Schools have treated these kids as employees for decades: limit outside employment, limit majors they can take, full time (plus) commitment required, etc. All in service of coaches and conferences taking tens of millions with 2% of players making the nfl, the rest maybe having a degree (criminology, social sciences) of lower economic value and all risking their health with no insurance. NCAA wanted their cake and eat it too. Problem is now they have offloaded “salaries” to alumni. Will they recognize the existential threat to the game the current system represents to fans who care about the university or will they pocket the money and bemoan the greed of players? We know the answer.
Students have always been well-compensated for their athletic services. Lower standards for college entry, plus free tuition, housing, medical care, tutoring, physical training, sports equipment and attire (which is what they wear almost all the time), official paid recruitment trips, and free use of dedicated sports centers that are nothing but glorified vacation resorts. And, now, they can sell their name and likeness even though the requirement was that they be amateurs to play in the NCAA. I'm okay with all of that at this point, but, a contract to keep them from moving from job to job (i.e., school to school) is a completely appropriate commitment to ask of their virtual employees. Amateur athletics are, sadly, dead. So be it.
How do you, me, or anyone conclude they are “well compensated?” Is this not a market based capitalistic country? When the true industry they participate in (entertainment) makes billions of dollars, it is clear that amateurism became a foil to keep from sharing profits. This is especially true when the students were prohibited from working (nfl, outside) or transferring without sitting out (unlike coaches, ads,etc). I am also sad at the way this is gone, but it went that way decades ago. I certainly don’t feel entitled to set the salary for folks in that multi billion dollar industry.
Good points, and, I see no issue with including someone who essentially majors in football into free-market capitalism. But, I've always been curious how someone comes to the conclusion that an employee should be compensated based on how much his employer is making. Should a hamburger-flipper at McDonalds make millions because his employer makes billions, even though the employee took on none of the risk or financial outlay to develop or acquire the business? Logic says no. No business would survive that and continue to be able to provide employment to anyone. An employer is required only to pay a legal wage for a service. The labor market situation will work out the rest.
In this case, the employer isn't really making billions either. Very few athletic departments operate in the black. Even fewer have multiple sports that operate in the black. The money generated by football is used to fund all of the non revenue sports, which are really negative revenue. It's used to buy the best coaches, trainers, staff, and facilities money can buy. The money is all reinvested into the program. It's not like there's some fat cat at the top swimming in gold. Of course the people who run the operations are paid, but don't act like these kids haven't been well taken care of for decades. A four year scholarship athlete likely receives upwards of a half million dollars in benefits over four years. Tuition, tutoring, housing, food, pocket cash, etc. The list goes on and on and on.
Football income actually pays for more than just the football program and the other low-revenue sports. I believe I've read that it is also a major income source for the university itself here these days.
Our athletic dept is one of the few that operate in the black, and the AAU does donate a significant amount of money back to the academic side every year. LSU is one of the few big programs that does not donate back to the school. Partly because the school complained they weren't getting enough, partly because they're LSU and they steal money from children's hospitals to pay athletes.
These are co These are college kids that didn't do the math on this one. 124 FBS teams, 1182 kids (who just entered the portalnot including those who were already in it.) That's nearly 10 kids per team and about half of those kids don't want to transfer to. This article I read was spot on about the commissioners from the big10, big12,ACC, and SEC went to congress to ask them to step in and regulate to make national standard rules on what exactly it entails thay kids can profit off of NIL and the fact that each state has different rules and it causes issues when kids transfer to another state with a NIL deal that goes against the other states rules. Said this will new CFB will bankrupt many athletic departments and bring an end to CFB.
I think this argument also gets used on working class people looking for fair wages too. The problem is the proportion. While agree most programs theoretically don’t operate in the black - the money IS there - HUGE endowments, coaches at small schools making 2-3 mill, tv money, conference money, lavish trips to Destin…. The money is there to spend SOME on the players. It would be like if I asked my boss for a liveable wage and he was like “but we have an amazing break room and all the food you could want etc”. CEO’s make 275x their workers now- it’s out of whack. Here in GNV the schools board admin is voting to give himself a 50k a year raise to 225,000 a year while teachers are making 30k a year. the money is there to create equity.
They’ve been spending “some” on the players, even before NIL. Read my post again. The best coaches, trainers, facilities, tutors, educations, etc, money can buy. Likely upwards of a half a million dollars worth of benefits for a football player that stays at a school like UF for four years.
An employer is only required to pay “a legal wage for a service”. That gets you McDonald’s service. You want to win the sec, a Super Bowl, or develop chatGPT, you gotta pay for talent. If employers would rather talent go elsewhere and think they still win, great. Compete on your “great organization.” But reality is that in an industry based on talent, talent matters and people pay for talent. This is not McDonald’s.
I feel like it's McDonalds lately, and, we've been paying for Ruth's Chris, to be honest. Back to Transfer Portal Thoughts, now...
You sure about that? Tell you what, do a little math problem, take ALL of his salary making him work for free, take that 225K and divide it up among the teachers to increase their salaries. There's probably a couple thousand teachers in Alachua Co. so that's a little over a hundred bucks a year each. It's a numbers game.
Interesting story out there about portal receiver that liked Florida. Wanted to visit and possibly visit.
