What's your ideal College Sports / NCAA Endgame?
After a couple slow days on the board I thought I'd throw a 2 part question out there: With the NCAA's current structure getting more and more ridiculous, I'm of the opinion that something will change soon - whether it's big 5 autonomy, a Players Association, the olympic model, etc - I don't think we'll last many more years of coaches making $5M per year and players being happy now that there are free snacks. My question is - what's your ideal endgame and why? I think there are 4 main constituencies you've got to satisfy: Revenue scholarship athletes, non-revenue scholarship athletes / title 9 (this can get tricky), administrators/ADs, and fans. If you were in charge of the NCAA, how do you satisfy all 4 groups moving forward?
Your username makes your comment even better.
So lets say some players, as your username suggests, are getting paid already. Besides the issue of player salary, what's the difference between college and minor league games?
I really can't tell if you're being serious...
I may have been leading in the way I phrased the question, but here's my answer: Remove likeness rights, allow athletes to make money with the olympic model, let the Big 5 conferences get autonomy and have those big 5 agree on a "total cap" of spending above and beyond tuition, room and board for scholarship athletes - call it $3M/year or so, but they could negotiate a number. Here's what everyone gets out of the deal:
Revenue athletes; The ability to market themselves and make money today from what their doing, however they don't get any extra benefits direct from the university which satisfies part 2. Allow athletes to unionize so that they have representation with the NCAA and allow certified agents to represent players. The NCAA could police the agents hard and put their random enforcement people to better use.
Non rev/Title 9 - They make the same new benefits direct from the university and could market themselves. Michael Phelps could have officially swam for Michigan under this scenario. For the 27 sports, figure around 500 scholarship athletes they would each get $6,000 per year if the cap was $3M.
Admins/ADs: Only additional costs are those which the conferences negotiate ($3M per year in my scenario). I assume most ADs will also lose some booster money which could flow towards athletes more directly (figure random business owner pays QB to be in a commercial rather than donate to AD) in my scenario, but that's kind of how it works in every other business. Plus I doubt the million dollar donations that go towards buildings will become millions towards players.
Fans - As I see it this doesn't change the game for fans much. If DG were legit sponsored by a car dealer and drove a nice car that doesn't differ much from Pryor's "leases" except it being allowed. Fans might end up footing the bill for the "spending cap" of $3M in my scenario, but considering that fans are already milked dry, I don't think the AD wanting more money will be news.
Thoughts?
initially are, what makes you think leaving the conference to arrange their own 'cap' will satisfy the players? Isn't this basically the current system whereby the conference determines what they are allowed to 'give' the players? This needs to be collectively negotiated or possibly an independent 3rd party arbitration could help.
Good point, let the players unionize and negotiate the cap.
Almost exactly like every other sports league...
Either a true 16 team playoff with all conference champions included or elimination of playoffs and a return to pre BCS/Bowl Alliance new years day bowl game matchups.
As an old guy, I would like to abolish national rankings. No playoffs, no National champion. Play for your conference championship, and then play in a Bowl game to represent your conference. Take away the perception that unless you win a national championship your season is a failure.
Yeah, how do you forbid the AP or ESPN or whomever from making a ranking? That's about the only major aspect of college sports that the NCAA doesn't--and can't--have any control over.
National polls and ranking systems have been around a long, long time.
Honestly, if you want "amateur sports," they're available today. Today's club sports are probably closer to the "amateur" ideal than college football has ever been. They're not very popular, but that shouldn't matter if that's what you really want. D-3 football is out there too; that's less "amateur" than club football, but it's less "professional" than BCS football, it's readily available in southern Michigan (Albion, Alma, K-Zoo, Olivet, Adrian, Tiffin, etc.) and tickets are dirt cheap.
-total NCAA deregulation. You want to pay [recruit x] $1,000,000? Do it. You want to send text messages to recruits 24/7? Do it, but suffer the consequences if the recruits get annoyed. You want to practice 20 hours a day? Go ahead, but suffer the consequences if recruits choose easier programs. You want to hire 85 assistant football coaches? Do it, but suffer the consequences if you don't have money left over for players.
The market is a better regulating entity than the NCAA has ever been or could ever be.
-Title IX receiving a legislative "fix" to no longer apply to football or men's basketball (it should only apply to the money wasters; if you want to flush money down the men's fencing toilet, you should have to flush the same amount down the women's fencing toilet).
-Most non-revenue sports being dropped to club level;
-24(+) team playoff for football;
-fans get greater accountability. No more hiding behind "academic standards" or "the SEC cheatz!1!;" it would be fuck or walk time for a lot of administrators and coaches. Win or get out.
(Side note: your points are thought provoking and interesting; I am writing this to continue the conversation and not to criticize you, although it is probably pretty clear that I have a different perspective)
• Should schools be allowed to terminate scholarships at any time for any or no reason?
• Should steroids and other drugs be "decriminalized" (in the sense of no NCAA or school penalties, not necessarily as a matter of federal or state policy)
• Should athletes have to go to class, or even attend school?
• Should schools be able to trade a student athlete to another school, as a professional player would be traded?
Of course, an individual school or coach could opt not to do these things, I am asking if it should be optional under the construct you described in your post?
* How do you create a 24-team playoff in the context of a "free market"?
Wouldn't the top 2 teams tell the other 22 to have fun in their tournament, but unless they each get 40 percent of the revenue of the 24-team tournament, they are going to break off and play each other in a best-of-3 series (or whatever) for the real championship?
What happens to a sport when it has a "free market" is what happened to boxing: competing championships and all of the power in the hands of the promoters.
I don't want to speak for the post to which you replied, but total deregulation was (I think) obviously a bit of hyperbole. With total deregulation we're not all watching football anymore, just whatever game the two teams who show up decide to play that day. To me deregulation is cutting back on the rules in a couple major ways:
-restrictions on likeness rights/booster payments to players/payments from schools. You can't really eliminate one without dropping the others. Allow a school, or its boosters, to pay the players as much as they want. Allow the players or school to sell their pictures and jerseys.
-recruiting: let schools host and offer as many recruits as they want. One thing I will say is that there should be some common-sense restrictions to prevent the high school athletes, who are usually too young to protect themselves.
(and thanks!):
Should schools be allowed to terminate scholarships at any time for any or no reason?
It should be based on contract. Elite recruits would be able to command fully guaranteed four-in-five deals, with stipends and GIAs from the top programs (Michigan, Alabama, TAMU, etc.). Mediocre recruits might get only a week-to-week offer from elite programs but might get a guaranteed offer from lesser programs (e.g. EMU, CMU), and at that point the recruit has a market choice.
• Should steroids and other drugs be "decriminalized" (in the sense of no NCAA or school penalties, not necessarily as a matter of federal or state policy).
College athletic departments should not enforce laws against recreational drugs. Personally I'd decriminalize PEDs at every level too, but I think there's plenty of room for reasonable disagreement there. The problem that the prohibitionists' side needs to better address: is prohibition effective, or is PED use rampant? If it's rampant and there aren't many effective ways to make it less rampant, the prohibition leads to "grey market" strategies (similar to those created by the current cap on compensation), which might be more disruptive to competition than the PED use itself.
• Should athletes have to go to class, or even attend school?
Why do they go to class or attend school now? Why would altering the distribution of their value affect the nominal link between university and player? Personally, I would leave it up to the university, and I'd suspect that most schools would continue to foster that link to the same extent they do today, because 1) that link is "cheap" and very tenuous as it is now, and 2) it is perceived to generate fan interest and revenue.
• Should schools be able to trade a student athlete to another school, as a professional player would be traded?
Should be a matter of contract. Better recruits and players would be able to negotiate for stricter restrictions on transfer.
I discussed this a bit in some of the back and forth after the initial Northwestern NLRB decision, but in a nutshell I believe that universities would have a hard time forcing their athletes to be students if the athletes are "employees" (unionized or not). This is because it will be hard for universities to justify why attending class and making progress toward a degree is a requirement for serving as an employee that plays football or basketball. Universities may try, but (with the caveat that I am not a labor lawyer) I believe courts would strike such requirements down. Under an employment model, I believe that universities would also have a hard time restricting participation to four (on the field) years. You did not address length of eligibility, but I assume that would be an upshot of your deregulated plan. Your construct imagines a very similar approach, where athletes are employees (or, more likely, independent contractors). I know you did not say that, and I am not trying to put words in your mouth, but I see your construct as basically the same as an employment scenario.
Here is my disagreement: I enjoy pro sports and all, but the best part (to me) of college sports is that it is being played by student peers and that it is more about the university than the players. We can have legitimate arguments about whether athletes are really peers of regular students given preferential treatment and incredibly heightened expectations of athletes but the concept is still the same. I am not sure I would enjoy Michigan football if they were signing kids to 7-year contracts or trading with Oklahoma for a hot shot and essentially competing with the NFL. I can already get that from a pro sports team I have rooted for for life rather than a college team I have rooted for since college.
I may be alone in my feelings, but I think many would not root as hard for Michigan if it was essentially another pro team. And that, I think, is the fundamental point of disagreement.
I agree with your sentiment of liking the days when college athletes were really just students like everyone else. But I have to be realistic, and I don't think there is any way of putting that cat back in the bag. Players are celebrities, nationally, coaches are paid millions, TV contracts are worth billions. I don't think there is any way to reconcile that with the amateur "student-athlete" concept. We are trying right now, and the pressure on both sides is causing issues like the O'Bannon suit, the Northwestern NLRB situation, bagmen, and other school scandals. Something's gotta give somewhere, it's just a matter of where, and how far it goes.
the top levels. Before cfb existed, Harvard was using ringers (and accusing others of using ringers) in its boat races in the 1850s. Yale had a six figure slush fund to buy football players in the 1880s (more than $2 million in today's $$). If you read Bill Reid's 1905 diary/book, Ivy League football programs were recruiting semi-literate ringers and committing widespread academic fraud at the turn of the 20th century (and paying their coaches well; Reid made $7,000/year to coach Harvard, more than any of Havard's professors and equivalent to about $180,000 in today's $$).
I could drone on, and on, and on, but for the sake of brevity I'd say 1) that if a social institution has deviated from a concept (like student-athlete amateurism) for almost its entire existence, it's pretty safe to say that adherence to that concept is not driving interest in the institution; 2) even so, to the extent that people believe that the value of creating nominal "student-athlete" ties between players and institutions exceeds the costs (which are quite low), those ties will continue in a free market in a manner that no player would have legal standing (or likely any cognizable legal claim) to challenge.
Hope you don't like the Fielding Yost legacy...
Now I do hope you don't turn around and tell me that Bo or Lloyd (or hell even RichRod) were using ringers too, or that they didn't at least generally operate within the rules in place at the time...
Why would the university have trouble enforcing participation in classes? Compensation could be additional to scholarship, so that everyone gets the same base-level thing they get now (full cost of tuition and room and board paid) and anything extra for better players is on top of that. Whole package is contingent on maintaining eligibility. That wouldn't prevent the same sort of UNC-style athlete coddling shenanigans that are going on all over the place but that's not the problem we're talking about right now.
I agree with you about the appeal of college sports being in large part tied to the idea that the kids are fellow students. However tenuously, we had the same relationship to the university as each other -- in some ways they really were my peers while I was at UM: we took the same classes, ate the same crappy dorm cafeteria food, bought weed from the same dealers, etc.
Compensation has to happen, as I think most MGoBlog people agree. But if the link is severed altogether - if football/basketball become another minor league - I think my fandom would fade.
All college bb is, especially when you're lucky to have a super star around longer than one season is definitely a "show case" for the bigs; therefore, no difference than a minor league franchise say in bb where the best will go to the show and the rest will go into insurance.
CFB, by conference, most notably the SEC, is definitely nothing more than the equivalent of a Triple A farm team in baseball. Their ability to get away with things that are important to some conferences, such as oversigning, cutting athletes, giving certain ones the nudge, etc., just don't seem to matter to NCAA enforcement. There is no way in hell they could maintain such an advantage in gathering superior talent to that part of the country if it weren't for the above realitys. I see no real advantage in them changing a thing until forced to. Nothing in that part of the U.S. has changed one iota to make it more attractive to college fb players other than it having become the mecca for professional NFL scouts. If the NCAA doesn't step in, and they won't, bet on them keep piling up NCs.
Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures, the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind and greed, you mark my words, will not only save the NCAA, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA
Greed is.
We can try to create systems to fight it, but as Leonid Brezhnev could tell you, you can't destroy a market; you can only turn it black.
Instead of hiding from the market for players or creating historically inaccurate "warrior-poet" narratives to pretend it's not there, let's try something new. Let's put on our Big Boy Pants and embrace it.
you end up with a few elite programs becoming football or basketball businesses instead of universities, not requiring players to attend classes, making hundreds of millions of dollars more than any other school and monopolizing ALL the talent. There would no longer be any semblance of competition. Just like in the real world, free market economy (which is regulated far more than what you're suggesting for college athletics), there would be only the Warren Buffetts and Charles and David Kochs of the world at the top, holding 75% of the wealth in "college" athletics, leaving the other 25% to be split among the rest of the schools. Not sure how you could deny this when this is the reality of capitalism today. And that's with checks like antitrust laws in place which you don't think college sports should have. Thanks but no thanks. Today's NCAA landscape is far superior to that.
robust competition law and contract enforcement is a necessity for vibrant markets.
The rest of your post basically describes what we have with major college sports today. The biggest difference with a free market system would be the distribution of the revenue (away from administrators, bureaucrats, and coaches; toward players).
Or about repealing the equal opportunity clause; all you're doing is altering one of the prongs used to determine compliance. Without even getting to the pros/cons "is Title IX a good thing" portion, athletic scholarship distribution is a small part of the regulation and isn't actually codified into the law itself.
I'm in favor with whatever Keith Jackson wants.
Mark Emmert instructs all schools to take the money that would be going to players to construct a not-so-viable minor league dog and pony show to which players can go to if they don't like his classical interpretation of amateurism.
from college sports.
end the facility upgrade war. set strict limits on coaching salaries. slash ticket prices.
remove the excess money that makes it so that athletes are being victimized. Pay for their full cost of attendance, and give the rest of the money back to the fans.
What makes the athletic accomplishment of a player like Jack Miller or Dennis Norflleet so much more worthy of being given everything than the scholar from the south side of Chicago that had to fight through far more adversity to get a full tuition academic scholarship to Michigan but still can't afford to house or feed him or herself? And that person has a far greater chance of attributing real value to society than 99% of the other college athletes out there, even those playing for major football and basketball programs. I've never understood the inane argument from athletes that say they went to bed hungry. It's a ridiculous lie b/c just like the rest of us that go or went to college with no money, there is federal aid in loans or grants that will take care of all of the necessities. And just like the rest of us they might have to pay it back when they graduate. For those that make millions of dollars for the athletic program, they have a far better chance of paying back those loans immediately since, if they truly are generating that revenue themselves, they're very likely going to be making hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars professionally afterward. Spare me their sob story. Full tuition is enough. Otherwise extend the full cost of attendance scholarship to academic scholarships as well. Athletes don't deserve any more than they do. In fact, they deserve less. They're not out there creating new technologies to make our lives easier, new medical breakthroughs, engineering marvels or positive social policy. They are providing entertainment. And only a scant few of them have names recognizable to the rest of the country.... Sorry, ending my rant now.
Agreed. Student athletes are given free room and board along with a scholarship. I talked to a couple of football players about this and they said that the outside people who claim that they are starving are totally wrong.
are doing anything of what you said.
the ridiculous incomes that athletes have is a bigger issue than just college though.
Separate player associations form for each school. NCAA continues to prohibit direct pay tp players. The associations negotiate to fund scholarships for life and long-term disability funds. Any other things the players associations are able to negotiate for cannot take the form of cash payments while in school, but full cost of attendance scholarships are allowed and adjusted with inflation.
NCAA is split into two organizations; one with the regulatory mission the NCAA is supposed to have and one that's the marketing entity that the NCAA has become. Separate books. Separate missions. Separate groups of people. The university presidents can then vote on marching orders for the two organizations separately.
We return to the old, traditional bowl associations. A BCS team ranking system still exists, but whatever 4 bowl games have the highest ranked teams in them serve as the 1st round of a playoff. That means teams 1-4 make it, but the next 4 spots might not be the top ranked teams in the nation (they will however, likely be conference champions.)
80 teams from FBS split into their own division of the "NCAA" and govern themselves. Scholarships increase to the point where the great majority of scholar athletes have no need to accept money from anyone. The new division of the "NCAA" throws out the current rule book and starts a new one that stops filling pages with rules that are unenforcable or immaterial to the realities of college athletics. Instead, they focus on preventing cheating and illegal benefits. Schools give this group legal power to investigate and enforce these rules.
On the field, the 80 teams form 8 conferences based on location and history and play round-robin conference schedules plus 3 nonconference games against other teams in the 80. Each year, the 8 conference champions come together for a tournament of champions to determine the national champion.
I guess I'm not entirely surprised to see a couple of comments suggesting Title IX shouldn't apply to 'revenue' sports, or should apply differently, somehow. After all, men's football and basketball are special, aren't they? And should as a result allow for gender-based discrimination in access to higher education.
Or maybe not. Title IX isn't about sports per se, it's about discrimination at institutions receiving direct Federal aid. People have fought it from the beginning, not out of principle, but to protect men's football and basketball. In implementation, it's ugly, but in principle, it's the right thing to do. Just because television hasn't figured out how to make a mint out of women's college sports, doesn't mean we have to allow media rights and popularity to dictate how educational opportunity is allocated.
If they can't do so in 40 years, it isn't going to happen and we're wasting time pretending that it will.
I don't agree with your interpretation of Title IX (schools are "spending" resources on one group while receiving resources from another, so they wouldn't be "discriminating against" the former group by paying the latter; and needless to say, it's hard to argue that allowing all athletes to receive market compensation is "discrimination" against one group just because the market values that group's skills less), but to the extent that people do believe in it, the money for women's "educational opportunities" should come from general funds, not off the backs of football players. Title IX was not intended to finance (mostly) rich white girls' "educational opportunity" on the backs of (mostly) poor-lower middle class, (mostly) minoritiy males.
"Self-supporting interest" is irrelevant. Gosh, if only women really wanted to break through the glass ceiling, right? I mean, we've given them so much time, they must not really want "it" (whatever 'it' is).
Revenue generation is irrelevant as well. Title IX applies irrespective of whether or how an educational institution monetizes athletics. "Market compensation" is completely irrelevant, and for the vast majority of affected institutions, just downright silly to talk about. Market fetishization will only serve to distract from the real issue here.
"On the backs of..."??? Are you serious? You're true colors are unfortunately coming through loud and clear.
52% of football players are black, 57% of mens basketball players are black, and 76% of women's ncaa athletes are white...his statement is intentionally inflammatory--to the point where it may take away from what he's trying to say--but it is worth noting.
The vast majority of D1 football programs lose money and are subsidized by the general student population, directly or indirectly. It is very rare for the revenue stream to flow the other way. We share a love of a school that is among the fortunate few.
do not lose money. Many athletic departments (not football programs; athletic departments) operate in the red, but a substantial amount of that is non-profit gold plating.
I'll say something for student subsidies too; at FSU, full time students pay an athletics fee that's like $150 or so per year, depending on the number of credit hours the student takes. However, FSU students get in free to every FSU athletic event; football, men's basketball, baseball, etc. To me, that's a better deal than charging football-fan students $295 for a season ticket.
...which is a measure that lumps together programs that are generating huge revenues (e.g. Kentucky basketball, Alabama football) with programs that are not (e.g. Yale basketball). A friend of mine is writing an article that carves out the big time football and men's basketball programs and then compare those programs with the non-revenue programs, and his preliminary findings are indeed starker than the numbers you cited.
-Title IX receiving a legislative "fix" to no longer apply to football or men's basketball (it should only apply to the money wasters; if you want to flush money down the men's fencing toilet, you should have to flush the same amount down the women's fencing toilet).with my caveat being that it should only apply to schools where the football/basketball programs actually are self-supporting. I.e. Middle Tenn State cannot take general fund dollars that now go to women to funnel it all to the football team.
Football and men's basketball don't need protecting. That's not really why people fight it. Those sports will exist regardless. People fight it because it limits opportunities for men to participate in any other sport besides those two.
And the reason Title IX should apply differently to "revenue sports" is: tell me how good the educational opportunity would be for women's volleyball players without something to fund them?