Yeah we needed another topic on this didn't we! :roll: But I found a new way to look at what the players get, courtesy of JayPa! JayPa on paying football players Jack Swarbrick the ND AD also weighed in on this in an interview when asked about paying athletes. Swarbrick Interview
You and I both know that that is a GROSS understatement of the time these young men spend on the game......that is saying that during the season, these kids spend less than 3 hours a day on average on football. That is just absurd. Right.....we can pretend that the only time these kids are asked to spend working on the game is during those hours when they are technically "allowed" to be supervised by staff and not count hours working out on their own in the gym, watching video, studying the playbook/gameplan, getting taped/dressed, doing interviews, going to rehab/trainers for treatment, practice time and meeting time, that's nuts.....not an effective way to address the issue, imho...... who really believes that? Hell on game weekends alone, they are in effect working 24 straight hours right? They surely wouldn't be able to check out after dinner on Friday for a shift part-time job right?
And that include the spiffs.... tons of shoes and clothing.... free admission to most venues, no show jobs, ticket sales to boosters..... etc etc. I am 100% against paying college players.
Call it whatever you want, unless something meaningful is done, you're putting these kids in an unreasonable position.....scholarship athletes are effectively prohibited from working - they can earn no more than approx $2000 per year to cover "incidental expenses" that is not covered by their schollies..... $40 bucks a week to go out to a movie, some goodies for their sweetie, download the lastest cd, shoot 'em up game for the X-box and some new clothes - seriously? Many of these kids are not in family situation where Daddy can write him a check to help out.....that's just asking for trouble. If you want to deal with the problem of kids putting their hand out, you gotta look at the situation from a realistic perspective, imho
How about the kid who wants to go to college or can't. Or the ones who work one or two jobs to put themselves through a second rate school. Personal note: I played football from 4th grade through high school. I was a decent player but nobody was looking for 178 lb. Lbs. Most kids are like me. They don't quit the game... the game quits them. My parents put me through two years of college ... then dad lot his job when NCR left town. So I worked full time in an aluminum die cast factory 50-60 hours a week and went to school at night. Most kids go through college in some fashion similar to that. These athletes are pampered from Pop Warner through the NFL. Not only do they get a college education and all ther trimmings fully paid for but they get comps galore and all the other things discussed. Its no wonder stiffs like Pryor go through life as oversized divas. I love college football but its a game fellas. Hell no don't pay them one cent more.... if they can gat a better deal take it!
....there in lies the rub Krebsie.....they don't get all their trimmings fully paid. They don't have any money in their pockets to take their girl out, to go to the movies and dinner, etc and unless I'm wrong, the rules prohibit their seeking employment during the school year and/or being paid more than approx $2000/year. Mom and Dad - if there is one - are not in a position to send spending money. What do you expect these kids to do? Not go out? That's just unreasonable and unrealistic in my view. It's a guaranteed fail.......
Don't they have parents. School is completely paid for . Can't they pony up the money for beer and tats.
I really don't know which side of the fence to swing my legs over. Paying college athletes opens up a Pandora's box of possibilities. How are you going to monitor it... control it... etc.? On the other hand, George, some of these kids don't have parents, at least in the plural sense. Some have older people that have no idea what a parent is. Those "parents" buy an eight ball any time they have two nickels to rub together. Just sayin'.
:idea: The Univesity of Chicago was one of the great powers of college football, but they dropped the sport, because they couldn't find any academic reason for the school to support it's own semi-pro team. What is the academic justification for college football? The further you get from the words "student activity" and the closer you get to the words "non-academic fund raiser" the more difficult it will be for college presidents and professors to justify the existence of football at universities. Once you start down this path, college football is doomed. Some schools, like Notre Dame, Stanford, BYU and Northwestern will never go along with fielding semi-pro football teams. Even many public schools like UCLA and Cal would form their own student football association rather than join the new semi-pro NCAA. What would be left after all the desertions would be a disaster. What would it look like? The SEC plus Ohio State, USC and Oklahoma? All the evil empires put together would only amount to a minor professional league. Ten seconds after it's born, the NFL will call in air strikes on college towns from Columbus, Ohio to Athens, Georgia. Players in the semi-pro NCAA would be subject to the NFL draft from their senior year in high school and the NFL will set up a competing minor league which will drain away ALL of the mercenary talent. Paying the players means competing directly against the NFL for talent and TV money, which is a game the colleges will never win...not even if they had Notre Dame...which they never will in this scenario. :idea:
This is true certainly not in every instance but is true in many instances......asking/forcing these kids to do without whilst on the same page you advertise fund raisers via organized autograph signings, memorabilia auctions, celebrity golf outings, cruises, dinners, book sales, etc just isn't going to work....you're swinging the pot of gold in front of their face within their reach yet you not only prohibit them from taking a handful, you force them into NCAA-mandated poverty.....listen, I'm not a fan of opening Pandora's Box but the status quo isn't working and cannot work. Surely there is a better solution.....
I'm on board with Swarbrick's position regarding "total cost of attendance" and that it should be looked into and a solution found that is equitable for all. As far as players personal expenses regarding taking their girlfriend out on a date or stuff like that, you'd have to be naive to think we could give them say 200$ month pocket money and that would take care of things. What about clothes, stero system, x-box, TV, a "decent" ride, etc. The list is endless. $200/month would be just a drop in the bucket. I'd say it would be closer to 2000 grand a month for them to be able have the things they think they are entitled to in todays world.
You have no idea what kind of a mess you are letting yourselves in for and all because of a bunch of over zealous boosters and a handful of greedy kids who are in college for all the wrong reasons. Money will lead to agents, collective bargaining, lawsuits, civil/equal rights issues and on and on. All of that will lead to much higher fan costs through cable TV package pricing and game day expenses. Imagine PSLs for a college game..... Eventually education will not be part of the equation. You will simply recruit players to play for the university as mercenaries. Your favorite team will be no more than a farm team for the NFL.
Good stuff on this topic from Her Loyal Sons... Jun 13 2011 - 10:27 pm There’s an idea that’s managed to whisper its way deep into the consciousness of the fans and media who attend so closely to the victories and defeats of our autumn Saturdays. It’s crept in there to convince us that things are too far gone with collegiate athletics to ever be fixed. The proponents of this idea argue that “the entire thing would need to be scrapped,” or that notions of winning in major college athletics without cheating are both “noble” and “novel.” But the idea that college athletics have been flung so far afield from the ideals of the NCAA that expectations of programs vying to win without cheating have become trite and quaint is simply a convenient excuse. It’s convenient for the coaches who would compile a list of “minor infractions” over their career. If it’s accepted that cheating is rampant and uncontrollable, then a coach’s personal rap sheet of minor infractions can probably get excused by the adoring public with a few folksy witticisms and just enough “aww shucks” attitude that people may suspect that, while you’ve managed to revolutionize an entire offensive system, you just might be too stupid to play by all of the rules all of the time. It’s convenient for the players who need a little footing of rationalization to stand tall while taking benefits expressly forbidden by the rules. Who can blame the “poor players” who might take a little extra cash in return for their services on the field of play? Who cares that the entire idea of scholarship collegiate athletics is to enable young men and women to pursue a path to a better future by way of academic accomplishments accompanied by athletic endeavors? Never mind that most families today wonder how the hell they’ll ever finance the college educations of their children given rocketing tuition costs and deteriorated credit markets. Our student-athletes need to be able to take a gal out on a date. In a really nice car. Damn the rules that they signed up to play by and pass the syringe! It’s convenient for the columnists. Unfortunately for the John Saunders and Mitch Alboms of the world, something truly affecting and tragic only happens within the world of sports that could translate to the world-at-large about once or twice a year, so “crafting” enough words to fill a weekly column can get tough. But if you can find a cash cow like the epidemic of cheating within amateur student athletics, well, sir, you’ve got enough material to make Jack Van Impe green with envy. Whenever the fresh springs of controversey or tradgedy run dry, just step on back to the old, faithful well of chronic cheating and declare your right-sized outrage; Just enough to get the readers hooked, not enough to push the public into any action that might kill the cow. It’s convenient for the journalists. And, regrettably, most real to them too. Some of the public spent a lot of time in “The Tebow Era” wondering just why it is that the sports media spent so much time adoring Tim Tebow. Granted, the guy’s a swell guy, but the reputation not only preceded him, but eclipsed any rational levels of humanity by his senior year. And it now seems obvious that it’s because the media members who regularly cover national collegiate athletics feel so surrounded by cheating and immorality, that Tim practically radiated blue and orange light to their cynical eyes. Sometimes things are too good to believe because the beliefs of the people are completely out of whack. But also, if it is accepted that the entire system is a wreck, then the observers of that system, the journalists, are left without blame for not exposing the scandals more regularly. After all, how can you pick out a piece of mud from all that murk unless it’s truly foul? And if you go around, poking your nose where it might not ought to be, giving everything a sniff test, who could blame you for worrying about losing your access (and thus job) in times like these? And it’s convenient for the fans. For the fans of programs already exposed as frauds, telling eachother on message boards and over beers that “everyone’s cheating, it’s just a matter of who’s caught and who’s not,” quickly sweeps away any sense of regret one might carry for supporting the fraud, spending money on the fraud, and getting into stupid internet-arguments in defense of the fraud. And, because sports always, inevitably, serve as a metaphor for life, the sense that “everyone cheats” in sports serves as a cushy little bed for the fans as they place every failure and every disappointment in the file labeled “external locus of control.” Suffering from a sense of victim-hood gets so much easier if everyone’s cheating. All of the time. There’s no denying that cheating is a problem for the NCAA. Even the NCAA has managed to notice it’s a problem, and that’s saying something. The Southern Cals and Ohio States of the world have managed to awaken the sleeping, lumbering, lazy giant of bureaucracy. So maybe that’s a start. But there’s absolutely no hope of the problem being solved until people begin to demand that the programs they support play by the rules. And there’s no hope of that happening until fans, players, media members, and coaches stop letting themselves believe the convenient lie.
Agreed.... You must either give them something or remove the ban that prevents them from earning it for themselves.....it's completely unreasonable to not allow them the means - either through their schollies or allowing them to work - to engage in activities that are normal and customary for kids their age all over the world and have been since the dawn of mankind.....it is contrary to fundamental human behavior and as such it cannot work and it's naive to think that it can.....surely as TOK suggests there is an equitable solution.