The Tipping Point
The following post will affect your fandom of Michigan sports not at all, because nothing does, so WATCH PARTY. Join HomeSure Lending's Matt Demorest and Seth at HOMES this evening for the game. First drink is on Matt. Ask for his Hightower impression.
It might take five years but NCAA amateurism is on its last legs. The Adidas investigation is about to be a shoe-industry wide thing after Michael Avenatti's farcical but still potentially revealing extortion scheme. A little connecting the dots from the players Avenatti's mentioning leads directly to a person who knows where a few bodies are buried:
Avenatti’s tweets on Tuesday morning narrowed down where the feds should start looking by calling out two of the star players from the Nike-sponsored California Supreme basketball program. That program is coached by Gary Franklin, who Yahoo Sources identified as the disgruntled AAU coach who appears in court documents allegedly attempting to conspire with Avenatti to shake down Nike. (Federal documents cite an unnamed coach who was no longer receiving his $72,000 annually from Nike to run his program, which fits Franklin.)
The 7-foot Ayton played for Franklin's California Supreme team in the summer of 2016, was ranked the No. 3 senior in the nation by Rivals.com in 2017 and became a one-and-done star at Arizona. The 7-foot-2 Bol, played for Franklin in the summer of 2017, was the No. 4 senior according Rivals and went to Oregon. …
Avenatti first accused Ayton and his mother, Andrea, of taking “cash payments” from Nike, which would likely be illegal under NCAA rules and could also have greater legal implications. He accused Bol “and his handlers” of taking “large sums” of money from Nike. “The receipts are clear as day,” Avenatti said in a tweet. “A lot of people at Nike will have to account for their criminal conduct.”
The issues are not so much whether the allegations are true—they are obviously true—but whether there's a paper trail of receipts. Avenatti purportedly tweeted some out before he took his twitter account private. Given Avenatti's approach to life (Goodfellas with a law degree) there's a higher than usual chance those were garbage, but that chance is still pretty low.
[after the JUMP: nobody cares! about this, not this post, you care deeply about all posts]
The prospect of a paradigm-altering offseason in the near future just went up another notch. At the same time that there's a vast amount of attention being paid to the college basketball black market by the government, the public does not give a single crap:
Adidas stock is basically at the same level it was before the charges were filed. Matt Powell, a senior industry advisor at the NPD Group who studies these kinds of things, told Deadspin he has seen no ill effects to Adidas: “I have not seen any material impact to Adidas’ business because of the convictions. I have not had any negative feedback from my Twitter followers either.”
Despite this tournament featuring at least one team 99% certain to have its participation vacated (LSU) and several others who have clearly been buying players, directly or indirectly, for years (Duke, Kansas, Louisville, Kentucky, Maryland, Auburn), ratings are up. This is in the immediate aftermath of more or less direct proof that all of the schools in the previous parenthetical are buying players with the aid of the shoe companies that sponsor them. The public does not care about that, at all.
This does two things. One, it knocks out one of the tentpole defenses of the NCAA's anti-competitive restrictions on compensation. The NCAA has repeatedly argued in court that if payers are paid the system will collapse because fans will lose interest. This has always been a ludicrous thing to argue—fans don't even lose interest when rape allegations are repeatedly swept under the rug at Michigan State, or Florida State, or Baylor. One wonders if there is literally any level of depravity that would materially affect the size and passion of a college's fanbase. But that argument is a lot more indirect to present than "it was revealed that a bunch of guys got paid and nobody cared."
The second thing it does is start emboldening legislators. If the public perception of the NCAA is that it's useless, or corrupt, or unfair, and that it should be blasted into the sun, well, that's when bill start popping up. And they have. There are currently four different bills, two federal and one each in California and North Carolina, being proposed that seek to bust up some part of the NCAA's cartel. They come from both sides of the aisle. They may not get through immediately, but they are the tip of the iceberg.
Industries confronted by the prospect of regulation frequently attempt to self-regulate their way out of trouble. The NCAA is reaching that point and will likely start taking more action than the incremental drips and drabs of revenue they've permitted to slide to the athletes, especially once they are confronted by the fact that they've either got to ban their moneymakers from the tournament or reinforce the reality that amateurism is a scam coming and going.
Enjoy the game tonight!
Again, this shit runs wide and deep. A Fab Fiver told me last year that ND offered him the most money of all.
Probably should take away the Fab Fiver part. Only one considered ND. So it's pretty obvious
As if anybody gives shit, especially 30 years later.
Wow, this is exciting. Finally a bunch of guys with the privilege of free food, lodging, education, and job training, and with the potential promise of millions of dollars and never having to really work for a living**, can make even more money!
Forgive me if I can barely muster a hip-hip hooray. People who advocate "free-market" type of compensation for the 1% of athletes who are "underpaid" never seem to want to apply the free market to every other athlete on campus, which would force nearly all of them to pay for the privilege of doing something like playing tennis or wrestling.
**other than to stay in physical condition, which is such a burden that 100% of the population would do that if they could
I took the point to be that they are already being paid, at certain schools, so why are we pretending that they are still amateurs?
But no one other than the NCAA even pretends that they're not getting paid. And that's why revelations like this don't move the needle. It's like, yeah, obviously. So let's watch some basketball.
And the only reason the NCAA pretends it doesn't happen is a likely misguided assumption that their product relies on the illusion of "purity" when it probably doesn't.
Michigan gave me free education, job training, and the potential promise of a tenure-track position at a lucrative professional school ... and they paid me stipends on top of that. Yes, I had to teach undergrads one time for free, and do whatever the coach (advisor) asked.
The system can afford to retain scholarships for non-revenue athletes and still give stipends of varying size to revenue athletes.
March 29th, 2019 at 12:12 AM ^
Yes. Coaches make what’s soon to approach 10s of millions of dollars per year. Athletic departments build hundreds of millions of dollars worth of facilities just to keep up with one another and because they can’t spend it on players. They can afford salaries for scholarship basketball and football starters.
Regulation and some limited oversight is needed when certain organizations cheat the rules and some don't on the assumption that doing the right thing means following the rules (however arcane). Otherwise we are simply teaching a large segment of our impressionable youth that cheating will be rewarded.
As a Michigan fan you should be all about this. As a human being, also.
We wouldn’t want to ever teach our youth that. I mean what if a major bank like say Wells Fargo, was caught opening bank accounts in their current customers names without them knowing about it which drove their stock price up. Then, get this, the officers of said bank who owned massive amounts of that rising stock were let off with no jail time?! They even got away with acting like they did not even know!!
No, we can’t let college sports send a lesson that cheating is OK. That would create a tragic shift in priorities and standards we as a society hold so dear.
Wait a minute, I'm hardly arguing against regulation or oversight. I think the NCAA should be coming down like a sledgehammer. They don't, because the member organizations know if they do it to someone else, eventually it'll happen to them, too.
I've made this point before but I'm genuinely curious as to what you think. There are two different ways this issue is argued:
- Your way--student athletes get a lot so why pay them more?
- The revenue that has been generated by college athletics, especially football and men's basketball, has grown astronomically over the past three to five decades. The question is, who should get that surplus revenue? Some of it, to be sure, goes to the players in the form of better facilities and bowl game swag and the like. But almost certainly a much larger share of the increased revenue goes to men in blazers. Should they get it? Or should the players get some (more) of it too? How much and how is a technical question--the principle would be that the value of the players' labor has grown immensely but their share of it has grown only a bit. Or at least, that's the empirical question--how much money does football and men's basketball generate now versus 30 years ago, and what is the value of players' compensation during those two periods? And what should be done with the surplus?
That IS a very good point. I have a question though that I don't see being asked much or analyzed. What impact do the great college athletes have on fan interest and revenue? If there were a workable pro minor league for those that the NBA and NFL deem not ready, yet still worthy of an investment and the colleges were left to field non blue chip athletes at every position?
If Michigan and Alabama and OSU and Oklahoma and USC et al were still competitive albeit at an overall lower quality level, would fans still come? In the same or near the same numbers, would they be willing to pay the same ticket prices? How about 75 percent of the ticket prices? College football and basketball is about star players, but moreso than the school colors and competitive games?
How would any other minor league which was loaded with HS blue chip talent fare in terms of fan interest and TV ratings compared to the somewhat lower level college game under this new hypothetical?
I guess my question isn't really new in that it harkens back to the argument that fans come to see the name on the front of the jersey, not the back of the jersey. I've always thought that the answer to that was not an either, or , but both.
"But almost certainly a much larger share of the increased revenue goes to men in blazers."
I don't really think this is true. I know it's the narrative around here because a tiny number of dudes in blazers are overpaid but to my understanding the VAST majority of money generated by the revenue sports goes towards:
1) The operational costs for the many sports supported by athletic departments that actually do get some of that money (there aren't many, mostly the power conference schools). Maintenance of facilities, event staff, TRAVEL costs (high), medical staff, etc.
2) The operational costs for television networks that broadcast the games.
You can make the argument that the revenue sports deserve a far larger piece of the pie (or all of it) than the non-revenue sports. And I buy that argument. Because that's really the primary effect of not being able to pay the few athletes who are "underpaid": those sports subsidize other sports.
If you truly opened it up to a free market/free agent system in which schools bid on players, you'll just see schools redirecting their money from non-revenue sports to the revenue sports to try to keep those big stadiums and arenas they built full.
And I'm completely fine with that. Competitive balance would shift towards the richer programs and away from the (more) unscrupulous programs.
You may be right. I guess it's the optics of Jim Fucking Delany getting a $2.4M annual salary and a bonus of $20.0M that sticks in my craw.
I think the surplus revenue should be spent on things like:
- Other sports, because to be clear, I'm 100% in favor of football and men's hoops subsidizing opportunities for other athletes. I think talented soccer players, tennis players, swimmers, etc., shouldn't be denied the same free education that football players get just because they're unlucky enough to be really good at an unpopular sport. It's good for society in general, and incidentally, it's good for our standing on the world stage in Olympic and other sports.
- Fringe benefits for athletes like health care and the insurance they frequently buy to protect their draft stock
- Financial incentives for staying four years in college and graduating
And I'm also OK with spending a lot of money on a coaching staff, because if it hasn't become clear by now, a bad one will cost you a lot more money. Money attracts talent.
To be clear, I like a lot of those suggestions. I don't think that the only solution is to give students salaries. Insurance is a great idea, as is some kind of nest egg, a la your third point.
Nice dialogue! And we didn't call each other Hitler!
The only problem with a nest egg is most would just take the cash from another source anyway. I think the point is to pay them for what they are worth now.
Well, I'm unlucky enough to not be talented in ANY of the sports. Shouldn't I get some sort of compensation too? If they aren't bringing in any revenue and are actually costing the school money, what are they giving to the university that's any more important than a regular student? Why should they receive a full ride when (insert name), who will go on to represent the university well in their professional career, has to pay her/his own way?
never having to really work for a living
That's always been a bullshit line. If you were as good at the thing you did as Zion Williamson or Kyler Murray, you'd want to be compensated for it. It certainly has value; witness the billions of dollars paid to the NCAA and millions of people who tune into the games. Saying it's only about "staying in shape" is lazy and always sounds like weekend warrior talk from people who figure they are 6 months away from being able to throw a pass in the NFL.
As for the claims that other sports would suffer, no they wouldn't. They are already receiving what appears to be enough money to sustain most of them. Unless your argument is that Jim Harbaugh is worth $7M and Pep Hamilton $1M for "coaching" these athletes and certainly couldn't stand to take a pay cut so the athletes got a share, and instead we'd have to cut wrestling instead. Which is your option, I guess.
It's also reductive and diminishes athletes down to a single facet of their life, but that's a discussion for another time I guess.
100% agree. The suggestion that being a D1 level and eventual NBA level basketball player is not work is insane. I'm very confident that a guy playing in the NBA puts in at least 150% of the hours that any of us put in at our jobs. Not to mention the business is ruthless with 10 guys fighting their asses off for your spot and always being one awkward landing away from your career being over.
If you were as good at the thing you did as Zion Williamson or Kyler Murray, you'd want to be compensated for it.
Yup. I would. And if guys like you and Brian would spend your time and energy into developing the professional minor leagues of football and basketball, Zion and Kyler could do that without having to sacrifice college athletics.
MLB prospects sign huge contracts and develop in the MLB system, or they choose to develop in college understanding their choice. NHL prospects sign huge contracts and develop in the NHL system, or they choose to develop in college understanding their choice.
Why aren't these shoe companies tearing at the fabric of college baseball? Why doesn't the bagman help land college hockey players? Simple. Because if they want to make money, they have an avenue to go make money.
College sports isn't broken. Fans brains are. Fix the pro models. Make Football and Basketball minor leagues and leave college sports the fuck alone.
Not sure about you, but I care a heck of a lot more about college basketball and football than I do about college hockey and baseball. I would dare to say most do, that's where all the revenue comes from. Your solution would "fix" the problem by reducing the revenue of college sports- people will pay less attention, spend less money, care less. Then there's less money to divvy up, and players care less about getting their piece. That's one way to do it, but it's not very fun.
I still hold out hope for a middle ground- a way to direct the revenue generated by football and basketball to the people who are responsible for the interest, while still keeping the model close enough to the same that a) players still opt to play in college, preferably for my favorite team, and b) people care as much as they currently do about their team.
There have been football minor leagues off and on. There are certainly NBA minor league options. But here's the rub and this is what people forget in this whole thing:
Players get more value out of going to a big time college football or basketball program than they can earn in the minor leagues. So they still choose to go to college instead of playing in the minors.
What value do they get? 1) Instruction. 2) Exposure (Zion Williamson will get a MUCH larger shoe deal after having gone to Duke for one season than he would have as a relative unknown going straight to the NBA because he already has a ton of fans).
And that's what I think people misunderstand. Football and basketball don't have minor leagues because players are better off apprenticing in college. There is nothing structural preventing the existence of football and basketball minor leagues other than pure economics: there is no demand for it AND there is no supply for it.
But what part of "college athletics" are being sacrificed right now if you gave the athletes a piece of the money created around them? If Charles Matthews got $40k a year on top of his scholarship, what gets broken? Your personal enjoyment of college sports, which in recently memory has feature numerous scandals that pale in comparison to some shoe companies explicitly paying athletes as opposed to the numerous other ways they've influenced college sports (including the millions of dollars UM collects a year on it) over the years?
Also, there have been numerous attempts at minor league/feeder leagues to the NFL and NBA and all have failed because, shockingly, there exists an already ready-made minor league that generates monstrous interest and has incredibly powerful connections to said leagues that allow them to dictate rules such as direct payment to athletes. The NFL benefits from college football because it's effectively free advertising for their product with the added benefit that the fandom is tied to colleges, a connection that already engenders immense passion from people. College football benefits because they can promote these players as future NFL pros; witness how often NFL "draft gurus" pop up on ESPN or CBS during games to tout a player's NFL prospects. And in the wash it generates billions of dollars, with all the adults enjoying the benefits while the athletes having to bear the risk of injury and possible lost eligibility. Same with the NBA.
And that doesn't even get into the restrictions both the NFL and the NBA have placed on players joining the leagues, both official (age restrictions) and unofficial (witness the fact that until recently the G league wasn't allowed to accept 18-year-olds). We'll see what happens with the G-league's decision to start paying real money to top players coming out of HS.
Listen, if we could start all over and introduce a G-League for both football and basketball at the same time as college athletics took off, then we'd have a chance to split the difference. But one side has had a virtual monopoly on the matter for decades and has tacit support from the leagues to continue on raking in the money. There are ongoing attempts to break that strangehold, and when they do people rush to fight for the NCAA because, as you've said, they feel some weird connection to the "amateur" part of athletics that can't really be described because it doesn't really exist. It's just you're used to one thing and you don't want to see it changed despite it likely having no practical effect on you.
As for hockey and baseball, I assume there are guys who get money illegally there (baseball is huge in the SEC and if you think the payments to players stops at basketball and football that's unlikely), but they are fringe sports at the NCAA level and likely don't come under the same scrutiny. Hell, the University of New Hampshire got busted for a booster giving small gifts and financial benefits for members of the women's volleyball and track teams. So my guess is that if people dug into, I don't know, Minnesota hockey or LSU baseball they'd see bag men, just not to the same scale.
Honestly, we should all not take the bait and get into this bullshit discussion right now. It is a dead-end conversation. People have been talking about "the death of amateurism" and how college sports is going to get blown up for 25 years now. It hasn't happened and people across the country are counting down the minutes until 7:00 PM right now. This was a ridiculous time to post this OP and we as a fan-base should all just be getting ready for a great matchup tonight. Trust me, Michigan players right now are not bitching to each other about how they don't get paid, they are getting ready to have the time of their lives in front of a sold-out arena.
I'm sure Matthews and Simpson are having the time of their lives right now. Problem is they'll have the rest of their lives to be bitter about the NCAA after they struggle to make the same amount in the entirety of their careers as what they have earned for the University in a couple years.
Unless your argument is that Jim Harbaugh is worth $7M and Pep Hamilton $1M for "coaching" these athletes and certainly couldn't stand to take a pay cut so the athletes got a share, and instead we'd have to cut wrestling instead. Which is your option, I guess.
It's not my option. Just ask yourself, though: if a college has to choose between offering smaller contracts to their football coach, or cutting the wrestling program, what will they choose? Everyone knows the answer.
Actually, there's an easy way for the NCAA to address this: jack up the number of sports a college must offer in order to be D-I, and create a minimum requirement for FBS as well.
Any sport other than football, basketball, and maybe baseball/hockey depending on the school loses money in college. Every one of them. If this was pure economics, colleges would have cut them decades ago. But they keep them around because they like the competition, or are good at them, or have prominent alumni who support them, or to comply with certain legal requirements, or any other number of reasons. Putting a requirement on colleges would be fine, but it wouldn't address, again, coaches getting paid like the professional leagues to coach "amateurs".
As a counter-point, imagine if college football and basketball teams had to pay some portion of their money to the players and, as a result, had less to pay college coaches. Everyone would be in the same boat financially, so instead of 5 guys on UM's staff making north a million a year, only 3 of them would. Maybe you'd lose Jim Harbaugh to the NFL, but there would be someone else to fill in his shoes for less. And it would trickle down and the world would keep spinning along perfectly fine, only Zavier Simpson would get a cut of the revenue his play later tonight will make for CBS, the Big 10, the NCAA, and Michigan.
I understand your point, but that trickle down effect would just trickle down to fans. Ticket prices, merchandise, etc. would go up so the coaches could make more and be able to keep someone like JH.
Hardly the point. The athletes are mostly responsible for creating the revenue for the eminently punchable faces, e.g. Delaney, to get a 20 million dollar goodby gift.
There is a difference between saying that schools have to pay players and saying that the NCAA shouldn't ban players from making money off their status. Brian is pointing out that the case against the shoe companies shows that players are already doing this. The point is that the NCAA should not be "preventing" players from making money, as they already are making money on the side. They NCAA says that this will hurt competition, but if a smaller subset of schools involved in this scandal haven't hurt competition, how will allowing every school to participate in this hurt competition?
I don't know where the numbers are at now, but I found Harbaugh's initial contract. He made $500k for coaching in his first year and $4.5m for "his television, radio, internet, public relations, promotional activities, personal appearances in connection with his duties under this Agreement, support of the University's shoe and apparel sponsorships, and other activities as part of his duties and responsibilities as the Head Coach". So, why can't players be paid for all of these things beyond the scholarship that they get for playing football?
I'm generally OK with things like "making money off their image." I think the players ARE paid for things like "support of apparel sponsorships" because they get LOADS of free swag. Should they be allowed to sell that stuff? Yeah, but it's also not a big injustice that they might have to wait til after college to do it.
This is always the worst argument 'but they get free dorm meals and cool team-issued sweatpants'.
If a job recruited you and said you could MAYBE make millions (it's not assured whatsoever) in 5 years you might not job at the chance. Plus, they're going to pay you in room and board and make you go to bullshit classes all while you bring in millions for the organization. And after a while you look around and see that there's tons of money in this business but you literally get none of it. You might think you're getting a raw deal.
I don't know what the solution is but there has to be some kind of revenue sharing that involves the players - maybe they can carve out something for Power 5 basketball and football players and/or go to the Olympic model of letting players profit from their likeness. The tournament is a billion dollar enterprise and it all goes to the networks, NCAA, coaches, athletic directors, conference commissioners and universities - I paid $190 for two tickets to Michigan's game last Saturday and I didn't pay to watch Mark Emmert or Jim Delany do a damn thing.
But hey at least the players get free food and 'job training'.
I honestly have to ask you, if you find college athletics this reprehensible and basically immoral, why do you consume the product?
This is not directed just or specifically at you, but to everybody here who thinks these kids are getting shit on and robbed. You should not be watching the game tonight, right? Aren't you just feeding this immoral unethical system? Are is it maybe, just maybe, that the outrage directed at this topic is not burning quite as hot as you say?
I can't answer for the person to whom you asked the question, only for myself. I stopped watching. Something broke in me this spring. It was a "tipping" point that is the title of Brian's article. I looked at just the Big 10 East... MSU: Rapes swept under the rug, a sexual abuser/pedophile of incredible proportions also operating for a long time and no one who wears Green seems to care. OSU: Money for athletes, an assistant coach who beat his wife and ordered sex toys into his office.. no one seems to care. Maryland: Kills a player and it takes forever just to figure out that maybe the jerk coach should not be allowed to coach. Rutgers: Murder for hire plot... let's all laugh at Rutger. PSU: Yep, horrible Pedophile and basically most of the sanctions get overturned.
I see LSU playing in a tournament facing up against MSU in the tournament.. I can't find the joy in that. Or seeing Oregon, Duke.. etc. winning because they can buy players who need the money.
I am not feeding this immoral unethical system. I'm sure I'll get a few folks telling me "Bye Felicia" and the such. That's fine, if you can find joy in it, more power to you. But I have reached the tipping point as I think Brian is getting close to.
I work with a former college baseball player. He has noted to me that he has grown tired of all of the bullcrap in High School and College athletics. He loves sports and all of the good character things it brings, but he is just tired of it and will be glad when his last child is done with sports.
For the TLDR folks... I have stopped, because I have reach the "tipping point."
College tuition costs are completely arbitrary and don't reflect any meaningful dollar value. Does Michigan really need the revenue from the football and basketball teams to afford to not receive tuition money from non-revenue athletes? I would find that incredibly hard to believe.
Yeah, much better to keep the huge revenue those players generate going to hordes of overpaid coaches and staff members rather than those spoiled players.
Conventional wisdom says such a shift would help Michigan for obvious reasons. Any guess on how long it would take to see those effects?
My brother recently had a debate how much a MgoBlog Kickstarter with the intent to buy recruits would net. We settled on around the $100K range. Thoughts? How many of you would chip in?
100k per 5 star recruit
That would be a underpay
Remember that during recruitment multiple schools/bagmen are involved. You can take the money and just never go to that school. What are they gonna do, rat themselves (and their institutions) out to the NCAA to spite you?
I wouldn't chip in at all, unless it was a kickstarter and I got season tickets out of it. The athletic department should pay the bill, not the fans.
just a couple of thoughts.
re: "nobody gives a crap" - none of adidas' stock price, adidas' market share or tv ratings really relate to whether the public cares about paying players, either under-the-table or, in some unlikely future universe, over it. that most of us dismiss lsu or kentucky's accomplishments (and, to a lesser extent, duke, north carolina, sparty, et al) is about all you need to know. we care that teams cheat, but we still love watching the games, and we still buy shoes. both things can be true.
re: "the limits of depravity" - most of my sparty friends initially reacted very strongly to the larry nasser revelations, spouting lip service about holding their athletic department accountable and wondering whether they could keep rooting for their teams...three guesses as to their current attitudes. the same thing happened at baylor after dave bliss left town - very few baylor fans would've advocated cancelling basketball, despite defensible reasons to do so.
the two points are related - we will generally keep watching and buying because we love the games, and our willingness to keep doing so - at almost any cost - is what will keep the system afloat for the forseeable future.
But in the results-driven world we live in "giving a crap" mentally and still watching the games and buying the gear is all that really matters. Personal opinions are fine to have but if you don't act on them then their value, at least as it relates to showing displeasure with the current state of amateur athletics in this country, they don't register. And there has always been some cognitive dissonance around fans and their teams; Michigan undoubtedly has "cheated" but we still cheer them on because, unless it's a situation like Baylor or MSU or PSU, nobody got hurt. Bol Bol getting a check from a bag man in Nike gear doesn't cause anyone actual harm.
I guess that's been my issue with all the outrage; it feels fabricated to show some level of social recognition or popular morality, not some fundamental distaste for the actions. Like you said, MSU and Baylor fans don't really care about sexual assaults if they keep consuming the product; I'd hazard a guess that UM fans would do the same if it happened in Ann Arbor. And that's for horrendous crimes perpetrated on human beings. Chris Webber and Jalen Rose getting some envelopes of cash from Ed Martin barely registers in comparison, and it probably shouldn't. So if on one hand ratings keep going up and old men in suits collect millions of dollars from TV and merchandising rights, and on the other people on the internet say they don't think Duke's accomplishments (which they watch) aren't as impressive because some dudes got $100 handshakes, then the world has spoke about how much crap they give and it's effectively nil
Yeah I'm not sure why stock price is used as an indicator of how many people care. According to a quick Google search, Adidas sponsors roughly 30% of teams. So if youre a fan of Florida Atlantic, you're not going to stop buying team gear because Louisville bought some players. And if you're a die-hard Louisville fan you're not going to stop buying Louisville t shirts. And then when you take into account the rest of the non college fans in the entire world, I don't see how the stock price would tank. I mean as Michigan fans it pretty easy for us to boycott Adidas because there's no Adidas Michigan gear anymore.
No person or group of people acting however horribly a person can act -- over however many years it happens -- will ever be enough to end my Michigan fandom. The school is simply bigger than the actions of any person or persons. Every coach of every one of our sports could go-on to become serial killers, and an investigation in 2060 could show that Michigan was covering up treacherous murders for half a century. Wouldn't change shit. This is our love. The NCAA is a joke thinking that anyone would become any less interested in watching their teams play simply because the essence of amateurism is coming into question.
I can already see this comment section going to hell, but whatever, might as well get riled up before tonight.
The amateurism argument has always been bunk, and most of the people who still support it as a means to uphold the NCAA's position on athlete compensation would agree provided the mics and cameras were off. It's why I never take seriously people who claim they'll stop watching college sports if they start paying the players directly; it's the same faux outrage and sepia-toned idolizing of a false past you see when internet people learn that some piece of pop culture is "destroying their childhood" by having the temerity to recognize women as human beings.
College football and basketball are two of the top 5 sports in the country in terms of ratings and consumption, and they generate literally billions of dollars for the NCAA and its member institutions. Yes, these universities are places of higher learning and education, but much walking and chewing bubble gum college sports has shown it can help the student athletes in the classroom and make gobs of money. So it's always been weird to me that the idea of handing some of that money to the student-athletes as actual cash, not just in the form of Nike-sponsored swag, scholarships, food, study desk, and everything else is so antithetical to people. The reason it's shady when an apparel brand does it is because of this construct that's been built around it, and honestly the only reason the NCAA gives a shit is because they don't get a cut.
To the VAST majority of people, college sports is about watching athletes play a sport in the garb of a college you either attended or have some connection with. Full stop. The fact that many of these athletes get access to world-class educational opportunities as a result is a happy by-product and one I'm happy to see. But what they receive when they aren't on the field or court competing shouldn't really matter and certainly isn't anyone's business provided it's not patently illegal. Avenatti is a clown and shouldn't be trusted on most matters, but as highlighted in the Deadspin article his greatest folly here was overestimating the the number of fucks that could be scraped out from America's collective cupholders and given toward this "issue".
a tad verbose but extremely well said bronx
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