Looks like a college players union is here
March 26th, 2014 at 11:15 PM ^
March 27th, 2014 at 12:01 AM ^
If you were my employee I would pay you in burgers.
Your argument suggests that college football players should all be treated like employees. Give a raise if they are producing, fire them (cut them) if they are not.
Most people on this board rag on the SEC for improper benefits and cutting players, however hold a very similar stance when it comes to "pay for play."
I'm not using logic to argue, I'm using fact. Players are currently paid with the equivalent of money. As I said, most people would kill for a chance at a free education and to be able to play the game that they love in front of a national audience.
The majority of America likes the NFL more than they do college football. Partially because they are from an area without a college team or didn't go to college all together. I personally like college football a whole lot more. The lack of greed and passion to play at the next level is what makes it so great.
March 26th, 2014 at 10:20 PM ^
Now that I think about it, I actually asked a boss of mine for a raise once. The company had never been doing better, we were cranking out a ton of extra work for no extra money, so the time was ripe to ask for a job. Very similar to what college athletes are going through now. You know what my boss told me? "These are the halcyon days, and you should just enjoy, and be happy to be a part of the organization. Plenty of people would kill to be in your spot."
Well, halcyon days don't pay the rent. And that was the end of the line for me. I had a new job in under a year. Most (like 98%) of these college athletes don't have that option. They aren't good enough to go pro, so they are stuck going to school, potentially in a major they'd rather not be in, while still having to "work" 40-50+ hours a week on football.
Just because you're doing something that lots of other people would like to do, doens't mean you shouldn't be rewarded accordingly. The scale has shifted in college sports, and the rewards are out of balance.
March 26th, 2014 at 10:58 PM ^
This is sort of delving into polical discussion now, but companies should determine their employees' pay as what their employees are willing to work for. If people aren't willing to leave for something else, then your pay is adequate. That includes changing careers. But football players aren't doing that. If I asked for a raise, and my boss said, "Nope, that's what we pay, and nobody's leaving for greener pastures so we're not changing it" he'd have a good point. That's the situation now.
My wife went to her boss last year and said she wanted a raise or she'd start looking for other options. Her boss told her she'd never find a job that paid her what he did and would give her the same kind of flexibility. He wasn't being a jerk, but he was right, and she stayed. That's what the NCAA should say to these players.
March 27th, 2014 at 12:57 AM ^
This analogy is pretty bad, mainly because there's nowhere else for them to play football. The NCAA has a monopoly, which is a MAJOR difference between it and other industries. Sports leagues in America are in a totally unique situation, as monopolies are illegal in pretty much every other industry. So, not the same at all.
Methinks your mom would have hated it.
Yeah, but I imagine eating for two would've been literally a non-stop endeavour, not to mention the difficulty walking and the damndest time trying to find maternity clothes that fit.
I understand where this tired argument comes from, but without the context that is the revenue that football players generate, any list of their compensation is meaningless.
According to Forbes, Michigan Football had $85M in revenue in 2011-2012. If you figure that each scholarship player gets $100,000 in scholarships/room/board which seems high but I will go with it, together they receive $8.5M in compensation or 10% of the revenue. NFL players receive around 50%.
Maybe some macroeconomist can chime in and say if receiving 10% of the revenue you generate is pretty standard in the workplace but it certainly is low compared to the professional sports leagues.
from the money-losing, low-end D1 programs.
And then further weight the distribution by individual contribution.
Once you go there, you've gone there, and it's only a matter of time before water reaches its natural level.
I'm not sure if them being taken advantage of is what the core issue here is. They definitely already get a good amount of benefits. No one is debating that. All they are asking for is more because their slice of the pie hasn't changed as revenues have skyrocketed.
It would be like starting out with a small company that pulls in $50M a year in profits and you make $50k a year in salary. Initially, you're happy with this. But say after 10 years, your company is now making $5B a year in profits and minus some small raises, you're basically still making $50k a year. I think all of us would be in full on WTF mode and be demanding a slice of those profits.
That's what's happened in college sports. The athletes are already getting paid and getting benefits. They just want more. And to argue against it because "college football might change" is silly. It changed a long time ago. At least let the athletes we all cheer for benefit from some of that change.
^This. A thousand times this comment.
my brother
Or more accurately, individual athletes. The reason rights fees have skyrocketed is that networks are scrambling for live events, as the ratings for everything else on TV continue to go down. So networks value college football more then they once did--the product, (formations aside) is mostly the same as it ever was. so are ratings--its just that the similar ratings are now more valuable to advertisers, And those ratings would be excatly the same no matter which athletes were on the field. College pagentry, tradition, school loyalty and pride, NOT individual athletes, are why college football is so appealing. I could replace every single M player the week before the OSU game and replace them with walk ons, same for OSU, and the ratings for that game would be excatly the same.
"I could replace every single M player the week before the OSU game and replace them with walk ons, same for OSU, and the ratings for that game would be excatly the same."
You also could say that about the coaches. Why are they getting ~$5 million/year.
As an operation becomes much more valuable, the maintenance/don't screw it up premium goes up.
This is an excellent point that needs to be made more. Just look to the skyrocketing coaching salaries - coaching salaries have gone up pretty much in line with revenue increases. Student athelete compensation has remained the same, more or less.
The issue here is that players had no bargaining power, until now, so their compensation was being held artificially low. The reason players are allowed to unionize in pro sports is because pro sports leagues are monopolies, just like the NCAA. In order to prevent the monopoly from artifically holding down labor costs, (strong) unionization is required. That's what is finally being allowed to happen in college athletics.
March 26th, 2014 at 11:10 PM ^
but it's not like the individual schools will have no leverage. Minor league football already exists. (Arena League, some would say CFL.) There would be nothing special about an 18-22 year olds-only pro league.
Segregate wisely between the money making programs and the rest, and then let the new equilibrium find itself.
Which is fair, but it is more attenuated than any professional sports league where the union negotiates with the governing body directly. The added intermediary makes change (to the extent that is what unionized students want) slower and more difficult, all other aspects being equal.
Also, although I am not saying it will happen or that it is necessarily a bad thing, but each school could have slightly different work rules (which are one of unions' core competencies). As an example, could NW bargain for no practices the week before midterms and finals, while SMU bargains for no Oklahoma drill. Some variety is probably a good thing (and could be a selling point), but one could imagine how it could go too far.
To take it to a more illogical extreme, could a player who gets benched file a grievance? I'm not talking about a player who gets Sabanized by a medical redshirt (that grievance would undoubtedly be a good thing), but a starter who gets benched. Or a player who is "strongly encouraged" to change positions against their will. I am willing to guess that opinion would at least be split on this board over these examples. Note that if the bargaining was with the NCAA directly, these issues would not really be on the table, because they are in the discretion of the member institution.
Yes because everyone needs another union in this damn country. Nothing benefits the people in a union, except the ones who run the union.
I have no problem with the end of "college sports as we know it."
The problem isn't so much the deal for the lowest guy on the pole (the players, who are treated well and derive various substantial benefits) but instead the insane profits by the guy at the top of the pole (NCAA et al.).
Get rid of the huge profits, get rid of the problem. Small is beautiful. Otherwise you get into dilemmas about inequity and troubling solutions like profit sharing.
This makes no sense. The NCAA is an organization of colleges and universities. How can the organization of universities be "the guy at the top?" How much profit is he making, and why does it bother you that he does so?
The money in college sports goes overwhelmingly to the student athletes. There are NO PROFITS. Your problem does not exist. As far as "small is beautifull" is concerned, I think that's just a lie you tell your lover.
Can you be a scab even after you've graduated? I would like to try a FG once!!
I call QB!!!
I played football in HS at 135.... now I'm 172, so I think I'm ready for RT (at 5'8" my arms aren't long enough for LT)
At your height I'm saying C is your spot. Do you have good hands?
And how's your butt? - Urban Meyer
It all depends on your pad level.
Hard to say what the overall implications of this will be. With the O'bannon case and all of the other stuff making its way through the court system, I can't say that I'm too surprised. My first thought (a selfish one) is this is overall good news for Michigan because we have the resources to compete no matter how the game will be played going forward. My next thought (not thinking as a huge fan of CFB in its current format) is that this is a great thing for the players and the right thing to do
It's important to note that because the University of Michigan is a public school, it is subject to the public sector labor laws of the state. These laws can be very different from those of the NLRA in the private sector. A state employment board (MERC in Michigan) would have to decide that athletes are employees based on the state laws (the PERA in Michigan). In Michigan, all the recent political animus towards public sector unions leads me to believe this would be a pretty tough sell.
I'm genuinely excited to hear this.
They don't get the same opportunities? Let's take Michigan, for example. Look at the athletes-only Ross Student Center in the Yost parking lot. If anything, the general student body doesn't get the same academic opportunities as the athletes.
I think he meant, and I can agree with him to a certain extent, that players are generally steered away from certain classes/majors because of the difficulty of balancing such work loads. Average students have more freedom in this regard. The other side of it, as you mentioned, is that the athletes also get a lot of perks that regular students don't get. Student athletes get a good amount of free clothing, electronics, tutoring, parking, living opportunities, etc. and I don't think it's unfair to think some popular athletes could get favorable grades from profs. A lot of these athletes also get the opportunity to go to a school they'd never get into without their athletic abilities. There's two sides to the argument. I'm kind of on the fence about the whole thing. While I feel like student athletes get plenty of compensation, I also have no problem with them thinking they should get a chunk of the profits.
Definitely true, student athletes get benefits that regular students lack. The flip side is that they give up probably the most valuable resource - time - as they have to dedicate a huge majority of their time to their sport. I'm sure most people here read Three and Out and remember the chapter about Denard's day. Sure, not all regular students take advantage of the copious amounts of free time they have to actually learn, but not all regular students get much out of their education. When it comes to learning, time is one of the most, if not the most, valuable resource, and student athletes desperately lack that.
those damn basketball players wasting their academic opportunities getting masters degrees in industry and operations engineering
They're not getting the same academic opportunities as the general student body. Their purpose is to focus on their sport and generate revenue for the school. If they happen to learn how to read beyond a middle school level or develop professional connections, then that's secondary benefit.I despise this line of thinking. They have the same opportunities as most of the student body and then some when you consider the Academic Study Hall afforded them. Their focus is to represent their school as a student-athlete. I know a lot of people find this reprehensible ideal but it's a fact. You can ask every single Michigan athlete what their purpose is and ZERO will say "to generate revenue".
Why would they say that? They don't get any directly.