The Most Important Article Ever Written About College Sports*

That was when Telander was in his hate the game phase of his life.

 

I don't fault Seth for this one. SI obviously sold his column space to a PR factotum deep inside the NCAA offices.

 

Jesus fucking Christ. Seth Davis makes Tom Verducci and Peter King look like Tommy Craggs with this one.

 

Holy shit, where do I start?

1. He bitches about coaches going into living rooms and offering car dealership money. Right after he claims that players are receiving their fair market value as freshmen is zero because pro teams won't draft them. Um, that smells of collusion. Not to mention, they aren't receiving their fair market value because they are limited in what they can receive. If a coach offers $75K in endorsements, that's the athlete's fair market value. If another player can get $100K in endorsement's, that's his fair market value. The second-string punter can get some free hamburgers. There's his market value.

And besides, what's wrong with a coach offering money anyways? The whole amateurism thing in football and men's basketball has fallen by the wayside. Stop pretending that it's immoral to get paid to play college sports. There's nothing immoral about it. Against the NCAA rules? Yes? Immoral? Nope.

2. "If the players don't like the deal, they can sign somewhere else. Hey, it's just business, right?"

Um no, they can't sign somewhere else, unless they want to sit out a year. And that's only if the school likes where the athlete is going. Otherwise, it's two years. Alabama QB decides to transfer to Auburn. You think Nick Saban's going to sign the release?

3. He repeats the usual meme about how schools lose money on sports, and actually writes about runaway coaching salaries and ridiculous expenses. Yet, he dismisses it as "It's expensive to run an athletic program." No, it's called sticking to a budget.

I'd have other thoughts, but I'd be up until dawn putting them down here. Maybe later.

 

I thought Davis made a lot of good points. While I was impressed with the level of reporting in Branch's article, Davis is right in that it ignored a great many things.

 

Most of which are likely answered in the e-book version.

http://byliner.com/originals/the-cartel

 

Branch article certainly spawned a lot of columns. Jeff McGregor has a good take in his pg 2 column :

http://espn.go.com/espn/commentary/story/_/page/macgregora-110919/time-blow-ncaa-start-college-sports

 

Totally agree.

Which reminds me of one of Davis' other criticisms. He claims that this 'blow up the NCAA' stuff is being fueled by the media.

He's right in that the fans don't give a shit, but does he honestly think the players aren't sick of the system? And please don't use any possible silence on their end as proof that they're happy. They don't want to have their scholarships taken away for ripping the poor-old NCAA.

 

Oh, Seth, honey, the cabana needs another cart of fresh towels . . . thankypoo . . .

 

I still don't understand why anyone would say paying college athletes would be more feasible, solve more problems and create fewer new ones than reinstituting freshman ineligibility. (Hell, I'd be fine if the NCAA made athletes play JV for two years, let alone one.)

I started to read the Branch article--really wanting to finish--but as I went on I just started getting more and more bored waiting for a mention of it, did a word search, and after finding nothing, bailed. I think Branch would at least have to acknowledge the history of freshman ineligibility and tell me why it wouldn't work now before I'd start crowing about what a great job he did on the piece.

I'm disappointed in myself for not finishing, but disappointed in the article after all the buildup here.

 

Yeah, and when he gets done examining why freshman ineligibility wouldn't work, he should get on to figuring out why the hell they switched out of leather helmets and Chuck Taylor basketball shoes.

 

I don't know if that is supposed to be levity or a put-down of my post addressing something you think is outdated, but if the latter, my suggested discussion topic is a hell of a lot more contemporary than some of the other stuff included in Branch's article.

It was considered by the NCAA within the last decade or so, with Dean Smith as a primary proponent.

Not that I think it would make college athletics into some kind of utopia, but anybody that thinks paying the players would is delusional. I'd rather keep the current "broken" system with no changes at all than to open up that Pandora's box of unintended consequences.