College Basketball Thread 2018

The Shame of College Sports - The Atlantic

 

I know. Players in hockey, baseball and every other damn sport agree.

 

NCAA makes the mafia look like the Cub Scouts.

 

Any one of us had the option to work for real, professional newspapers when we were in college. These kids don’t have the same option.

 

I really, really despise the NC$$.

 

They don't even try to hide from it.

 

No it's not. He could, indeed, sign that contract Monday. Nike'd pay him a shitload, too. All it'd take is ending his Duke career.

Now, if your point is he shouldn't have to do that, and my opinion is BS, well, that's it's own thing.

But I doubt I'm factually wrong.

 

Because the world isn't always exactly the way we want it to be?

I dunno. I'd rather the NCAA just stayed what it was and the market accounted for the Zion Williamses the right way. The NBA could either let him in their league or create its own developmental leagues that, hell, recruit the kids when they're 10, for all I care. Nike and Adidas already have AAU leagues...just pay the kids, with those kids understanding that, once they take the money, they're not playing in the NCAA.

My sense is the NCAA's biggest flaw is simply not conforming completely to the hypocrisy of the progressive sports media, which, on the one hand, wants to treat college sports like a free market but, on the other, wants to keep the NCAA somehow strong for its historical value. I mean, what's Alabama football if Alabama football isn't actually good, but a bunch of 3-star kids who play in college because they can't make a minor league team that pays money?

To some the NCAA is so awful, and broken - even shameful! Shameful we say! - but apparently not to the point where athletes ought to circumvent the system entirely. No no. The NCAA has to become some kind of intermediary pro league. The NBA could create this pro league. The NFL could. MLB does and long has done so, which is why some of our best baseball players - including the very best, Mike Trout - never spent a day in college. But instead of putting the pressure on the pro leagues - or, more to the point, TV networks and shoe companies, we put it on the NCAA.

If the NCAA is that wretched an organization, let it wither through disavowal and neglect. Don't transform it into something it's not. Let it be amateur, attracting amateur athletes, while the pros are pros for a long time.

If you want to root money out of the NCAA, I'm OK with that too. End apparel deals. Tax payouts from conferences as capital gains. All good with me.

 

Of course they do.

I will admit the options for football players aren't good, but that's mostly due to absence of good pro leagues. But the NFL acting in bad faith until the creation of the AAF. The NFL using the NCAA as its developmental league is on the NFL, not the NCAA.

Now, one thing the NCAA could do - and it'd be really damn provocative to do so - is to ban NFL scouts from their practices and press box seats. Wouldn't that be something? I'd be in favor of that.

 

Instead the young men received valuable lessons in character building from the likes of Rick Pitino.

 

I guess the biggest question for me is, why the fuck would you care if they get paid? Does it affect you in any way?

 

Exactly. Why would you want kids who are largely poor to not want to cash in? Seems awfully unamerican.