OK, I'm finally compelled to chime in on the pay the players BS.
How the fuck do you get away with only paying those athletes that are participants in revenue sports?
The answer is easy. Pay all the scholarship athletes at a level prorated(commensurate) to what percentage their chosen sport contributes to overall athletic department revenue..... and that revenue should include booster donations as well as ticket sales as it does now. Since some college sports are at best revenue neutral or must beg welfare through Title 9 to stay alive, there would need to be a minimum level of pay or what I would call a standard per diem based on local living costs which can vary considerably from campus to campus.
The pay for athletes in the more popular revenue producing sports such as football and men's basketball would of course be capped at Spartan levels varying from school to school only with local cost of living. Pay from sponsors or other commercial interests such as product endorsements should remain prohibited. I don't think the Olympic Sports way of paying athletes would work well in collegiate athletics. Sports apparel companies such as Nike would go wild just as they do with pro athletes and some college coaches.
There may be ways around title 9 for revenue generating sports.
Your point on coaches leaving and fan interest is bad. Coaches salaries are already hugely inflated to due to TV revenue. Tosh fucking Lupoi made 500k last year. The incentive to climb the coaching ranks and make a six/seven figure salary will still be there and coaches are a uniquely skilled labor force. The proportional redistribution won't have a dramatic effect on coaching quality especially when the NFL, the only alternative, is fixed at 32 teams.
Players wouldn't get worse. They'd have even more incentive now to make money through endorsements and the like. Glad you support licensing. That support should be universal on this board because it's so simple and just. The only thing holding it back is the NCAA's greed.
That leaves a lot of my concerns unanswered. If players are paid, there will be very very few seven figure jobs. It doesn't matter that college coaches salaries are inflated so long as they remain high at the professional level where they could make a lateral move or worse and still make significantly more money. Even if you are correct with respect to NFL because it is the only alternative, that doesn't hold for the rest of the sports. And, if we are limiting pay to FB only, or net income sports, it doesn't mean the school can afford to pay them, even with NCAA assistance. UW was in the red not too long ago. As is, only 23 out of 228 public schools in NCAA Division I generate enough money to pay for their athletics, and 16 of those 23 still received subsidies to do so. You really think that many olympic sport programs survive if a school has to figure out how to pay its football players too?
Everyone assumes that because revenue is way up at top programs and the NCAA, the money is there to pay the players. It's not that simple. The majority of the NCAA's revenue is already distributed to division I schools.
Comments
Or not
Either way will be uninteresting
The pay for athletes in the more popular revenue producing sports such as football and men's basketball would of course be capped at Spartan levels varying from school to school only with local cost of living. Pay from sponsors or other commercial interests such as product endorsements should remain prohibited. I don't think the Olympic Sports way of paying athletes would work well in collegiate athletics. Sports apparel companies such as Nike would go wild just as they do with pro athletes and some college coaches.
Everyone assumes that because revenue is way up at top programs and the NCAA, the money is there to pay the players. It's not that simple. The majority of the NCAA's revenue is already distributed to division I schools.