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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

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.
- yupper32 5y ago
  NBA? Sure. NFL? Yeah. They can probably fund and figure out the logistics for an operation like this. What about all the other sports? At the moment, we've figured out a way to elevate less lucrative sports like track & field or swimming into a potential profession without making young people take massive risks by skipping higher education.
  - triceratops 5y ago
    How do countries that are "not the US" produce swimmers or track and field athletes?
    - twiddling 5y ago
      often through direct state sponsorship
      - triceratops 5y ago
        I think Olympic athletes get government funding in the US as well. There's also the possibility of firms like IMG funding athletes' expenses and training, in return for a cut of future earnings.
        yupper32 5y ago
        > I think Olympic athletes get government funding in the US as well. This is incorrect. "Unlike other national Olympic organizations, [Team USA] receives no government funds. It pays for its operations and helps fund athletes and the national governing bodies of its sports through the sale of media and sponsorship rights and some modest fund-raising." - NYT
  - jldugger 5y ago
    NBA? Sure. NFL? Yeah. They can probably fund and figure out the logistics for an operation like this. What about all the other sports? I'm really struggling to come up with a reason this is the academy's problem to solve.
drewg123 5y ago
Given that college sports mostly loose money for schools[1], why do we think its OK to ask students and (for public colleges) taxpayers to subsidize professional sports' feeder system? I went to a large state school (SUNY Buffalo) where the administration wanted to go division 1 when I was there in the early 90s. Transitioning to division 1 came along with a large (to us) mandatory athletic fee. The student body voted against this multiple times, and then the administration simply stopped asking and went division 1 anyway (and imposed the fee). [1]:https://www.bestcolleges.com/blog/do-college-sports-make-money/ https://www.bestcolleges.com/blog/do-college-sports-make-mon...
- yupper32 5y ago
  So in-state tuition at UB would be around $4850 instead of $5200 without sports. Out-of-state would be around $13,750 vs $14,100. Would life be significantly better without sports at UB, if students were given back a few hundred dollars? Would alumni donations go down without the occasional March Madness appearance? Or Bulls games? When people make this argument, they make it seem like schools would all of a sudden be able to afford a massively better educational experience. That's just not the case.
  - ecshafer 5y ago
    It sounds like life would be significantly better without sports. 5200 vs 4850 is $350. That is the difference of a month of rent in Buffalo for your room, snow tires on your car that year or not, text books or not.
    - Ekaros 5y ago
      So around 24 hours of 15$/h minimum wage labour so that someone else can do something they could be doing on their own dime... That sounds very excessive burden to be placed on students. For something they gain very little from...
  - drewg123 5y ago
    Speaking from experience, the administration's disregard for the wishes of the student body pissed me off enough that I didn't donate anything to them for 15 years or so after graduation (until William Greiner, the president who presided over this had retired). Others in my peer group felt the same way, and I imagine did the same thing. In terms of the impact of the fee: When I went to school, the tuition was $675/semester, and the fee was over $100 (I don't recall if that was per semester or per year). So that was at least a 7% increase in cost. Its sad the tuition has gone up so much.
jackschultz 5y ago
This comment is getting downvotes and given my experience playing D1 college, getting a STEM degree, this scenario is in no way possible. Stanford on its own is one of the top golf programs in the country. Its practice facility is absurdly good (my team was able to use it once when we were out there. The reason we were in the bay area? Because we took our spring breaks to go play fancy courses with rich alumni to get them to donate to the athletic department, which is another part of money you don't see but athletics gets.) You need to be really, really good to play at Stanford. Second, college golf is a case where, because of the niceties like practice facilities, tournaments, where you don't pay for any of that, it's a feeder to the main tour. In fact, PGA Tour University[0] came out to help get guys who were good in college to the Tour quicker. The quality of guys in lower level tours is crazy, and this is a deserved bumper for the good guys. Guys play in college first because that's where you grow. I'm very anti-NCAA. Each sport is different in terms of growing to the professional level though, and how engrained the NCAA is in most cases though makes it tough to have an overall solution. [0] https://www.pgatour.com/university/what-you-need-to-know-faq.html https://www.pgatour.com/university/what-you-need-to-know-faq...
- yupper32 5y ago
  You're getting bogged down in the details of my example. I know a good amount of people who played D1 sports. One went pro and is competing in the Olympics this year. The others used their degrees to get "normal" jobs when they weren't able to go pro (or had no intention to in the first place). All of them would not have had the opportunity to compete at a high level in their sports without forgoing their higher education.
  - cortesoft 5y ago
    I was friends with quite a few D1 athletes when I was at college. Their sports took up so much of their time that they were only able to put minimum effort into academics. In fact, the coaches and staff would help guid them into known easy classes, so they would be able to maintain their grades while working 40+ hours a week in their sport. It would make so much more sense for them to just hold off on school, go try to make it as a professional athlete, and then go back to school if it didn’t work. No other country ties sports and athletics like the US does. Good soccer players in other countries sign contract at 10 years old, and play for the academy while getting paid.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

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.

yupper32 5y ago
NBA? Sure. NFL? Yeah. They can probably fund and figure out the logistics for an operation like this. What about all the other sports? At the moment, we've figured out a way to elevate less lucrative sports like track & field or swimming into a potential profession without making young people take massive risks by skipping higher education.
- triceratops 5y ago
  How do countries that are "not the US" produce swimmers or track and field athletes?
  - twiddling 5y ago
    often through direct state sponsorship
    - triceratops 5y ago
      I think Olympic athletes get government funding in the US as well. There's also the possibility of firms like IMG funding athletes' expenses and training, in return for a cut of future earnings.
      - yupper32 5y ago
        > I think Olympic athletes get government funding in the US as well. This is incorrect. "Unlike other national Olympic organizations, [Team USA] receives no government funds. It pays for its operations and helps fund athletes and the national governing bodies of its sports through the sale of media and sponsorship rights and some modest fund-raising." - NYT
- jldugger 5y ago
  NBA? Sure. NFL? Yeah. They can probably fund and figure out the logistics for an operation like this. What about all the other sports? I'm really struggling to come up with a reason this is the academy's problem to solve.

drewg123 5y ago

Given that college sports mostly loose money for schools[1], why do we think its OK to ask students and (for public colleges) taxpayers to subsidize professional sports' feeder system? I went to a large state school (SUNY Buffalo) where the administration wanted to go division 1 when I was there in the early 90s. Transitioning to division 1 came along with a large (to us) mandatory athletic fee. The student body voted against this multiple times, and then the administration simply stopped asking and went division 1 anyway (and imposed the fee). [1]:https://www.bestcolleges.com/blog/do-college-sports-make-money/ https://www.bestcolleges.com/blog/do-college-sports-make-mon...

yupper32 5y ago
So in-state tuition at UB would be around $4850 instead of $5200 without sports. Out-of-state would be around $13,750 vs $14,100. Would life be significantly better without sports at UB, if students were given back a few hundred dollars? Would alumni donations go down without the occasional March Madness appearance? Or Bulls games? When people make this argument, they make it seem like schools would all of a sudden be able to afford a massively better educational experience. That's just not the case.
- ecshafer 5y ago
  It sounds like life would be significantly better without sports. 5200 vs 4850 is $350. That is the difference of a month of rent in Buffalo for your room, snow tires on your car that year or not, text books or not.
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    So around 24 hours of 15$/h minimum wage labour so that someone else can do something they could be doing on their own dime... That sounds very excessive burden to be placed on students. For something they gain very little from...
- drewg123 5y ago
  Speaking from experience, the administration's disregard for the wishes of the student body pissed me off enough that I didn't donate anything to them for 15 years or so after graduation (until William Greiner, the president who presided over this had retired). Others in my peer group felt the same way, and I imagine did the same thing. In terms of the impact of the fee: When I went to school, the tuition was $675/semester, and the fee was over $100 (I don't recall if that was per semester or per year). So that was at least a 7% increase in cost. Its sad the tuition has gone up so much.

jackschultz 5y ago

This comment is getting downvotes and given my experience playing D1 college, getting a STEM degree, this scenario is in no way possible. Stanford on its own is one of the top golf programs in the country. Its practice facility is absurdly good (my team was able to use it once when we were out there. The reason we were in the bay area? Because we took our spring breaks to go play fancy courses with rich alumni to get them to donate to the athletic department, which is another part of money you don't see but athletics gets.) You need to be really, really good to play at Stanford. Second, college golf is a case where, because of the niceties like practice facilities, tournaments, where you don't pay for any of that, it's a feeder to the main tour. In fact, PGA Tour University[0] came out to help get guys who were good in college to the Tour quicker. The quality of guys in lower level tours is crazy, and this is a deserved bumper for the good guys. Guys play in college first because that's where you grow. I'm very anti-NCAA. Each sport is different in terms of growing to the professional level though, and how engrained the NCAA is in most cases though makes it tough to have an overall solution. [0] https://www.pgatour.com/university/what-you-need-to-know-faq.html https://www.pgatour.com/university/what-you-need-to-know-faq...

yupper32 5y ago
You're getting bogged down in the details of my example. I know a good amount of people who played D1 sports. One went pro and is competing in the Olympics this year. The others used their degrees to get "normal" jobs when they weren't able to go pro (or had no intention to in the first place). All of them would not have had the opportunity to compete at a high level in their sports without forgoing their higher education.
- cortesoft 5y ago
  I was friends with quite a few D1 athletes when I was at college. Their sports took up so much of their time that they were only able to put minimum effort into academics. In fact, the coaches and staff would help guid them into known easy classes, so they would be able to maintain their grades while working 40+ hours a week in their sport. It would make so much more sense for them to just hold off on school, go try to make it as a professional athlete, and then go back to school if it didn’t work. No other country ties sports and athletics like the US does. Good soccer players in other countries sign contract at 10 years old, and play for the academy while getting paid.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]