[SI] "I Will Never Forget The First Time I Paid A Player"

That you probably could never do. But giving them a stipend of some sort is much fairer than the system in place now. That, or give them the option to go pro from day 1 and stop the "education" charade.

 

I don't get how kids are getting a 'raw deal' for getting a FULL RIDE to college. Many of these institutions and up costing hundreds of thousands of dollars for a 4 year program, and these kids just have to play football. Don't cry about not getting paid- you're getting an education and its up to you whether or not you make use of it. Most of their classmates have to fight for scholarships and loans and still end up with heavy debt at the end of college. All you have to do is play football.

Even if you don't get a degree, college still teaches stuff that you wouldnt know straight from high school. That has been proven by difference of NBA kids from HS and College. Big difference.

 

Kids who do research get their tution waived and get stipend which can be like 1800 bucks a month. A lot time the research we do is pointless but the government has to fill those nsf and dod grants.

I am pretty sure reggie bush bringing in a hell more than 99% of research students.

 

I don't know where you are getting your numbers, but undergraduate students do not get tuition waivers and stipends like that. Graduate students do, at least in the sciences, but these are people with bachelors degrees that are working full-time for the university and have passed on 40k+ per year jobs to get a PhD.
At that point they are really university employees, not students.

 

I was talking about graduate students, but how are these athletes not pretty much university employees. They make the universities a lot of money.

 

Careful with that assumption. The better measure is: how much of that money goes to the general university vs how much of it goes right back into athletics. When they get a free ride and the lion's share of the money goes right back into athletics, I don't see why they should get paid to go to school when science majors, businesss majors, music majors, etc. do not.

 

Because that full ride is a drop in the bucket compared to what the school is making off of their labor, at least for the big D1 schools. I don't have the numbers but I think it's fair to say that the D1 schools make so much $$ off of the football and basketball programs that they can fund ALL of the other sports programs. If true, how is a full ride to college = to that? Do you realize how much money is made off of D1 football and basketball programs?

 

Because science, business and music majors aren't making millions and millions of dollars for the school. No one is giving the school money based on those kids. Schools do get research contracts based on their faculty and the good reputation of their students, but the students aren't the primary driver of getting those funds to the school. The athletes are.

And to answer your question, tons of $$ goes right back to the athletic program, to fund all of the other athletic programs. In other words, we make so much off of these two sports that we can pay for all these other sports that can't turn a profit. As I asked earlier, why should a basketball or football player bear the burden of the school having a swim team or rugby team?

 

I have to point you back to the article I linked to earlier. There are 52 FBS football programs that did not generate a profit last year. Do you force those schools, which constitute close to half of all FBS schools, to incur even greater losses by paying a stipend to football players?

Furthermore, if you are talking about athletic programs as a whole, you would need to abolish the non-profit generating sports entirely if you wanted to be able to pass on the profits from football to the players, considering that only 14 of the 120 FBS schools made a profit from their athletic programs last year. (Same source: http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=5490686)

If you stance is to abolish the non-profit generating sports that football profits subsidize, you would have to support dismantling the men's basketball programs for over half of those schools as well, since they don't generate profit either. And because Title VII exists, you would have to lobby to abolish that first. Given that Title VII currently exists and cutting teams isn't possible, the money for football player stipends would have to come from somewhere for the 106 FBS athletic programs that did not generate a profit last year. That money would have to be subsidized by the general university, and the article points out where some of that money might come from:

And frankly, if I was a current student paying my way for my education, I would be pretty pissed to have my tuition increased or student ticket prices raised (even more) to subsidize football players with more benefits.

 

The students are the reason that the SCHOOL exists. So, yes, they are the primary driver. Take away the students outside of the athletic department, and there IS no athletic department, because the school would fold. Despite what some may believe, academics comes before athletics.

Because the basketball and/or football player is part of a larger whole: the UNIVERSITY. Bball and Fball don't get to call the shots. They need to play by the same rules as the rest of the school, which means their students don't get any special treatment (which includes being not being paid to go to school - one of the most ridiculous ideas ever).

You said it yourself: the football/basketball programs earn millions....for athletics. Not for the university at large. Let's not pretend that they play nice and share all those millions with sciences, business, music etc. They earn money for themselves. Good for them. But that doesn't give them a free-pass to do whatever they want.

 

why do schools have sports teams if they arent turning a profit? dont understand that.

 

Part of it is tradition, part of it is "Title IX" where for every male athletic scholarship there has to be a female athletic scholarship... (someone can probably add more insight than that)

Also, some of it is funny math, meaning some of the donations that get made for season tickets don't directly count as revenue for that sport

 

Not too surprising, but a good article read definitely.

 

sorry to bump this thread for some silly info, I just read this article in the print version last night. I never opened this thread, but I felt worth noting that the first player he paid Kanavis McGhee went to Wheatly High School in Houston. thats all