OT-Mad at greed

Submitted by trueblueintexas on
I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore...yes I am. Why? Because I love college sports. Sorry for the late night rant about problems that can't be solved, mainly because those making the money don't see it as a problem. After watching TV and not going 5 min without being encouraged to call my local cable subscriber to get the Longhorn Network I go to ESPN.com and find an article based on a study ESPN has commissioned evaluating their impact on college sports (http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/id/7149965/espn-middle-college-realignm…) It's clear the goal of this was to exonerate ESPN and yet by the time I was done reading, I was even more pissed off at them. So I thought, I'll go to the college football main page to actually read about the game I love. Of the 11 standard headlines on the page, 2 actually dealt with playing games. The other nine were all about money, and bigger scoreboards (ND), players in trouble, re-alignment, etc. It's the middle of the season!!! I wish the powers that be, the media, and every other greedy jerk would leave the game we all love alone so we could all...you know...enjoy the game. Rant over. Get off my lawn. Thank you.

aaamichfan

October 27th, 2011 at 1:41 AM ^

I came into this thread fully intending to make a snarky dickhead comment, but I actually agree 100% with the OP. Well stated.

snoopblue

October 27th, 2011 at 1:55 AM ^

It's clearly ALL about money, but when it comes to paying the actual athletes they all say...WHAT ABOUT AMATUERISM!?!

I think college athletes need to unionize. If anything, it will give them experience to deal with unions at the next level, because it's lockouts galore in professional sports these days. Revenue generating sports (football, mens hoops) should definitely organize some kind of union. Football/Basketball schools would be divided into 'Tiers'. At each Tier, all athletes have the same 'base pay' and then recieve a 'bonus' amount based on their specific schools revenue situation.

The NCAA makes waaaay too much money, I wonder if it all actually does go back to the schools?

IPFW_Wolverines

October 27th, 2011 at 2:11 AM ^

No. Unionizing college sports would be terrible. The last thing I want to see is some 18 year old kid demanding that a university provide him with an Ipod and if he doesn't  get it, he'll strike. 

Unions were a great idea in the gilded age. Today they are as much of the problem as the side they fight against. 

BlueGoM

October 27th, 2011 at 5:21 AM ^

What is there to unionize?  They are not employees.   If they don't like the school and all the pressure they're under, they can go to another school.

NCAA makes too much money?  They're a non-profit.   How much is too much?

I'm as upset at the money involved in college sports as the next person but ... dude.  Serious.

 

SanFrancisco_W…

October 27th, 2011 at 11:25 AM ^

Well, technically if they begin to get paid anything other than tuition they could technically be considered employees.  Think about it, they are saying that the schools are capitalizing on their likeness.  If they demand money for that likeness, they are then being paid to promote the school's brand.......thus making them employees of the school.  Unionizing wouldn't be that out of the spectrum.

LSAClassOf2000

October 27th, 2011 at 5:47 AM ^

"I think college athletes need to unionize. If anything, it will give them experience to deal with unions at the next level, because it's lockouts galore in professional sports these days." - snoopblue

First, they aren't employees of the school and therefore are not entitled to the same sorts of benefits as an employee, which I think would mean that, by law, the school would not be required to recognize them anyway even if they did form one, so there's little point.  The only ones we officially recognize in contracts at DTE are the ones whose members we employ. 

Second, I think the unions in sports are feeding into the problem of greed in sports nowadays, not making these valiant stands for the rights of their members. The NBA might be the most glaring example of that. They don't recognize that their search for a bigger paycheck is causing people who work in ancillary positions with teams and around venues to lose theirs. Not sure I want students to have the experiences that this invites. 

Zone Left

October 27th, 2011 at 6:39 AM ^

To play Devil's advocate, before money totally took over, you couldn't watch every Michigan game down in Texas. Heck, you couldn't even get all the Texas games in Texas.

trueblueintexas

October 27th, 2011 at 11:13 AM ^

And now, once again, because of the Longhorn Network you can't get every Texas game in Texas. That's the difference between making money and greed.
That was the point of the post. I'm okay with making money, it's when greed takes over that everything gets screwed up. I pay $6.95 a month for the B1G Network. That's reasonable from a fan perspective and it helped all the schools in the conference make more money without significantly changing the scope of any one sport, school, or conference. Having ESPN tell the ACC they should go get a few more teams to get that big TV contract to me is greed.
My Mom would be proud, she always used to say, "there's enough for everyones need, but not everyones greed".

exmtroj

October 27th, 2011 at 8:39 AM ^

If college football is a horrible life of slavery and destitution, then go get a fucking job bagging groceries at Meijer instead of taking your free ride to college. Most of us mere mortals have had to do something similar in our lives. I would pay to still be able to play football, not the other way around. This debate is over

MaizeAndBlueWahoo

October 27th, 2011 at 10:44 AM ^

Hear hear.  To use a contemporary phrase, the 99% of college athletes are being ignored.  Except in this case, it's the 99% getting a free ride on the backs of the 1%.  The 1% are held up as paragons of exploitation because of "all the money that's made off their efforts" - and yet they are in the top one-one-hundredth of one percent when it comes to undergraduate college students being compensated for their efforts.  I'm sick of hearing how exploited they are.  When practically the entire campus would trade places with you in a heartbeat, you're not exploited.

Wolverine Pride

October 27th, 2011 at 9:31 AM ^

The very passion for college sports that the OP speaks of is the reason that the ESPN's of the world won't change.  That is until fans decide to change.  As long as traffic to their site continues and we watch the games on tv, they have no reason to change.  If we don't like the way it is, we could change our behavior and at some point they would have to alter theirs to stay in business.  Easier said than done....I don't want to turn off the tv and miss UM games.  I value watching Michigan more than hating how money has taken center stage in college athletics.  Until that changes for the majority, ESPN's business plan will remain the same.

 

michgoblue

October 27th, 2011 at 10:14 AM ^

Let me tell you why I COMPLETELY disagree with everything that you wrote. 

1.  Do you enjoy watching the games on TV?

Like me, you live outside the state of Michigan (I think).  You do realize that without $$ as a motivating factor for ESPN to show the games or for the B10 network to even exist, you would not be able to watch a single game unless you traveled to Ann Arbor?  Before $$ was involved (let's say the 1950s and 1960s), there was at most 1 game on TV per year out of area.  Even in the days of Desmond winning his Heisman - when I just started watching - in NY there was at most 2-3 Michigan games televised per year.  The influence of $$ has created ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPN Classic, B10 Network, ESPN 3 and so on, allowing us CFB fans to watch just about any game we want.

2.  Like the new Big House renovations?  Enjoy seeing that awesome scoreboard that is giving ND scoreboard-envy?  How about our  awesome practice facilities that recruits are commenting positively on?  How about Greg Mattison's very high coordinator salary?  What do you think paid for those thing?  Yup, money - money raised in selling seats, jerseys, TV Rights, and the like.  The country, and in particular the state of Michigan, is in a deep recession - if our football program were not profitable, do you think that the state would pony up for excesses like that. 

3.  Dude, it was a Wednesday night.  What games were on that you want ESPN to write about?  On Thursday, Friday, Saturday and even Sunday, you don't see as many of these $$-related stories.

4.  ESPN

They are a part of the Disney company.  A publicly-traded FOR PROFIT company.  It is their job - the purpose for which they were created - to make money.  If you don't like that, you are free not to frequent ESPN.  THere are plenty of good CFB blogs out there that are less $$ focused (like this one).

andrewG

October 27th, 2011 at 10:43 AM ^

i opened this thread for the sole purpose of down-voting. but instead i up-voted. i'm sick of watching all these schools just throw away history and geography for a couple extra bucks.

triangle_M

October 27th, 2011 at 12:16 PM ^

This comes from the same people who brought us this quote regarding the Bruce Feldman/Mike Leach/CRAIG JAMES KILLED 5 HOOKERS WHILE AT SMU debacle:

 

. . . this recent online fracas is a result of cascading decisions that were made with good intentions but without the proper attention to core values and loyalties.

ESPN is great cause it brings us sports, but terrible because of its talking heads.

Engin77

October 27th, 2011 at 2:28 PM ^

We don't see ESPN ads for the Longhorn Network in Oregon.

Now I have an inkling of how Texas A&M fans must feel when they see those ads; but they must feel it 1000x stronger than I do.