The Evil, Rumbling Laugh Of Student Welfare

Focusing on football for a minute, the bowl system already caters to the schools that can afford to give players a stipend. Boise St. and TCU pratically need to beg to get into a BCS game. And forget trying to get in the the MNC game. They'd do the FCOA thing anyway.

is in large part based upon the idea that schools are making big money off of them, and thus giving them expense money is only fair and right, particularly when scholarships don't cover some necessary expenses. Well, the schools that are making big money from football/basketball athletes are the schools in the prominent conferences--not the MAC's of the world. So as Brian says, yes the big schools have the advantage.. and so?

It seems highly unlikely that this would be limited to revenue sports. And, let's face it, even the impact on football will ultimately be "transferred" to other sports. Does anyone really believe that the $1 million or so cost per year that will be required to cover football, men's basketball and an equivalent number of scholarships for women's sports will be borne by football? No, those expenses will result in cutbacks within and/or the elimination of other sports by all schools except the top 15-20.

This probably would benefit UM and most schools in the B10. It also would benefit BTN by increasing the talent level for B10 non-revenue sports. It's far less clear whether it would be a net benefit for college sports.

...that people assume we are talking about a ton of money? If Delany's going to actually make a proposal, he should make more clear how much dough it's going to be. He mentioned 15 bucks for laundry. What's he hoping to have covered?

It would be nice if the commissioner would have some sort of plan in mind before he opens his mouthor writes open letters to other conferences... or names his divisions or messes with the most important game his conference has or whatever comes next from the mind of the Dude's landlord...

If the BCS conferences plus or minus a Big East can manage to do this, I think the small schools will ultimately benefit almost as much as the athletes at big schools--hear me out.

Mid-majors generally can't compete with the BCS schools. They don't have the athletic traditions, resources, history of NFL draft picks, or academic reputations to go toe-to-toe with the BCS schools. That Boise State can compete (which will be the only current mid-major as of next season to have made a BCS bowl game) is a serious exception to the rule. However, they continue to fight an athletic facilities arms race they cannot possibly win. In doing so, they spend millions of dollars in student fees and state money to field FBS programs that play games in front of empty stadiums and only play on TV when they're being slaughtered in exchange for desperately needed money they need to fund their programs.

This could be the impetus for the school presidents and regents to throw up their collective hands and drop en masse to FCS--saving millions per school in athletic spending while enabling them to possibly compete for championships. Check out the USA Today's database of D-1 athletic budgets. It costs about $7-10 million more per school to field a bad FBS team than to field a good FCS team.

I don't know what would happen to a school like Butler, which has developed a competitive D-1 basketball team, but I really think a drop would benefit the vast majority of schools. Maybe they could stay D-1 for basketball and some female equivalent of their choice while dropping everything else to D-2 or FCS.

I think Delany is just CGI. Whoever is responsible needs to touch up his right side, which appears to be underdeveloped compared to the left side.

The BCS conference that could be most affected by this could be the Big East.  A lot of the schools in the Big East don't have a football program that generates a lot of revenue to help offset this:  Georgetown, Villanova, St. Johns, Depaul, Providence, Seton Hall, Marquette.

Aren't schools probably going to increase ticket and concession prices?  Generally in the business world when the manufacturer, supplier, etc. incurs an increase in costs, that cost is passed onto the consumer.  Would it really be any different here?

Far from being the spiritual patriarch of the Gambino crime family, he was a renowned proponent of free republics, as noted in a few obscure texts called everything else he ever wrote. The reason The Prince endured the ages while the rest of his philosophy gathered dust in the back of an old library warehouse is chiefly 1) it's really short, and 2) it angries up the blood. By far the best way to get a book on the best-seller list is to write something that pisses everyone off, but the drawback is that it steamrolls the message of any work that's only meant to be understood in context.

The context in this case is that the Medici family to whom he dedicated his love letter is the same group who personally broke Machiavelli's arms for being such a staunch advocate for free government. He worked for the Florentine Republic before the Medicis marched in, mowed down the government and mercilessly tortured him, and then he sat down and wrote The Prince from his shack in exile, assumedly with some really bendy handwriting (on account of the arms). When you learn about that, it kind of adds a new layer of meaning to the text -- it suddenly sounds like it's dripping with sarcasm.

For centuries, the consensus on Machiavelli's best-known work has been that he was just trying to brown-nose his way back into the government. But a deeper study of his full body of work reveals that this is a pretty absurd ambition, considering not only did Machiavelli repeatedly say that "popular rule is always better than the rule of princes," but after he wrote The Prince, he went right on back to writing treatises about the awesomeness of republics. Considering also that he was no stranger to the literary art of satire, scholars these days are turning to a more likely scenario -- Machiavelli was the Stephen Colbert of the Renaissance.

Unless someone can show me that the assured instant law suit won't make it mean exactly that, it's a big part of the conversation.

Could help with baseball recruiting as well. We could offer more money than a UC Irvine, Rice, Long Beach State, etc. Although those are really good programs, we might be able to lure some good recruits that typically go to the smaller schools

I'm not quite sure how this would involve student activity fees.

First, UM's student activity fee is $15 per semester (really low, may go up soon). Rec sports can barely maintain facilities with that amount. If there is going to be an increase in the fee to pay student athletes, then there will be a lot of backlash within the university about ways to better spend that increase.

Second, mid-major's may have higher student activity fees, but do you really think the student body would agree to let the university increase their cost of attendance to pay the athletes to do their laundry? I just don't see that happening. Increasing ticket prices probably won't do it either because most of those mid-majors already have a hard time putting butts in the seats.

This guy prints money for our conference when he thankfully jumped out in front of the TV network and is a big reason the Big 10 will be poised to stay strong with the extra revenue. He understands that he needs strong sports to increase the value of his content which with increase the desired reach of his network so more power to him. He is at least treating this like the business it really is at the end of the day.

I think I can shed some light on the 18 scholarships for hockey issue.  U of M has 24 players on the roster.  You might think that means they have 6 walk ons but that may not be the case.  I played lax for a top tier DII school.  We had 30 plus members on the team.  I do not know how many full scholarships the coach had but he built custom packages for us.  It was a combination of athletic scholarships, finincial aid, grants, loans and awesome work study programs.  This afforded him the opportunity to split up scholarships among multiple players.  I remember half rides being common for the average recruit.

The best part for student welfare was the "Work" Study jobs.  My job was to sit under the hoop of our basketball games with 2 or 3 other athletes.  When someone fell on the court run out and wipe down the sweat with a towel.  Other than having really great seats for the game I had to get up 2 or 3 times over the 3 hours we were paid.  Back then it was minimum wage.  The $15 I made was good enough for 2 hard nights worth of drinking Beast Ice.  On average my weekly pay check was between $50 and $100.  Its not a whole lot of spending money but the extra $1000 to $1500 every semester was nice to have.

In short, I think it cost my family and I around $5,000 a year to attend the college.  With tuition at the time (circa 1999) being $22,000 this was a great thing.  I had a nice newer car in college because my parents had saved for college and anticipated paying more than they needed to. 

This is also one of the reasons I am not 100% sold on the fact that all of the nice cars that athletes drive are based on shady dealings.  If I had a full ride to U of M I would have been like..... "Mommmy can I have a Chevy Tahoe LT Puuuhleeeese!" (Eric Cartman Voice)