Let Them Eat Bag
They probably didn't mean for his hat to look like a butt
A slow April day in the middle of the college football wasteland had a bomb detonated on it when Stephen Godfrey and SBNation published an in-depth article on the shadow economy of the SEC, wherein people get paid by other people to play football for school X.
"I had this one kid, great player, good guy. Never got in trouble, but never did much on the field. But he's calling me all the time. 'Hey, the sunroof in my car is leaking,' he says, so I tell him to come meet me. $150. Two days later it's: 'Hey, I'm going out this weekend with a girl, can you help me?' $200. Next week after that he's got $300 in parking tickets. So one day I go to meet him to give him money and I ask, "Hey man, aren't you a business major? Have y'all learned what ROI means yet? It means return on investment, and at this rate I'm going to need to start seeing some touchdowns.'"
The article is fascinating and you should go read it now. I'll wait.
…
Now, let's talk about how much we care about this. I do. I've got a sneer or two in me left when I see kids at Clemson and Ole Miss whose recruitments did 180s away from Ann Arbor. There was a recruit in the last five years who Michigan led for; his sudden decision to go somewhere else was financially motivated and that was an open secret amongst that recruiting class. As a guy who wants to see his football team win games, that kind of thing still grates my gears.
But that's all at this point. It's just partisan crybaby stuff. I regard it as a character flaw. (The tatgate thing was different since Tressel lied to the NCAA multiple times. You can't do that and expect to keep your job, even if you lied about stupid rules that make no sense.)
So I don't care, you know, morally. The NCAA's prohibition on kids taking money is not only asinine but (obviously) unenforceable. It also serves no purpose other than to concentrate wealth in the hands of administrators. Whenever I get in discussions about these sorts of things with the dwindling number of people on the side of amateurism, the conversation usually boils down to this:
ME: I guess I just don't see why rich guys giving some of their money to poor people is such a problem.
THEM: But then they'll have money.
ME: I'm unclear on why that's an issue.
THEM: But then they'll be influenced.
ME: …
Around here we like to say things like "I'm so glad Michigan doesn't do that." I think it's time to stop that. The rule is arbitrary, the system inherently corrupt, and if Michigan has a shadow network of boosters my main problem with them is that they're not good enough at being shadowy and boostery. The basketball recruits other schools have swooped in on aren't picking these other schools because of the coaching, man.
I'm over it. And you should be too, because the attitude about I'm So Glad We Don't Do That that's so pervasive around these parts is almost certainly false. I'm So Glad We Don't Do That As Much doesn't have the same horse height. Very averaged-sized horse, that. That's a horse that you can see your lunch getting eaten from only.
And in the service of what?
"Last week I got a call. We've got this JUCO transfer that had just got here. And he's country poor. The [graduate assistant] calls me and tells me he's watching the AFC Championship Game alone in the lobby of the Union because he doesn't have a TV. Says he never owned one. Now, you can buy a Walmart TV for $50. What kid in college doesn't have a TV? So I don't give him any money. I just go dig out in my garage and find one of those old Vizios from five years back and leave it for him at the desk. I don't view what I do as a crime, and I don't give a shit if someone else does, honestly."
Everywhere else in society, an 18 year old who works really hard at something is financially compensated for it and most of them do not… I mean… why am I even arguing about this? If you're the kind of person who thinks that young people doing dumb things with money is a threat instead of, you know, life, you probably start arguments with "Speaking as a parent." Anyone who starts arguments with "Speaking as a parent" wants you to turn off your brain so they can feelingsball you. They are my mortal enemies, speaking as a person who can formulate an argument.
The aura of paternalism that hangs over objections to letting players get theirs is suffocating. "But if they get money they'll…" They'll what? They'll still be under the thumb of a drill sergeant of a football coach desperate to remain in his good graces lest the faucet turn off. They will be the same, just with fewer things to stress about.
They might waste it. They might not. I just don't care anymore. Let them have their five hundred dollars.
A school cannot compel a booster to do something, and the NCAA would be unfair to make them. Nor can the NCAA compel former players to talk, or punish their former teams for that.
Can you imagine Michigan getting punished because, say, Desmond Howard thinks that there's a witch hunt and won't cooperate? That would be ridiculous.
It's the heart of many of the NCAA's problems. Remember, the Ed Martin stuff was resolved in part because Chris Webber was legally obligated by the Feds to talk to eligibility investigators.
If you think it's "unfair" to punish the school for not compelling Desmond, that's the out you give them - if this person will not cooperate, the school must take demonstrable measures to render them no longer a "booster". Exile.
Note that I'm only proposing this for situations where there's some probable cause to believe a booster is a) directly connected to a school and b) has material information about an MCAA rule violation. That would basically be the closest thing the NCAA could get to a sort of subpoena power.
You think that if Desmond had to weigh giving back a Heisman trophy, getting his name erased from the record books, his image publicly tarnished, and getting the University in trouble against saying "No comment" and having the University just ignore him for the rest of his life, that he is going to willingly take the former?
Come on, nobody in their right mind is going to do that. Especially once they are out, or on their way out of school. And that is someone who bleeds school colors. Do you think Terrelle Pryor is going to lay down for OSU because they ask? He doesn't care enough about the school to do that. Especially for kids who are getting paid big money outside of school; their loyalties aren't to their alma mater.
April 10th, 2014 at 10:34 PM ^
At what point does that start to matter?
US collegiate athletics is unique--there's no comparable market for youth sports anywhere in the world. The system seems to depend on the perceived connection between the players and the institutions they represent--people watch because of their attachment to the institution. If the connection becomes so weak that that perception is broken, what happens then?
I'm sure there's a line somewhere that can't be crossed; I'm not sure where it is. But the extreme case of a Vonnegut dystopic football world where schools hire professional players to play under the school's name and who aren't even nominally students and have no other connection to the school--that model doesn't work, I'm sure.
that model works extremely well for soccer teams all over the world owned by universities.
It works for Catolica and Universidad in Chile, I guess,and there are a couple of sort-of-successful teams in Mexico. UNAM's an order of magnitude bigger than any American school, though.
I'm having trouble thinking of an example elsewhere. Is there a successful team in Europe owned by a university? Bath is not a successful team.
April 11th, 2014 at 12:06 PM ^
University College Dublin.
It's barely professional soccer. In fact, until fifteen years ago or so it wasn't, and a lot of the clubs that tried to go professional went bankrupt in the process.
University College's ground has a capacity of 3,000. That's our model for success?
April 11th, 2014 at 10:12 AM ^
April 11th, 2014 at 12:10 PM ^
what the "bag man" was claiming in the article. Bag men funnel money to the players while deliberately avoiding access which would surely compromise the flow of money.
Now as an Ohio State fan, I can just pay a couple of your players and then keep quiet and watch your school take a fall :)
The big problem is that the school has no authority over the people in question. They can punish the players who take money, but can't do much for the bagmen. If the NCAA were to punish a school in this way, I think you would see schools talk more seriously about leaving the NCAA.
Anytime you have a situation where someone is willing to pay for something and someone is willing to offer that good or service for money, there will inevitably be a market created. The law cannot stop this. That certainly doesn't mean it's a good thing--prostitution, drugs, and gambling have all caused some major problems--but it's a reality.
The rise in both the money and the popularity of college football made this inevitable. It isn't just that the NCAA and colleges are bringing in cash, it's that fans are so attached to their teams that they're willing to pay to make them better.
It's clear that the system is broken and needs some serious fixing. It's clear that in places like the SEC there are frequent and flagrant violations of the rules. And it also seems clear that, for now, the NCAA isn't too interested in a fix.
This issue needs to be addressed. It certainly doesn't make sense that schools like Michigan should be punished for playing by the rules, or even for playing by the rules more than the other guys do. Fix the system.
As for amateurism, I fully support it. If these kids really want to get paid instead of "playing school," then there should be a minor league. If we're going to pay players, let's bring it out in the open and make it transparent. The problem with paying players now isn't that it's wrong for poor kids and their families to get money, it's that it's wrong for it to have such a big impact on the competitive landscape of sports.
I may be old fashioned (or just old), but I firmly believe in the character and life values sports teach. And I believe there is value in playing sports for that reason, instead of to get paid. But I'm not naive enough to believe that some kids do it for the money, or even judge those kids "wrong" for doing it. I just want it be as fair and transparent as possible, because fairness and transparency are values worth teaching--whether players are getting paid or not.
April 10th, 2014 at 10:01 PM ^
I'd argue that the NCAA desperately wants to fix the problem. They know they need to, or they will quickly fall apart and disappear. The problem is that the NCAA works for the schools. They have no power over the schools; they can't come out tomorrow and radically change anything to improve the current landscape. The schools have to do that.
It is the schools that don't want to fix anything. They know that football is the golden goose that keeps laying egg after egg each year, and the eggs keep getting bigger.
Are all posters obligated to agree with this line of thinking?
I'm asking, as a parent.
I'm with Brian here. I'm so sick of there being a lack of competitive parity not because of natural advantages, but because the rules are enforced on an honor system and some programs put themselves at a huge competitive disadvantage by choice. The rules themselves are arguably immoral.
Most of these kids are NOT going pro. If they make their college decision based on something other than academics, they're shooing themselves in the foot and being influenced to do so.
That's not a new problem or anything, nor one that goes away money. I'm just saying.
Like I say though, take away money and kids are still gonna choose ASU, and not for the business school.
"Around here we like to say things like 'I'm so glad Michigan doesn't do that.' I think it's time to stop that. The rule is arbitrary, the system inherently corrupt, and if Michigan has a shadow network of boosters my main problem with them is that they're not good enough at being shadowy and boostery."
This was the main problem with not having a guy who the boosters universally loved. I know that people don't want to hear it (I didn't either), and I definitely know that Brian could never go off of the hearsay that Bag Man operates in, but if you think that everyone else is doing this except us, you're kidding yourself.
When I was in grad school I got a tuition waiver and a stipend for being a TA and an RA. There's no reason you couldn't do that for athletes.
And what is the quid pro quo on all this bribin'? Just the thrill of seeing "your guy" score a TD? Sorry I'm not understanding the mentality if there isn't some type of gambling link...but maybe their brains are wired differently.
The only reason I need to want Michigan not to do this is "it's against the rules." I am fully in favor of changing the rules. I'd like to start with the ridiculous scholarship cap: "So, what you're saying is, if Michigan wants to sponsor scholarships for 400 young men, many of whom can't afford tuition otherwise, the NCAA will stand in the way of educating these children?" Then I'd like to allow the players to be compensated at whatever level the school thinks is appropriate, like they would for any other on-campus job.
However, until we get rules in place that allow these things, Michigan absolutely should not do them. I would rather see Michigan lose with honor than win with dishonor, any day. And there is no honor in breaking the rules to win, even if the rules don't make sense. Work within the system to change the rules, or exit the NCAA and create your own rules, but don't break them because they're not convenient.
April 10th, 2014 at 10:12 PM ^
The NCAA doesn't stand in the way of that, the government does. Title IX has more to do with scholarship limits than the NCAA deciding it is a great way to increase parity.
Title IX is a convenient scapegoat, but for most schools, this couldn't be further from the truth. Suppose Michigan wanted to have 125 students on football scholarship, instead of 85. They could either remove 40 scholarships from other mens' sports or add 40 women's scholarships to compensate.
Even if you believe that the athletic department is giving the school $60K per player per year to cover the cost of the scholarship, all this does is double that cost to $120K -- $60K for the player that you actually want to come to your school, and $60K for the additional women's bowling scholarship that was created to balance the books.
In fact, setting scholarship limits is just another way to set a salary cap, and it has all of the same implications that it does in pro sports (supports competitive balance, ensures a minimum salary for every player on the roster, and caps the total outlays by the owner, to name a few). Of course, the NCAA will never call it a salary cap, but if a scholarship costs $60K and there are 85 in football, then the football salary cap is $5.1MM, end of story.
Anyway, don't be fooled. Setting scholarship limits is strictly in the purview of the NCAA -- in fact, you could argue that it's their primary responsibility. You can find the specific limits here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_I_(NCAA)#Scholarship_limits_by_sp…
As a parent who's about to start paying $20-$60k per year to put kids through college, racking up a half-million dollars or more in debt, I take significant issue with the statement that these kids "aren't getting anything" in return for playing a game while attending school.
Indeed, if you think it's nothing, show me other ways these kids, many teenagers, can earn $60,000/year in any other way.
Many of these students are poor enough that they would qualify for substantial financial aid, if they could be admitted to the university in the first place. I think it's fair to say that many of them are playing for "nothing."
It's nearly impossible to compute the true value of a scholarship. College is (intentionally) priced so that it will be just slightly out of reach for all but the very rich.* The value proposition sold to parents is that they should sacrifice elsewhere in order to provide this education -- or, better yet, that they should complain to the government and attempt to get additional tax incentives for education.
Jordan Morgan got a good value from his Michigan scholarship, with two degrees in engineering. Many players don't do so well for themselves.
* Here I define the "price" of college as the total out-of-pocket expense, which scales greatly with income.
April 11th, 2014 at 12:08 AM ^
Let's agree that the players are getting "something" currently.
However, the question is "is that enough"? and your answer seems to be "yes". I'd argue that it's not because they bring in so much more money than they "get". Some wrestler just won something and the OSU AD got a bonus. How messed up is that? There is all of this above-ground money that goes everywhere but to the people generating the revenue.
In short - if you didn't want to pay for college, have kids who will get paid to go either athletically or academically.
If you think the kids already make enough then you're fine with the suits who are all making bank?
They don't bring in that much money. Yeah yeah "OMG look at the AD's financal statement look at all that money!!" but that precludes the real situation that the AD is going to make that money either way.
Look at the down years and look at the up years. If you want to know an actual number in terms of how much impact the person in the jersey has to the finances of the AD you don't compare the $ to "0" - you compare it to a bad year. This is exactly the same way it works in the rest of the world - would your company make any more or any less than they do right now if you weren't there? The answer for 99.99999999999% of us is "no" and yet we're here complaining about player benefits. If the rest of world worked like people think the NCAA should work there would be no massive CEO payouts, you wouldn't have the massive delta between average worker pay and CEO pay on and on and on.
Ok, so you want to say that great UM teams bring in more $ to the AD than bad teams - ok, that's true. So if you wanted to split up the extra $ that the University makes from apparel sales associated with an up year and give the players a % of that I'm ok with that. 50% still goes to the AD and the remaining 50% could be split up 1 of 2 ways. Either 1) it goes by time in the program so the 5th year guys get 5 shares and the freshmen get 1 share or 2) it goes by playing time (although this gets fuzzy if there are a number of blowouts, what a problem that would be!!) and you'd get the maximum "share" if you played between 80% and 100% of the time that the player who played the most played.
The stipulation in the 2nd would prevent guys like NTs from getting hosed because of the rotation. That's borderline pay for play but it's more pay for "success" than it is pay for play. Again, the players aren't responsible for 100% of the money the AD makes - the UM brand is responsbile for the overwhelming majority it. The success on the field does have some impact but it's nothing like the 10's of millions people seem to think.
Heck, explain to me how teams like, idk, Indiana, still make any money when they haven't been "good" in decades - that in and of itself would provide ample argument to the point that by simply putting ANYONE in the uniform the university is going to make $.
They'll get a full scholarship and a stipend somewhere.
April 10th, 2014 at 10:32 PM ^
Well, before the NBA instituted its age cap, kids who were REALLY good at basketball got millions of dollars before they could legally drink.
And all of this "they get $60k" stuff needs to end. With the most liberal interpretation of a scholarship accepted, you are arguing student-athletes receive $60k "in value" from a scholarship, much of this value set by the university and difficult to accurately quantify. They don't receive that in a lump sum, and in many cases it is just accounting. And while I feel bad that you have to pay some amount of money for your children to go to college (because it definitely is expensive), you can also seek out scholarships and grants that could help defray the cost of college. And maybe if money is a major issue, you could encourage your children to attend a less expensive college or go to a community college first. But most of these kids are recruited because they have skills and abilities in high demand, and someone is willing to pay for it. As cruel as it is to say, you wouldn't bat an eye if your child was "special" enough that someone wanted to give him/her money for a rare skill.
that one of the largest Alumni bases in the country is also one of the stingiest?
Did funds start drying up about 2004, the faucet almost completey off by 2009 only to be turned on again in 2011, but snapped shut again sometime in October 2013? Did the bagmen in Ann Arbor decide that 2014 would be Hoke's last? Are they intentionally sabotaging class 2015 to make a point? Is that the real reason Damien Harris dropped his commitment and has yet to recommit? Is the real reason Malik McDowell wanted to play for MSU because Ann Arbor bagmen refused to pony up?
Should we resign ourselves to the fact that there is not a hope of landing Chad Lindsay?
This will come off a little curmudgeon-ish, but I think it provides some balance to this debate. Or I may just be self-indulgent. Whatever. Anyway...
I don't personally know anyone here (at least, I don't think I do), and I certainly don't know the circumstances under which any of you went to college.
However, I worked my ass off in high school, got good grades and got in to Michigan (many, many years ago). PAYING for Michigan - that was a whole other level of working my ass off.
I had three jobs, worked over 40 hours a week to pay for school, housing and food and got an engineering degree (barely, if you look at my transcripts).
I had no help getting into school. I had no special help to keep me there.
So you'll have to excuse me when some cries "exploitation" about students who (1) face less stringent standards to get into school than I did; (2) have $40,000 (FORTY THOUSAND DOLLARS!!!) handed to them; (3) have access to significantly more resources than I did in an attempt to help them not only stay in school but keep their grades up; (4) have FREE ROOM AND BOARD ON TOP OF THE $40,000; (5) have to work about the same number of hours a week that I did; and (6) have access to a much better education than they might have without their athletic abilities.
Finally, any argument to pay players additional money that is based on "they raise a shit-ton of money for the school so they should be compensated" is baseless and hypocritical unless you simultaneously believe (1) that players on women's basketball, women's hockey, men's soccer, men's gymnastics, and any other student-athlete for a money-losing sport, who works JUST AS HARD AND JUST AS LONG as football players, should have to PAY the school to play since their team loses money for the school; AND (2) students in engineering, art, math or any other degree who contribute to papers, discoveries or any other aspect that brings a shit-ton of money into the school should also get paid.
If the NFL created an under-22 league, how much revenue do you think would be created?
The quality of play in college football is more or less comparable to NFL Europe or the USFL, and we saw how that went. Minor league baseball and hockey teams aren't exactly rolling in money either. There's a very tiny handful of players that are good enough to command a sizable income before they're NFL-eligible, but for the most part these revenues result from fans' allegiance to the school. We've created a system here that's able to monetize those alumni allegiances, but in the absence of that particular system there's very little money to be made in youth leagues. Is anyone watching Bayern Munich's U23 team on TV this weekend? They're really good, for U23 players....
April 11th, 2014 at 12:28 PM ^
I'm STRONGLY in favor of the establishment of such a system in both basketball and football. I just don't think it would be the cash cow that people used to American collegiate sports imagine.
There are people for whom the value of a free education simply isn't equal to the nominal value of the scholarship. They'd much rather have, say, $30,000 in cash than $40,000 towards a degree they have no interest in completing, and in many cases rightly so. I don't see any point to a system that forces them into a school they aren't interested in attending, to pretend to pursue a degree they don't want and will never receive.
And for the Robin Younts and LeBron Jameses of the world, the opportunity would be there to go earn real money if they can.
to be exploited, there is nothing to prevent anybody from establishing a developmental or minor league for football or basketball. Why do you suppose it has never been pursued?
They can't compete with the existing system. There would be no revenue stream that could fund player salaries beyond the value of a scholarship, or the value of the fame that college stardom brings, or the under-the-table payments available to those for whom the scholarship and the free marketing isn't enough. The funds would have to come from the professional teams that stand to benefit from the development of future players, and why should they bother when they're getting that for free now?
Coming from someone who's story is not all that different than yours....this doesn't make sense. I think the fundamental mistake you're making is thinking that the monetary compensation is linked to effort level. It's not. The monetary compensation is linked to economic generation. You only begin to touch on this in your point #2 in your last paragraph, and to that I'd say, if they chose the university for the primary purpose of doing the engineering/art/math/any other thing you refer to, and pretty much have to spend 40+ hours per week on that thing, and lots of other people surrounding them are getting systematically richer and richer every year as a result of their efforts, etc. etc. then yes, they should.
"Let them have their five hundred dollars."
It's not about "$500" because if that were the case then an 18-20 year old could likely find an easier way to make $500 than grinding through the rigors of practice and classes.
The ones playing football to get paid are looking for a big score, ideally the NFL draft. As for the dirt poor ones who are trying to help their families then maybe they should skip school altogether (college isn't for everyone) and start working.
It's an interesting time for college sports. I'm hopeful it goes the direction of Ivy League non-scholarship athletes because that'd be a step in the right direction. But if the powers that be would rather blow up the whole damn thing by being greedy then I'll probably find of sad amusement in that too.
April 10th, 2014 at 10:22 PM ^
As for the dirt poor ones who are trying to help their families then maybe they should skip school altogether (college isn't for everyone) and start working.
This is absolutely the mindset that college opportunities are supposed to disabuse people of. Just because you are poor doesn't mean you can't "cut" it in college. I had a decent number of peers at UM who were well enough off but couldn't cut it intellectually, and it showed. For lots of these poorer kids, this is the only real opportunity they'll have to attend a top-flight university, and they would waste that option "going to work." Last time I checked, even with the esclating cost of college it more than pays for itself provided you apply yourself.
Going the way of the Ivy Leagues wouldn't help that much either, as schools that wanted to get the best athletes would still recruit them and just pay them in even less scrupulous ways. And the myth that the Ivies "do it right" is a genius bit of marketting. Having known kids recruited by these hallowed institutions, many of them received incentives and financial packages that are by design "athletic" scholarships if not by name.
The system can be fixed such that you compensate college athletes fairly while still retaining the core elements of college athletics. It just takes more effort.
"Feelingsball" is my favorite mgoword
is what you do when nobody is watching.
Brian's post is one of despair. It's an "I'm tired of losing" post and it's an "I want to win at all costs" post. And it's fatalistic thinking that Michigan couldn't develop its players better to win more games.
Yes, players could be paid and the world would not end. College sports would not end. Life would go on. But those are not the current rules. To argue that we should cheat better or as good as other schools is not an argument, it's succumbing to a foolish desire for a "W" next to each game.
If you are a parent, then you get it. As much as you want your children to win all the time, you know there is value in losing as well. Not everybody wins. Not all the time. And karma does bite you in the ass eventually.
So play by the rules. Do things the Michigan Way and good things will happen. And if everybody else cheats? Then the choice isn't whether to cheat alongside them, the choice is to stop playing the game.
Did you read the end. He says the issue isn't that people aren't following the rules, it's that the rules aren't worth following. If you really care about the kids, you want them to get the money they've earned.
But I'm not sure you read my post. I'm not arguing against paying athletes, I'm arguing for playing within the current rules.
April 10th, 2014 at 10:24 PM ^
Well, the "Michigan Way" led to Ed Martin? And it has led to questions, so rather loud, about guys getting benefits outside of the NCAA purview.
The rules are dumb and simply taking your ball and going home is one option but is somewhat myopic. Michigan is probably cleaner than average, but I'd rather schools like UM figure out how to make what they do aboveboard than act with piety and then bitch and moan when their methods aren't as effective.
The Michigan Way is not Ed Martin. It's the booster bullshit way that did that. Michigan deserved its penalty for the last couple decades because of that nonsense.
Again, I agree that the rules are dumb. But they are the rules. I don't care if other schools cheat - that's their business. But, if we think that our only option is to cheat, then that's really the myopic view.
Brian has been incredibly consistent in his views on this matter going all the way back to when I started reading this blog in 2006. It's not "I'm tired of losing so fuck it", this is what he legitimately believes, dude.
Brian WAS consistent until this post. And I had agreed with him until this point. The nuance is that instead of advocating paying athletes, for the first time he advocated cheating. He used a false moral equivalency (i.e. the rules are corrupt, everbody is doing it, so we should do it too) to make his point.
This type of logic leads you straight off a cliff in life. As the article notes, even if you paid kids 40 grand, there would still be bag men trying to pay kids another 40. And the guy in the article is right, just look at the bounty scheme that New Orleans had - those guys didn't need the extra cash. So, that's why I wrote the word "despair" because even if you pay the kids it won't stop cheating and Brian knows that. But the answer isn't to cheat as well.
And, as the head of Michigan's most popular football sports blog, he is influential and knows that there are many who read this blog and have the wherewithall to become accomplished bag men/women. He has effectively issued a fatwa absolving those involved from guilt and that is a dangerous thing.
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