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Unionization of the NCAA

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Should NCAA players get paid?


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gourimoko

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Thoughts?

I'm not a college sports guy.. Never have been. But recently in the news there is much talk of paying NCAA athletes through a collective bargaining agreement and a player's union (like pro sports).

I'm interesting in hearing everyone's thoughts on this. I personally was against such a move, but after talking to one of my political friends in Ohio today I may be changing my mind.

Discuss.
 
I'm not well knowledged on the subject to be honest, but my opinion is that if college athletes start getting paid to play, then athletic scholarships should be abolished.
 
I'm not well knowledged on the subject to be honest, but my opinion is that if college athletes start getting paid to play, then athletic scholarships should be abolished.

I don't agree that scholarships should be abolished at all.

If a college gives away 70 full ride scholarship at 50,000$ for football that would be roughly 3.5 mil$. A decent football program is going to make almost 15x that in revenue from merch sales, concessions, TV money and endorsement deals. So giving the kids something like 20,000$ a year as a living stipend wouldn't put a big dent in things or be unreasonable imo

This is a little outdated but read the below link. It will give an idea of the amount of money we are dealing with, if they can't offer a little as a standard of living stipend that is some greedy shit. It would def make some kids think a little harder before leaving school, which is never a bad thing. Not only that but it may curb some of the instances of accepting benefits like Pryor or kids getting exploited.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/chrissmith/2011/12/22/college-footballs-most-valuable-teams/
 
I guess I'm failing to understand why shouldn't adults who are effectively working in a business-for-profit venture not get paid based on their production?

It does, subjectively, seem exploitive that the NCAA makes $11 billion dollars annually yet NCAA players garner only an athletic scholarship which amounts to less than minimum wage for the amount of time that is put into their sport.

I was a college athlete, and I never had any expectation, whatsoever to get paid. But to that end, I'd be lying if I didn't acknowledge the vast difference in revenue between collegiate wrestling and NCAA basketball / football.
 
I'm not well knowledged on the subject to be honest, but my opinion is that if college athletes start getting paid to play, then athletic scholarships should be abolished.

Maybe the NCAA should be spun-off into a minor league. The appearance of academics completely removed?
 
I agree, if kids don't want to play in college go somewhere else to play, until eligible for the Pros. I do think they should take care of players from and Injury perspective, but if they want paid then don't go to college.
 
I don't think the schools should have to pay the athletes, but they should have less restrictions. Let them cash in on autographs and endorsements like Olympic athletes.
 
IMO, with the NCAA selling jerseys of these kids, those kids should get a part of that pay.
 
IMO, with the NCAA selling jerseys of these kids, those kids should get a part of that pay.

This was a major point of the guy I talked to today. I watched a Jon Stewart clip he mentioned and he basically broke it down. These guys are marketing and making billions off of the athletes, yet the athletes are reimbursed with nothing more than a scholarship.

It seems the system is setup to protect the interests of the institution and not the players who make the institution profitable?

Where am I going wrong here?
 
Maybe the NCAA should be spun-off into a minor league. The appearance of academics completely removed?

If university affiliations are no longer present, the $11 billion dollars they currently bring in annually will no longer happen. People don't care about minor league baseball, they won't care about minor league football or basketball.

Most of the NCAA athletes won't go pro. The free education, housing, and food that they get is a pretty good deal. Players also get stipends currently. When I was at OSU in the early to mid 2000s, football players got a $1000 per month stipend. I wouldn't be opposed to that going up to $1500 to $2000 per month.
 
This was a major point of the guy I talked to today. I watched a Jon Stewart clip he mentioned and he basically broke it down. These guys are marketing and making billions off of the athletes, yet the athletes are reimbursed with nothing more than a scholarship.

It seems the system is setup to protect the interests of the institution and not the players who make the institution profitable?

Where am I going wrong here?

I'm 32 years old, pretty successful in my career, and I'm still paying on my student loans. I think the value of the scholarships given are always understated in this debate.

My solution is this - give the athletes a choice - either take the full, paid scholarship or get paid the equal value of said scholarship (given as a bi-weekly paycheck) and allow them to take student loans out to cover their own education. If they feel they'll eventually go pro, they'll have plenty of cash while they attend school and can repay their own loans with the money they make professionally.

We all get taken advantages by bigger entities. If you work at First Energy, for example, your work is allowing them to makes millions and millions of dollars. Sure, you're being compensated, but are you getting the same share the head honchos up top are getting? My guess is no.

I'm in favor of giving them the option I mentioned and do believe they should have health care benefits, but that's it. Paying them AND giving them a full ride is too much. For as much as people talk about them getting taken advantage of, never forget their participation is OPTIONAL. Basketball players can forego college for the D-League or European Leagues if they don't want to go to college. Although it's not as good, football players have the option of the CFL if they don't want to attend school. If they're good enough, they'll still find their way into the pros.

One final point - unionization can't just be for the money-making sports of college football and basketball. Due to Title IX the benefits have to also be there for athletes participating in women's basketball, softball, baseball, swimming, track and field, etc etc etc. Unionize and watch colleges just start to axe sports programs left and right.

90-95% of collegiate athletes will never go pro and need the education they receive to be successful in their lives. Let's not jeopardize that for the 5-10% star athletes whose work that's taken advantage of leapfrogs them to millions of dollars.
 
This was just an easy fix I thought up. Give each college X amount of "scholarship" level awards per season on a 4 year rolling basis. Say they are each 25k or something, since all tuition is not the same. Student is refunded the portion that is not spent on education and housing. Allow colleges to hand out multiple awards per student. So a high end talent might be worth 3-4 scholies a year or something. If you don't have enough scholarships left, you are stuck with walk ons. Maybe schools take rebuilding years where they sit on scholarships and roll them over to try to bring in a better class. Either way, hopefully you'd see more talent spread out instead of Alabama getting 10 5* tackles every year. Teams want to entice a guy to stay the 4th year? Offer him an extra scholarship or two.
 
Making top high school basketball players go to college for a year really was a tipping point for this imo.

Guys like Anthony Davis, Andrew Wiggins etc are not student athletes. They are more like employees.

Either make guys go for 3 years like with football or let them start making money right away if they want.

I can understand extra benefits, but as a student paying my own way, I don't exactly have a ton of sympathy for those complaining while getting free tuition.
 
I think a lot of people are missing the point.

The NCAA is a multibillion dollar industry. Why shouldn't the athletes be paid relative to their production. If so much money is being made from people who are effectively working 50-60 hours a week; why should the NCAA be exempt from paying their salary.

The question was brought up of turning it into it's own league, with or without school affiliation. Schools could be like cities, having franchises; but the players aren't necessarily students - or maybe they are, but they are paid on a contractual basis relative to their worth.

My question is, why not do this? I don't really see the downsides and it seems far more equitable.
 
Consequences of unionizing and players getting paid. I'm not an attorney, so I could be wrong on some thoughts here. But the below is where logic takes me:

(1) Players would likely have to pay taxes on both their scholarships AND any income that they got AND any benefits that they received from the team. On the other hand, if teams then decided not to give out scholarships and instead paid a salary, it seems possible that the teams could manage to pay salaries low enough that they're actually (a) making less than they would have if they had a scholarship and (b) having to put that money right into paying the tuition that would otherwise have been free. Kids at expensive universities could come out net negative and kids with no money going into college, whom are often some of the better athletes are going to have to come out of pocket for tuition. If those guys are net negative, how the hell are they going to college at all?

(2) If they unionize, but the team decides not to agree to anything the union demands...what do the players do? They could strike, but then I believe the team could probably ban them from their practice facilities and prevent coaches from coaching them. So these players, many of whom are doing what they're doing for a chance to play pro ball, are going to take a year or more off from playing the sport in front of scouts AND being unable to practice. What are the chances they get drafted immediately after a year like that? Maybe the very top tier guys get drafted, but certainly later than they would have if they'd have played that year and some of the lower end guys who had a shot at last day draft spots or UDFA status are severely limiting their chances.

Perhaps some boosters or someone locally would be willing to allow them to use their facilities as a team, but likely without the quality of NCAA medical treatment and coaching. Can they maintain amateur status if they accept benefits like that though? And couldn't the university drop their scholarships and force them to pay tuition and incur all costs that otherwise would have been covered?

Now if there are multiple unionized teams, they could go to one of those teams. But the chances that those teams are able to get past the same consequences that would likely be imposed by the schools, they'd be limited to only those teams if they want to get paid.

(3) Next issue is, do schools have enough money to pay these players? And if so, now are they going to have to pay players of both genders in all sports? Even the ones that produce minimal income for the university? Seems like thisis a rabbit hole that could lead to the university running very, very low on funds. What advantage is there for a university to cave to the demands of all these unions that would surely pop up?

(4) Let's say some of the top tier programs with huge endowments can afford to pay their top income producing programs like football and basketball. Now ONLY those schools are attracting top level athletes. How badly would this extend the quality drop between the current top teams and the teams with much smaller endowments?

Do fans at smaller schools that make runs in the NCAAs or compete in lower tiered bowls want this? These are the people that are paying for the games and licensed products. Again...that seems totally counter-productive to the quality of spread out talent that allows smaller schools to at least compete to an extent. Right now, not everyone gets to play for Kentucky or Duke or Michigan, so they end up at lower quality major conference teams or in some cases at mid-majors. Now you're running out of Steph Curry's at Davidson, Kawhi Leonard's at SDSU or Damian Lillard's at Weber State. Is that really good for the sport?

If there are 10 teams paying players, you've got 10 All Star teams and then everyone else. And trust...the rest of the teams are going to get much shittier in a hurry.

These are the top issues as I see them.
 
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