Study: D-I football, men's hoops players worth at least six figures per year

Because like Shoeless said, they're spending a shitload of money, too.

What this group is arguing is that there already is plenty of money that is being wasted. Shift money elsewheres for athlete payments, and allow them earn cash by autograph signings or posing nude if their little hearts so desire.

The star athlete isn't going to forgo USC for Prairie View A&M anyways, so the whole "Little schools won't be competitive!" thing is BS. Except for the occasional Appalachian State upset, they already aren't.

 

Best of luck on your crusade, Baron. My guess is you will again be disappointed, college sports will not find their Curt Flood, and the system and complaints that have been around for a hundred years will continue.

 

If players want to get paid, I'm all for it.

Go after the NBA and NFL, or any other professional league, and make them change their rules so its a free market for anyone 18-or-older.

They are the ones hindering the market for players who want compensation.

 

Yup. That's the injustice.

 

That's what they said about baseball in 1970, which had the same system for 90 years. Few years later, we all know what happened.

I think it's a big victory for the players right now that the NCAA is considering making scholarships four years guaranteed.

 

There also was a time when all it took to get some of your teams to an away game was to put them on a three-hour bus ride. Now, with conference realignments making much of that an impracticality, a lot of the money is going to airlines and hotels. I'm not sure how many teams fall into the must-fly category, but the list certainly isn't getting smaller.

 

The claim that the big money sports are funding the lesser sports is likely true, but the vast majority of those $$$ are not going to the tennis team, they are going to the administrators, NCAA, bowl presidents, etc.

The problem is that people are demanding the content provided by the programs and that's unacceptable. People need to realize that they are supporting this expoitation. That's what needs to change.

Paying the athletes? Something needs to change, put the $$ in trust funds or something, anything is better than the Fiesta Bowl "president" getting $100K of lap dances while the players' mom cannot even attend the event. NCAA is reaping billions. Who gets the most $$ from those funds? The NCAA association. The head of the NCAA likely gets over $300k for attending 12 board meetings a year. That needs to be written about. Where is the expose of where the $12billion goes?

I recall that all the claims of the big time programs bringing in huge $$ was a fallacy, there is no profit, they barely break even. All the $$ they generate? They just cover the costs that are allocated to the program with very little left to fund the other sports. Sports are by definition not supposed to be self-supporting, they are/were supposedly offered to college students as part of the education process so therefore should be part of the general expenses for the university. What happened is that the big time programs said they were "self-supporting" so that they could keep the huge influx of $$ and spend it on themselves.

A viable alternative needs to be provided so that college athletes over 18 have a true choice.

 

And what is motivating these conference realignments? Money.

Which is then going towards the airplanes and the five-star hotels.

 

Which player's mom wanted to give the Fiesta Bowl president a lap dance?

I don't disagree with anything you said. But I don't know what the true incentive to change the system is, since there are more people and more money coming in than ever before. College football is the #2 or #3 sport in America and there just isn't a groundswell to reform it. I don't know if there is ever going to be a court case that will force reform, but it seems like nobody's going to be interested in being the next Curt Flood because if you're that good you're A) getting plenty of money on the sly anyway; and B) gone to greener pastures in 2 1/2 years -- or seven months for hoops -- and not interested in waging a huge court fight.

 

I'm sorry, but "true choice"? This notion is so overblown.

No one is forcing anyone to take an athletic scholarship. There's also no right to be compensated for one.

There is no right for families to benefit from said scholarship. So much of the reasoning here is ludicrous.

There will be no court case to force players to get paid because there is no law that is being broken. There is no market that is being hampered. The NBA and NFL are more vulnerable than the NCAA in this realm and both of those leagues have repeatedly won in court when they've been challenged on their age-limits.

And all of this ignores the practical fact that the vast majority of Division I universities could not afford to pay their athletes under any circumstance. What might be good for Michigan is fatal for Eastern Michigan, etc.

 

Once again you aren't realizing or just simply ignoring what the real situation is. A school like Purdue doesn't make a profit and couldn't afford to pay. A vast majority of teams, even a majority of BCS schools, don't make a profit. It's not just Prairie View A&M. It's the big schools too.

And sorry but in this time of the most parity ever someone saying the small schools don't compete makes me laugh. Also makes me want to bang my head against the wall. News flash Boise State, TCU ... etc. are competing.

 

Boise State has nearly 20,000 students (undergrad and grad). Roughly the same amount as Syracuse and Mississippi State. More than Clemson (which has about 15K), from schools that I just randomly looked up. They're hardly a small school.

TCU has a little more than 9K, but they've competed against BCS schools for nearly their entire history and were in the SWC. So I don't really think of them as a small school.