OT: O'Bannon Case - Current Arizona Players join lawsuit vs NCAA - RR very supportive
Current Arizona players join the O'Bannon anti-trust lawsuit against NCAA:
http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/9491249/six-current-football-pla…
Some interesting comments in this ESPN article by Arizona coach Rich Rodriguez:
"Jake and Jake came to my house the other day and talked to me about the case and their involvement," he said. "They're two conscientious guys, and they're both really appreciative of playing college ball. It's not like they're disenchanted with the system. They love being student-athletes. But with the likeness issue, they wanted to see if they could have a voice for college athletes, and I said I support that.
"I know there's concerns [in the NCAA] about where this lawsuit will lead. And we need to keep it as amateur status. We already have a pro league, it's the NFL. Let's not make college a minor league. I just think we can do a few things, get a couple thousand more [dollars a year] to help out the players."
And this:
Ramogi Huma, president of the National College Players Association, said he was both surprised and pleased that Rodriguez and Byrne supported the players' desire to advocate for their peers.
"The fact that the athletic department is behind them is huge," Huma said. "[Coaches and ADs] are the people who arguably benefit the most from the system, and yet they see an injustice and feel it's OK for players to challenge that system. They're standing up for what's right, not what benefits them, which means a lot because I'm sure it took a lot of courage for those players to stand up."
Said Fischer: "I'm not surprised at all. [Rodriguez] has his players' back, and that's why we love playing for him."
I'd have liked to have seen more support for this from others in positions of power. E.g., Slive, who claims to support better deals for athletes, could have tried to get at least one student-athlete from every school in the SEC to sign on.
"Giving college athletes salaries will completely ruin not only the game but will also ruin the atmosphere that we have all come to love like recruiting."
That's a pretty unconvincing and selfish argument.
Rich Rod saying something that he failed to really tie together strongly at the end? This is news to me.
I mean, there is only so much hours in the day, right?
Selfish if the OP is on a volleyball scholarship, maybe.
Look, college football players do great things for their universities. They fund programs, build fanbases, and keep applications coming into the school. There is no doubting their value. They get paid a lot, but in intangibles, not money. I would like to see a modest stipend, but no more. They get full rides, respect from their peers, a top notch training regimen for the NFL, fame, cute girls, a guaranteed position at a realty or insurance company. If you wrap that unquantifiable incentive, you get a very rich college experience.
If this was the damned Roman military, kids wouldn't dream of being the next Charles Woodson. Those built in incentives make all boys interested in sports salivate at the thought of playing college sports. Nobody grows up thinking college players get paid, and yet we all wanted to be in their shoes.
I don't think that it will ruin the atmosphere, as long as they players are still legitimate students. I think that's ultimately what gives the game its charm -- the fact that the kids are playing for your university but also taking classes there during the week like a normal kid.
It might even help, because right now, so many talented kids are leaving college early. Maybe some of them will stay (?) I'd love to see college athletics become a four-year endeavor again. It's incredibly rare for a star player to see his senior year now.
All they have to do is stop telling players they can't take money from outside sources. That would allow golden handshakes, "jobs" they don't have to actually work for, endorsements, and money for use of likeness.
A free pizza or burger once in awhile probably wouldn't hurt, either.
Can't wait for the NCAA President to come out and complain about a guy in a wizard hat selling snake oil.
Come on man this is like 10 threads down, pure laziness
EDIT: If you want to talk RR take that shit here http://www.azdesertswarm.com/
this is the Rich Rod supports them portion of the topic.
And I am sick of this. Take your free education from a great college, take your all expenses paid trips around the country, take your trips to incredible locations for bowl games, take your admiration from millions of fans, take the incredible experience of having yourself portrayed on a best selling video game. Take all of it and claim you get nothing. Petulant.
RRod isnt affiliated with the University of Michigan, if you or anyone else would llike to discuss RRod here is a great community to do so http://www.azdesertswarm.com/
already said that.
And that is why the OP put OT.
The time you spent complaining about this thread was more than it took to read the OP. I feel like people complain because they actually enjoy it.
Firstly, not all NCAA D-I schools are great colleges. Some of them downright suck.
I'm an aerospace engineer. By your logic, I should just be happy with having the company pay for the expenses of the materials I need and the "incredible experience" of designing new stuff for the air and space industry. Am I petulant for not working for free?
I support this case not for practical reasons, because there's a chance it will fuck up everything (although that's looking less likely after the NCAA-EA split), but to stop the very organization that beats its chest about supporting amateurism and prioritizing the "student" in student-athlete from capitalizing financially from these amateurs with impunity.
of straw men. You can't possibly make that argument with a straight face. There are more kids playing college football right now who just want this thing to go away so they can go back to the having the time of their lives than there are supporting this thing or that even know what it is. You are not taking a big moral stance. You're supporting Ed O'Bannon and his determination to not become irrelevant. And it could fuck everything up. For you, for the fans, for the players who love college football. This thing could get slippery, and there could be major unnecessary upheavel all because Ed O'Bannon could not make it in the NBA.
Paying to train you, while also paying for your housing, food, and medical care.
Oh, wait, that actually sounds a whole lot like your job.
Your job provides you the means to sleep with a roof over your head and feed you when you're hungry, and that's the same damn deal college athletes get.
I work within a profitable software division of a multi-billion dollar company. They sell their product on the strength and reliabilty of the software and the solid support given to firms using it. Us on the lower end of the totem pole do all the actual work; there are some here who sell it, those of us who develop it, others who support it, and a few that just take complaints about it. Those guys do all the work and receive a modest sum that allows us a comfortable life with a bed to sleep in and food on our families' tables. But that salary is nothing compared to the salaries of the big wigs who sit in their offices making decisions rather than doing the leg work that truly reels in the money.
Life working for almost any company is no different than big time college sports. The athletes make the same relative share as a common worker does for a large organization despite doing all the heavy lifting. Why are they different than me? I complain about wanting more money every damn day, but that's just not how it works, and the whole thing would go to shit pretty quickly if it was any differently. At the end of the day, what's on my pay check isn't that bad at all, and you know what? A player getting room and board, meals and free education ain't bad deal either.
A scholarship at Michigan is worth more than one at CMU, both academically, and financially. It's not like they've equalized scholarship costs around the country. And the perks at going to Michigan are certainly higher too than playing in the MAC.
And actually not in every sport does the player make more than their coaches. Maybe in more individualized ones like basketball, But in football, the sport we're talking about with the EA suit, the average NFL salary is around $1.9 milliion, with a a median around $770k. (Not guaranteed). An average head coach can make over $3 million a year. So while the top guys and QBs can earn more, the average day to day player isn't that much different than Jhender's job situation. Certain guys at the top making lots of money and everyone else making far less for doing the majority of the work.
Because they've never said how much a scholarship must be worth. For your cap to work they'd have to impose something to make a scholarship at Arkansas State as valuable as one at Stanford. They haven't gotten together and decided how much that should be, any more than anyone has decided English teacher salaries should be in a certain range, but you're probably not going to find a public school system offering someone 7 figures for the job, even if they're really good.
And room and board, and food, and trip expenses paid, and blow gifts, and medical treatment is a lot more than the assistant video guy or academic advisor is making. (And of course, we're just talking greater $$$ amounts. Not the value of an education).
Most of your Assistants are probably a lot closer low 6 figures (or really less at schools not like Michigan....the running back coach at Arkansas State isn't making 3/4 of a million dollars) than the cooridnators and such. Check and see how much a GA makes. And if you think college assistants make a lot of money, than obviously pro assistants make more, right?
And your Brady Hoke comparison doesn't work. You took a guy at the top of his industry, and compared it to the average. (Michigan is among the highest profile positions). The top NFL head coaches were making $7+ million. In any case, the ratio should be closer. NFL Player is a more elite category, and there are a lot fewer of those positions to fill than "college football player." And the money they create is far greater than, well, pretty much anything else in sports. The NFL is a cash cow. (Guess what- waiters at the Chop House downtown make more than the guy taking your order at McDonald's, and there's less salary differential with the management).
A job gives you a salary. Losing money over time while being in college and having a 40 hour/week activity on top of classes is not the same thing. You sound like survival is a privilege, but I bet you'd be throwing a hissy fit if you even got paid only as much as an English teacher. The fact is, your education has less value the more time you have to spend paying for it, because you have less time to study and pump up your GPA.
Feel free to never ask for a raise or try to improve your life (even though you are), but don't complain when others do.
"Take all of it and claim you get nothing."
A straw man or straw person, also known in the UK as an Aunt Sally,[1][2] is a type of argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.[3] To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the "straw man"), and to refute it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.[3][4]This technique has been used throughout history in polemical debate, particularly in arguments about highly charged, emotional issues.
In fairness, everything you listed is for playing football for the schools. The lawsuit is about players making money from their likeness, e.g. EA Sports selling games with them in there, or schools selling the jerseys that the players wear. They may not use the players' names, but you can't tell me that QB#12 isn't modeled completely after Devin Gardner or that jersey sales (particularly the jersey numbers they decide to sell) aren't dependent on the players wearing those numbers.
If EA were to agree to pay $.001 to each player in their games, they would pay out $8.82/copy to each player in NCAA Football 14 and each of those players would get somewhere in the range of $1000 each year. That's not going to cripple EA and it's not going to cripple NCAA's system, however, each of those players is now in a position that they don't have to worry about expenses that scholarships don't cover. I don't really see why it has taken this long to come to this.
In its current form it asks for the players to share the television revenue.
you definitely don't want him anywhere near the DEFENSE!
badumbump!
Yet another comment that shows why we need to be able to upvote past 5.
A good guy if a bad fit in AA.
"RRod isnt affiliated with the University of Michigan, if you or anyone else would llike to discuss RRod here is a great community"
OT means "off topic". And with that I'm actually granted a limited license to mention something about the people of which we do not speak.
Thanks for your opinion though.
I'll try to keep it in mind should Michigan ever play Arizona non-conference or in the Rose Bowl sometime.
Allow me to add, "If you don't want to read about RR, don't read the thread. The topic is clearly stated in the title."
The OP appeared in my office, put a gun to my head, and made me read it. But then he made me pancakes, so it wasn't all bad.
I wonder how the "BUT THEY GET A FREE EDUCATION!!!" crowd would feel if their own salaries weren't dicated by the free market, and instead were capped in some arbitrary fashion by their employer. I doubt someone whose talents are worth $100,000 a year to their employer would be OK with their employer telling them, "We got together with our competitors and we all decided that we're going to cap compensation for professionals like you at $35,000. But don't fret...you're still getting SOMETHING, and that something is worth $35k!"
In this specific instance, it's actually like when a video game producer and an NCAA executive you've never met take your birthday gift card.
While I definitely think that RR is being earnest in his support here, no current coach is going to be the guy to publicly say they don't support their players on this. It would be far to easy to negatively recruit against a guy if he came out publicly saying the players don't deserve more.
One thing that I have always found intriguing about the Division I Handbook really is that it is enshrined in the bylaws that coaches and staff could, in theory, benefit from having their likeness and image on various media within certain bounds. If a player makes and appearance somewhere, they can collect only necessary expenses like travel, and if their image is used, the school is specifically the keeper of that cash less any NCAA licensing fees, or at least this is what I gather.
One interesting note is that student-athletes are not specifically barred from any sort of employment by a member school, but it cannot be on the grounds of their perceived value or utility, fame or following and so forth. It must be at a rate commensurate with similar jobs in that location. They are even allowed to run fee-for-instruction clinics per Bylaw 12.4.2.1, provided the instruction occurs off the school's property and the school can maintain appropriate records of these events.
The sole exceptions to anything regarding compensation seem to be any licensing which is related to Olympic activity, just based on a study of the passages on compensation and when it may be had.
conscientious
This isn't about pay for play. It's about rights of publicity and privacy, which we all have. The question is, who has the legal right to exploit them?
If you or I want to endorse a product, have our likeness in a video game, have our name on jerseys, it is our sole and exclusive right as adults to license our name, likeness and image, and endorsement, and exploit those licenses for money.
No one can do it without our consent. If we somehow appear in a movie frame as the 200th extra carrying a spear and wearing a fake beard, our release still has to be obtained. If we sing tenth backup on a record, someone's going to want our signed paperwork saying it's OK to put our name and picture on the record jacket.
Few of us can monetize those rights by licensing our names and likenesses. For those who can, being able to do so while they are still valuable is a personal right that has been recognized in every jurisdiction.
Everyone but college athletes has these rights. Every celebrity, no matter how minor, in every field of endeavor has the ability to monetize them.
Most college athletes, even many of those who do big things on Saturday, will not have NFL careers after college. Many will have very short careers if they go to the NFL.
Few will have the ability to capitalize on the fame that comes with their college stardom later. It is entirely fair to allow college athletes to be able to license their rights of publicity while they are able to do so. A trust fund could be established so that they receive whatever licensing fees they generate upon graduation.
I don't particularly enjoy seeing the sacred mythological image of college football change, but I also don't see how the NCAA and schools can continue to benefit legally without having the athletes themselves benefit from their own rights that are recognized in law for every other person in the US. In some states, this is a common law issue, and in others, such as New York, it's statutory.
I've litigated publicity and privacy cases, and this issue is something that needs to be addressed, because nowhere in the law does it say, "Everyone has rights of privacy and publicity that they are free to exploit, except student athletes."
Just my two cents.
Edit: I want to add that these students are signing these NCAA releases at the age of 17 or 18, generally without the benefit of counsel, and having no idea what the paperwork really means. In fact, most people who aren't schooled in entertainment law don't fully understand the publicity/privacy rights they have or what those rights are.
Win or lose, the students challenging the NCAA are doing something that's actually meaningful, and I applaud RR for supporting them.
I've edited this a few times, please forgive me, I wanted the explanation to be concise.
It is a case in which I don't like any of the litigants. Not the plaintiff/players. Certainly not EA Sports. And not the NCAA, insofar as they seem to be licensing images of current student-athletes.
I understand and accept that Rich Rodriguez has taken a very mild position; support for the preservation of basic amateurism (a quote that was not in the OP) and also favoring some form of cash stipend.
But Rodriguez is wrong to lend any support at all to the lawsuit. He's being Rich Rodrigez; open, honest, casual, unguarded. As much as I might like the honesty and the information, it is no way to handle a complicated lawsuit.
I'm very surprised at the opinion that some of you have that college players are being selfish and get enough.
I feel like the deal used to be fair. Players got a full ride scholarship to go to a school and (presumably) get a good education in exchange for playing a game that gives them the opportunity to train for a career but also funds the university. University and others also make money from selling merch like jerseys.
That's all fine and good but it seems the focus has shifted to marketing individual players more than ever rather than the team/school and you have gotten to a level of exploitation that has made the deal unbalanced again.
Since you can't just pay certain players the only solution is to give a stipend.
It's easy to think the students are being selfish when you think of the ones who can afford it, but when you think of the ones who still need to pay for things like food and gas that their scholarship doesn't cover while others are making millions of dollars on their name and likeness you should give it a second thought.