
Broke - joe5150
http://www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com/2015/9/8/9249681/broke
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nkozyra
I'll never understand why people reject the most sensible answer: allow high
school students to be drafted into the NFL.

Even if they're not playing in the NFL for 2,3 or 4 years, pu them into a
developmental league where they can earn $30K a year for a shot to make the
league.

Then college is reserved for people who _want to go to college_ , not for
people who have to go because that's the collusion that's been designed. It's
been designed to protect the value of college football, which exploits poor
athletes who otherwise have no way to make a living in sports.

The system is likewise awful for college athletics. Kids who have no reverence
for school (why should they) break the rules, break the law and are coddled
because they make millions for the university with no pay. Then we all have to
pretend like we care about academics in student athletes, coaches impose
1-game suspensions during the 1-AA game week and everyone happily looks away.

Major League Baseball has solved this - you may be drafted out of high school,
but once you start college you have to be out three years. It preserves the
notion of amateur athletics - of trading your athletic skill for a shot at a
degree - without forcing people to take that route.

~~~
joeyyang
Football is a different case from other college sports for one main reason:
physical development. Your average NFL squad has players that are much bigger
and stronger at every position.

A receiver who is 5'9" has a fighting chance to be successful in many college
conferences where there aren't monstrous cornerbacks but absolutely no shot in
the NFL where size is a requirement. Undersized and underdeveloped players
also risk significant injury by going pro too soon. College players need at
least a year or two to build up the physical condition to compete at the next
level.

This is the reason why the worst NFL team would easily crush the best college
team. The college team just wouldn't be able to handle the size of your
average NFL squad.

~~~
hkmurakami
The same conditions hold true for most baseball players drafted out of high
school. They spend several years in the minors for this reason. Why not have a
football minor league?

~~~
santaclaus
Baseball is a non-contact sport, probably less chance of injury.

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chroma
I agree with pretty much every criticism in this article. Where I differ in
opinion is the solution.

First, there's the "me too" effect. If colleges pay football players, other
athletes will want to be paid. They'll ask, "What makes football special?" and
they'll have a point. Then we'll run into some unhappy truths regarding
sports. For example: If colleges base compensation on revenue, the wage gap
between male and female athletes will be massive.

Then there's the problem of mixing sports and education. If these athletes are
paid, do they still have to attend classes? Do they have to get good grades?
Are they given scholarships in addition to monetary compensation? Can athletes
switch colleges if another school will pay them more?

It seems to me that most of these problems would be solved by creating a minor
league separate from college. If people are so attached to college names, then
the colleges can sell naming rights.

But honestly, I'm hard-pressed to find a sport more repugnant than football.
If football came into being today, people would riot in the streets. Who would
pay money to watch mostly lower-class, mostly black[1] players permanently
damage each other's brains and bodies? Who would cheer during such an event?
Yes, it can be argued that athletes know the risks, but the same is true for
dueling. In the past, people thought dueling was fine. Today, we recognize it
to be a barbarous tradition. I believe that, as we do with dueling, future
societies will condemn us for allowing this sport to continue.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_players_in_American_prof...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_players_in_American_professional_football#Today)

~~~
webXL
I feel the brutality of the sport every morning when I get out of bed. And I
was a scrub for the most part. But I wouldn't trade any of it. If it weren't
for the increase in brain injuries and the muscle-mass maximizing arms race
that ends careers (and limp-free middle age) on a weekly basis, I'd encourage
my son to play. I absolutely loved the sport.

It still has its merits, and I'm still a huge fan, but there's a lot of
ugliness that needs to be fixed before I'd encourage anyone to play. It's a
lot like encouraging someone to serve their country. If the mission is clear
and moral, no problem. But it's rare you're gonna find that these days. Just
work hard and try to be happy. That's honorable.

~~~
a8da6b0c91d
> brain injuries and the muscle-mass maximizing arms race

The huge players and huge hits are a direct consequence of the modern changes
to the game. Just go back to no separate defense/offense/special teams.
Everybody runs the whole game. Maybe also bring the play clock down to 15
seconds.

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fphhotchips
I've never understood _why_ the American model of mixing academics with
athletics came to existence. I understand why it _continues_ , of course,
since the status quo nearly always does.

The Australian(/European? I'm not sure) model of having schools only passingly
involved with athletics, and then having the athletics clubs and associations
as separate entities just makes much more sense to me.

First, it allows for amateur sports to continue well past high school/college,
allowing those who compete for fun and fitness to do so. Sports, after all,
shouldn't just something you watch on TV once you're out of school.

Second, apart from providing a fun diversion to students in much the same way
as a video gaming club might do, why should any teaching institution be
involved in sports? Surely that's outside the core mission.

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RandallBrown
College athletes _are_ paid. I'm not just talking about getting free school.
They get free housing, free food, and lots of other free benefits that are all
completely allowed by the NCAA. That's without any of the shady booster money.

The athletes I knew (two large division 1 schools) got considerable housing
and food stipends. They were quite a bit more than what most students were
paying for rent in the area and these athletes had much more disposable income
than most of the regular students I knew.

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supercanuck
One of the necessary things that needs to happen if we are to begin paying
players is that there would need to be some serious contraction in the number
of Division I Football teams. A team like Boise State is just not going to be
able to keep up with players at the University of Southern California for
example.

Since a lot of those would be in small, rural towns, there is A LOT of
resistance to this outside the traditional power conference (and frankly some
of the stragglers inside power conferences too for that matter)

~~~
tempestn
Transfer payments would also work.

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bdcravens
The counter to paying college players is that it can be a gateway to the NFL,
so college players play for "free" in exchange for access to a potentially
very lucrative career. So why not a venture capital model? Pay players, with
the condition that the university receives a % of their pro pay.

~~~
majormajor
Top-tier college recruits shouldn't need a gateway to the NFL with their
talent level.

We can stick with a tech metaphor: It would be like all tech companies and
startups and VCs colluding to require a certain number of years in college
before being willing to hire or fund anyone. And the universities would own
any apps/code the kids wrote while they were in school. Obviously it would be
ludicrously imbalanced for the top 18-year-olds in that situation to give up
that much earning potential in exchange for a "gateway" to a profession that
_needs them anyway._

Sadly people really get into tribalism, and have much stronger ties to their
college than they would to any local minor league team, so there's tremendous
amounts of money in play to maintain the status quo.

~~~
dpeck
Agreed that they shouldn't need a gateway, but disagree on the 18 year old
being ready. There may be one from time to time, but the extra 3 years of both
skill and physical development makes a big difference for almost every
player/position.

~~~
fredkbloggs
That's certainly true; it's true in most other sports as well. That's why for
example baseball players spend anywhere from 2 to 5 or 6 years in the minor
leagues before they make the big club (which many never do). There's no reason
to prefer that they spend that developmental time playing for free on a
university's team instead of for peanuts on a minor-league professional club.
And there are plenty of reasons to prefer the alternative.

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dssddsds
Minimum wage is necessary

~~~
toolz
Minimum wage is a band-aide on gaping wound. The problem is that employers
control employees lives, while employees at worst can take a company down -
leaving the owner in a position where he just has to go get a job. The power
obviously weighs heavily in the favor of the employer.

If everyone (and I do mean everyone including the 1%) was given a wage that
could keep you alive and healthy, then there would be balance of power between
employer and employee and you would see people taking advantage of each other
much less.

~~~
dssddsds
Ha, you put it much more eloquently! I agree - the underlying problem is
obviously how much the wealth disparity has grown.

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fredkbloggs
There's another possible solution, too, which for the 95% of post-secondary
institutions you've never heard of is either already the status quo or would
be a much more economical answer. That solution is to get out of the business
of athletics. If you are not a "power 5" program or one of the top NCAA D-I
basketball programs, athletics is a money-loser. The UAB debacle provides a
pretty good case study in why this is so: there are only a handful of
universities that the system will allow to make any money. So what looks like
one problem is really two: first, the employee-athletes at the major athletic
programs aren't being paid, and they should be. But the flip side of the coin
is that many of the same retarded rules that harm those employees are being
applied to people playing sports at much smaller programs, where they are not
at all profitable and there is essentially zero chance that anyone is ever
going to make their career as a major league athlete. That's the second
problem.

The solution to the first problem is complex. It starts with paying your
employees. But there's more to it than that: something has to be done about
the fiction that those employees are fundamentally students. They're not.
Scandal after scandal shows every trick and dodge in the book is and will
continue to be used to keep functionally illiterate players off the
academically ineligible list and on the field. It would be healthier, if these
schools insist on keeping their highly profitable athletic programs, to
partner with the NBA and NFL (baseball doesn't really have this problem) to
transition their status to minor league affiliates. In the process, they could
also cut the sanctimonious and absurd NCAA out of the game. No more scandals,
no more bullshit. But it's going to take some work to get from here to there.

The solution to the second problem is very simple. For the other 95%, no more
NCAA rules (they're designed for the big-money programs to deceive themselves,
not for the others). No more TV, period. Not that most of them are ever on TV
anyway, except for the one or two games a year they volunteer to be
slaughtered by far superior competition to fund the rest of their season (in
games which, for no conceivable reason, actually count for both teams!). No
more licensing. If they want to sell merchandise, they can sell it at the
campus bookstore. Not like any of them are making millions from Amazon or Foot
Locker anyway. Above all else, no more "athletic scholarships", a profound
contradiction in terms hardly anyone ever ponders long enough to recognize.

That means no more pressure, no more extended seasons, and no more faux
students hanging around in hopes of transferring to a big-money program so
they can get their shot at the big time. If you want to play intercollegiate
sports, fine. But the reason those academic standards that are so low yet
somehow impossible for the big guys to meet without cheating exist in the
first place is to prevent students who don't have time for a hobby from being
distracted from their studies. Raise them, high. If you don't have at least a
3.25, you have no business doing anything but studying. And without the
pressure of having to maintain your "athletic scholarship", why should you?

No more games against hopelessly superior competition. You'll play against
other teams of full-time students with no funding for fancy uniforms and
gleaming locker rooms, at a simple gym or on a field shared with 8 other teams
next to a single set of bleachers. High school baseball teams don't play
against AA clubs; there's no excuse for pay-for-play in other sports, either.
If you can't fund your athletic programs through student fees, they get cut.
Simple as that. But stop pretending that "student athletics", a huge money
loser and waste of time and energy, is a necessary part of your institutional
identity, or that it "builds character". There's nothing wrong with
intercollegiate athletics as a hobby, a diversion, another way to network, and
a way to stay in shape while you study. But that's all it is. Don't let the
tail wag the dog.

Because as bad as the futile aspiration of making a major-league professional
club is for the 98% who never will, the small schools (or large schools with
small athletic programs) forced to play by the same rules as the big boys are
in exactly the same spot. The first step is admitting that you're not
competitive and never will be. Once you've done that, a whole world of
refreshingly decent options opens up.

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acurious1
Let the poor demand to be paid. And ignore that for most universities, the
sportsballs are net losses on the whole.

By all means pay them what they are owed. They are owed exactly what they
demand and receive for contracting their playing services. If they can
strengthen their hand by bargaining as a team, go for it.

~~~
fredkbloggs
They should be bargaining collectively, but they're not being allowed to do
so. The NLRB acknowledged that football players at Northwestern University are
employees, but then refused to say whether they can form a union on the basis
of a technicality (specifically, that the university is a state institution,
and the NLRB only has jurisdiction over private employers). So none of the
employees in question is represented by a union, and it's not clear whether
any or all of them are even legally entitled to such representation if they
elect it.

I agree that this would go a long way toward addressing the fundamental
inequity here, at least for the tiny fraction of employees whose skills are
actually generating cash for their employers. It's pathetic that we can't
agree that everyone has the right to join a union and bargain collectively if
they wish, but that's where we are.

