What Happens to College Sports After the House Case is Settled

Kicker are generally recruited walkons as freshmen but then scholarshipped if they earn the starting job. At least that's how it's worked at Microville Tech.

 

At Colorado the first team kicker and punter have historically on scholarship. But the back-up punter and the long snappers were normally walk-ons. And at Colorado the most recent athletes to occupy these positions have been

I don't know how much Mines will be able to take advantage of transfers. Academically it is hard to get into. Even if a transfer has the SAT and grades to get in it is unlikely the kid has taken the math courses that would be a prerequisite for the engineering courses.

But if I was the coach at Northern Colorado I would have a billboard in Boulder with my contact information. I would guess UNC would love to get many of the kids rotating out of the Colorado program.

 

I always find it amusing when you get these games involving multimillion dollar universities and coaches and the end result comes down to some 18-year-old non-scholarship kid’s leg.

 

I spent seven-plus years up in Houghton covering Michigan Tech. Very similar situation. Though for hockey there is probably enough financial support to get at least some money flowing through there, at the D-II level, it's often a chance to take a bite out of the cost of a very good (and potentially valuable) education, keep playing (in front of crowds that in many cases are decent and appreciative). No amount of NIL is going to convince someone to live through Copper Country winters, but they often do get guys who like being 15 minutes from good fishing and/or hunting. Plus Wisconsin has no D-2 schools north of Kenosha (and that one doesn't have football), so they often dominate northern and central Wisconsin and even into the Cities.

 

I have nothing but admiration for kids who play college sports and get an engineering degree at any school. But the time requirements of being an athlete mean that you have to be extraordinarily smart or someone prepared to basically give up on the rest of your college life to do the problem sets.

 

You can major in business at Tech now, which is something they didn't have when John MacInnes was recruiting the likes of Tony Esposito to those snows. Still, I looked at the current women's basketball roster and I see five engineers of various sorts and a couple others in legit sciences like biology or pre-med. They tell me they get very good at doing homework on the bus.

 

I think it is true the players will never be satisfied. Ever since Oklahoma won the court case that broke up the college football monopoly, the sport has been dominated by the richest schools complaining of not getting enough of the revenue pie, no matter how much additional income these schools receive. The players will be no different.

 

Did Tony Esposito graduate? Is he an engineer?

 

I erred. They apparently did have a business major back then, and he was one.

Tony Esposito, Nimble Hall of Fame Goalie Known as Tony O, Dies at 78 (Published 2021)

 

The moment I became completely cynical about college sports was in the late 80's. Colorado State brought in a basketball coach named Tiny Grant, who was extremely good at his job, He won two conference championships at CSU. After his first year, coming off a 20 win season, he pulled the scholarship on an engineering major who rising junior because the kid was not quick on defense and had his minutes sharply reduced the previous season.

How many schools were going to take a kid with only a year of eligibility left after he sat out a year? It is also hard to transfer all your credits after three years into a new program. The kid was also from outside Colorado. I don't know the financial situation of the family and what financial sacrifices they would have to make to keep him at CSU.

 

I was playing on some neighborhood tennis courts one day, and this high school kid came onto the court with some kind of coach . . . carrying a football.

They proceeded to practice long snaps for the next hour. Said he had interest from a couple of SEC schools.

 

There's an actual photo of when it happened!