OT: Cracked article on NCAA player life
Comedy listicle based on anonymous interviews of former NCAA football and track & field athletes for insight on player life. Probably no new information for the educated readers of this site, but discusses the difficulties with student-athlete employment and medical care, and how enforcement surrounding academics and drugs get skirted.
January 11th, 2016 at 10:41 AM ^
There must've been a lot of those word of the day calendars gifted for Christmas.
Yes, I had to google "listicle"
January 11th, 2016 at 10:52 AM ^
January 11th, 2016 at 11:21 AM ^
#Lance
January 11th, 2016 at 2:47 PM ^
Things that aren't funny:
1) you
2) your post
=Listicle
January 11th, 2016 at 10:53 AM ^
You couldn't figure it out based on the context?
January 11th, 2016 at 11:14 AM ^
Not everyone has your genius capacity for immediately grasping portmanteaus.
January 11th, 2016 at 6:12 PM ^
I had to look up "context"
January 11th, 2016 at 10:50 AM ^
I'd love to be "exploited" and live on meager free tuition.
January 11th, 2016 at 11:18 AM ^
You should have been a better athlete then.
It's not like there are Millions of extra dollars in the system that have to go somewhere and go anywhere but to the players.
January 11th, 2016 at 11:41 AM ^
...do you? You can't live on tuition, thats not how it works... you also dont have time to get a part time job when you already have an extra full time job playing football in addition to classes.
You probably hate Richard Sherman, but this is a pretty real account of a student athletes life and its limitations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIdOKqga8NU
January 11th, 2016 at 11:49 AM ^
They also get room and board. If they live off campus, they get a monthly room-and-board check.
Really, most athletes don't have that much to complain about. It's a select few who are genuinely marketable and have value beyond an ordinary replacement - like Denard Robinson - who get stiffed.
January 11th, 2016 at 12:20 PM ^
You're missing the point... as Richard Sherman points out in the interview above, if you gave a normal student the schedule of a student athlete, they would not find it to be a tenable situation. Having lived with 5 student athletes, I would agree with Mr. Sherman.
To field a football team that generate hundreds of millions of dollars through lucrative TV and advertising deals, you need a LOT of guys who are never going to make the NFL and see the $1m/year+ returns for the sacrifices they make to play football. And, at the same time, they arent able to take full advantage of the educational opportunities in front of them because just like Sherman was told by our beloved Harbaugh, "You're here to play football" 30+ hours per week (practice, trainers, weights, meetings, travel, etc).
There is a middle ground to be had here and for some reason many "fans" understand the gross exploitation by the powers-that-be more accutely than they do the struggle of a young man, putting his body on the line time and again for your viewing pleasure, to be able to support himself reasonably.
If we are to be such die hard fans of Blue, recanting "the team, the team, the team" I dont understand how we can be so eager to dismiss the needs of the guys actually on THE TEAM.
January 11th, 2016 at 12:36 PM ^
I was a student athlete and lived with 3 Big Ten football players only one of whom made it to the NFL.
We athletes do not have much to complain about. "Normal students" at Stanford?!? There is no such thing. Every kid there is devoting 30+ hours to a passion of some sort. Band, theatre, art, honors thesis, dance team, solar car, drug trials, robotics etc.
Every kid at Stanford or Northwestern or similar is overly maxed in something. Football players have an awesome network though for careers that many of those other activities don't. "Big Ten athlete" got me through 70% of any job interview I have ever had. There are plenty of former Michigan football players hiring lots of other Michigan athletes.
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January 11th, 2016 at 12:48 PM ^
If millions of people were tuning in to watch a dance competition, I would make the same argument for them. To anyone who dedicates 30+ hours to painting, band, theater, that is fantastic and I am in full support of the arts. And for Honors Thesis, Robotics, Drug Trials, etc. these are all persuits that are likely in line with your career goals. But, there isnt a multi-billion dollar industry being built on your back and putting your physical well being at risk. (yes there is a multi-(hundred) billion dollar drug industry, but you presumably are doing drug trials to eventually participate in that industry)
It is great that being a "Big Ten Athlete" gets you into job interviews, but I dont see why that is mutually exclusive to cutting student athletes a small piece of the pie.
Of the 5 guys I lived with, it was split pretty evenly between guys who came from fairly well off families and guys who didnt and the differences in how they had to live their lives was stark. Why shouldnt we ensure that each of them can afford to live life reasonably.
January 11th, 2016 at 2:27 PM ^
I was grad teacher at UM and received a stipend in addtional to having my tuition covered. At the very least athletes in revenue generating sports should receive the same, given that my classes were much smaller than 114,000 kids. They should also be allowed to draw income from representations of their likenesses, merch, etc.
January 11th, 2016 at 3:12 PM ^
They get room and board, which is what your graduate stipend is supposed to pay for.
January 11th, 2016 at 3:22 PM ^
My stipend was over and above room and board though. Enough to cover a 2 bedroom in A2 and decent living.
January 11th, 2016 at 7:20 PM ^
Well look at you, living large.
I say this as a gradute student--that's not the norm. Like, anywhere. And definitely not the expectation.
January 11th, 2016 at 4:04 PM ^
But you wrote:
"...if you gave a normal student the schedule of a student athlete, they would not find it to be a tenable situation. Having lived with 5 student athletes, I would agree with Mr. Sherman."
I do not agree. Especially at Stanford. Almost everyone at Stanford is into something that requires the same sort of schedule. You don't make it to Stanford without being at least the Richard Sherman of something or maybe the Tiger Woods of said thing.
Your response seems to be "but that other thing prepares them for a career and sports doesn't". Again, I do not agree.
Plenty of football players get careers because they were football players. I wasn't suggesting that my athlete status got me interviews I was saying it got me through interviews to career opportunities. Business people, especially sales people, LOVE athletes. Especially football players.
Plenty of guys who never played a down in 5 years on Michigan's football team walked away with a degree, no debt, and a solid career with above average pay given to them by an alum (probably donor) who loves hearing about what it was like to chase down Denard in practice.
It may not be intuitive but being an athlete at a big school, especially a football player (even if you never play) is a solid path to many jobs. Maybe even some undeservedly.
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January 11th, 2016 at 1:15 PM ^
You're missing the point. There is a middle ground here and we don't have to choose between agreeing with you (whatever it is that you are really trying to say) and not being for THE TEAM.
Are there solutions more equitable than the current setup? Yes. Will we find them by accepting such gross exaggerations as the Cracked article or the sherman piece? No.
My solution: every athlete on scholarship gets $2500 a year in "walking around money" to take into acount additional expenses of being a student-athlete beyond room, booard, tuition, books, fees, etc. In return, they sign away their rights to their likeness for the period of their scholarship.
January 11th, 2016 at 2:54 PM ^
I am aware of this. I still don't think it's that bad of a deal for most athletes.
When you have any sort of extracurricular activity that takes up 30-40 hours a week, your academic options are going to be restricted. That's life. If you have to work evenings, for example, you're not going to be able to take classes then. This is something that a lot of college students have to deal with. Many not only deal with these challenges but end up graduating with enormous debt.
Beyond the free tuition/room and board, the big advantage that athletes have is institutional support. There are two sides to this. First, they are cut a lot of breaks by professors, given tutoring, and in some cases perhaps even given dubious grades to stay eligible. In theory, this is shortchanging them of an education, but a lot of students would probably kill for those kinds of breaks. And post-graduation, a lot of employers don't actually care what you learned in college as long as you have the degree.
The other side of it is that there is a network of sympathetic alumni at most schools who will give jobs to ex-players in need of one. This is often part of the recruiting pitch: "We have _____ alumni and if you join them, they'll help you out."
January 11th, 2016 at 3:11 PM ^
...you say this as if they don't know what they're getting into, like it's a surprise that being a D1 athlete takes up time.
January 11th, 2016 at 11:11 AM ^
That was 2 mins of my life I'll never get back.
January 11th, 2016 at 11:47 AM ^
The article is a bit mistaken about scholarships. It states that only 2 percent of college athletes are on scholarship, but the linked NCAA article actually says that 2 percent of high school athletes go on to get a college scholarship.
January 11th, 2016 at 12:29 PM ^
Cheating? Yes. There was some clustering and everyone looking off of one person's test and definitely some group assignments that were supposed to be individual. However in my experience most fraternities and other organizations were doing as much or more cheating than the athletes.
Injuries: huh???? I had every single thing paid for no question. Surgeries, ER visits, overnight hospital treatments. I had all of it and never paid a dime and I need heard of any other athlete, including the ones who got medicated, ever owing a cent. I think the author here fished out some cases and isn't disclosing all the details for why these guys owed tens of thousands of dollars. For my 5 seasons I had the greatest medical care in the world and so did former players who were medicaled.
3. Camps: this author cherry picked a terrible, wholly unrepresentative example. We worked camps all summer, all athletes did and were paid $2,500 - $3,000 per summer for doing so. We had to pay FICA and other withholdings but it was NCAA sanctioned above board. What college kid on scholarship needs more than $2,500 in cash for the school year? On top of stipend and bowl payout???
There are challenges to being a student athlete and it's very tough. It's also tough being in the marching band or on the dance team or racing the solar car.
We can make changes but this piece is very different than my 5 years as a Big Ten athlete.
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January 11th, 2016 at 3:22 PM ^
On the subject of cheating, the sororities and fraternities on the campus where I teach are widely known to keep extensive files of tests from their classes, free for members to consult and use to prepare/anticipate a professor that doesn't do enough to change things from class to class. And that's just the tip of the iceberg of stuff they try to pull.
January 11th, 2016 at 3:48 PM ^
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January 11th, 2016 at 4:02 PM ^
January 11th, 2016 at 4:07 PM ^
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January 11th, 2016 at 5:59 PM ^
I used to read Cracked a fair bit but it has become so politicized that it's unberable to read anymore.
January 12th, 2016 at 12:43 AM ^
Especially when they weren't an athlete themselves.
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