Post by Mr. Wednesday on Oct 10, 2006 2:27:57 GMT -5
murina said:
mrwednesday said:
What, exactly, is your problem with the current definition of a professional team? How would you change it?
I have a lot of problems with the NCAA on this front.
1) They refuse to acknowlege the obvious: that NCAA sports are professional themselves (at least those that use athletic scholarships).
I can understand and sympathize with that argument.
Note that there's a practical reason for this -- the NCAA and its member institutions avoid a number of bothersome tax consequences by claiming that the athletic programs are an integral part of the educational experience. And by and large, aside from the revenue sports, I would argue that's the case.
2) It is mostly applied against foreigners. There are plenty of cases of American kids in youth sports receiving similar benefits that foreign kids get, but the foreign kids are called "pro's" and the Americans are not. Nobody wants to take the oppertunity from American kids, which I understand.
The way that the rule defining a professional team is written is, to my eyes, neutral and perfectly logical. If there is a differentiation between Americans and foreigners, I suspect it is that there is a strong incentive for pre-college competition in the U.S. to maintain college eligibility for players, where such incentives do not exist (or are greatly reduced) in Europe.
3) Kaczor and Cutera, for exaple, in my opinion are "pros" by the NCAA rules (I can't, and have no interest in proving it though). However, the reality is that they are probably making far more money with their scholarship than they were making playing in Europe (especially when you consider USC being a private school, and Cutera costing international rates at Cal). It could very well be true if they were only costing "in state" tuition at a public school. NCAA scholarship athletes are, in many if not most cases, more professional than their "professional" foreign counterpart!!!
That's an interesting counterpoint to the people who whine about the poor unpaid basketball players.
Thanks for the detailed response.