College Players Union - No $$ Discussion
So the existing college players union thread seems to have gone straight to the "Theyre already paid" vs. " but Delany makes BILLIONS" argument, and I think the union goes deeper than that. Specifically, let's leave that money/stipend/pay-for-play discussion in the other thread and focus on what OTHER things NCAA athletes could attempt to bargain for.
Coulter commented that right now Athletes don't even have a seat at the bargaining table. Now, presumably, they will. If I'm an NCAA athlete I have a few things that I'd like to see:
1 - rewrite the LOI with protections for players. Currently LOIs are an extremely 1-way contract, as seen when Les Miles tells a kid who is moving into the dorms that he doesn't have a scholarship. I'd like to see universal transfer rules (eligible immediately if a coach leaves, able to go anywhere out-of-conference) and 4-5 year scholarships
2 - additional year of non-eligible scholarship education: All players get 1 additional year of tuition/room/board beyond their playing years (capped at 5 years). If the NCAA really is about educating college athletes, get them more education. If players are leaving for the pros doing what is best for them, keep them connected to their college and have the protection for the students if the pros doesn't work.
3 - streamlined compliance rules - seriously, bagels = OK, cream cheese = violation. Let's get some players in the room when those rules are being discussed.
4 - recruiting communication rules - same thing. Let the athletes discuss the rules as to how their lives will be changed.
Anything else? There are already practice time constraints. Should there be protections/benefits for interviews/photoshoots? How about player input on "countable hours"?
I think the more likely scenario (after this has run its course) is schools like Northwestern drop their football programs.
Because NU pulls in millions of dollars in football. There's not much that can get a University President running around on grass in his shirtsleeves to give people trinkets that they paid $50,000 donations for.
And, you broke your own rule -- (no $).
"they could easily drop all athletics with little to no backlash from students or alumni"
looooooooooooolWHAT
please give me the name of the guy that gets you whatever you're on. People would go absolutely berserk if any major conference school dropped all their athletics.
Northwestern may have the lowest proportion of alums and current students who would go nuts, though. Athletics just aren't as important there as they are at other Big 10 institutions.
Those who would be upset, however, do have a big megaphone, as NU has a lot of people in very prominent media positions.
Exactly, Michael Wilbon would literally never shut up about it.
March 26th, 2014 at 11:03 PM ^
Henry Bienen, Northwestern's President Emeritus, was out there recently lamenting this process and saying that, if the players succeed, he could foresee a scenario in which Northwestern removed itself from Division I athletics completely. Because of the football / hoops revenue alone, I suspect some schools (not sure about Northwestern) would think twice before doing anything that drastic, and again, in the Big Ten, this affects only Northwestern right now.
Not implying it would happen immediately, but one can extrapolate how difficult it would be to remain competitive in DI sports, and drop to D2.
Or, Northwestern could pay their football players tons of cash, and attract the best 5* recruits that way.
That comment was a bit tongue-in-cheek.
Which isn't too much different than corporations threatening to shutdown factories/stores if unionization takes hold. Typical posturing in the by the anti-labor crowd.
So explaining possible costs and benefits of a decision is inherently taking an anti-whatever approach?
In almost any organization, the main thrust of conducting affairs is to keep the noise level to a minimum. Adding unions to college athletics increases an already significant noise level and it's not hard to see some schools saying "screw it" and dropping athletics and thuis decreasing athlete opportunities. Not intending a consequence doesn't make it any less real.
I could definitely see Northwestern arguging that football athletes shouldn't get special treatment over all the other sports, etc and just dropping it the way Chicago did.
Woo! Front page'd!
And assumes that it's just out of the blue:
"He further said that if the players won their fight, private institutions with high academic standards -- he specifically cited Duke and Stanford -- could abandon the current model in order to preserve academic integrity."
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/26/us/northwestern-football-union/index.html…
Imagine if, in addition to this, admissions committees reviewed all applicants under the same rubric, and athletic teams were assembled based on tryouts. Then you could really identify with your team as the UM Wolverines or MSU Spartans, etc., instead of halfway mercenaries.
Professional leagues need to stop forcing players to enter university - they do it in their own interests, not the kids'.
I always smirk a bit at the somewhat invented term "need based". Unless you're a trust fund kid, pretty much every 18-year-old I've known is broke and about to be in debt. All of them are needy. The idea is of course that the parents are supposed to fork over tens of thousands of dollars to help their adult children. Some parents can and do help. Some parents can but don't help. Some parents just can't afford to help. Lots of kids end up with tons of debt because they were not deemed needy enough by some metrics that may not even apply to them.
I'd support approaching this the way other countries do, starting with charging no more than a few thousand bucks a year for tuition.
Why in the world would NU drop football? The academics out there don't like football necessarily because of the money, but the attention it can bring to the university and the affect that it can have on community morale.
because there are two very different schools of thoughts. Some think the name recognition alone is worth the expense. Others view it as a complete waste of time money and resources and think its a net negative. Not hard to imagine a scenario when the cost of compliance is so great that the latter become a majority
But the programs draw money because of the athletes, otherwise why go after 5* recruits. You may not have gone to see Dennard play, but you were certainly more likely to with him as the QB compared to when a less talented person was playing.
Furthermore, what about schools that sell the #2 jersey (or whoever the most popular player on the team is) or put "football" instead of "Manziel" on the back?
No players, no name, no program : no content, no form.
You're saying players do not generate revenue - the program does.
I think revenue generation requires both program and players. People do not pay to sit in stadiums to look at the emblems on an empty midfield/court. They don't pay to gather around the diag. They also don't pay to watch pickup games.
As I see it, failure to acknowledge a fundamental component - either the program or the players - is failure to understand what's really going on here, who the stakeholders are, what the problem is, etc.
My position is that generating revenues requires program and players. You've explicitly said only the program does, and you appear to be holding fast to that position.
The point is that Hoke has to trot someone out there. Some people think that that someone has or should have an interest and a say. Just because (1) there's always another body behind him to take his place, and (2) fans will watch whoever because they care about the program, these things do not diminish his significance.
If Hoke has no one to trot out there, there's no program and no revenue.
March 26th, 2014 at 10:49 PM ^
But the value of anyone's position is their value relative to the value of the person who would replace them. Think of it as WAR in baseball. If you are as good as any average AAA guy, you don't have much value. My point is that most players for any program are no more valuable than they guy they replaced or the guy who will replace them. Not necessarily from a winning standpoint, but from a revenue draw standpoint.
I'm not arguing whether or not they should have an interest or a say, just that I don't buy the "they bring in the revenue" argument for why they should. Because I don't believe they do. I have cheered for Michigan for about 25 years now, and none of those teams, who all had different rosters, piqued my interest notably more than any others. I enjoyed the game more in some intances, but didn't spend my money any differently or alter my viewership. I think that's the case for most fans.
March 27th, 2014 at 12:37 AM ^
How about the added revenue from games viewed nationally by more than just true fans of a particular university team? Couldn't an extremely skillful or flashy player attract more interest in the team by drawing bigger games or higher ratings from casual fans, who may tune in to see a superstar (e.g. the amazing Denard), or do you assume those numbers to be marginal additions to the massive alumni base a university such as ours can count on to view a Threet- or Sheridan-led team the same as a Brady-led team?
The unfortunate thing is that so much of Colter's testimony about the coaches control over their lives really is a result of the public trying to corrupt/use them. You think a coaching staff really want to review all leases, outside jobs, out of state travel, etc. There are just so many bad actors out there that would do anything to get in with football players that they have to do this just to hopefully prevent the program from incurring serious penalties (incompetent NCAA aside).
Someone needs to bring back the USFL or some other league and have that season opposite the NFL season. It could act as a minor league/development league for the NFL and any compensation issues would be put to rest. It worked in the 1980's then Donald Trump tried to put it up against the NFL and have co-existing seasons and got squashed.
and has proved repeatedly to be a financial failure. The expenses of football are too high and the season is too short. You can get away with 5,000 fans per game in minor league baseball because they play roughly 70 home games, but with football you can't.
Unless you've got some prominent stars to draw fans (and thus compete with the NFL for talent), you're not going to make a go of it.
Let the record show that "Coulter" is Kain, the Northwestern running back.
As opposed to a certain famous graduate of Michigan's Law School?
...I'm strongly against the idea of student-athletes being paid (and I firmly believe that the schools will never do it either), I do believe that there is some room for student-athletes to negotiate with universities/NCAA.
And if I were one of theses student athletes then I would probably make fewer games/shorter seasons a top priority. Too much of the "exploitation" argument revolves around money when, if we really want to improve the lives of these kids, then we should probably respect their time more.
OP, you are trying to remove $$ from a discussion that is all about $$. An extra year of scholarship at Michigan is 50-60K. While there are rules that need to be amended heavily or tweaked, ultimately, the almighty greenback is what will come into play.
The difference, though, is that it doesn't cost UM 50-60K more to educate a player who stick around to graduate. All of the costs are sunk- it doesn't matter if that lecture hall has 250 or 251 people in it.
March 26th, 2014 at 10:18 PM ^
This doesn't make any sense. You want to talk about issues outlined by the Northwestern players instead of talking about money for no apparent reason? Northwestern's players don't have a pay-for-play goal. We obviously should be beating that subject to death.
No discussion of food.
can we have hot dogs? Are they not considered food if they're the devil?
Otherwise, You Go Hungry --- BOW BOW BOW (~1:18)
To be fair, the money argument drowns out a lot of other important stuff, which the OP correctly identifies as worth discussing. To use your analogy, if you put aside the burgers vs. hot dogs argument (I know what side you're on), maybe you can discuss and find common ground on sides, drinks, seating arrangement, etc. Yes you still have an elephant in the room, but at least you accomplished something.
March 26th, 2014 at 10:21 PM ^
I think pickles and mustard is the common ground in the burger vs hot dogs debate. Both work wonderfully on each.
These boosters and alums are getting away with murder. Where is the integrity?