.e., TV money) might also be UBI. Also, there might be some antitrust issues when one cartel pays another cartel to restrict a labor market. I don't claim to be an antitrust expert, I think the NFL already has an exemption from the antitrust laws but I don't know about the NCAA and its member schools, and I don't know whether any relevant existing exemptions could extend to such a relationship or whether new exemptions would be available.
 
I think the threat of a union would likely be more effective than a union itself.

As far as the NFL and NBA getting involved, I think that would happen if the NCAA member institutions were mandated to pay athletes and pro leagues were at risk of losing much of their minor leagues. Then you would see some movement.
 
Maybe a haas but has anyone watched the documentary about this on netflix "$chooled"?
 
If the field hockey team unionized, would anybody listen to them?
 
zqglass said:
Maybe a haas but has anyone watched the documentary about this on netflix "$chooled"?
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Yep. It's actually pretty good. A lot of ACC references. There is one funny scene where they discuss how long Athletic scandals have been happening and the first image they show is a newspaper image of two Wake players from sometime back in the 50s.
 
How would the union react to the UNC cheating scandal? Would they prevent discipline of players who cheated in the class room? If a player is suspended for academic reasons, can the union take the school to court?
 
CHillDeac said:
Yep. It's actually pretty good. A lot of ACC references. There is one funny scene where they discuss how long Athletic scandals have been happening and the first image they show is a newspaper image of two Wake players from sometime back in the 50s.
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My friend noticed that also, we paused it on the article and it was the second time in 2 years that Wake had kicked players off the team. In fact one of the players, Bill George, is in the WFU sports Hall of Fame. haha
 
I skipped over a bunch of the middle of this so maybe there is some repetition.

A quick exposition of my views about paying players in college sports--

1) College athletes are necessary to provide a product that lots of people want -- college sports. It is a truism to say there are no college sports without college athletes.
2) Lots of people are paid extremely large sums of money to provide this product. Coaches and ADs topping the list.
3) Lots of people are paid smaller sums of money to provide this product--perhaps even enough to live on. Assistant coaches, trainers, compliance officers, SIDs, and so on.

Given that universities are willing to pay lots of people large and small sums of money to produce this product that the public wants, it does not seem unreasonable that the only group of people absolutely essential to the provision of that product should get some slice of the revenue they produce.

Some people argue that an education is sufficient compensation for providing this product. One important assumption that is often made by people who argue that the education alone is sufficient exchange for providing labor that contributes to college sports product is that athletes are offered the same educational opportunities as non-athletes. I suggest that in most cases--including at Wake--they are not. Athletes are routinely advised into easy classes, pushed out of time consuming majors (lab sciences in particular), and have non-academic time demands that IMHO generally mean they are getting an inferior education product even at the same (often great) institution.

Colleges and universities like sports because the big revenue sports make lots of money (via different channels), help with advertising/name recognition, and for public schools probably help secure resources from state legislatures. And, not paying players is big component of what makes this a financially viable model.

Here is the difficult truth as succinctly as I can put it:
1) I love college sports
2) College athletes (in revenue sports) deserve to be paid for their labor, especially if they are getting an inferior education product (relative to gen pop students) as their "payment"
3) Paying players will destroy the financial/business model of college sports. Pro sports leagues pay out around 50% of "official" revenue to players. College athletics would need to do something major to afford even a fraction of that.
4) Destroying the business model will result in substantial changes to college sports as we know them, including possibly killing them off entirely (less drastic outcomes may be possible).
5) In the long term I probably can't have both things that I want--college athletes being paid for their labor and college athletics.
6) I've decided I can live without college athletics and therefore support paying players, even if that ultimately kills something I love. I can always substitute other sports product.

Paying athletes a small amount as a way of preventing paying them a large amount (that is the $5000 that RJ suggests rather than something akin to what pro athletes make as a share of revenue) might stall more dramatic consequences.
 
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College sports already are imbalanced. And they’re doing just fine.

Actually, college sports aren’t merely imbalanced. They’re practically rigged. Occasional upsets aside, big schools dominate the highest levels of competition. College football hasn’t had a mid-major national champion since Brigham Young University in 1984, while in men’s basketball, more than half of the Final Four appearances between 1979 and 2011 were made by just 12 power conference schools. The disparity is due to talent differences, which mostly come from recruiting differences. In 2011, economist Andy Schwarz examined the school choices of the top 100 high school football prospects over a 10-year span. Of 1,000 total players, 993 went to power conference programs—and of the seven remaining, four were Mormons who attended BYU and one was an Ohio State University recruit who had a scholarship offer rescinded because of (later disproven) criminal charges.
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I mean, we all kind of know this, but it is interesting to see the numbers. (And now I want to know where the other two went.)
 
avalon said:
I mean, we all kind of know this, but it is interesting to see the numbers. (And now I want to know where the other two went.)
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Of course, the top 100 players are in the top 100 primarily because the power conferences are recruiting them, so it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. But still it's a strong indicator because those schools are in the business of evaluating talent and the results on the field are pretty good proof that they are successfully selecting the best players.
 
I think the even bigger point is that students who have the best options to go to a P5 school are doing so.
 
Deacon923 said:
Of course, the top 100 players are in the top 100 primarily because the power conferences are recruiting them, so it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. But still it's a strong indicator because those schools are in the business of evaluating talent and the results on the field are pretty good proof that they are successfully selecting the best players.
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And it means the power conference schools are getting the players they target, even without paying them. Like small budget professional teams, non power conference schools succeed by finding undervalued talent.
 
My opinion on college athletes and pay has nothing to do with fairness and all to do with the reality of life. I have a friend whose family are large athletic boosters for Auburn. The rules imposed upon gifts to athletes attempt to level the playing field for all schools, but unnecessarily punish the athlete. Many Auburn football players come from impoverished families, yet they are required to wear coats and ties to all football related events. My friend states NCAA rules do not allow for the schools to provide for this expense. Seems unreasonable to me. Seems an inordinate number of athletes are involved in petty theft every year. Imagine being an impoverished athlete and living with the majority of the well to do Wake students on a daily basis. You desire to wear similar clothing and to be able to take a girl out on a date as well as possibly even own a car like the majority of Wake students. You cannot work as your time is consumed with football/basketball as well as your studies essentially 365 days a year. What are your options? I believe a stipend similar to the level of a graduate student would go a long way to solving many of the problems being seen among college athletes today. It would provide a realistic solution to a genuine problem for many student athletes whole not impugning the integrity of a student athlete as a whole.
 
HowardDeanSux nails it.
 
HowardDeanSux said:
My opinion on college athletes and pay has nothing to do with fairness and all to do with the reality of life. I have a friend whose family are large athletic boosters for Auburn. The rules imposed upon gifts to athletes attempt to level the playing field for all schools, but unnecessarily punish the athlete. Many Auburn football players come from impoverished families, yet they are required to wear coats and ties to all football related events. My friend states NCAA rules do not allow for the schools to provide for this expense. Seems unreasonable to me. Seems an inordinate number of athletes are involved in petty theft every year. Imagine being an impoverished athlete and living with the majority of the well to do Wake students on a daily basis. You desire to wear similar clothing and to be able to take a girl out on a date as well as possibly even own a car like the majority of Wake students. You cannot work as your time is consumed with football/basketball as well as your studies essentially 365 days a year. What are your options? I believe a stipend similar to the level of a graduate student would go a long way to solving many of the problems being seen among college athletes today. It would provide a realistic solution to a genuine problem for many student athletes whole not impugning the integrity of a student athlete as a whole.
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I understand this, but that is kind of life. I had to work 3 jobs while I was going through Wake. I am still paying college loans 13 years later. I didn't deserve anything more than the opportunity I received. If a college player is receiving a quarter of a million dollar + scholarship to play a game and one of the top 30 educations in the country, I have a difficult time feeling bad that he can't wear Vineyard Vines.

I am not against a small stipend, but I don't feel bad for college athletes. They aren't getting screwed, the vast vast majority (as in 99%) are getting the chance of a lifetime all because God blessed them with extra-ordinary genes. The sob stories are pretty much a load of bologna.
 
Not sob stories. Simply reality. How you choose to view the reality in front of your very own eyes is your perogative. You can attempt to provide solution to a problem or complain about the problem and do nothing. It is your choice. Many of these athletes lack the support system and guidance you more than likely received while working 3 jobs and attending Wake Forest. One final comment. I have never understood the mentality of "I had it tough so others should have it tough too". Who do you feel your hard line stance is protecting or helping?
 
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