Fab Five, This is Where Your Jersey Sales go
Michigan Women's Gymnastics Big Ten Champions 5-Peat
The topic of Football and Basketball players needing to be paid because they generate so much money always irritates me. First and foremost because if the market could sustain a professional minor league, then it would. Baseball and Hockey don't seem to have problems doing this and co-existing with College Amateur Sports.
The student athletes of the lesser revenue generating kind put in just as much work for their scholarships as the football and basketball players. They just aren't blessed by an abundant TV audience to generate insane amounts of revenue. But go take a look at all the facilities on Michigan's campus. Swimming pools, baseball fields, indoor and outdoor track, etc. they are world class and continually being updated. Paid for by the revenue generated from things like basketball jersey sales.
The other reason this discussion irritates me is because it's conducted by people who will also bring up Bo's "The Team The Team The Team" speech. Clearly they've never listened to this speech, because there is a large section where Bo talks about the special and irreplaceable 4 years that are a gift to any student athlete. Those 4 years are a time when student athletes compete for the pure joy of the sport, of their teammates, without any distractions of contracts, sponsorships, and in general the downside of money.
Accepting a scholarship is a choice and a privilege. You can enter the NBA from high school if you are good enough. It won't teach you to be an adult, but you will be paid if your talent is sufficient.
That is a choice.
March 21st, 2011 at 10:47 AM ^
thanks
March 21st, 2011 at 10:51 AM ^
The players choose schollies because they are the best deal out there, and they are supposed to follow the rules. But that doesn't mean they don't deserve to be paid. Shamateurism is a myth, and the NCAA makes sure they control all of the money they possibly can by perpetuating it.
Why shouldn't a kid be allowed to take money from a booster or a local businessman? Obviously, because of the rule, but why does the rule have to be there in the first place? All the current system does is force clean programs like Michigan to compete on a "tipped" playing field against teams that cheat, like OSU, USC, and most of the SEC.
The NCAA is greedy, they want all of the money for themselves, and that is why it is illegal for a kid to take $100 from a "friend." Meanwhile, those jersey sales go into the school's and NCAA's pocket. I don't agree with anyone cheating and taking the money against the rules, but I do think it is time for the rules to be changed.
Maybe the players should unionize.
March 21st, 2011 at 10:57 AM ^
vacationland U.S.A must be a wonderful place
March 21st, 2011 at 10:58 AM ^
Why shouldn't a kid be allowed to take money from a booster or a local businessman?
Because this will create an unfair playing field. You mentioned that Michigan has to complete on a "tipped" scale because some teams cheat... well if this were allowed kids would go where they knew they could get the most from boosters. If everyone who came to Michigan got $200 from Booster X, but everyone who went to Auburn got $180k... everyone would go to Auburn
March 21st, 2011 at 11:25 AM ^
That's kind of the point of the pay-for-play argument though. The way the NCAA has things constructed now is that its created system that restricts the player's options so that the NCAA and the conferences can maximize the revenue they generate. Allowing people behind the scenes to pay players would disrupt that system, tilt the scales, and you'd wind up with a handful of super teams that would dominate interest and ratings and collapse the entire profit system the NCAA has set up. The NCAA's desire to not pay players really has nothing to do with preserving the integrity of the game, but it has everything to do with preserving the cash flow these athletes generate.
Personally, I always think of athletes playing "for free" in college as like a 1-4 year unpaid internships. Plently of college kids take unpaid internships with the hopes of adding valuable experience to land them a good paying job. For a lot of these football/basketball players, its kind of the same thing. Yeah, it sucks at the time, but hopefully it all works out in the end.
March 21st, 2011 at 10:58 AM ^
I really want to call you a bunch of names right now, maybe even ones with swears in them. I won't, but I really want to.
March 21st, 2011 at 11:00 AM ^
Elite basketball players could choose to play in Europe for a year and get paid if they don't want the scholarship. Worked out okay for Brandon Jennings.
March 21st, 2011 at 12:25 PM ^
No doubt. If NCAA basketball was such a raw deal, then players would go to Europe in droves, but they don't. Soccer players do it all the time, because it's a better option for them. Even though Brandon Jennings' situation worked out just fine going the Europe route, no other big name American players have done it. Why? I'm not sure, but probably because the NCAA route is still a better option. Money is not the only thing with value. Being on the front page of ESPN, being discussed on tons of sports radio shows and being watched on TV by half of the country during March Madness has value too. How many Americans are watching the D-League or European basketball? Having all the kids in your state talk about how awesome you are doesn't buy you Deisel jeans, but it sure as hell has value.
March 21st, 2011 at 11:00 AM ^
First, I have absolutely no problem in principle with the idea of players being paid. The problems arise when you start to think about the execution of it. A first big hurdle would be Title IX, which would probably demand that you pay female athletes if you are paying male athletes. A second hurdle would be the fact that a lot of athletic departments don't make money. The VCUs and George Masons of the world might not have the cash to pay players the way Michigan or Duke would.
The Title IX argument only makes sense if you want the schools to directly pay the players. Going off of what Tater said, if you just took a hands-off approach to allowing athletes to work or earn money based off their celebrity, then it has nothing to do with Title IX or broke athletic departments.
It would make the inequality between the schools enormous. You would literally have guys going to the highest bidder.
Like Cam Newton? Or Reggie Bush? It would just level the playing field for clean schools.
Why not let Webber go on TV selling Nike's? It would have kept him from getting involved with someone running a betting ring.
Chris Webber got invovlved with Ed Martin when he was in the seventh grade.
Chris Webber went to Detroit Country Day School. Both of his parents had good jobs.
He had his tuition, books, room and board, including the basketball training table, and a thousand legal perks we don't even know about, all paid for by the University of Michigan Athletic Department.
There was no good reason that Chris Webber had to get involved with a filthy numbers operator. And if evidence that was used by the United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Michigan, to secure a guilty plea from Ed Martin, was correct, it means that Chris Webber had NO reason to beg money from anyone, including Mitch Albom, because Chris got quite a lot of illegal money in addition to all of the legal benefits.
I always forget how young he was. Okay, the Webber comparison was wrong, my bad.
However, it sticks for anyone else. You can take your pick looking at Reggie Bush, Cam Newton, whatever. You can say that they get these things all you want, and I'm glad they do. But the fact that they can't hold whatever job makes them the money they're worth is just terrible.
I really don't understand the compromising of amateurism when selling shoes or cars or whatever is only tangentially related. Do you really think it changes Tom Brady's football career that he sells Ugg's in the offseason?
The problem is that recruiting would turn into a bidding war between boosters. Only a small number of schools would be able to compete for top talent. There would be a competitive imbalance that would be worse than that in professional football because there would be no salary cap. The fact that a few schools have operated this way or are doing so doesn't justify it.
You would have a lot of unreported money flying around and it wouldn't be clear who the players should be loyal to, their schools or the boosters who pay them. More, a good amount of those boosters would be people who were in no way interested in the kids' best interests.
Allowing players to be paid by boosters* would turn college football into a minor league, which is fine if that's what you want, but it would be a minor league in which competitive fairness largely wouldn't exist and in which eighteen-year-olds would become beholden to dodgy characters.
I am much more sympathetic to payment through the schools, wereby competitive balance could be taken into consideration and players could be shielded from the type of people who offer a nice-sounding favor now in return for a large piece of you later.
*Have no illusion that it would be boosters who would be mostly paying the players. A rule allowing players to benefit from jersey sales is a rule inviting boosters to offer players huge amounts of money, say, $100 for every $50 jersey that is sold.
I guess I don't see how this changes anything about the game itself. Right now, there are only a handful of schools that 5* recruits are looking at, there's already huge disparity, so I don't know (and to tell the truth, nobody knows) what would happen to competitive balance.
I used to think it would be good to give players a cut of jersey sales; I no longer have that opinion. But let them take jobs that maximize their value during the times when they can take jobs (i.e. the summer). If Adidas can make 1,000,000 off of Denard and his untied shoes, why not let Denard go up on a poster in a Foot Locker and send some money home, or buy a nicer car or whatever it is Denard likes to do with money? There would be some bad apples around, but I think that goes on anyway.
I don't mean to suggest that I have all of the answers here, either...What would happen with your example, though, is that the market would become perverted. You would have your standard endorsement contracts, yes, but you would also have people paying kids not because those kids make money for their businesses but just because they want those kids to play for their favorite schools.
Likely conversations:
Michigan coach to recruit: If you come to Michigan and are a star player, you may get an endorsement contract.
Alabama coach to recruit: If you come to Alabama, you will get a cushy job in which you make a bunch of money whether you're a star or not.
John Calapari: Shoot, kid, I'll get you $50,000 just for taking a meeting with me. You can take out a booster's garbage later and we'll call it a job.
Granted, things like this happen now, but they are not the norm, and some schools are punished for doing it.
Well, this isn't exactly the Lybian situation, so compromise wouldn't kill me. I get the change in recruiting, and realize the problems that could cause, but I feel like there would be ways to keep a lot of the sleaze out. I don't know their exact policies, but I know it's rare to see point shaving in professional sports, so something keeps those guys away from the shadier people for the most part.
You could have some sort of opt-in system where the players agree to turn in IRS documentation in exchange for the ability to keep playing while making more than, say $5,000 or whatever a normal amount for a college student is during the summer. There could also be some sort of list, where maybe you can go to work for a publicly traded company or an approved local business, but not someplace that hurts the university's reputation.
My biggest problem with stuff like this isn't about recruiting, because as it stands now the top players go to the top schools. However, when a player picks Alabama, he picks it for Alabama, for the coach, or the program, or the winning potential, or whatever, but it's for Alabama.
Now let's say player A picks Alabama because they're offering him the best package. Some local booster says he'll employ player A at his law firm for the same salary he pays his associates and player A only has to work 1 day a week with 52 available sick days. After hearing this player A decides he loves Alabama and goes there. 6 months later, this booster gets into an altercation with the athletic department or retires or his firm goes out of business. Now you have a pissed off kid who wants to transfer because he's not getting his payday he was promised. Now the coach is dealing with player A's booster boss to get him to stay on the team because player A is set to start at CB next fall. Or maybe after player A signs his LOI, the booster stops returning his phone calls.
This isn't the crazy scenario you could think of for problems with boosters and money and 19 year olds. Things would get very ugly and I wouldn't want that to happen.
Well there are certainly ways to get around it. You could limit players to contracts approved by a compliance department or a third party that the employer/student would pay for (no one day a week with 52 sick days). You could also limit booster activities with players, like say that they're free to employ a student, but they can't be season ticket holders at the same time, or contributions to the AD are limited during that time.
Just a couple ideas off the top of my head; I know they aren't perfect but I think it would be a step in the right direction.
March 21st, 2011 at 12:02 PM ^
Latavious Williams (NBDL) and Brandon Jennings (overseas)
show that there is an alternative path to the nba if one is talented enough and so choose. The one and done is not the only route possible.
March 21st, 2011 at 10:52 AM ^
The topic of Football and Basketball players needing to be paid because they generate so much money always irritates me.
Couldn't agree more. The overwhelming majority of college athletics teams operate at a defecit. They exist because of the combined generosity of patrons and the success of a very few group of teams. Those teams that do earn lots of money should be thanked and hailed, but to say that college athletes need to be paid because about one percent of the football or basketball players in the country are marketable athletes is myopic to the extreme.
March 21st, 2011 at 10:53 AM ^
"You can enter the NBA from high school if you are good enough"
No you can't.
March 21st, 2011 at 10:58 AM ^
Also, I don't see the connection between people wanting players to be paid and Bo's "The Team" speech. Where did that come from?
March 21st, 2011 at 11:26 AM ^
that the Fab 5 dont have enough of a team mentality, and therefore the gymnastics team is suffering...
or something...
March 21st, 2011 at 10:58 AM ^
You play for a year in the D-League and then the NBA NBA the next year.
March 21st, 2011 at 11:16 AM ^
No, you can't.
The D-league isn't the NBA. Its the D-League.
March 21st, 2011 at 11:56 AM ^
NBADL isn't quite the NBA, but it is pro basketball, and you can play it straight out of high school. It's like going to AAA in baseball
So you can play pro right out of high school
March 21st, 2011 at 12:13 PM ^
Exactly. Baseball players who go pro right out of high school aren't on the MLB team right away, same with hockey. Those guys play in the minors for some amount of time until the team sees they're good enough. That might be half a season, or it might be 3 years or more.
And if a player goes to the NBDL right out of high school and is one of the best players in the league, no doubt they'll be getting paid.
March 21st, 2011 at 12:02 PM ^
latavious williams look him up
Read the post. Trust me, I'm well aware of the D-League and Latavious Williams. I'm also aware of guys like Brandon Jennings and Jeremy Tyler that skipped college (and his senior year of HS in Tyler's case) to go to Europe to play. No one is arguing that you can't go to the D-League or Europe or any other place that will pay you to play straight out of high school. The OP clearly said "enter the NBA from high school" and you clearly can't do that. Any entry into the NBA requires a 1-year stop somewhere other than the NBA.
March 21st, 2011 at 11:04 AM ^
not anymore, of course, since 2006 when the CBA required players to be 19 and at least 1yr removed from high school. Of course, this just results in a bunch of 1-and-done players.
March 21st, 2011 at 11:19 AM ^
The NBA and the NBA Player's Association agreed a few years ago to require kids be at least one year removed from high school. Like someone else posted, they could still choose to go to Europe to play pro ball there for a year.
March 21st, 2011 at 11:07 AM ^
Do we then pay the men and women tennis team, golf team, baseball team, swimming team? If you pay one sport then you must pay everyone else.
March 21st, 2011 at 11:28 AM ^
how about we just use revenue sharing for every sport?
March 21st, 2011 at 12:44 PM ^
They do, it's called a scholarship. 96% of all the money generated by collegiate sports goes towards paying somebody's scholarship.
March 21st, 2011 at 12:06 PM ^
The "pay one, pay them all" argument is pretty weak. Would it be unfair to pay some sports and not others? That would be a reasonable argument, but welcome to the real world kids. It could also be argued that it's unfair for unmarketable sports to ride the coat tails of the marketable ones.
When you look at what a gymnast receives vs. what he/she brings in vis-a-vis a football player, the fairness argument blows itself out of the water.
The spirit of Title IX is equal opportunity to education, not necessarily equal opportunity in funding. I'd venture to guess that the amount of revenue that is spent on men's sports outside of scholarships dwarfs what is spent on women's sports. Just think about coaching salaries.
There is no balance, and there probably will never be. Paying players has nothing to do with that.
The amount of money spent on the Michigan football program is obviously much larger than the amount spent on Michigan gymnastics. The amount given directly to football players v. gymnasts, though, is not. Both get tuition, room, board, etc.
March 21st, 2011 at 11:14 AM ^
Apples and oranges. Baseball and hockey players aren't forced through the college ranks like their basketball and football counterparts. They can play right away in their respective pro or minor leagues if they are talented enough.
Footbally players must be 3 years removed from high school. Basketball players, one. The only good option for them is to go through the college ranks. These are the defacto minor leagues in these sports and also, maybe not so coincidentally, the big money makers for (some) college athletic programs.
Next argument...
March 21st, 2011 at 11:59 AM ^
Not apples and oranges, you just missed his point. His argument was that if the market demanded it, there would be minor leagues for basketball and football like there is for baseball and hockey, but there isn't.
And I don't think most of these guys that want a bunch of money would like the minors for their sport anyway. Minor league athletes make less than these players are getting for their scholarships when you factor in R&B, and they aren't getting an education out of it. If a true minor league basketball league could work and make money, then players wouldn't have to play in college. As was said above, players have the option of going to Europe instead of college.
The difference is that if you don't make it in Europe, you will spend a few years halfway across the world from your family while you figure it out, and you don't have a college degree as a consolation either.
Personally, I think the solution is that no sport should have a minimum age to be drafted. If a player is 18 and he thinks he can play pro football or basketball, let him. If he fails, it's no fault but his own.
March 21st, 2011 at 11:51 AM ^
I have an even more mundane question: What portion of the Athetic Department's revenues are generated by number-specific jersey sales?
I certainly hope that Chris Webber doesn't think that he deserve(s)(d) a paycheck from all Michigan-logo apparel sales. Chris, dude; Fielding Yost, Fritz Crisler, Tom Harmon, Bob Chappuis, Dave Strack, Cazzie Russell, Rudy Tomjanovich, Bo Schembechler and Glenn Rice all had a little something to do with the Michigan brand before you ever got here.
So my question is how much, really, has the Michigan Athletic Department profited off of sales of basketball jerseys with the Number 4? Would we devise a formula to parse out sales of #4's for both Darius Morris and Chris Webber?
By the way, does the University get any kind of a cut from Chris' smash-hit debut recording, "2 Much Drama"? I'll bet any amount of money, that Mr. Webber made more money for himself in contracts with NBA franchises, Fila, and recording deals (okay, so maybe we can leave his recording-artist career out of it) than the University of Michigan made off of sales of unnamed #4 jerseys.
To answer the original question, I think that number-specific jersey sales amount to a tiny, tiny fraction of all athletic revenue. The Webber story is apocryphal only becuase he made the mention to a writer like Mitch Albom while standing in front of a shop window on S. University where number 4 and 5 jerseys were on sale. And Albom published it. Chris Webber and the rest of the Fab Five were outliers in almost every imaginable way, in terms of their experiences as student-athletes. To make nationwide rules within the NCAA based on that experience is crazy.
Chris Webber did just fine, thank you very much. He's a millionaire.
March 21st, 2011 at 11:32 AM ^
Players should not be paid!
I don't understand why people argue for this. It will tip the competitive balance to a select few teams who can pay more than everyone else. Why is that good? If you want players to have spending money, give them loans that they pay back later. That way everyone has equal chance.
This will always be an argument I oppose. It is one of the dumbest right now. Right up there with a 650 team NCAA Bball tournament.
March 21st, 2011 at 11:35 AM ^
The topic of Football and Basketball players needing to be paid because they generate so much money always irritates me.
wow.... then tell schools and athletic depts to stop exploiting Football and Basketball players. Once a school is geared towards looking out for a kid's interest in academics over money.. then you argument will stand.
Also, when will you see an individual gymnastic's jersey on sale for 70 bones?
When will bball/fball games NOT be scheduled to revolve around TV revenue and sales?
Do you think college ball players can study during march madness?
Whats the point of adding a '12th game'?
Ask conferences why they REALLY initate installing conference championship games
Ask the Big East why they schedule football games on Thursday
I saw MSU play a ball game at 9-10pm to revolved around a TV schedule.
Football players are already forced back to work as we speak... It's a year long 'job'
And also, these athletes are at a huge disadvantage when it comes to cuttroat academics that grade based off a curve.
And for those saying athletes are good enough can leave early to the pros or the NDBL or Europe? With that attitude... Youre no better than Saban handing out offers like candy. Just think about it
There's too much of a business aspect on the school's end... and atheletes aren't treated as students.
March 21st, 2011 at 12:09 PM ^
No doubt many colleges make certain changes that you mention, game days/times, etc to generate more money, but it's not like it's to feed the wealthy shareholders. Do you know why the Big East schedules football games on Thursdays? Because many of those teams' have athetic departments in the red and if they don't make more money from a Thursday night game, it might mean dropping Swimming and Diving or something like that.
Part of being a college athlete is being a part of a college athletic department. At every school, men's football and basketball generate the money for all the other sports. If you don't care about the other sports at your college then don't play a college sport. You have to take the good with the bad. No one is forced to play college sports. It's often the best option to train for the pro league, but it's not the best option to make money right out of high school. Life is full of give and take, and this is one of them.
March 21st, 2011 at 11:40 AM ^
While I'm not in favor of universities paying players beyond what they already get, I don't understand why the NCAA forbids players from making money off of their own name. I'm not suggesting players should get a cut from university sales, but, instead, should be allowed to sell their own apparel (such as game-worn clothing, awards, etc.).
March 21st, 2011 at 12:07 PM ^
gets around it is that vendors cannot sell the NAME of the athlete. Hence why jerseys only have #'s on them and also why there was the big deal with selling the Denard "shoelace" t-shirts.
forgive me I can't remember the specifics of the t-shirt ordeal, but I remember Underground Printing had to stop selling them.
March 21st, 2011 at 12:18 PM ^
If players were allowed to sell their stuff, it would be no different than players getting paid.
Let's say Chris Wormley is being recruited by Michigan and Auburn. Auburn says, "Hey Chris, just so you know, Auburn has a great fanbase, and we can almost guarantee that if you come here, someone will buy every one of your game jerseys for at least 3,000 dollars. That's what (list of players) got on average last year. We know how to take care of our players down here."
How is that different from, "Come here and we'll hand you dollars."? It would still result in players going to the school that would get them the most money.
March 21st, 2011 at 11:42 AM ^
I am not in favor a people getting a paycheck from the sport they play but rather, if you play football/basketball chances be that your making the university a lot of money so your cut should be based on that.
Increase their monthly stipend to a level set by the NCAA but which can be declined/reduced by school. Sure the big schools will be able to pay the max to each player but thats a benefit of going to a bigger school. Most smaller schools also do not have access to every benefit that Mich/MSU/OSU have anyways so your really not changing anything in that respect.
As for as the equal rights thing, that gets sticky but its not like any of the women sports are loosing scholarships because your raising football/basketball stipends.
March 21st, 2011 at 11:46 AM ^
The point was not just that the University made money of the apparel sales. It was how much MORE money they made off of it due largely to the Fab Five's presence (almost eight times as much, in fact) and none of it came back to the people who seemed to be responsible for the big spike.
March 21st, 2011 at 11:52 AM ^
Just curious where you're getting your numbers, I feel it would be an interesting read.