10 ms·

College football in the US is awash with money

40 points by clouddrover 3y ago

chomp 3y ago
> For the past two seasons, college players have been able to sign deals to allow third parties to use their "name, image or likeness" - NIL, for short - and receive money in return. Yep this is what's happening this year at my University this year - players now do a quick 30 minute autograph signing before each game.
blastro 3y ago
I saw the commissioner of the SEC on TV this week. He called on Congress to put in place limits on how student-athletes can earn from their NIL as well as put in restrictions on the transfer portal, calling it a "return to traditional American values in college sports". Pretty unbelievable how these institutions are creating billions of dollars of revenue / wealth off the backs of young (primarily minority) men and women. It's so gross.
- Quillbert182 3y ago
  The point here is not mainly focused on athletes ability to make money off of their work, although that is a part of it. The issue in this particular instance is that players are being bribed to switch teams.
  - lozenge 3y ago
    The free market?
    - Quillbert182 3y ago
      It's not supposed to be a job. It's supposed to be secondary to education. Admittedly, it's getting away from that, but I would like to hold on as long as possible.
      - watwut 3y ago
        But it is not secondary to education and was not for years. It is primary thing they do and if they fail at sports, they loose education entirely. Only difference is that money don't go to athletes.
        Quillbert182 3y ago
        I might be misunderstanding you, but if athletes fail at sports, they do not loose the education. Once a scholarship is given to a player, it is not allowed to be taken away for performance. If a player is kicked off the team (barring something like discipline issues), they still get the scholarship.
        watwut 3y ago
        You can loose athletic scholarship for performance or injury. There are some exceptions where athlete gets to keep them for four years. But generally, coach has a lot of power to not renew scholarship the next year.
      - yCombLinks 3y ago
        Lol, getting away. That train pulled out decades ago
- theironhammer 3y ago
  Time to Unionize and take it the Supreme Court.
- spacemadness 3y ago
  And then they’ll turn around and pay adjuncts a non-living wage to teach students at the University. Students who are paying thousands more than previous generations to learn. Greed and exploitation is given the thumbs up in many higher learning institutions.
- kristjansson 3y ago
  The amateur tradition in football was, at one point, strong enough that professional football was viewed as grubby and second class. I'm sure that commissioner, like any reasonable person calling for a return to those traditions, is also calling for the abolition of the NFL, all volunteer coaches, and gratis, advertising-free broadcasts of all the games, right? Right?!
  - diracs_stache 3y ago
    Agreed, there was a long time when the olympics were for amateurs only.
    - LanceH 3y ago
      > olympics were for amateurs only For varying degrees of "amateur". A lot of nations employed their athletes to do nothing but train for the olympic and international competition.
      - houseinthesky 3y ago
        That's actually why the amateur requirement was dropped. The Soviet Union and other government-controlled-economy nations were sending essentially professional athletes to the Olympics while free-economy nations were sending amateurs. Removing the restriction allowed all nations to send their best athletes. Ironically of course, there are some aristocratic motivations for why "amateur" was desirable in the first place that don't really align to modern sensibilities, but that's separate.
- mattgreenrocks 3y ago
  Gross is the perfect word here. “Traditional American values in college sports” means “we make the money, and lots of it. You (the athlete) get free exposure! Who do you think you are, getting your cut?” I don’t know what it is about the current zeitgeist but people with power seem quite happy to vocalize their discontent with what they perceive as “lower classes” making decent money. It’s like they don’t even pretend anymore.
  - steveylang 3y ago
    Besides wanting to keep all the revenue, the NCAA talks up all that sanctimonious crap to justify their non-profit status so they don't have to pay taxes on it either.
  - banannaise 3y ago
    It's easy to lose sight of the fact that it's been like this for the vast majority of American history. The only change is the mechanism. Usually they try to obscure this state of affairs. When the veil breaks, their backup plan is enforcement, first through threats and then through laws and then, if necessary, through violence. We appear to be mostly in the "threats" stage.
    - watwut 3y ago
      Not actually, for majority of that time no one was earning from college sports.
      - rschneid 3y ago
        This south park excerpt is... frighteningly realistic https://youtu.be/Z5ZZ8bO9-Ig https://youtu.be/Z5ZZ8bO9-Ig
- mikeyouse 3y ago
  If that was Greg Sankey, he made $3.7 million last year and the 5-year contract he just signed "substantially" increases his salary. https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/38005718/sec-extends-commissioner-greg-sankey-2028 https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/38005718/sec-...
  - Rebelgecko 3y ago
    I imagine he's actually being out-earned by some of top players' NIL deals. I think it's a tricky situation. The previous NCAA rules were idiotic and unfair to players. The current situation is better for players, but I'm worried that we're moving towards a future where the best teams are just the ones with the deepest pockets (or whose boosters have the deepest pockets). Considering most teams are already unprofitable, it could further increase stratification between P5 and G5 teams. Maybe CFB needs to implement a per-team salary cap.
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      >Maybe CFB needs to implement a per-team salary cap. Maybe schools should not be involved in professional sports in the first place, especially one that inherently causes brain damage. Let the NFL owners pay for a minor league.
    - jabradoodle 3y ago
      Why should the workers wages be capped; why not cap how much money the team can make and tax the rest?
- bell-cot 3y ago
  This is America, where being against-slavery-in-theory - but unable to reconcile that theory with the real-world property rights and financial interests of the slave owners - was an enormous legal and "moral" problem for a century or few.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- janalsncm 3y ago
  How about returning to the tradition of college sports being merely a recreational break from academics, where scholastic merit cannot be trumped by athletic ability, and where the highest paid employees of states are not football coaches?
  - bdw5204 3y ago
    That actually exists. It's called Division 3 NCAA sports. There's no redshirting, no financial aid because you're good at sports and no making a profit from sports or paying coaches million dollar salaries in D3. The conferences are also based on where the colleges are geographically located. You just don't hear about D3 because their games usually aren't televised and 99.9% or so of their athletes actually go pro in something other than sports.
    - pmyteh 3y ago
      And it's still massively more of a deal for spectators then academic sport in, say, the UK. I spent a term as an exchange student at the Catholic University of America, a smallish university with a completely unexceptional D3 football programme staffed with actual students. And they got two thousand people to their football games! Much of the campus! Alumni! People who lived in Brookland and fancied some live sport! I mean, I knew how seriously people take high school football too. But even really good UK university sport can play to an audience of the players supportive romantic partners only. A different (and quite refreshing) world.
      - Ekaros 3y ago
        I think I would prefer the UK model for things like football. Where there is local community teams that are not limited just students, but larger age ranges. And then possibly also having kids programs.
- magic_man 3y ago
  Primarily young black men. Some of these coaches make 10s of millions of dollar and they are against paying the people who helped them make all this money. College football is the 2nd most popular sport behind the NFL.
  - outside1234 3y ago
    https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/38277849/michigan-jim-harbaugh-backs-student-athlete-revenue-sharing https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/38277849/mi... The coaches are usually actually all for paying the athletes. It is the university MBAs who are running a business off the back of them all -- and interested in maximizing profit -- that usually aren't.
- freitzkriesler2 3y ago
  But they get paid with an education! /s What I want to see is higher education have their tax free status stripped and their endowments taxed as a total percentage (like property tax). Both for creating the student loan mess and for having this ridiculous sports system that uses athletes as chattel.
  - bruceb 3y ago
    "that uses athletes as chattel." There is no shortage of people who want to play college football. Many would play even with out a scholarship. In Division 2 less than half the team is on scholarship. In Division 3 nobody gets scholarships. They are almost never on TV and there is very little chance they will make the NFL.
    - Ekaros 3y ago
      Actually why not franchise the whole thing? Have the players be paid athletes. Let the schools own the teams and spot in franchise league. Thus allow them to keep the brand and whatever goodwill there to extract money from students.
    - dessimus 3y ago
      And yet when you see the Big Schools, like an Alabama or Clemson, playing much lower Division schools, those schools are getting a massive payout for that game, while their students get whooped, and not getting anything for the abuse other than experience. That would be like a lower weight class boxer, say Canelo Álvarez taking on a fight with Tyson Fury (each in their respective class) for the "pay day", sure he may have a "puncher's chance" but few would consider it a fair fight.
  - Quillbert182 3y ago
    Athletes are not forced to be play sports. They are there because they want to be. If they don't want to do it without pay, no one is making them do it.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- onetimeusename 3y ago
  One thing I am bothered by is student athletes who don't even have to attend classes and have tutors do their work for them or there are special classes set up for them that guarantee an A. I think the concept of a student athlete is an oxymoron at this point.[1][2] Either the sport really serves no purpose and could exist as a club or the student is not really a student at all and should just be a paid university employee like the coaches. But this inbetween area is odd. I guess the facade of being a student is more endearing maybe because otherwise the university sports team people cheer for is just a bunch of paid professionals basically. Maybe that would ruin the fun for people idk. Not sure I even care. It isn't right to treat some students different than others. [1]: https://bleacherreport.com/articles/365303-cold-hard-fact-student-athletes-are-not-students https://bleacherreport.com/articles/365303-cold-hard-fact-st... [2]: https://www.cnn.com/2014/10/22/us/unc-report-academic-fraud/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2014/10/22/us/unc-report-academic-fraud/...
- dccoolgai 3y ago
  They basically ran one of the most beloved coaches in NCAA football - Jim Tressel at Ohio State - out of town. The reason? Because while these ghouls were profiting off of his players' NIL to the tune of millions per year, a couple of them had the gall to take a couple hundred bucks for themselves - and Tressel didn't do enough to "turn them in" proactively.
- dessimus 3y ago
  Honestly, what's even more bullshit, is the schools' excuse: We need the money from Football and Basketball to fund the other sports. So: "Sorry Johnny, I know you've been busting your ass scoring TDs, and 100,000's of fans pay to see you play in-person and millions more on TV, but we need that money so the Tennis and Golf teams can afford scholarships and travel to go to their tournaments. But don't worry if you break your femur and can never play again, we'll rip away that scholarship so fast you'll never think it existed to give it to the next guy."
davidw 3y ago
I always thought it'd make sense to have something like a minor league that is separate from universities, but perhaps initially owned by them so they don't lose out on the money, or something to that effect. Let football people concentrate on football, and let colleges be about learning and research. Snowball's chance in hell of actually happening though.
- matwood 3y ago
  There's the D-league for basketball and the minors for baseball. The problem is that the best players want to play where they'll be seen. This means college is the place to play for now for the revenue generating sports like basketball and football.
- hospitalJail 3y ago
  What is more likely? >We get US Medical Reform that actually helps the general population and doesn't just give medical workers/owners more money and power. >Football gets a minor league :'(
FirmwareBurner 3y ago
South Park already covered this brilliantly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61TMtH3Qw4s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61TMtH3Qw4s
SoftTalker 3y ago
College football (and to a lesser extent basketball) revenue has traditionally funded almost all the other so-called "non-revenue" sports. Track and field, tennis, cross-country, swimming, wrestling, rowing, etc. With the supreme court decision allowing NIL payments directly to players, that could change. Schools are still raking in cash in ticket sales and TV revenue. But a lot of the other sponsorship and alumni donations might be going directly to players now instead of to the athletic departments.
- TylerE 3y ago
  The big schools make money on football. Many midsize schools, including state schools, lose money in football. Being a mid tier team in Conference USA or the Mountain West is much much less lucrative than the SEC or ACC.
datavirtue 3y ago
Bread and circus. That's all that matters. Want global warming solved? Have it interrupt Monday night football.
- havblue 3y ago
  Actually, there was a fairly long interruption during Coco Gauff's US Open match last night where protesters apparently glued their feet to the floor of Arthur Ashe. So at least people can test that theory in tennis.
- adventured 3y ago
  What would that do in terms of convincing China to stop rapidly expanding their emissions output (which is now greater than the US + EU combined and still very quickly climbing)? The US has no power to do anything about China's emissions. The US could drop its emissions to zero tomorrow and it wouldn't alter where we're going in terms of global climate change at all. That isn't an exaggeration, that's how bad the situation actually is. India is just coming online with its mega emissions boom and Africa is next (they'll add a billion people while simultaneously massively expanding emissions). The outcome is already set.
  - tzs 3y ago
    The atmosphere doesn't care about arbitrary man-made geographical divisions, so comparing emission totals by country to determine if some group of people is emitting more or less than they fair share of whatever total world emission level we decide we have to stay under makes no sense.
  - janalsncm 3y ago
    Claims that China is the world’s biggest polluter ignore the fact that so much of the rest of the world has outsourced their manufacturing to China. Those emissions mostly aren’t going towards bettering the lives of Chinese people, they’re for producing the stuff we buy. In the same vein, a lot of the clean air improvements in the US can be attributed to moving those factories to China. Chinese people are dying early from air pollution to make stuff for us. People in Pittsburgh used to bring two shirts to work because it was so polluted. Not anymore. “Convincing China to stop expanding their emissions” is akin to stopping consuming manufactured goods. Americans are also far more prolific polluters than Chinese at an individual level. Due to poor urban design endemic to North American cities, most travel involves cars and airplanes, some of the worst conceivable means of transportation from an environmental perspective. This isn’t to say China is blameless. They’ve definitely made some choices favoring expediency over sustainability. But it seems a bit rich to shift blame to China and other poorer nations now when CO2-driven climate change was a problem Carl Sagan warned Congress about in the 80s (and he was ignored).
WanderPanda 3y ago
US college football looks like one of the most path dependent things ever
NikolaNovak 3y ago
>>"Of the 10 largest sports stadiums in the world, eight are US college football venues". TIL / this blows my mind. I would never have guessed that US college football trumps all those soccer stadiums around the world, by that much! :O Weird.
- adventured 3y ago
  It's no weirder than, say, the European obsession with their football programs. The US has ~340 million people, and we're talking about 10-20 mega stadiums in college football. $80,000 GDP per capita (nearing double that of France or Britain) with one of the highest disposable incomes and extreme amounts of wealth. It's surprising the stadiums aren't even bigger.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    You're missing the salient point that 8 out of ten largest stadiums in the world are american college football, NOT THE NFL The thing that's supposed to be a fun side part of your education, or even a feeder program to the pros, can afford larger stadiums than the pros.
    - hospitalJail 3y ago
      Colleges are able to spend 4 years promoting their brand, its kind of a cult of sorts. Professional teams don't have that pull, you see them a few times a year. In college, your degree's reputation can depend on how well they are viewed nationally. For 2 decades a top school could not win games, the fanbase was outraged because they were spending record amounts of money on trying to win games. It seriously made me (and others) question how good the school was academically if they couldn't manage to win, despite setting records on spending. Not to mention your friends go to the games, you have nostalgia from a vulnerable part of your life, etc... That just doesnt happen as much in Pro.
      - lotsofpulp 3y ago
        >It seriously made me (and others) question how good the school was academically if they couldn't manage to win, despite setting records on spending. Why?
pknomad 3y ago
I suspect this isn't a surprising news for anyone who's been following the college football scene for the last 20 years. TV deals matter quite a bit (especially for money and exposure) and most universities worth their salt will gun for the SEC or the BIG 10 when the opportunity is there. PAC12 essentially imploded this year for this reason.
hintymad 3y ago
A trajectory question: why do Americans worship toiling so much when it comes to sports, like Kobe Bryant's "have you seen the streets of Los Angeles at 4:00am" were repeated endlessly by the media, but despise toiling in school, like this: https://www.wired.com/2004/12/why-nerds-are-unpopular/ https://www.wired.com/2004/12/why-nerds-are-unpopular/, and this: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/01/17/half-of-americans-think-young-people-dont-pursue-stem-because-it-is-too-hard/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/01/17/half-of-a...? For someone who grew up in a different country, it appears to me that Americans do not hate working hard, they just hate working hard on academics, which is really strange.
- rayiner 3y ago
  > For someone who grew up in a different country, it appears to me that Americans do not hate working hard, they just hate working hard on academics, which is really strange Really interesting way to put it.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- lapcat 3y ago
  The US has a very strong anti-intellectual streak. Even the children feel it in schools; I know I did. And you can see it in our politics too. I'm not sure exactly why, but I wonder whether anti-intellectualism has a religious origin.
  - bobthepanda 3y ago
    I wonder if it's in the US's pro-agrarian, anti-urban roots. Thomas Jefferson famously thought of America as an agrarian democracy, and you see this even today where "Main St", "the real America", "small town America", etc. are all callbacks to the nation's rural roots.
    - asciimov 3y ago
      I don't buy that, not all rural people are moronic hicks or hillbillies. Opportunity has often been their biggest hurdle. While most are just as smart as you or me, the chances for them to get a "proper" education and out of their situation isn't as easy as it is for an urban dweller.
lapcat 3y ago
California and Stanford, literally on the Pacific coast, just joined the Atlantic Coast Conference. That tells you everything you need to know about college football. It's not about the athletes, not about amateur competition, but all about the money. Sports have become a corrupting influence on colleges and distract from their educational mission.
- strikelaserclaw 3y ago
  In reality, educational mission is just a small part of the college experience these days, it is all about building up their brand and making as much money in process as possible.
wtf_is_up 3y ago
No kidding. Conferences are signing megadeals with ESPN, et al for broadcasting rights which gets split between the members schools. Look how quickly all of those Pac12 schools jumped ship when realized their commissioner dropped the ball and they won't be getting the big payouts. Decades of 'tradition' for schools like USC, Stanford, UCLA thrown in the trash over media rights.
hnburnsy 3y ago
For now, when the cable bundle falls apart and programming goes DTC, revenue to pay the sports leagues will drop tremendously. My prediction is that the streaming services will turn back into the cable bundle via longer term contracts and selective packaging.
toastal 3y ago
They really should let folks skip the ‘school’ charade if the athlete wishes like the NBA’s G League (or go straight pro). Some use it for the education, & that scholarship can be great for those without the means otherwise, but a lot of college sports is just a cash grab for universities on the talent & training of its athletes (thankful NIL actually happened for those kids). The halfback market would see the greatest benefit to this too as they are seen as worn tire treads by the age of 24 wasting a lot of the positions most valuable years in college where they are not getting anywhere near the pay they’d see in the NFL as they are just used for their cheap rookie contract, franchise tagged, then often tossed in the trash (see: Jonathon Taylor, Saquon Barkley, Josh Jacobs, et al.).
everdrive 3y ago
It's hard to know what to think here. I really don't like or care about college sports at all. Most of the debate tends to focus on how the kids are "exploited" because they're not paid while the coaches, administrators, and schools make a huge amount of money on the unpaid athletes. The general remedy seems to be that people want the athletes to be paid. This seems backwards to me. What does a sports team have to do with a university? Why are they even associated? The athletes get a free ride, and often don't really engage in much education. Why are they even there? And why are the coaches paid well at all? It seems like an enormous waste of money. It seems like the better solution would be to stop taking in so much money from the sport _and_ keep the athletes unpaid. If this isn't possible, it seems best to wholly separate the teams from the schools.
- paulpauper 3y ago
  athletes are not uncompensated. they get scholarships. but agree also that schools make huge sums of $ off them.
- hotnfresh 3y ago
  College sports are like NPR’s classical stations: they keep them around because the donors fucking love them.
- onetimeusename 3y ago
  that's how I feel about it. Also you see things like this pop up https://deadspin.com/haley-hanna-cavinder-miami-nil-infractions-ncaa-athlete-1850162567 https://deadspin.com/haley-hanna-cavinder-miami-nil-infracti... where a super rich donor met with the twins. Maybe I am completely wrong but I get the suspicion the meeting wasn't just to say hi out of the kindness of the donor's heart. Thinking about it, would universities sexualize their athletes to sell more and be able to solicit donations? Yes, this violated an NCAA rule but wouldn't surprise me if ways around it are found just like in the past where donors would sell cars to athletes for a dollar. Not sure it would be a positive development for universities.
asciimov 3y ago
College football was once more popular and made more money than the NFL. If it wasn't for the absolute mismanagement by the NCAA, Disney/ESPN, and various big money stakeholders College Football would still be more popular and make more than the NFL. That shouldn't be surprising, as in some areas the local college team is the only professional sporting event around. It is a damned shame that they couldn't come up with a better system than the NIL. Yes all the players should be making money, but it should be done in a manner that benefits all players.
readingnews 3y ago
I worked at a uni (just left), a high school friend went into accounting and is the CPA / Accountant for the football team (ok, _one_ of the accountants)... When times were really, really bad at the uni, talking about furloughing employees, closing down schools, etc, I bumped into him: Hey fred what's up? How is it going there in the football stadium? "Eh fine..." Yeah, times are rough here, we can not purchase pencils or toilet paper. Scared for our jobs. "what!?! The football / athletics department has so much money, I am practically burning it just to get rid of it" This was the norm at the university. Research labs? Not updated in 30 years. Football stadium needs a paint job, $@#% that, we are going to build a 100Million dollar new one. Oh, the AC in Engineering is broken, screw them. Oh, its hot outside? 50Million dollar indoor training for the football team. Yeah, I hate colleges. If their goal was to win games, I would understand. Uh-oh, I was missing the point of college... dang.
j-wags 3y ago
A slight tangent - I played small college football as a lineman and every once in a while we'd be in a televised game. Those games were almost a different sport because they'd stop play during commercial breaks, so it was as if 10+ random time-outs were sprinkled through the game. While not an exact comparison, playing line during a possession is like having a series of 5 to 10-second intervals where you're either sumo wrestling or sprinting, with 10-40 seconds to recover between each. So during the off-season, linemen are trying to reach a balance of strength, speed, and cardio to meet their team's play style. Because most of our games were non-televised (and therefore we didn't get the additional breaks) our linemen conditioned more heavily for cardio/recovery. So when we'd play a televised game we'd basically feel like our cardio was "underutilized". I'd love to see an analysis of whether our team ran more line-intensive plays during these games because we had the additional recovery time. It's weird for me to see these huge guys in D1 college and the NFL playing line, because I'm pretty sure they'd cramp up/get gassed during a drive in a non-televised game.
- bruceb 3y ago
  Most interesting comment in the thread. Anyone who has been to a D1 game know the commercial breaks are so long in person. Never thought about non TV games being different pace but makes sense.
- devilbunny 3y ago
  I was just a mediocre high school player, but I'm pretty sure you're on to something there. I was a DT; the other DT and I alternated 4-on-4-off at right OT. Playing 1.5 ways is tough. The worst was to go in on second down, have to punt, and immediately resume playing defense, and know that you had to play their entire possession and one last play on offense before you got a rest. OTOH, I don't think anyone could realistically play both ways at D1 level. Even if we just assumed the necessary position skills into existence.
MostlyStable 3y ago
As long as the schools/networks/whoever are making boatloads of money, it is completely reasonable and fair that the athletes are also allowed to get their share (which should be in, my opinion, a pretty decent chunk of the total). That being said, the sheer amount of money involved in CFB at all is, in my opinion, slowly ruining it and turning it into a worse version of the NFL. If I could wave a magic wand, no one involved would be making more than trivial amounts of money (relative to today). Unfortunately, I also don't think there's anything to be done about it (neither I nor anyone else possesses such a magic wand). It would be possible to fix, but only if schools were willing to give up the revenue voluntarily, and they obviously aren't going to do that.

40 points by clouddrover 3y ago

> For the past two seasons, college players have been able to sign deals to allow third parties to use their "name, image or likeness" - NIL, for short - and receive money in return. Yep this is what's happening this year at my University this year - players now do a quick 30 minute autograph signing before each game.

blastro 3y ago

I saw the commissioner of the SEC on TV this week. He called on Congress to put in place limits on how student-athletes can earn from their NIL as well as put in restrictions on the transfer portal, calling it a "return to traditional American values in college sports". Pretty unbelievable how these institutions are creating billions of dollars of revenue / wealth off the backs of young (primarily minority) men and women. It's so gross.

Quillbert182 3y ago
The point here is not mainly focused on athletes ability to make money off of their work, although that is a part of it. The issue in this particular instance is that players are being bribed to switch teams.
- lozenge 3y ago
  The free market?
  - Quillbert182 3y ago
    It's not supposed to be a job. It's supposed to be secondary to education. Admittedly, it's getting away from that, but I would like to hold on as long as possible.
    - watwut 3y ago
      But it is not secondary to education and was not for years. It is primary thing they do and if they fail at sports, they loose education entirely. Only difference is that money don't go to athletes.
      - Quillbert182 3y ago
        I might be misunderstanding you, but if athletes fail at sports, they do not loose the education. Once a scholarship is given to a player, it is not allowed to be taken away for performance. If a player is kicked off the team (barring something like discipline issues), they still get the scholarship.
        watwut 3y ago
        You can loose athletic scholarship for performance or injury. There are some exceptions where athlete gets to keep them for four years. But generally, coach has a lot of power to not renew scholarship the next year.
    - yCombLinks 3y ago
      Lol, getting away. That train pulled out decades ago
theironhammer 3y ago
Time to Unionize and take it the Supreme Court.
spacemadness 3y ago
And then they’ll turn around and pay adjuncts a non-living wage to teach students at the University. Students who are paying thousands more than previous generations to learn. Greed and exploitation is given the thumbs up in many higher learning institutions.
kristjansson 3y ago
The amateur tradition in football was, at one point, strong enough that professional football was viewed as grubby and second class. I'm sure that commissioner, like any reasonable person calling for a return to those traditions, is also calling for the abolition of the NFL, all volunteer coaches, and gratis, advertising-free broadcasts of all the games, right? Right?!
- diracs_stache 3y ago
  Agreed, there was a long time when the olympics were for amateurs only.
  - LanceH 3y ago
    > olympics were for amateurs only For varying degrees of "amateur". A lot of nations employed their athletes to do nothing but train for the olympic and international competition.
    - houseinthesky 3y ago
      That's actually why the amateur requirement was dropped. The Soviet Union and other government-controlled-economy nations were sending essentially professional athletes to the Olympics while free-economy nations were sending amateurs. Removing the restriction allowed all nations to send their best athletes. Ironically of course, there are some aristocratic motivations for why "amateur" was desirable in the first place that don't really align to modern sensibilities, but that's separate.
mattgreenrocks 3y ago
Gross is the perfect word here. “Traditional American values in college sports” means “we make the money, and lots of it. You (the athlete) get free exposure! Who do you think you are, getting your cut?” I don’t know what it is about the current zeitgeist but people with power seem quite happy to vocalize their discontent with what they perceive as “lower classes” making decent money. It’s like they don’t even pretend anymore.
- steveylang 3y ago
  Besides wanting to keep all the revenue, the NCAA talks up all that sanctimonious crap to justify their non-profit status so they don't have to pay taxes on it either.
- banannaise 3y ago
  It's easy to lose sight of the fact that it's been like this for the vast majority of American history. The only change is the mechanism. Usually they try to obscure this state of affairs. When the veil breaks, their backup plan is enforcement, first through threats and then through laws and then, if necessary, through violence. We appear to be mostly in the "threats" stage.
  - watwut 3y ago
    Not actually, for majority of that time no one was earning from college sports.
    - rschneid 3y ago
      This south park excerpt is... frighteningly realistic https://youtu.be/Z5ZZ8bO9-Ig https://youtu.be/Z5ZZ8bO9-Ig
mikeyouse 3y ago
If that was Greg Sankey, he made $3.7 million last year and the 5-year contract he just signed "substantially" increases his salary. https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/38005718/sec-extends-commissioner-greg-sankey-2028 https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/38005718/sec-...
- Rebelgecko 3y ago
  I imagine he's actually being out-earned by some of top players' NIL deals. I think it's a tricky situation. The previous NCAA rules were idiotic and unfair to players. The current situation is better for players, but I'm worried that we're moving towards a future where the best teams are just the ones with the deepest pockets (or whose boosters have the deepest pockets). Considering most teams are already unprofitable, it could further increase stratification between P5 and G5 teams. Maybe CFB needs to implement a per-team salary cap.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    >Maybe CFB needs to implement a per-team salary cap. Maybe schools should not be involved in professional sports in the first place, especially one that inherently causes brain damage. Let the NFL owners pay for a minor league.
  - jabradoodle 3y ago
    Why should the workers wages be capped; why not cap how much money the team can make and tax the rest?
bell-cot 3y ago
This is America, where being against-slavery-in-theory - but unable to reconcile that theory with the real-world property rights and financial interests of the slave owners - was an enormous legal and "moral" problem for a century or few.
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janalsncm 3y ago
How about returning to the tradition of college sports being merely a recreational break from academics, where scholastic merit cannot be trumped by athletic ability, and where the highest paid employees of states are not football coaches?
- bdw5204 3y ago
  That actually exists. It's called Division 3 NCAA sports. There's no redshirting, no financial aid because you're good at sports and no making a profit from sports or paying coaches million dollar salaries in D3. The conferences are also based on where the colleges are geographically located. You just don't hear about D3 because their games usually aren't televised and 99.9% or so of their athletes actually go pro in something other than sports.
  - pmyteh 3y ago
    And it's still massively more of a deal for spectators then academic sport in, say, the UK. I spent a term as an exchange student at the Catholic University of America, a smallish university with a completely unexceptional D3 football programme staffed with actual students. And they got two thousand people to their football games! Much of the campus! Alumni! People who lived in Brookland and fancied some live sport! I mean, I knew how seriously people take high school football too. But even really good UK university sport can play to an audience of the players supportive romantic partners only. A different (and quite refreshing) world.
    - Ekaros 3y ago
      I think I would prefer the UK model for things like football. Where there is local community teams that are not limited just students, but larger age ranges. And then possibly also having kids programs.
magic_man 3y ago
Primarily young black men. Some of these coaches make 10s of millions of dollar and they are against paying the people who helped them make all this money. College football is the 2nd most popular sport behind the NFL.
- outside1234 3y ago
  https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/38277849/michigan-jim-harbaugh-backs-student-athlete-revenue-sharing https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/38277849/mi... The coaches are usually actually all for paying the athletes. It is the university MBAs who are running a business off the back of them all -- and interested in maximizing profit -- that usually aren't.
freitzkriesler2 3y ago
But they get paid with an education! /s What I want to see is higher education have their tax free status stripped and their endowments taxed as a total percentage (like property tax). Both for creating the student loan mess and for having this ridiculous sports system that uses athletes as chattel.
- bruceb 3y ago
  "that uses athletes as chattel." There is no shortage of people who want to play college football. Many would play even with out a scholarship. In Division 2 less than half the team is on scholarship. In Division 3 nobody gets scholarships. They are almost never on TV and there is very little chance they will make the NFL.
  - Ekaros 3y ago
    Actually why not franchise the whole thing? Have the players be paid athletes. Let the schools own the teams and spot in franchise league. Thus allow them to keep the brand and whatever goodwill there to extract money from students.
  - dessimus 3y ago
    And yet when you see the Big Schools, like an Alabama or Clemson, playing much lower Division schools, those schools are getting a massive payout for that game, while their students get whooped, and not getting anything for the abuse other than experience. That would be like a lower weight class boxer, say Canelo Álvarez taking on a fight with Tyson Fury (each in their respective class) for the "pay day", sure he may have a "puncher's chance" but few would consider it a fair fight.
- Quillbert182 3y ago
  Athletes are not forced to be play sports. They are there because they want to be. If they don't want to do it without pay, no one is making them do it.
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onetimeusename 3y ago
One thing I am bothered by is student athletes who don't even have to attend classes and have tutors do their work for them or there are special classes set up for them that guarantee an A. I think the concept of a student athlete is an oxymoron at this point.[1][2] Either the sport really serves no purpose and could exist as a club or the student is not really a student at all and should just be a paid university employee like the coaches. But this inbetween area is odd. I guess the facade of being a student is more endearing maybe because otherwise the university sports team people cheer for is just a bunch of paid professionals basically. Maybe that would ruin the fun for people idk. Not sure I even care. It isn't right to treat some students different than others. [1]: https://bleacherreport.com/articles/365303-cold-hard-fact-student-athletes-are-not-students https://bleacherreport.com/articles/365303-cold-hard-fact-st... [2]: https://www.cnn.com/2014/10/22/us/unc-report-academic-fraud/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2014/10/22/us/unc-report-academic-fraud/...
dccoolgai 3y ago
They basically ran one of the most beloved coaches in NCAA football - Jim Tressel at Ohio State - out of town. The reason? Because while these ghouls were profiting off of his players' NIL to the tune of millions per year, a couple of them had the gall to take a couple hundred bucks for themselves - and Tressel didn't do enough to "turn them in" proactively.
dessimus 3y ago
Honestly, what's even more bullshit, is the schools' excuse: We need the money from Football and Basketball to fund the other sports. So: "Sorry Johnny, I know you've been busting your ass scoring TDs, and 100,000's of fans pay to see you play in-person and millions more on TV, but we need that money so the Tennis and Golf teams can afford scholarships and travel to go to their tournaments. But don't worry if you break your femur and can never play again, we'll rip away that scholarship so fast you'll never think it existed to give it to the next guy."

davidw 3y ago

I always thought it'd make sense to have something like a minor league that is separate from universities, but perhaps initially owned by them so they don't lose out on the money, or something to that effect. Let football people concentrate on football, and let colleges be about learning and research. Snowball's chance in hell of actually happening though.

matwood 3y ago
There's the D-league for basketball and the minors for baseball. The problem is that the best players want to play where they'll be seen. This means college is the place to play for now for the revenue generating sports like basketball and football.
hospitalJail 3y ago
What is more likely? >We get US Medical Reform that actually helps the general population and doesn't just give medical workers/owners more money and power. >Football gets a minor league :'(

FirmwareBurner 3y ago

South Park already covered this brilliantly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61TMtH3Qw4s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61TMtH3Qw4s

SoftTalker 3y ago

College football (and to a lesser extent basketball) revenue has traditionally funded almost all the other so-called "non-revenue" sports. Track and field, tennis, cross-country, swimming, wrestling, rowing, etc. With the supreme court decision allowing NIL payments directly to players, that could change. Schools are still raking in cash in ticket sales and TV revenue. But a lot of the other sponsorship and alumni donations might be going directly to players now instead of to the athletic departments.

TylerE 3y ago
The big schools make money on football. Many midsize schools, including state schools, lose money in football. Being a mid tier team in Conference USA or the Mountain West is much much less lucrative than the SEC or ACC.

datavirtue 3y ago

Bread and circus. That's all that matters. Want global warming solved? Have it interrupt Monday night football.

havblue 3y ago
Actually, there was a fairly long interruption during Coco Gauff's US Open match last night where protesters apparently glued their feet to the floor of Arthur Ashe. So at least people can test that theory in tennis.
adventured 3y ago
What would that do in terms of convincing China to stop rapidly expanding their emissions output (which is now greater than the US + EU combined and still very quickly climbing)? The US has no power to do anything about China's emissions. The US could drop its emissions to zero tomorrow and it wouldn't alter where we're going in terms of global climate change at all. That isn't an exaggeration, that's how bad the situation actually is. India is just coming online with its mega emissions boom and Africa is next (they'll add a billion people while simultaneously massively expanding emissions). The outcome is already set.
- tzs 3y ago
  The atmosphere doesn't care about arbitrary man-made geographical divisions, so comparing emission totals by country to determine if some group of people is emitting more or less than they fair share of whatever total world emission level we decide we have to stay under makes no sense.
- janalsncm 3y ago
  Claims that China is the world’s biggest polluter ignore the fact that so much of the rest of the world has outsourced their manufacturing to China. Those emissions mostly aren’t going towards bettering the lives of Chinese people, they’re for producing the stuff we buy. In the same vein, a lot of the clean air improvements in the US can be attributed to moving those factories to China. Chinese people are dying early from air pollution to make stuff for us. People in Pittsburgh used to bring two shirts to work because it was so polluted. Not anymore. “Convincing China to stop expanding their emissions” is akin to stopping consuming manufactured goods. Americans are also far more prolific polluters than Chinese at an individual level. Due to poor urban design endemic to North American cities, most travel involves cars and airplanes, some of the worst conceivable means of transportation from an environmental perspective. This isn’t to say China is blameless. They’ve definitely made some choices favoring expediency over sustainability. But it seems a bit rich to shift blame to China and other poorer nations now when CO2-driven climate change was a problem Carl Sagan warned Congress about in the 80s (and he was ignored).

WanderPanda 3y ago

US college football looks like one of the most path dependent things ever

NikolaNovak 3y ago

>>"Of the 10 largest sports stadiums in the world, eight are US college football venues". TIL / this blows my mind. I would never have guessed that US college football trumps all those soccer stadiums around the world, by that much! :O Weird.

adventured 3y ago
It's no weirder than, say, the European obsession with their football programs. The US has ~340 million people, and we're talking about 10-20 mega stadiums in college football. $80,000 GDP per capita (nearing double that of France or Britain) with one of the highest disposable incomes and extreme amounts of wealth. It's surprising the stadiums aren't even bigger.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  You're missing the salient point that 8 out of ten largest stadiums in the world are american college football, NOT THE NFL The thing that's supposed to be a fun side part of your education, or even a feeder program to the pros, can afford larger stadiums than the pros.
  - hospitalJail 3y ago
    Colleges are able to spend 4 years promoting their brand, its kind of a cult of sorts. Professional teams don't have that pull, you see them a few times a year. In college, your degree's reputation can depend on how well they are viewed nationally. For 2 decades a top school could not win games, the fanbase was outraged because they were spending record amounts of money on trying to win games. It seriously made me (and others) question how good the school was academically if they couldn't manage to win, despite setting records on spending. Not to mention your friends go to the games, you have nostalgia from a vulnerable part of your life, etc... That just doesnt happen as much in Pro.
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      >It seriously made me (and others) question how good the school was academically if they couldn't manage to win, despite setting records on spending. Why?

pknomad 3y ago

I suspect this isn't a surprising news for anyone who's been following the college football scene for the last 20 years. TV deals matter quite a bit (especially for money and exposure) and most universities worth their salt will gun for the SEC or the BIG 10 when the opportunity is there. PAC12 essentially imploded this year for this reason.

hintymad 3y ago

A trajectory question: why do Americans worship toiling so much when it comes to sports, like Kobe Bryant's "have you seen the streets of Los Angeles at 4:00am" were repeated endlessly by the media, but despise toiling in school, like this: https://www.wired.com/2004/12/why-nerds-are-unpopular/ https://www.wired.com/2004/12/why-nerds-are-unpopular/, and this: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/01/17/half-of-americans-think-young-people-dont-pursue-stem-because-it-is-too-hard/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/01/17/half-of-a...? For someone who grew up in a different country, it appears to me that Americans do not hate working hard, they just hate working hard on academics, which is really strange.

rayiner 3y ago
> For someone who grew up in a different country, it appears to me that Americans do not hate working hard, they just hate working hard on academics, which is really strange Really interesting way to put it.
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lapcat 3y ago
The US has a very strong anti-intellectual streak. Even the children feel it in schools; I know I did. And you can see it in our politics too. I'm not sure exactly why, but I wonder whether anti-intellectualism has a religious origin.
- bobthepanda 3y ago
  I wonder if it's in the US's pro-agrarian, anti-urban roots. Thomas Jefferson famously thought of America as an agrarian democracy, and you see this even today where "Main St", "the real America", "small town America", etc. are all callbacks to the nation's rural roots.
  - asciimov 3y ago
    I don't buy that, not all rural people are moronic hicks or hillbillies. Opportunity has often been their biggest hurdle. While most are just as smart as you or me, the chances for them to get a "proper" education and out of their situation isn't as easy as it is for an urban dweller.

lapcat 3y ago

California and Stanford, literally on the Pacific coast, just joined the Atlantic Coast Conference. That tells you everything you need to know about college football. It's not about the athletes, not about amateur competition, but all about the money. Sports have become a corrupting influence on colleges and distract from their educational mission.

strikelaserclaw 3y ago
In reality, educational mission is just a small part of the college experience these days, it is all about building up their brand and making as much money in process as possible.

wtf_is_up 3y ago

No kidding. Conferences are signing megadeals with ESPN, et al for broadcasting rights which gets split between the members schools. Look how quickly all of those Pac12 schools jumped ship when realized their commissioner dropped the ball and they won't be getting the big payouts. Decades of 'tradition' for schools like USC, Stanford, UCLA thrown in the trash over media rights.

hnburnsy 3y ago

For now, when the cable bundle falls apart and programming goes DTC, revenue to pay the sports leagues will drop tremendously. My prediction is that the streaming services will turn back into the cable bundle via longer term contracts and selective packaging.

toastal 3y ago

They really should let folks skip the ‘school’ charade if the athlete wishes like the NBA’s G League (or go straight pro). Some use it for the education, & that scholarship can be great for those without the means otherwise, but a lot of college sports is just a cash grab for universities on the talent & training of its athletes (thankful NIL actually happened for those kids). The halfback market would see the greatest benefit to this too as they are seen as worn tire treads by the age of 24 wasting a lot of the positions most valuable years in college where they are not getting anywhere near the pay they’d see in the NFL as they are just used for their cheap rookie contract, franchise tagged, then often tossed in the trash (see: Jonathon Taylor, Saquon Barkley, Josh Jacobs, et al.).

everdrive 3y ago

It's hard to know what to think here. I really don't like or care about college sports at all. Most of the debate tends to focus on how the kids are "exploited" because they're not paid while the coaches, administrators, and schools make a huge amount of money on the unpaid athletes. The general remedy seems to be that people want the athletes to be paid. This seems backwards to me. What does a sports team have to do with a university? Why are they even associated? The athletes get a free ride, and often don't really engage in much education. Why are they even there? And why are the coaches paid well at all? It seems like an enormous waste of money. It seems like the better solution would be to stop taking in so much money from the sport _and_ keep the athletes unpaid. If this isn't possible, it seems best to wholly separate the teams from the schools.

paulpauper 3y ago
athletes are not uncompensated. they get scholarships. but agree also that schools make huge sums of $ off them.
hotnfresh 3y ago
College sports are like NPR’s classical stations: they keep them around because the donors fucking love them.
onetimeusename 3y ago
that's how I feel about it. Also you see things like this pop up https://deadspin.com/haley-hanna-cavinder-miami-nil-infractions-ncaa-athlete-1850162567 https://deadspin.com/haley-hanna-cavinder-miami-nil-infracti... where a super rich donor met with the twins. Maybe I am completely wrong but I get the suspicion the meeting wasn't just to say hi out of the kindness of the donor's heart. Thinking about it, would universities sexualize their athletes to sell more and be able to solicit donations? Yes, this violated an NCAA rule but wouldn't surprise me if ways around it are found just like in the past where donors would sell cars to athletes for a dollar. Not sure it would be a positive development for universities.

asciimov 3y ago

College football was once more popular and made more money than the NFL. If it wasn't for the absolute mismanagement by the NCAA, Disney/ESPN, and various big money stakeholders College Football would still be more popular and make more than the NFL. That shouldn't be surprising, as in some areas the local college team is the only professional sporting event around. It is a damned shame that they couldn't come up with a better system than the NIL. Yes all the players should be making money, but it should be done in a manner that benefits all players.

readingnews 3y ago

I worked at a uni (just left), a high school friend went into accounting and is the CPA / Accountant for the football team (ok, _one_ of the accountants)... When times were really, really bad at the uni, talking about furloughing employees, closing down schools, etc, I bumped into him: Hey fred what's up? How is it going there in the football stadium? "Eh fine..." Yeah, times are rough here, we can not purchase pencils or toilet paper. Scared for our jobs. "what!?! The football / athletics department has so much money, I am practically burning it just to get rid of it" This was the norm at the university. Research labs? Not updated in 30 years. Football stadium needs a paint job, $@#% that, we are going to build a 100Million dollar new one. Oh, the AC in Engineering is broken, screw them. Oh, its hot outside? 50Million dollar indoor training for the football team. Yeah, I hate colleges. If their goal was to win games, I would understand. Uh-oh, I was missing the point of college... dang.

j-wags 3y ago

A slight tangent - I played small college football as a lineman and every once in a while we'd be in a televised game. Those games were almost a different sport because they'd stop play during commercial breaks, so it was as if 10+ random time-outs were sprinkled through the game. While not an exact comparison, playing line during a possession is like having a series of 5 to 10-second intervals where you're either sumo wrestling or sprinting, with 10-40 seconds to recover between each. So during the off-season, linemen are trying to reach a balance of strength, speed, and cardio to meet their team's play style. Because most of our games were non-televised (and therefore we didn't get the additional breaks) our linemen conditioned more heavily for cardio/recovery. So when we'd play a televised game we'd basically feel like our cardio was "underutilized". I'd love to see an analysis of whether our team ran more line-intensive plays during these games because we had the additional recovery time. It's weird for me to see these huge guys in D1 college and the NFL playing line, because I'm pretty sure they'd cramp up/get gassed during a drive in a non-televised game.

bruceb 3y ago
Most interesting comment in the thread. Anyone who has been to a D1 game know the commercial breaks are so long in person. Never thought about non TV games being different pace but makes sense.
devilbunny 3y ago
I was just a mediocre high school player, but I'm pretty sure you're on to something there. I was a DT; the other DT and I alternated 4-on-4-off at right OT. Playing 1.5 ways is tough. The worst was to go in on second down, have to punt, and immediately resume playing defense, and know that you had to play their entire possession and one last play on offense before you got a rest. OTOH, I don't think anyone could realistically play both ways at D1 level. Even if we just assumed the necessary position skills into existence.

MostlyStable 3y ago

As long as the schools/networks/whoever are making boatloads of money, it is completely reasonable and fair that the athletes are also allowed to get their share (which should be in, my opinion, a pretty decent chunk of the total). That being said, the sheer amount of money involved in CFB at all is, in my opinion, slowly ruining it and turning it into a worse version of the NFL. If I could wave a magic wand, no one involved would be making more than trivial amounts of money (relative to today). Unfortunately, I also don't think there's anything to be done about it (neither I nor anyone else possesses such a magic wand). It would be possible to fix, but only if schools were willing to give up the revenue voluntarily, and they obviously aren't going to do that.