Northwestern football players seek to join union

"Coach, I'd love to play for you. I want a car, a house for my mom, and $150,000 per year in addition to my scholarship."

"Sorry, that's against NCAA rules."

So no, they cannot negotiate, at least by NCAA standards.

 

They are too scared to negotiate on the one thing they ARE allowed to negotiate.

You say they don't out of fear the school will toss them aside in favor of someone else.

So wouldn't that also happen if it were a free-for-all? Wouldn't these marginal players be too scared to ask for much, lest the school toss them aside and say, "Eh, we have 100 other players who WILL accept our terms. See ya." ?

 

You cling to this theory, and it gets weirder every time you say it.

What's the point of negotiating for a four-year or renewable one-year scholarship? It is not worth the time or aggravation for something that does not matter to them at the time.

Now, negotiating for money, or something that actually makes a difference is a different story.

 

With college football/men's basketball scholarships, if you're strong enough to get a full scholarship to a Division I school in those sports, you probably also have more than one school interested in you. More options on where to go than you will probably have in the working world after graduation.

Let's say that Georgia is recruiting you for football. You take the visit, decide it is just too intense and that you'd rather play where the pressure is lower. So you chose Wake Forest or Indiana instead, where nobody gives a damn. Your Saturdays are relatively peaceful on the second-string or even on the first team but, hey, you're getting a free education out of the deal.

That's how you game the system. I went to college (gigantic BCS school) and knew a couple of football players on a social basis. Both of them were highly-recruited coming out of high school as quarterbacks but, thanks to six quarterbacks already on the roster, both hardly even saw the field. One was shifted to a tight end and the other was a scout team receiver. Both knew they'd never play in the NFL so they used the system. Only time they ever went above and beyond was in the weeks before the spring game so that the coaches wouldn't pull their scholarships.

Both stayed on scholarship for four years, which is puzzling because of all of the resources used to recruit them and the accolades on Signing Day.

These two hit all of the parties, ate all the free food the program provided. Graduated with honors. The tight end caught a touchdown his senior year in a non-conference blowout. Other guy became a jammer on punts only during blowout games.

They perfectly "gamed" the system.

As a "big time" recruit, you should know exactly the atmosphere that you're getting into long before signing day. You know which coaches are jerks, which colleges have the most girls who are a "6", which places will stress academics and which places won't care.

All for an education that you get to "work off" while in college and paying nothing yet getting all the support systems most "civilian" students don't get.

 

My point is the players do deserve a seat at the table to have their concerns voiced. They also deserve medical care after college for injuries that occurred while a member of his or her respective team. I do believe they deserve some sort of annual stipend - not to exceed $3K - so they can have some money that normal college kids can earn. What I do not think college players are entitled to is a regular paycheck and/or employee status because, as exmediahack pointed out brilliantly and I mentioned in my post, the value of a free education cannot be understated.

 

It's nice that you have determined for everybody what the value of their education is and whether they should be happy with it.

But then why are so many boosters, agents, tattoo artists and others exceedingly willing to give the players more than a free education?

 

That's easy. Greed. They want to be in these kids' pockets when they go pro. Nobody's giving to No. 1 women's diver money and free tats because there isn't money to be made in that.

 

Ah, the whole "a college scholarship should be enough!" argument. Why should it have to be enough? Especially when it's not enough for coaches and administrators to make five figures instead of seven?

Your first graf leads to my point. Most of these guys have more than one school interested in them. They should be able to sell themselves to the highest bidder and be able to profit as much as they can from their ability.

You also pointed out about how scholarships can be taken away. Schools might not be so willing to do so if one of their boosters had to pay a recruit an extra $10 grand to come to their school.

 

1. How did you arrive at $3,000 stipend? My guess is you picked the number out of thin air because it sounds about right to you given your sensibilities and background. Sorry, that's not how the real world works.

2. The value of a free education is consistently overstated as a reason why athletes shouldn't share in the billions of dollars they generate.

 

Not to exceed a certain amount to keep things within Title IX, otherwise the women's soccer team is going to complain that it receives, say, $100 a year per player while the football players get, let's say, $10,000. You have to actually think within reason here about something that could actually work, instead of just saying, this team generates X-amount of dollars, so the players should get a cut. Title IX is a tricky thing and the NCAA will not open itself up to litigation by ignoring it.

 

Instead of a set stipend, a percentage of merchandise sales and alumni donations could be placed into a fund that would then be distributed to the players.

Players would also get, say, four tickets to each home game that they could do what they want with. And for a select number of games, universities would pay for the travel of parents or guests.

A clothing allowance, not more sweatpants, would be given to players and also allow for a certain amount of commercial endorsements.

It really isn't hard and the money is there.