NCAA and scandals

[mikegarrison]

When the Miami thing broke, I ended up listening to some sports radio commentators (including a former NCAA and NFL QB) talking about it, and their consensus opinion was that the schools should just pay the players (cash, not just in scholarships). The argument was that the players are providing a service that people are willing to pay a lot to see, so they should reap the rewards.

However, when somebody mentioned that maybe there should just be a minor league football system, they shot that idea down. "Nobody wants it, nobody would pay for it."

Hmmm. So what really is the valuable commodity here that people are paying for? If it is football, and these college football players, then wouldn't they make just as much money playing minor league football?

I suspect the answer is "no." Would 100,000+ people fill a bowl to watch a minor league football team play? I doubt it. But they will to watch Michigan play Ohio State, or Notre Dame play USC, etc.

So how much of the value of the product is the football, and how much is the college loyalty/rivalry/brand identity? Maybe the colleges really do own the product that the people are paying to see, and the players are only interchangeable cogs in the machine. Maybe the NCAA really does have some justification for saying that the millions and millions which flow in from these games should belong to the colleges and not the players.

What do you think?

[NebraskaVBfan93]

+1

The question of whether or not a minor league football system is a marketable product is something I've never thought of before. And I agree with you Mike. No chance I would go. I get sick of some of the crying from people who think these kids should get paid. No one is holding a gun to their head when they sign their letter of intent, and they know what they're getting for their efforts and more importantly what they're NOT getting.

The fact that this is a topic of conversation again because of the Miami issues is total BS. People are going to use the argument that we should change the rules because they are being broken too frequently? It reminds me of when the Nebraska Dept. Of Corrections instituted a smoking ban at all the state facilities in 2001. Around five years later they decided to allow smoking again at the work-release centers. The rationale? Too many inmates were getting misconduct reports for smoking. So instead of giving stiffer forms of punishment to act as a deterrent, they just changed the rules so it wouldn't be a problem any longer. How stupid is that??? That is a true example of the inmates running the asylum.

Love love love the minor league football argument. Maybe there are some tattoo parlor owners in Columbus willing to give it a whirl and sponsor a league.

Great points Mike!!

[The Bofa on the Sofa]

1) Huskerfan - remove or shrink that banner please. Friggin annoying.

2) To mikegarrison's point: yeah, pretty much. The problem is you can't disassociate the team from the school. It wouldn't have the support. That being said, there is also no reason that the members of the team have to actually be in school, either. Recall that when college athletics started, they just grabbed anyone they could find without regard to whether they were in school (hence, the Boilermakers from Purdue, who were not Purdue students but were boiler makers over in Lafayette). So the appropriate answer is in-between - have the minor league football teams be part of the school corporation. They effectively are their own business wing anyway, so drop the pretense, and don't bother with the kids being in school. Members of the team are perfectly welcome to use their salaries to pay their tuition to attend school, of course, if they can fit it in their schedule. However, they are not required to attend school.

I would happily allow regular students to participate in athletics, and have university athletic teams, but without any athletic scholarships (kind of like club sports currently run).

[mikegarrison]

Aug 25, 2011 9:23:19 GMT -5 The Bofa on the Sofa said:

I would happily allow regular students to participate in athletics, and have university athletic teams, but without any athletic scholarships (kind of like club sports currently run).

D3.

[The Bofa on the Sofa]

Aug 25, 2011 10:01:47 GMT -5 mikegarrison said:

Aug 25, 2011 9:23:19 GMT -5 The Bofa on the Sofa said:

I would happily allow regular students to participate in athletics, and have university athletic teams, but without any athletic scholarships (kind of like club sports currently run).

D3.

Yes and no.

For most sports, it could be in principle like D3. However, for those sports that are independent of the school (forgot to mention - they are financially independent - the minor league athletics get NO support from the academic university), the school side would be more like the club sports. But since there is nothing stopping it, pretty much all the school sports could be operated that way.