The Shame of College Sports- a case against the NCAA
[Ed: PGB - Bumped for general awesomeness in the topic and the cerebral discussion that follows. This is a very good example of why the MGoBoard is great. Make sure to read the article before joining in on the discussion, if possible.]
Dr. Saturday linked to this (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/10/the-shame-of-colleg… on the NCAA suggesting it:
"may legitimately be the most important article ever written about college sports. If not, it's certainly the most comprehensive, tracing the history of the NCAA from its humble, impotent origins, and making the most convincing case yet that the organization is not only the bastion of an exploitive, plantation-like system that violates antitrust law, but may in fact be little more than a basketball tournament with an empty office building in Kansas City. (Also: It includes a former coach describing his profession as "whoremaster.")"
I haven't read the whole thing yet (because I'm not one of those speed-readers), but it's both very well written and researched, and I thought it would be good to disseminate it to the masses for consumption and discussion.
September 15th, 2011 at 9:48 PM ^
Olympians are a tiny select set of athletes. There aren't bloody many in any single sport. Suprising many are from wealthy backgrounds, witness ND fencing, else receive tantamount to professional financial support. A prospective sale of U-M/ND night game jerseys is nauseating for me.
What NCAA institutions "sell" is an education that will enable student athletes to stand a reasonable chance of fulfilling their non-athletic dreams after the athletic ones are crushed by time. Continuing education is the proper currency in my view, and for the institutions it may hold certain tax and business advantages. 0.02
September 15th, 2011 at 10:12 PM ^
And I like your solution - however what had me most horrified by that article was the NCAA preventing players from meeting with lawyers and not having to pay for kids' health insurance. More so than just compensation, these two aspects were nauseating. Any solution has to deal with that.
September 15th, 2011 at 10:20 PM ^
What was mentioned was a tiny, select group of revenue athletes. Sure, you might run into a bar/car dealership/store opening paycheck for anyone who can show up with a Michigan letterman jacket, but anything else (shoe deals, action figures) will only exist for a small subset of the population.
Also, I don't know what difference the number of athletes makes. The idea is a solid one, and one I completely agree with. Let the school pay for their tuition, let athletes earn money outside. Nobody complains that the NFL is compromised because Cam Newton appears with Desmond in a Nissan commercial.
September 15th, 2011 at 10:39 PM ^
How do we deal with the fact that football subsidizes the entire athletic department? To some extent, I WANT that to continue to happen. But there is no reason for the NCAA, or their member universities, to hamstring schools from letting their kids earn money on the outside. Add in the fact that it'll be the revenue-generating athletes who'll generate revenue for themselves, and we'll see a system that will still have its problems - but be a ton fairer than what we have currently, while not overthrowing the system completely.
September 15th, 2011 at 10:42 PM ^
My alma mater of twelve years through various advanced degrees will never be some mere agency for professional athletes and actresses while I live. Cam Newton can snort a house on Packard Street up his nose for all I am concerned. Know this.
September 15th, 2011 at 10:50 PM ^
1) I never mentioned that the University had to act as the agent
2) I think that it should be necessary for student athletes to still be students. Otherwise, what's the point?
Basically, you just give them the rights that any other student has. If by some miracle, they decided, while I was in school, to put my ugly mug on TV and sell something - I wouldn't lose my eligibility as a student, or as an engineer. More plausibly, let's say Lloyd Brady starts to have his image marketed and sold - he'd make a cut of it, and still get to be an M student. What's wrong with athletes getting that same deal?
September 15th, 2011 at 10:51 PM ^
In that case, you're looking for only professional doctors, engineers, scientists and the like? If that's the case, why support intercollegiate athletics at all. Michigan has made a conscious (and multi-billion dollar) decision to be in the business of big time athletics. Unless someone at the medical school has made a huge pay jump lately, the two highest paid employees are athletic coaches.
Also, these athletes would be "amateur". The University wouldn't be paying them a dime more than they do now, which is exactly what I proposed above.
Glad I now "know this" about Cam Newton. Cool. Next time I'll mention Tom Brady and Uggs.
September 16th, 2011 at 12:45 AM ^
Nobody complains that the NFL is compromised because Cam Newton appears with Desmond in a Nissan commercial.
Wasn't that Mark Ingram, or are there more than one? I have to watch more TV
September 16th, 2011 at 9:16 AM ^
Correct on both accounts, my bad. Although in my defense, I immediately thought "why not Cam Newton?" when I saw the commercial. There are several, and the ones I watched from the thread yesterday were pretty funny.
http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/mark-ingram-desmond-howard-nissan-commercial
September 16th, 2011 at 7:45 AM ^
the elite players who can profit from sponsorships, are then living off the labor of their teammates. The problem just shifts.
September 16th, 2011 at 9:26 AM ^
Well, currently Tom Brady has deals with:
- Stetson
- Smartwater
- Movado
- Audi
totaling more than $4m annually. I don't think he does this "off the labor of his teammates".
I found one site advertising athlete speaking and appearances (including Jake Long, which was my search) starting at $5,000 per event, and my suspicion is that someone like Long probably goes for at least double that.
These acts are commonplace for professional and Olympic athletes, as well as Michigan coaches like Carr, RR, Hoke, Beilein; I don't really see it as a big deal.
September 15th, 2011 at 10:36 PM ^
Hate the game. The NCAA was created and exists in it current state because University administration want it that way. And asking for federal government intervention? Title IX anyone?
September 15th, 2011 at 10:46 PM ^
The article chronicles its evolution. You're right, this did happen because of what universities wanted. But the question is, do we want it that way?
What it comes down to me is - what is the point of college athletics? Not just football and basketball, but all college sports? I think that it's too naive to dismiss the fact that they are a place for athletes to develop into better athletes - essentially, they're minor leagues. But I am naive enough to think it's also about giving kids an opportunity to go to college - opportunities they may not have had if they didn't display excellence in athletics.
After reading the article, I think the answer to the NCAA is - it's all about making the NCAA money. And the schools get a pretty decent chunk of it themselves. Anything else that happens is just PR to dress up that ugly fact.
September 15th, 2011 at 11:14 PM ^
Fine. Michigan can let out Michigan Stadium to one of those teams on Wednesdays. The Washtenaw County Arbs (Go Arbs!). The rest of us participate in a University that actively is working toward cures for cancer. You can go take your filthy semi-pro money-ilk athletes concepts somewhere else. I enjoy the athletes but will be just as pleased to never see them set foot upon campus again. It's why God invented cable tv. I have so many programming options.
September 16th, 2011 at 7:03 AM ^
Agreed. If Michigan just becomes an entity that runs a football team populated by non-students or even students on the payroll of assorted lowlifes with no affiliation with the university, I'm not interested and won't invest any more time or money.
Branch's article and pieces like it proceed from the premise that the terms "student-athlete" and "amateur" are concocted hypocrisies. That premise is inaccurate. Michigan field hockey players are amateur student-athletes; Michigan golfers are amateur student-athletes; Michigan tennis players are amateur student-athletes. The only difference between those sports and football is that football generates a lot more fan interest, both inside and outside the university. That difference does not, conceptually, make the players something other than the amateur student-athletes the tennis and field hockey players, and golfers undisputably are.
If people are so offended by the amounts of money the adults are taking out of the system -- and there's every reason to be -- legislate that down.
September 16th, 2011 at 12:37 AM ^
I'll have to say the article opened up a number of things for me. In a way, it demonstrated why conferences like the SEC, Big 10, Big 12 and Pac 10 tend to be dominant and conferences like the MAC, WAC, MWC tend to not be dominant. I'm willing it all goes back to the game of the week thing and the subsequent realization by the big conferences that they could make more money if they went their own way. At least the game of the week tried to spread the money around.
I'll use Kinko's as an example. I believe Kinko's got its start because of a couple of college students seeing a need for more copiers. If those guys were athletes, they would have had to give up their dreams of being athletes in order to pursue a business. To me that's not right. They should be able to seek out a forture regardless.
The thing that I didn't like about the article is that it didn't really touch the subject about schools that are bleeding money from their athletic programs. If the NCAA finally allowed some sort of compensation, it might put the final nail in the coffins of marginal programs. I'm not sure I'd like to see that. I mean Michigan could probably pay for its athletes...EMU probably couldn't and it would force the EMU Regents to finally make that tough decision.
But it did go to pretty good detail about the arbitrariness of the NCAA punishments.
September 16th, 2011 at 9:56 AM ^
Tom Brady's a professional. Michigan football has always been for amateurs and there's no real reason to change that.
September 16th, 2011 at 10:34 AM ^
Frank DeFord weighed in this morning:
http://www.npr.org/2011/09/14/140433661/the-ncaa-and-the-so-called-student-athlete
September 16th, 2011 at 3:20 PM ^
RE: the scholarship argument: not only are they basically all in favor of the institution, but they're renewed on a year-to-year basis, no? So if you fail to live up to expectations or they find someone better (I'm looking at you, Saban), they can find any reason to not renew your scholarship or push you out the door.
I don't know that I'm in favor of full-on paying these guys but at least give them a little leverage in terms of the LOI's.
EDIT: If this point has been brought up, my pardons.
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