7 ms·

The solution in my opinion is to do away with college athletic scholarships and preferred admission for athletes. Let school's field their sports teams from th

The solution in my opinion is to do away with college athletic scholarships and preferred admission for athletes. Let school's field their sports teams from their normal student bodies and ensure that those teams are truly amateur and the participants really are "student-athletes". Let the NBA and the NFL field their own semi-professional minor leagues like baseball does. If these schools have to start paying their football and basketball players (and lets be perfectly clear, that's what this is about), it will be the absolute death of virtually every other men's sport at the college level, and will likely only leave enough women's sports to offset the football team due to Title IX. I won't even get into the ridiculous hypocrisy of our institutions of higher learning pouring billions of dollars into a sport that is proven to cause brain damage, while cutting other sports that don't. That is not at all what college athletics should be about, it should be about extracurricular opportunities for real students. I think the Division 3 model (no sports scholarships/no backdoor admissions) has been much more successful and has provided many more opportunities for students (men and women) to compete in a wider variety of sports. I say this as someone who was a college athlete on scholarship years ago and still coaches high school.

chrisseaton 5y ago
> it will be the absolute death of virtually every other men's sport at the college level Why's that?
- chadash 5y ago
  In the current system, schools need to have an equivalent number of sports teams (and slots) for men and women, with the same number of scholarships (the law governing this is called Title IX). Generally speaking, women's sports don't bring in money for schools, whereas football at a competitive school will bring in money in the form of TV deals and even donations from alumni. So essentially, the football and basketball teams subsidize the rest of the athletic department. If you had to pay the athletes in these sports, then there'd be less money to go around for other teams that don't generate revenue. But at a minimum, you'd still need a few women's teams because of Title IX. EDIT: to clarify, I personally think it's ridiculous that star college athletes don't get paid given how much time those athletes put in and how much money they bring in for schools, but I also think that at least at the schools with huge athletic programs it'll have some effect on other sports.
  - triceratops 5y ago
    Alternatively, universities would spin off their money-making teams into professional organizations in return for licensing fees.
  - slg 5y ago
    >If you had to pay the athletes in these sports, then there'd be less money to go around for other teams that don't generate revenue. This relies on the assumption that sports are somehow separate from a school's educational mission and therefore must be funded by the profit from other sports. There are a maximum of only 2 or 3 dozen athletic departments that are self sufficient in the manner you suggest. The rest fund sports the same way they fund any other extracurricular activity. I'm not sure we should require sports to fund themselves when we don't have that requirement on something like a drama or music departments. The understudy in a school play is probably no more likely to make a career out of acting than the backup QB is to make a career out of football, so why do we pretend one is a worthwhile academic pursuit and one isn't?
    - Loughla 5y ago
      Your math doesn't work out here. I can't major in football, I absolutely can major in drama and/or music. From my experience, club sports and clubs such as the theater club are funded via student fees, whereas departmental projects such as drama and music are funded via tuition. In theory, the major areas are self-funding because of the tuition costs.
      - slg 5y ago
        >Your math doesn't work out here. I can't major in football Literally, no you can't major in football. From a practical standpoint many of the athletes who go to a school like Alabama to play football do end up majoring in it. Maybe their actual degree will say something sports specific like kinesiology or sports management, maybe their academic advisers will point them to general education classes specifically targeted for athletes and they will end up with a super generic business or communications degree, but either way football is the primary focus for many of them. >From my experience, club sports and clubs such as the theater club are funded via student fees, whereas departmental projects such as drama and music are funded via tuition. The point is who funds a play or a concert at universities? Do they all need to be financially self-sufficient or do we accept that these pursuits have value outside of the number of people who will pay to watch them? >In theory, the major areas are self-funding because of the tuition costs. This isn't true. The costs to teach different subjects varies wildly and departmental budgets are therefore not always inline with the number of students in each specific program. For example, tuition from an English department would likely go to help subsidize a more expensive Physics department.
- handrous 5y ago
  The 2-3 huge money-maker sports tend to fund all the rest. Paying athletes real money will cut into those profits (especially if a strong labor market for student athletes develops) with a plausible result being that other sports will be cut as budgets tighten. The only ones that would be for sure safe would be whatever women's sports are needed to achieve Title IX parity with the income-generating men's sports. Of course, it's also possible that colleges will find other ways to pay for the "lesser" sports, and there would be no cuts.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    > tend to fund all the rest How much 'funding' does an amateur university sport need? I don't think my fencing club at university had any 'funding' we just met and fenced. Occasionally we borrowed a van to go to a competition. We had a coach we paid from a few pounds of membership fees we collected from ourselves.
    - csa 5y ago
      In the US, in no particular order: - equipment - coaches - travel/hotel/per diems, sometimes long distance depending on league - trainers - workout facilities (typically shared) - practice facilities (might be shared) - game facilities - additional dining options to accommodate training - nutritionists - doctors - scholarship money for tuition - scholarship money for room and board - video review areas and equipment (shared) - video recording equipment and videographers - insurance - announcers for events - recruiting - tutoring - event management - publicity/advertising - title ix compliance official Note that at some universities (even some high schools), there are self-funding booster clubs that will pay for a lot of this stuff for some sports. That said, there is still some stuff that the university has to pay for directly. As a simple example, Alabama football (big program that makes tons of money) also funds Alabama’s championship teams in golf, softball, and gymnastics (and many other sports that have not led to national championships).
      - chrisseaton 5y ago
        I just don’t get why a university amateur golf team needs anything but a few people and their golf gear. Why take it so seriously?
yupper32 5y ago
This would end up killing a bunch of smaller sports, and hurting the larger ones. NCAA covers a massive number of sports. The vast majority of those who go pro in any US sport, first go through an NCAA team. Think about a scenario in the current world: You're a pretty good golf player in high school. You commit to Stanford for golf and a degree in some STEM field. The school already has a system in place to make sure both are possible. You give high level competitive college golf a shot and realize you can actually go pro. After college, you do. And even if it doesn't work out, you've got a degree from Stanford. And then there's your world: You're a pretty good golf player in high school. You go to college instead of the separate LPGA feeder leagues because it's the safer bet and your school doesn't have a system in place to make sure you can compete in both. Why would they? You never get to experience and thrive in the high level competitions and end up not going pro. So many professional sports would get maimed with your model. After a decade the US would heavily drop on the world stage when it comes to sports.
- ecshafer 5y ago
  So maybe we don't need so many professional sports players.
  - yupper32 5y ago
    Who needs those sports balls on the television, right?
- triceratops 5y ago
  Sounds like that's a problem for the pro sports leagues to solve. They have the money to do it, so they'll be fine. Baseball does an adequate job with its system of minor league teams. Pretty much every other country in the world manages to have professional sports leagues without having universities be their feeder teams. Even in your scenario, there's nothing stopping the aspiring golfer from attending Stanford part-time while they try to make it in pro-golf. Or applying and deferring admission for a couple of years. Frankly, they'd do better academically if they didn't have golf distracting them.
  - 5y ago
hervature 5y ago
Why do you assume that paying the athletes will have any meaningful impact on expenses? I will be using my numbers from [1]. Coming in at 65 on expenditure, University of Kansas spends $14 million on football. At the time of the article, they hadn't been to a bowl game in a decade and the drought has since continued. I'm sorry Jayhawks, but the program isn't good at all. First, no school is going to remove scholarships because that's an easy way for the university to pay their athletes. Paying the football players $10k per year would only cost an additional $1.05M for a 105 man roster. That's less than 10%. That is easily covered by increasing price of tickets by $2 in their 50,000 capacity stadium over the course of the season. But students watch for free? Well, not really, they already paid in their student fees. So fees have a one time increase of $2. But more realistically, these are football players that will never go to the NFL. They are happy for a free education and the Jayhawks would never pay them in additional to what they give them already. These rules apply solely to the top 10 teams that wish they could pay the top recruit of the nation $100k. I say that all of this is easily fixed by giving the players 10% of their jersey sales. It is completely insane that the NCAA can make money off of a person's likeness and not pay them which is illegal in most states. [1] - https://www.syracuse.com/orangefootball/2017/08/which_schools_spend_the_most_on_college_football_where_does_syracuse_rank.html https://www.syracuse.com/orangefootball/2017/08/which_school...
- fiftyfifty 5y ago
  We saw during Covid that as soon as there was a tiny bit of financial stress on athletic departments they immediately started cutting non-revenue sports, here's a fairly complete list from the last year: https://businessofcollegesports.com/tracker-college-sports-programs-cut-during-covid-19-pandemic/ https://businessofcollegesports.com/tracker-college-sports-p... You can see from that list that the vast majority of sports that were cut were non-revenue, men's sports. $1.05M lost to paying the football team could just as likely be covered by cutting one or two non-revenue sports as it is by raising ticket prices. The reality is attendance of college football games was already down before Covid, even for powerhouse schools like the University of Georgia: https://ugawire.usatoday.com/2019/03/27/college-football-game-attendance-still-on-the-decline-why-whats-the-solution-how-does-it-relate-to-uga-football/ https://ugawire.usatoday.com/2019/03/27/college-football-gam... It is extremely unlikely that even the biggest football schools will be able to cover the cost of paying their players through increase ticket prices when they are already concerned about filling seats.

chrisseaton 5y ago

> it will be the absolute death of virtually every other men's sport at the college level Why's that?

chadash 5y ago
In the current system, schools need to have an equivalent number of sports teams (and slots) for men and women, with the same number of scholarships (the law governing this is called Title IX). Generally speaking, women's sports don't bring in money for schools, whereas football at a competitive school will bring in money in the form of TV deals and even donations from alumni. So essentially, the football and basketball teams subsidize the rest of the athletic department. If you had to pay the athletes in these sports, then there'd be less money to go around for other teams that don't generate revenue. But at a minimum, you'd still need a few women's teams because of Title IX. EDIT: to clarify, I personally think it's ridiculous that star college athletes don't get paid given how much time those athletes put in and how much money they bring in for schools, but I also think that at least at the schools with huge athletic programs it'll have some effect on other sports.
- triceratops 5y ago
  Alternatively, universities would spin off their money-making teams into professional organizations in return for licensing fees.
- slg 5y ago
  >If you had to pay the athletes in these sports, then there'd be less money to go around for other teams that don't generate revenue. This relies on the assumption that sports are somehow separate from a school's educational mission and therefore must be funded by the profit from other sports. There are a maximum of only 2 or 3 dozen athletic departments that are self sufficient in the manner you suggest. The rest fund sports the same way they fund any other extracurricular activity. I'm not sure we should require sports to fund themselves when we don't have that requirement on something like a drama or music departments. The understudy in a school play is probably no more likely to make a career out of acting than the backup QB is to make a career out of football, so why do we pretend one is a worthwhile academic pursuit and one isn't?
  - Loughla 5y ago
    Your math doesn't work out here. I can't major in football, I absolutely can major in drama and/or music. From my experience, club sports and clubs such as the theater club are funded via student fees, whereas departmental projects such as drama and music are funded via tuition. In theory, the major areas are self-funding because of the tuition costs.
    - slg 5y ago
      >Your math doesn't work out here. I can't major in football Literally, no you can't major in football. From a practical standpoint many of the athletes who go to a school like Alabama to play football do end up majoring in it. Maybe their actual degree will say something sports specific like kinesiology or sports management, maybe their academic advisers will point them to general education classes specifically targeted for athletes and they will end up with a super generic business or communications degree, but either way football is the primary focus for many of them. >From my experience, club sports and clubs such as the theater club are funded via student fees, whereas departmental projects such as drama and music are funded via tuition. The point is who funds a play or a concert at universities? Do they all need to be financially self-sufficient or do we accept that these pursuits have value outside of the number of people who will pay to watch them? >In theory, the major areas are self-funding because of the tuition costs. This isn't true. The costs to teach different subjects varies wildly and departmental budgets are therefore not always inline with the number of students in each specific program. For example, tuition from an English department would likely go to help subsidize a more expensive Physics department.
handrous 5y ago
The 2-3 huge money-maker sports tend to fund all the rest. Paying athletes real money will cut into those profits (especially if a strong labor market for student athletes develops) with a plausible result being that other sports will be cut as budgets tighten. The only ones that would be for sure safe would be whatever women's sports are needed to achieve Title IX parity with the income-generating men's sports. Of course, it's also possible that colleges will find other ways to pay for the "lesser" sports, and there would be no cuts.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > tend to fund all the rest How much 'funding' does an amateur university sport need? I don't think my fencing club at university had any 'funding' we just met and fenced. Occasionally we borrowed a van to go to a competition. We had a coach we paid from a few pounds of membership fees we collected from ourselves.
  - csa 5y ago
    In the US, in no particular order: - equipment - coaches - travel/hotel/per diems, sometimes long distance depending on league - trainers - workout facilities (typically shared) - practice facilities (might be shared) - game facilities - additional dining options to accommodate training - nutritionists - doctors - scholarship money for tuition - scholarship money for room and board - video review areas and equipment (shared) - video recording equipment and videographers - insurance - announcers for events - recruiting - tutoring - event management - publicity/advertising - title ix compliance official Note that at some universities (even some high schools), there are self-funding booster clubs that will pay for a lot of this stuff for some sports. That said, there is still some stuff that the university has to pay for directly. As a simple example, Alabama football (big program that makes tons of money) also funds Alabama’s championship teams in golf, softball, and gymnastics (and many other sports that have not led to national championships).
    - chrisseaton 5y ago
      I just don’t get why a university amateur golf team needs anything but a few people and their golf gear. Why take it so seriously?

yupper32 5y ago

This would end up killing a bunch of smaller sports, and hurting the larger ones. NCAA covers a massive number of sports. The vast majority of those who go pro in any US sport, first go through an NCAA team. Think about a scenario in the current world: You're a pretty good golf player in high school. You commit to Stanford for golf and a degree in some STEM field. The school already has a system in place to make sure both are possible. You give high level competitive college golf a shot and realize you can actually go pro. After college, you do. And even if it doesn't work out, you've got a degree from Stanford. And then there's your world: You're a pretty good golf player in high school. You go to college instead of the separate LPGA feeder leagues because it's the safer bet and your school doesn't have a system in place to make sure you can compete in both. Why would they? You never get to experience and thrive in the high level competitions and end up not going pro. So many professional sports would get maimed with your model. After a decade the US would heavily drop on the world stage when it comes to sports.

ecshafer 5y ago
So maybe we don't need so many professional sports players.
- yupper32 5y ago
  Who needs those sports balls on the television, right?
triceratops 5y ago
Sounds like that's a problem for the pro sports leagues to solve. They have the money to do it, so they'll be fine. Baseball does an adequate job with its system of minor league teams. Pretty much every other country in the world manages to have professional sports leagues without having universities be their feeder teams. Even in your scenario, there's nothing stopping the aspiring golfer from attending Stanford part-time while they try to make it in pro-golf. Or applying and deferring admission for a couple of years. Frankly, they'd do better academically if they didn't have golf distracting them.
- 5y ago

hervature 5y ago

Why do you assume that paying the athletes will have any meaningful impact on expenses? I will be using my numbers from [1]. Coming in at 65 on expenditure, University of Kansas spends $14 million on football. At the time of the article, they hadn't been to a bowl game in a decade and the drought has since continued. I'm sorry Jayhawks, but the program isn't good at all. First, no school is going to remove scholarships because that's an easy way for the university to pay their athletes. Paying the football players $10k per year would only cost an additional $1.05M for a 105 man roster. That's less than 10%. That is easily covered by increasing price of tickets by $2 in their 50,000 capacity stadium over the course of the season. But students watch for free? Well, not really, they already paid in their student fees. So fees have a one time increase of $2. But more realistically, these are football players that will never go to the NFL. They are happy for a free education and the Jayhawks would never pay them in additional to what they give them already. These rules apply solely to the top 10 teams that wish they could pay the top recruit of the nation $100k. I say that all of this is easily fixed by giving the players 10% of their jersey sales. It is completely insane that the NCAA can make money off of a person's likeness and not pay them which is illegal in most states. [1] - https://www.syracuse.com/orangefootball/2017/08/which_schools_spend_the_most_on_college_football_where_does_syracuse_rank.html https://www.syracuse.com/orangefootball/2017/08/which_school...

fiftyfifty 5y ago
We saw during Covid that as soon as there was a tiny bit of financial stress on athletic departments they immediately started cutting non-revenue sports, here's a fairly complete list from the last year: https://businessofcollegesports.com/tracker-college-sports-programs-cut-during-covid-19-pandemic/ https://businessofcollegesports.com/tracker-college-sports-p... You can see from that list that the vast majority of sports that were cut were non-revenue, men's sports. $1.05M lost to paying the football team could just as likely be covered by cutting one or two non-revenue sports as it is by raising ticket prices. The reality is attendance of college football games was already down before Covid, even for powerhouse schools like the University of Georgia: https://ugawire.usatoday.com/2019/03/27/college-football-game-attendance-still-on-the-decline-why-whats-the-solution-how-does-it-relate-to-uga-football/ https://ugawire.usatoday.com/2019/03/27/college-football-gam... It is extremely unlikely that even the biggest football schools will be able to cover the cost of paying their players through increase ticket prices when they are already concerned about filling seats.