A Case for Paying Division-1 Football/Basketball Players
As we all know, there have recently been many scandals involving paying football players (Cam Newton, recruiting, OSU players selling gold pants, Tattoo-gate, etc). It's not just football players involved, either: we all know what happened with the Fab 5. Is paying sports players so bad though? We all know that universities make millions of dollars based on their football - and to a lesser extent basketball - programs. In addition, many players come from extremely poor backgrounds and must support their families and/or kids. Obviously, if we were to pay them, it would need to be legalized by the NCAA.
First, I know that many of you do not believe in paying sports players. Why pay them when they're already receiving a free education worth 200K? I would like to present an unusual but strangely compelling analogy between football players and PhD students. As an engineering PhD student, I've noticed many similarities between the two. Obviously the analogy isn't perfect but I consider it to be an interesting one.
- Both PhD students and football players provide more value to the University than they receive in direct compensation. PhD students draw grants worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions of dollars from companies (if you're an engineering or science PhD student) and the federal government. A good PhD student provides a lot of exposure for the University in the research community and in the news: when you read about some professor's science breakthrough in the Science section of the NY Times, keep in mind that the PhD students working for the professor are the ones who did 99% of the work. In compensation, the PhD student receives free tuition (sounds familiar?), and a minor stipend for living expenses. Obviously, we all know that football players generate way more money in athletic revenue and generate tons of exposure for the university: see the Doug Flutie effect. Also, would anyone not in Idaho have heard of Boise State University if it weren't for football?
- Both PhD students and football players get a free education. All PhD students do not pay for their tuition, either receiving funding through teaching (TA), research (RA), or an internal or external fellowship.
- The #1 job of PhD students and football players is not to do well in class. The #1 job of the PhD student is to do lots of research. Taking classes is mostly to learn some background information, although one or two classes will suffice for their research area. Of course, they need to take more classes to graduate. After the first few classes, all other classes are just for the sake of your own interest, to "make you a better person." Your advisor will also pressure you to spend more time on research and less time on classwork (assuming that you're not in danger of failing out). Obviously most coaches would rather their star football players focus on football rather than studying (assuming that they're not in danger of failing out).
As we can see, from a high level perspective, there are many similarities. The difference is that PhD students get a stipend, which varies based on the school and the location. Also schools may offer PhD students different amounts of money for their services based on how good they are. For example, an OSU PhD student choosing between OSU, MIT and Stanford will probably get a larger offer from OSU than one who just got into OSU. Stipends range between 15K to 30K a year, based on the department, school, and your attractiveness as a candidate.
Aside from these points, PhD students and football recruits share another similarity: recruiting visits. Obviously they aren't as lavish as the football recruiting visits, but schools still make an effort to wine and dine you, paying for your airplane tickets, hotel rooms, and gourmet food.
So if we wish to pay football students, how much money should they be offered? It shouldn't be too crazy: they're still basically amateurs, and frankly many smaller schools can't afford it. However, they should be paid enough to support themselves and possibly a family. Guess what? That sounds exactly like a PhD stipend! PhD stipends are already designed to support a student's living expenses and be able to just barely cover them if they already have a family. They are designed to be affordable for the school, competitive with other schools, and support the student based on the cost of living in the area.
Based on these facts, I propose that football and basketball student athletes be paid as much as the minimum PhD student stipend at the university (maybe multiplied by some value between 0 and 1 since athletes already have many aspects covered such as food). The stipend is enough to support them and encourages universities to pay their PhD students more money if they would like to raise the stipend for their sports players, thus fostering better research. The NCAA has said many times that student-athletes are students first, so now it's time for them to prove it or shut up. Making the football stipend based on some academic stipend is a good way to do it since it will improve the quality of graduate education as well as giving student athletes enough money to support themselves and their families back at home.
What if the school does not have a PhD program? An alternative strategy is to make the student athlete stipend based on the minimum professor salary. Here are some examples for what the student athlete salary can be:
Athlete Salary = A * (Teaching Assistant stipend)
Athlete Salary = B * (PhD stipend)
Athlete Salary = C * (Assistant Professor salary)
Where A and B are maybe between 0.5 and 1, and C is around 0.1 or so.
TLDR: Here's the main question that I'm posing: how do we distinguish between Div 1 basketball and football players from PhD students, in light of the fact that they both produce more value than what they receive?
Building on what I said, here is proof:
http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/why-did-17-million-students-go-t…
"Putting issues of student abilities aside, the growing disconnect between labor market realities and the propaganda of higher-education apologists is causing more and more people to graduate and take menial jobs or no job at all. This is even true at the doctoral and professional level—there are 5,057 janitors in the U.S. with Ph.D.’s, other doctorates, or professional degrees."
March 31st, 2011 at 10:48 PM ^
OK, I think you're just being nit-picky, but let's pretend that you're right. Please tell me then, what job can someone who got a PhD in Ancient Greek Literature do that he couldn't do with just an undergraduate or Masters degree in the field. The premise is that this person "failed", meaning he or she was unable to get a teaching job (the equivalent of not making the NFL).
I think that you're giving PhD students too much credit. Any reasonable professor or graduate student can tell you that most PhD work is full of shit, pardon the language. Out of every paper published by every PhD student, maybe only 1% of them (or less) are actually worth the time to read.
To elaborate a bit more, basically the goal of the PhD student is to bullshit out something that's reasonable enough to publish and then graduate. It takes a lot of time and effort to create quality research, and unfortunately most people choose not to do so.
As an example in my field, most papers on computer architecture present work that improves performance (or some other metric) by 20-50%. Anyone in industry can tell you that that's BS, and if it were actually implemented (assuming that the idea is good enough to implement, which it probably isn't) it'll probably only get 5-10%, if that.
Most papers have the potential to be valuable, but you never know which papers are actually going to help someone to actually do something valuable. I've heard other people talk about "1%" of the publications out there actually being useful (only talking about technical papers.) The number is made up of course, but I think the point is valid. A lot gets burried in the journals only getting cited by people already affiliated with it. A small fraction get used outside of academic settings.
Aren't you the one who just said they do 99% of the work?
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<br>Sounds like you're making a better case to pay Grad Students less, not athletes more.
You will never be able to pay them enough so that they still won't want to make more from boosters.
I completely agree with this, and think it's theone of the primary flaws in the argument for paying players. They're still going to take the payouts. It's free money... would you turn down 10k if someone on the street just walked up and handed it to you? Plus, a lot of this money (Newton, eg) comes while these players are being recruited (long before their salary from the college kicks in). Which means they'll take it, because at that time, they're not making anything from the school.
Lest we forget, TP and company didn't actually need the money they got from selling their stuff. They burned it on tats and whatever. It wasn't to help their poor families back home or whatever people think when they cry about the poor athletes. It was because they could. The good players will always be able to sell memorbilia and will continue to do so if it makes them money. Hey, my "salary" gets me drinks at the bar on weeknights, but I can sell my jersey for enough to cover spring break in Miami? Sold.
Football and basketball players should absolutely be paid. The NCAA and major D1 college athletics have essentially set-up an entirely unnatural paradigm, whereby an entertainment product has been cultivated, and financial rewards gained, but the real earners (stars of the show) receive 0% of the money. Pay them a reasonable stipend or provide them with additional benefits. Until that changes, the rules will continue to be broken. Didn't CBS pay billions of dollars to the NCAA for the rights to broadcast March Madness? Additionally, I see no reason why football and basketball players can't major in their respective sport. Artists are allowed to major in Art. Therefore, develop a curriculum that is useful for athletes wanting to play professionally; courses may include: Contract Law, Personal Finance, Investing, Media Relations, Public Speaking etc., and provide for them the tools to use in their lives after college. Just my 2 cents.
csides
LSA '98
Division 1-A programs have 85 scholarships for football and I believe 13 for basketball for a total of 98. I know Michgan gives a total of 335 scholarship equivalents per its FY 2011 budget, so that means U-M has 237 scholarships outside of football and men's basketball that it funds.
If you pay those 98 players $400/month over 12 months, the annual cost is $470,400. That's a pretty modest amount for the Michigan Athletic Department which has projected revenue of over $105M in FY 2011. But will that solve the problem of money handshakes and street agents and boosters that permeates these sports?
How about some more serious money--let's say $10,000 per player per year. The math is simple on that one--we're looking at $980,000 in annual cost. Again, that's something Michigan's Athletic Department would probably be able to handle, but what about other schools who may not have the same resources? And again, will that $10,000 per year really change the situation? Also, should this be means tested? After all, I don't think Tim Hardaway, Jr. really needs the extra money as much as someone like Jalen Rose did.
What about the other scholarship athletes at Michigan--do they get paid as well? It's true that they aren't in revenue sports, but they also operate under the same sets of NCAA rules as the footballers and men's basketball players. At U-M, that $400/month stipend for all 335 scholarship athletes would have a cost of $1.6M. If you give them all $10,000 per year, then its up to $3.35M.
But there's one other thing to consider--Michigan actually has 764 individuals who participate in varsity sports per the Department of Education's database--see http://ope.ed.gov/athletics/InstDetails.aspx?756e697469643d31373039373626796561723d32303039267264743d332f33312f3230313120383a32303a313020504d
Do all 764 individuals get paid? At that $400/month stipend rate, we're talking about $3.67M and at $10,000 per year, it goes up to $7.64M.
What system would you advocate that would be fair to the parties concerned? Keep in mind what the impact would be on varsity sports not only at Michigan, but at all Division 1-A universities that don't have the same sort of financial resources. Also keep in mind that Title IX is still in effect when you think about eliminating varsity sports because there are athletic departments that can't afford to support them while paying some or all the players.
March 31st, 2011 at 10:44 PM ^
I don't think all varsity athletes need to be paid the same. As you pointed out, they aren't all treated the same now. Some get full scholarships, some are partial scholarships and some don't get any scholarship at all. The stipend could be variable like scholarships are.
What would you do with players who play different amounts of time, say a starter in football vs one of the 85 other scholarship players who just don't see the field. Do you give them a different level of compensation? Do all starters get paid one thing and all scrubs another? Do you break it down based upon the number of plays? How about if someone gets hurt? You want to talk about destroying teamwork and camarderie, you have found the perfect solution.
What are you going to do with a major in football if you don't go pro? Coach?
With respect, I understand the argument that a major or concentration in football may not be of any value outside of being a football player or football coach.
Consider however:
1. Many universities grant undergraduate and graduate degrees for music, drama, and the fine arts (painting, sculpting, pottery). The lives of artists, musicians, and actors are certainly not any easier or more lucrative (on average) than a professional athlete. Their peak years are often short in duration and unless they are a star, they have to eke out a living teaching, coaching, or otherwise supporting themselves while they work on their craft and art.
2. Their degree however encompasses the whole scope of their field. So a degree for someone who aspires to be a pro ball players would be in performance athletics.
3. The music programs offer a good parallel. Not everyone can get a music scholarship, there are competitive tryouts and one has to practice and practice year round. They have a prescribed course of study which include general studies in music and specific studies in their area of focus (voice, violin, piano, woodwinds, etc.). At the end their program they have a deep all around understanding of their choice in life.
4. For a performance athlete, they would have to know about the history of sport in general, its effect on society, culture and economics. They have to know about professional sports and in particular their focus. Courses on physiology, psychology, physiokinetcs, nutrition, and the legal/financial aspects would be emphasized. Training would be year round and each year these scholarship athletes would be expected to make progress.
5. When a music or drama student leaves school and becomes a star, no one minds, it just helps the program. That would be the same way with a performance athletics program.
6. This would get rid of a lot of the hypocrisy of the NCAA rules (why limit practice for someone who aspires to be a pro; no one limits the music student from practicing) and help clean up a lot of shady entourage hangers on - the time spent on campuse would be seen as valuable and truly helpful.
It probably wont' happen however unless a really brave college president and board is willing to shake up the current money making system. The athletes would be "paid" by their top notch training and it would be a fair trade.
Certainly receiving an athletic scholarship, housing, and meals is not free and I am not suggesting that it is. The reality is that the players are not compensated fairly for services performed under the current schema. NCAA rules prohibit the players from having an outside job. This paradigm is untenable and to suggest otherwise is unrealistic. Elite D1 football and basketball programs bring an extraordinary amount of income to colleges and universities, and that money is used to fund a variety of unprofitable teams within the athletic dept. including Tile IX sports; however the athletes receive none of the monetary benefits. I am not suggesting paying players cash under the table, but simply provide a fair stipend as part of the scholarship. As an aside, I don't think the comparison with PhD candidates is an accurate one. As for the comment regarding what would players do if they don't play professionally, would they coach? First off, the athlete is not required to major in said sport, but if they want to they should be allowed to. Secondly, if the want to coach, then coach. I guess I don't understand the problem with designing a major meant to benefit the participants. If you majored in finance for example, but found a career in something else, what would be the difference?
Man, when I went to college my scholarship, housing, food, books and everything cost money. I didn't know it was all free now, lucky dogs.
There needs to be an alternate path for players to get to the professional football and basketball outside of the college route. I think that's the only way you can get rid of a lot of the problems surrounding collegiate sports nowadays.
The NBA and NFL should both have full fledged developmental leagues like baseball and ice hockey do for their sports. The NCAA, NBA and NFL can work together to set up these leagues so that they're acting in concert with one another.
There is clearly a group of youngsters who are talented enough to take a shot at professional football and basketball, but don't want to be in a university setting in order to get there. There is another group that may want to go to university and play sports, but don't have the necessary academics to do it.
My suggestion is do what the military services do with their academy prep schools who get students ready to attend the U.S Naval Academy and the U.S. Military Academy prior to their formal admission (the Naval Academy Prep School is called NAPS--see http://www.usna.edu/NAPS/). Youngsters can go to school (or to work), practice their sport and get themselves ready for college or a trade or perhaps even an associates degree. If they're good enough to play in the pros, they get drafted like anyone else. If they aren't good enough, they have an opportunity to get an academic scholarship to play in college for the rest of their eligibility (ex. if a player spends two years at the prep school, then he has two years of eligibility left in college).
The NFL is a nine-billion dollar enterprise--I think they can set aside some money for a development league. The colleges can still recruit players who want to be student-athletes for four or five years as well--that aspect of this doesn't change at all.
I just think there need to be other alternatives available so that collegiate sports gets to the point where it's somewhat more sane for everybody involved. NCAA basketball seems to have survived "one and done" players, so having a prep school alternative isn't going to hurt the sport too much. College football might not have all the same level of talent on the field, but the graduation rates would probably go up while the attrition rates go down.
March 31st, 2011 at 11:02 PM ^
The answer depends on what the goal of paying players is. Is it because they deserve compensation or to remove pay-to-play scandals?
If it's to prevent scandals a solution I've heard for basketball is to allow players to enter the draft after HS and then once again after their sophmore year if they didn't get drafted out of HS. Once a player is drafted he signs a contract but still goes to the college he signed with. He goes to school for free and is paid a base salary by his NBA team for owning his rights. I don't know of many so-so players that are paid to go to a college. It seems like every Michigan player that was paid was also drafted (Webber, Taylor, Traylor, and Bullock) so this would remove the problem.
In the NFL there is less of a correlation between HS talent and being drafted so I think having a draft isn't a solution.
One unusual idea I have heard (from a labor economics professor) is to have a signing bonus for every college athlete. The players get a small lump sum when they sign helping with moving costs, finding apartments, etc. Then each semester they get X amount from their college.
However, neither solution really prevents schools from paying players to attend. A player could be drafted (and paid by their NBA team) and then still paid to attend tOSU. Or a player could sign to be a LB at Auburn and still find a suitcase full of money. And should schools have to pay athletes on every sports team? Men's Football = Women's gymanstics? Some smaller schools won't be able to afford it and it would probably kill some sports programs. At the same time, paying football players and not other sports is crazy and completely unfair.
The truth is there is no way to stop people from paying players as long as there is a scaricity of elite talent. Every school wants to win but there are only X number of elite players.
March 31st, 2011 at 11:10 PM ^
I'm a staunch opponent of paying college athletes, for a number of reasons. More so than anything though, I feel as though the main arguments fall flat. One of them was brought up here, and has been brought up by just about everybody, and that is "There is no other industry in America where the owners make billions of dollars and don't have to pay the workers". But isn't this exactly what college is? Universities themselves are multi-billion dollar companies, and the people *students) who fund that don't get paid do they? And just like going to the NFL, although one has options to make a living by foregoing a college degree, their options are usually automatically limited by whether or not they have a degree. If I want to be a writer for a major newspaper, no matter how good my writing skills or how much research I've done, even if I've completed every reading that a normal college student would complete over four years, chances are I'm not going to get hired without the proper degree.
Secondly, I hate this notion that college athletes "just want to have the normal college life", or that a "stipend" would be enough. When was the last time wins were vacated or a heisman was taken away because an athlete took thirty bucks for groceries? Anyone? And when was the last time you were at the bar and you saw the star quarterback huddled in the corner because he couldn't afford a drink? Anyone? These athletes don't want to be normal, they want to live like pros. That's why they take tens, and sometimes hundreds, of thousands of dollars. Normal for a college student is coming out after four years with tens of thousands in debt and very little job prospects in this economy. It's not graduatingt with zero debt and a multi-million dollar contract waiting for you. This notion of the "poor sad athlete" is becoming much too exaggerated...
But, that's just my two cents.
But you didn't address the issue presented here, i.e., the comparison between PhD students, who receive a stipend, and D1 athletes, who don't. Any thoughts on that?
(BTW I agree with everything you said).
It seems to me to boil down to one fundamental thing—college athletes are not PhD students. They’re undergraduate students. Their version of obtaining a PhD is signing a contract in the professional league for their sport. Think about the similarities: Both need to obtain undergraduate education in order to move forward. Not everyone is selected to the elite programs, and once they do their research (or for athletes, play out their initial contract) they either move forward in their career or they find a new one.
It seems to me that the most obvious answer is one I have yet to see talked about. Why not offer an allotment of work-study positions? I’m not sure of the legality behind it or the federal labor laws that would have to be consulted, but wouldn’t this eliminate a lot of the headaches? Only those athletes who demonstrate financial hardship would qualify, if they want extra money they can take out a loan like normal college students, and payment would be at a normal hourly rate. Not to mention that it would help monitor both the income of the athlete as well as the practice hours.
(thanks for agreeing FYI—I thought that post was going to get torn apart)
March 31st, 2011 at 11:36 PM ^
I really like how you developed your idea and put it out there, even though it cut against common opinion.
In my mind, the issue you raise is, how do we distinguish between Div 1 basketball and football players from PhD students, in light of the fact that they both produce more value than what they receive?
Great question - I don't have an answer at the moment. But I'll think about it. My disagreement at the moment is based on sentiment, which is almost never solid grounds for anything.
This post is an example of MGB at its finest IMHE.
Thanks for the compliment! I probably wasn't clear enough in my original post, but you've exactly described my point that I was trying to raise. I will add it to my OP.
This analogy works for PhD students. Beginning in July I'll be a third-year medical student PAYING 50k per year to work 80 hours a week at a hospital. I'd glady accept a scholarship in return for my labors.
Athletes are more important than doctors?
Don't you get paid for doing residencies? I have a friend in pharmacy who is getting paid something like 40K a year, which isn't great but it's something.
You get paid absolutely handsomely being a resident. You make in the low 40's, work 80 hours a week, including all nighters. For craps sake, a nurse with a fraction of the skills and a four year degree working half the time makes twice as much. And that residency comes after four years of college and four years of med school where, if you are like my OOS family at Michigan, your education only cost about 400K.
Yup...great deal.
1. Letting athletes sell their memorabilia or likenesses has potential for problems.
If you open up the abilty of players to sell trinkets, jerseys, and signed crap for whatever price, how long before gold pants and a promise to help meet a spread go for $15K instead of just $1500 for the pants alone? Local radio idiot made a rare sane point that pro football players make enough money these days (well, assuming they start playing football again) that they can't be tempted by the money of gamblers to shave points, but college players making nothing, or even making $10-15K in the scenarios above, can still be enticed by another $15K.
2. Paying athletes does not solve anything, but just introduces more problems as far as Title IX and squeezing non-profitable athletical programs or sports out of existence (hey, Gee's done it before). With the large number of professional athletes who end up broke after their playing days, more money just gives some of these folks earlier practice at blowing it (say, on tattoos)
3. Not all PhD's work on things that bring in big $$ or prestige for the universities, especially if they are working as teaching assistants. It likely averages out with the other RA's who are sometimes abused - I've seen dissertations delayed for extra years so their advisor could milk them for more papers and grant proposals.
Before I'd start to give any credence to the proposal floated here, I'd have to see a much more thorough economic analysis, along with much more of the cause and effect of some of the decisions. Everyone just sees large dollar amounts and thinks that means there must be lots of dollars to just give to poor little athletes and that'll solve all the problems of NCAA/sports/society/etc. Very similar when you only look at a corporation's revenues and not look at the profit (or loss).
The original post definitely stimulates debate but I really don't understand the logic of this at all...
How about comparing athletes to athletes rather than athletes to PhDs? Especially since the "value" you describe are soft costs. The relationship of value of merchandising from an athlete and grants from a PhD candidate has not been empirically articulated in the original post.
When we look at Athletic Departments, approximately 10% of D1 schools are profitable. Yes, that even counts the mighty SEC. Schools lose money on sports there.
I'm assuming that you're deductively reasoning that if players are paid, the stigma of agents and money handshakes goes away -- it decriminalizes it.
WRONG! If there was a stipend, you're adding costs to already fragile AD budgets. Who do you think is going to come forward and pay the players when the AD cannot? The school? No. Agents and well-heeled boosters will be coming out of the freaking woodwork.
Ed Martin would have had a field day if the NCAA allowed a stipend for athletes.
There's definitely a "hard" value: people pay to see the football players in the form of stadium tickets, merchandise purchasing, and TV contracts.
Okay, quantify it then.
To prove your point, and back up your weak and disjointed comparisons, show me how an athlete’s impact on tix, merchandising, and TV versus a PhD's ability to bring in grants and R & D dollars, affects a school's balance sheet.
Now also consider your case for paying athletes is DI-wide. How does a school like Eastern stack up against, oh, I don't know, Stanford?
So to make up for inequities, do you propose then that a school like Stanford be able to pay their athletes more than Eastern? After all if you're so worried about this notion of value, a school with more money should certainly be able to pay their people more? Why should Stanford have to have the same standard as Eastern in such a case?
Or does the NCAA have an across the board flat rate for athletes which most schools couldn't afford anyway? Which by the way would bring the agents and boosters out of the woodwork?
I don't know about you but when I propose an expense at work, I have to show numbers. I cannot go into mahogany row and merely tell 'em hey there are hard values here and expect my ideas to be accepted.
Are most PhD students having their scholarship paid for by their department? Or are they just "waiving" the tuition? Because athletic departments are actually using that money made to pay the school for their Player's scholarship. Does that grant money acquired pay for the PhD tuition?
Major, major difference that seems to have been missed: In order to become a PhD student you first have to earn an undergraduate degree and then a graduate degree - in other words, hundreds of thousands of dollars have already come out of your own pocket to get where you are. PhD students don't just show up *poof* out of nowhere and get paid. They have years, if not decades, of experience that they bring to the university and their field and they've already put way, way more money into the system than they're going to get out of it studying for their PhD. At best they might come out even.
The same cannot be said for football players. The question is not whether they're being paid "fairly" based on what they bring the school. The question is how well compensated are they compared to their peers? The answer is: football players are in the 99.9th percentile. How is that unfair?
Don't football players also have years of experience that they bring to their field? Most players start in elementary school or middle school. Considering that many PhD students apply to the program with only a Bachelor's degree, one can argue that football players actually have more experience than a starting PhD student.
Also PhD students are also in the 99.9th percentile.
99th percentile of what? Very, very few PhD students are in the 99th percentile of their peers: other PhD students. Every D-I football player is definitely in the 99th percentile of their peers: other undergraduate students.
And, what, PhD students appeared from birth as 18-year-old undergrads? Why do you count the high school and peewee football experience of football players but not the high school experiences of PhD students? Even so, a football player has maybe six years of useful football experience under his belt before he goes to undergrad. A PhD student has at the barest of bare minimums six years of college study before starting a PhD unless he's some kind of prodigy. If someone applies for a PhD without a graduate degree, here's betting ten thousand dollars that unless they really are talented beyond belief and did some really special things as an undergrad, they're not 22 years old and just walking off the stage with their bachelor's degree.
PhD students are in the 99.9th percentile compared to students who choose to join the workforce rather than get a PhD.
Also what the heck, everyone in Engineering applies for a PhD without a Masters degree. I did the same and so did most of my peers.
Oh, OK. And those poor desperate football players are so badly off compared to people who don't go to college and try to get a job with nothing but a high school degree - or less. Come on, man. There's a huge flaw in your assertion and you know it. I'm comparing apples to apples (undergraduates who play football to other undergraduates) and you're comparing pineapples to steak (PhD students to whomever you think fits your assertion.)
OK fine, it wasn't a good comparison. You can't equate the two because football players are a subset of undergrads and PhDs... are PhDs. You have to compare them some other way.
Lets take football players as a subset of 17-22 year olds and PhDs as a subset of 23-28 year olds (or something like that, you get the point). In both cases then, both are in the 99th percentile.
If you just mean the pure number who continue, then yeah, maybe. If you mean only the highest percentage of the best go on, well, now you're doing what you warned...giving PhD's too much credit. Because just because someone decides to go and make money doesn't mean that they weren't (whatever your percentage means, smarter or better) than those who decided to get another degree.
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<br>In fact, in your comparison to athletics, those who can go out and make lots of money without more schooling, and leave early, are generally the best.
Working in hi tech, I find it difficult to believe that Bill Gates, Scott McNealy and say Carly Fiorina were not the smartest people in their class (Gates, McNealy at Harvard, Fiorina at Stanford).
And a lot of the smartest students in graduating classes go on to industry, now if you're saying the average PhD has more intelligence than the average Bachelor's, I could buy that, but at the top, there is no difference.
Your analogy is not bad. I'm a PhD student in a Humanities field, and it has occurred to me but I drew a different conclusion. NCAA athletes aren't so different from us, they generate $ or provide services but are under-compensated. Grad students accept that because the degree and experience they get are worth the short-term sacrifice. The student-athlete's situation is not unique - grad students, interns, medical residents, etc. all take apprentice-type positions that pay poorly for a deferred benefit. That's life. If they can find a better deal, they should take it. Propose a better, feasible system? We should listen. But I get tired of hearing about the plight of the poor, exploited athletes as if it's some unique injustice.
That's correct, but why should athletes get a worse deal than the PhD students? Grad students, interns, and medical residents all get paid substantially for their services.
Where you lose me is with your medical resident comparisons and their substantial payments for services. Since you are a CE student, I suspect you are good at math. Try 40,000/(80*52) and tell me if it equals the minimum wage. Bet its pretty close.
And very few had college paid for nor med school and most are supporting a shit load of debt and a medical system fraught with peril.
the average age of incoming PhD students is around 26, given they graduate at 22, they either got a masters or they maybe worked for a couple of years. And that number is inflated by international students, who may have a few more years of work experience, I agree.
There are a few problems with this. First, anything you do for football/basketball, you have to do for all the other sports, unless schools can come up with some kind of legal distinction between them (which is pretty doubtful).
Second, it's not actually true that football is always a cash cow. In fact, many football programs, even at the I-A level, lose money. It's only at the BCS superpowers that football can generate enough money to pay for everything. Many other schools are barely scraping by as it is, and need their athletic departments to be subsidized by the university. Given this, you're not going to see them go for a bylaw change that results in significant new expenditures.
In addition to their education, they get meals, travel, and a housing allowance. Add it up, and they’re making more than the average middle-class family. The argument is not about paying them, but about paying them more.
The problem is: there is no conceivable amount we could pay them, that would come close to the value of a Reggie Bush or a Cam Newton on the open market. You won’t eliminate the temptation for them to go after under-the-table payoffs, unless you pay them what they are really worth, which is plainly impossible. When a kid is worth millions, giving him a few hundred or a few thousand legitimately isn’t going to keep the scouts, agents, and boosters away.
The other problem is that most Division I programs operate at a loss, which would only widen if they have to pay their players more than they do already.
Don't forget they are given top shelf medical care, all the food they can possibly eat (west quad cafeteria FTW), the best tutors money can buy, world class training facilities (in some cases), and offseason trips or travel, example: We went to Rio for winter break and trained.
For a kid out of state, the cost of a four year degree at Michigan is easily valued somewhere between 350-400k without breaking a sweat.
You cannot pay amatuer athletes, if you let that genie out of the bottle, college athletics are finished.
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