The Most Important Article Ever Written About College Sports*

I don't see how freshman ineligibility solves any of the problems Branch presented.

I also think that as unfair as the whole system is now, the level of unfairness of not allowing a person to ply his trade anywhere in the United States -- even for the far-below-market-value rates that a player like Derrick Rose or John Wall is willing to accept for that one year -- would indeed make the current system utopian.

 

Simple. Allowing players to get their fair market share would end the hypocrisy that this is amateur athletics. It's not. It's a business.

Making freshmen ineligible won't get rid of the money in the system. It's still there. If anything, it could hurt the freshmen if they have a bad season on the frosh team, they'll still get their scholarship revoked.

 

I'm all for allowing people to ply their trade for fair value throughout the United States. But it's not the responsibility of the colleges to provide that "employment" opportunity. To me, that's more of a beef against the NBA and NFL for having age restrictions.

I think freshman ineligibility would go a long way toward aligning athletics with what should be the mission of a college--that is, educating students. The schools would be a lot less hypocritical, regardless of how much money gets generated in the two major spectator sports, by *forcing* all athletes to be students first. If that weeds out some athletes who have little or no inclination to be students, so be it.

Paying players goes in the exact opposite direction of the mission...making them athletes first to an even greater degree than they already are in the current system. And I can only imagine the bitching and lawsuits that would result from any kind of pay inequity, justified or not.

Now, that's not to say I'm hoping Ed O'Bannon loses his case. Players should not have to sign away their images and likenesses forever. But that's different than paying athletes while they're in school.

 

I'm also in favor of four-year scholarships. No revocation.

 

I guess you really didn't read the article, because Branch makes the indisputable point that that is NOT the mission. It might have been turned into that over the decades with a willing media and fan base looking the other way, but the history of the term "student-athlete" is that it didn't exist until the NCAA came up with it as a legal way to dodge all obligations under worker's compensation laws.

 

Branch makes the point that educating students is not the primary mission of a college?

I did read the part about the "student-athlete" term and worker's comp, but I didn't glean that from it.

 

I'm outraged people hyphenate student athlete, but as an editor, not an activist.

 

He makes the point that educating athletes is not the primary mission of an athletic department. Dressing them up as students was the NCAA's way to get off the hook for workers' comp.

 

Gotcha. I'm looking at it totally as if the college should be in charge of the mission. Not the athletic department.

 

The college suckles at the teet of the corporate money.

The athlete is an asset.

The college fears the repercussions of being subject to employment laws. It hurts the business.

The athlete is a student.

 

But there needs to be some incentive to work hard and stay eligible and stay out of trouble. If your four years is guaranteed no matter how much you slack off, all that does is reward laziness. We don't have multi-year contracts at the places we work --- our employment can be revoked at any time --- so why should anyone be guaranteed years of benefits just because you were able to wow a school during your senior year of high school?

 

The vast majority of FBS football players and Division I men's hoops players -- more than 99 percent -- are compensated far beyond their value.