f13.net

Link (http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/news/story?id=6254572)

I have to say that, while I love college football, I tend to agree with his reasoning.  Big time college sports are a business, and those in charge care nothing for the education involved.  And on the players side, there are a lot of athletes that use the scholarships for what they're designed for but many do not.  The football and basketball graduation rates of a lot of schools are pitiful. 


I suspect that if universities were forced to operate their athletics department as an unrelated business that they would actually be able to pay their players then.

They could get rid of a lot of the bullshit NCAA rules too. They should do it like junior hockey does- anyone who participates gets a free education after their athletic career is over, so the 95% that don't go to the pros have at least something. Make it like a scholarship pension or something. Then the retards who can't or won't go to college aren't wasting spots for actual students.

Nader is generally a bright guy, but I will never forgive him for 2000.

I tend to favor the European football approach, where academics are completely separate from the football. The pro teams have academies, youth and reserves leagues and the kids get paid when they sign pro contracts.

Agree 100%.

Schools should be about school and the athletics intramural and/or "friendly" bouts comprised of "students".

Defenders of the current scenario often cite how the athletic programs bring the bacon in, but actually, outside of a few high profile schools, most of that money just is earmarked for the athletic department, or for facilities and luxuries 99% of the student body has no/limited access (i.e., swimming pool facilities open only 6-8p Wednesday evening, indoor basketball/volleyball courts open only an hour or two on selected days to the general student body, etc.…).

It's been a while since I graduated from college, but I remember the separate dining facilities for athletes (and this was a I-AA state school, though nationally ranked wrestling program), at least 2-3 tutors for each athlete (and still many flunked out, despite the favoritism and help provided), etc.…

Bottom line, it's a pox on the academic side and permits an avalanche of corruption. This, I know from friends who were recruited (one of my friends who ended up getting drafted by Buddy Ryan, when he was coach of the Eagles after 5 U. of Miami "seasons") -- the stories he told me about the recruiters… …basically he couldn't take a piss without being in the shadow of a recruiter. Maybe it's gotten better since, but I doubt it…

The Canadian junior hockey leagues are much better model to emulate. Smaller cities could have intense rivalries and attendance and fanfare could be just as large as collegiate sports today or even greater than pro ranks.

Zero chance of it happening during the next 60 years, though.

American sports are really the only place where the "traditional" systems of "amateur" vs. "professional" are still used. Now that all major international competitions allow for professionals to participate, the fight to keep collegiate sports as some bastion of "amateur" competitive spirit is just hand-waving.

But you won't see the college system reformed because it is big business now with the "ideal" labor pool: a pool that gets paid virtually nothing while being the workhorse that brings home the big bucks.

Eh, no, I wouldn't equate a college scholarship (which continues to skyrocket) with all the extra perks (tutors, enhanced dining, etc.…) not enjoyed by the typical "student"-student with "virtually nothing"…

Compared to what their labors bring into the program dollar-wise?

I don't know if this solution and his approach are ideal, from what I understand he announced this without getting any real backers first, kind of setting himself up for failure.

That said big-time college athletics are a joke. It's huge business that has nothing to do with education and none of the workers get paid.

Yeah I don't know what the point of this crusade could be besides reminding people that he exists. There is no hope of anything changing even though he is 100% right and the ncaa is a fucking disgusting exploitative scam.

Nader can go fuck himself in his self-aggrandizing ass.

I giggled....

http://www.onionsportsnetwork.com/video/ncaa-expands-march-madness-to-include-4096-teams,14317/ (http://www.onionsportsnetwork.com/video/ncaa-expands-march-madness-to-include-4096-teams,14317/)

Nader is the wrong guy for this, but I'd love to see someone with credibility turn this into a serious life mission. The solution is obvious, and I think relatively simple on the implementation end. Make college teams into the NBA and NFL minor leagues. Keep their affiliations with their sponsoring universities, have the universities be whole or part owners of the new teams, and all the emotional ties and payoffs to local communities stay intact. Hell, if you want to, offer players who bomb out of their teams or get injured have guaranteed admission as students within an institutional network of participating universities if you want to keep that association. But drop the pretense that the players are in any sense students, pay them the salaries that they're owed, have the money being made be completely out in the open. The NCAA's corruption would make a 3rd World dictator blush.

This. 

Athletes with the talent to play for large programs should be getting paid (and paid well) for their talents.  Almost noone that I played football with in college saw their education as anything but a hinderence to their real mission (namely, making it to the NFL).

Except there's no incentive to change. The NFL doesn't give a shit where the talent comes from, and the NCAA is making more money by abusing their tax-exempt status.

It will never change, but it's nice to hear someone call out the NCAA for what it really is-  a business.  And many of the institutions that get a ton of money from the NCAA sports are shockingly involved in the decision making processes of the NCAA.  Being a member based "voluntary" organization is great and all, but heavily biased. 

The guy who went after the bowl tax records had the right of it. That's how you are going to sink the NCAA and the bowl system.

It's like Al Capone. You can only get them on tax evasion, not their bigger crimes.

Would put a lot of people out of work, and basically ruin marching bands for all time. I think I'm not in favor.

Which people? Also, marching bands? That's a casualty I'm willing to accept.

Stadium employees, all sorts of athletic department staff at colleges, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if it was literally hundreds of thousands of jobs threatened when you consider every school. I think the choices are basically 'have scholarships' or 'don't have college athletics at all', I don't think there is any real 'we will pay the athletes' solution that can work for anyone but the highest profile programs at the highest profile schools.

An NFL and NBA farm system would create plenty of jobs.  I doubt there would be a net loss.  If there were, it would be because the fat would be trimmed off of the system. 

The NCAA is fucking over student athletes much like the rich fuck over the poor.  They dangle the allure of a professional contract in front of student athletes knowing full well that most will never achieve it. 

We should just move this over to the "Slavery is now a business model" thread. 

In football and men's basketball. I am pretty sure that there are thousands of athletes in other sports that would be absolutely crushed by losing their scholarships. Nobody's making a dime off of women's water polo, but the kids are getting an education out of the deal and doing something they love at the same time. That's worth preserving, no?

I guess it would be okay if they were getting a degree in water polo.  But they aren't.  There are tons of kids that get scholarships due to academic or musical or art prowess and then get a degree in that field.  I like college sports, but think they should probably be a peripheral thing.  I went to a DIII school and nobody got scholarships and we still had sports that were fun and interesting. 

I fully support club sports.  They build community and social bonds at a school.  Unfortunately, commuter schools all but killed the community aspect. 

You're still taking away an option that some kids have to get an education when they might otherwise not be able to attend college at all. You can look at any of these schools and see some pretty remarkable success stories amongst the one-and-done failure types.

 
No argument to that.  Still lost even more are the stories of the people that work three jobs to get through their education while maintaining a high GPA.  That is why I can appreciate the athletes who "get a break", but I don't particularly dig the favoritism that athletes seem to get. 

Nope. I am fully in favor of making scholarships entirely academic and merit based. Poor kid with good grades? Scholarship. Brilliant kid? Scholarship. Underpriviledged youth with good work ethic? Scholarship.

Chick with medium grades who can spike a volleyball? Exactly why should I care? Why should any of us care as a society? If the total point is to get an education, then do it. Get the grades in high school and take your tests, and get it done.

I think doing away with the sports scholarships would lead to better colleges, personally.

Yeah, because colleges and universities primarily exist to employ people who have nothing to do with their core mission. There are a perishingly small number of college sports franchises that actually make enough money to offset their costs. The rest suck money away from instruction and administration, often very large sums. There are tons of college stadiums that have been built with public money in the last ten years that struggle to fill 25% of their seats and which drain money out of their university's coffers to pay those stadium employees and costs, again at the cost of instruction. All those cheap adjunct classes taught to 500 or more students at public universities? In many cases they have a direct relationship to stadium employees etcetera.

Also, I don't know about your team, but the Unversity of Georgia gets local volunteers to do all the concessions as a fundraiser for their school or something.

Funny how people will band together to help a sports team but do so little to support academics.  America, fuck yeah!

I think you may be misreading what he's saying (or I am).  Those people that volunteer to do concessions often make money for their own organization/school/team not necessarily just for the school.  You get a lot of high schools and traveling sports teams running the concessions at UofA football games.  It probably beats the pants off a bake sale or car wash.

Personally, I don't care to see the current atheletics system change beyond cleaning up the tax abuses.  It's been such a source of personal enjoyment, community identity and family bonding that this is one of the very few situations that I'm going to say "Yes, all good points", cover my eyes/ears, hold my nose, and renew my season tickets for another year.

Yep, the volunteers are in it for the $$$, yo. They get to keep a portion of the concession take for their organization. That's why they do it.

The University gets almost free labor with no overhead attached. It's all based on sales income.

Well, to further Nebu's side of the debate, a great many of these volunteer organizations are designed to support high school or other level sports. 

My bad.  Sorry Paelos.  I need to up my caffeine levels before responding!

No worries, ghost makes a good point. They are just volunteering to help their own high school teams usually or cheerleaders or band. It's a vicious cycle of helping!  :awesome_for_real:

They don't suck a whole lot of money away from instruction and administration, they mostly suck money away from donors and the football program, at least at my own school from everything I've been able to dig up about it. And most of those donors would just not give money if the programs they're supporting went away, rather than say 'well, I guess I'll give it to the anthropology department instead!'


Yeah, this.

Hey hey hey.   You just watch all that helping going on.  Somebody's going to put an eye out. 

You can pry  big time college football from my cold dead hands!

Welcome to the Pac 12.  :awesome_for_real:

Personal enjoyment, community identity and all that jazz is perfectly obtainable with minor leagues that are associated with university sponsors.

Big time college athletics absolutely 100% sucks significant resources away from instructional budgets in every campus except for the few that have teams that make serious $$$, and many of the big stadiums built in the last decade at public universities have been built with taxpayer $$$, not donor money. When donors and board members are involved in athletic support, they often exert governance over academic programs as well. Look up the shit going down at Auburn if you want an especially gross example of that.  Moreover, it leads to pervasive corruption of universities: there is an endless legion of stories of adjunct faculty fired for accidentally fucking up and grading an athlete down, bogus courses created to get athletes through, before you even get to the fantastic corruption involved in recruiting or in trying to keep athletes from having to face criminal charges for a wide variety of crazy bullshit they pull.

It's much wiser to just say, "I enjoy it and I don't intend to look any further into it, because I don't want to know"  than to suggest that there's really nothing wrong going on and it doesn't hurt anybody and won't anyone please think of the concessions staff and the poor scholarship athletes.

I'll speak from a bit of experience -- a friend of mine, guy I've known for almost 20 years now -- his dad used to be BIG into government watchdog groups. You know, filing FOIA requests, demanding access to books, doing amateur forensic accounting, that sort of thing. (By "amateur" I mean "trained CPAs and occasional actual forensic accountants volunteering". It was all done as volunteer work).

Our local community college is a rather sizeable one. Big enough that Bill Clinton spoke there when pushing his big community college program. My friend's dad was one of the guys in his watchdog group looking through their books. The college had a sizeable sports program. REALLY big for it's size.

What he found was that, contrary to their charter and possibly (but I doubt it) state law, they were funding a large chunk of the sports program (primarily football) out of student and tuition fees. The 'athletics' fees and alumini donations didn't even scratch the surface. We're talking significant chunks of the college budget.

It all got published, there was a huge uproad, the Chancellor resigned and everyone swore it'd be different. Athletics would be funded JUST from the athletics fees (which they jacked up) Six months later, the next audit showed that, suddenly, groundskeeping costs were ten times what they'd been the previous year. Again, they were funnelling money to the sports program.

THAT uproar resulted in the entire removal of the sports program. Which means the amateur groups -- student groups and whatnot -- have good equipment to play games in, there's a large football stadium the pee-wee leagues use to practice in, same for baseball -- and the only athletics there are actual classes or pure 'fun' leagues.

I'm pretty sure if my podunk Texas Community College was shoveling a sizeable percentage of fees that should be going to academics to football, that they had PLENTY of company. I'm sure the alumni from most of the Ivy League are quite capable of funding their super-sports programs, but I've heard nasty things about what's going on at UCLA for instance.

Tbh, that's Texas and doesn't really apply to the rest of the country, though. You're going to find those kind of over the top situations where they were STILL trying to funnel massive amounts to football because Texas as a state has a hard-on for the sport. They have a raging hardon for the sport at levels most people don't even understand. I mean we're talking about building multi-million dollar high school stadiums that seat more people than an average DI-A college.

I know this because I grew up there, went to all my schooling there through high school, and witnessed the kind of insanity people will pull through booster programs just to get around state laws regarding payment of football coaches and recruiting amongst middle schoolers. I mean we're talking about illegally recruiting 13 year olds here.

Then I moved to Georgia, which is probably tied with Florida for second place on that level of crazy for football. Cali's a close third. Consequently those 4 states always produce the top candidates for college programs in the US.

UCLA isn't in Texas (http://www.samefacts.com/2009/11/education-policy/intercollegiate-athletics/). Kleiman (the blogger in question) is a tenured professor there. (The post is from late 2009)
Offhand, I'd say the very big football schools with the VERY rich alumni might fully fund their stuff. But if that's more than, oh, 15 schools -- tops -- I'd be shocked. The rest steal off academics fees, suck money from the actual goal of a university (which is not, in fact, to train football or basketball players), and are generally a net minus.

Kinda reminds me of the 'stadium deals' the pro teams make. You know, the ones the taxpayers fund on the promise of HUGE returns (and the threat of losing the team) that never seem to pay the taxpayers back?

Ah, sweet. Actual data (http://blog.al.com/bn/2008/02/how_the_sec_got_rich.html). Key bit:
The article is mostly about how the SEC is basically a giant -- and poorly run business -- not an academic endeavour.

Yep, the South loves football and makes money off it. No shock there.

Oh, and don't forget the poorly run, yet profitable business part. The South is well-known for that also.

Frontline episode from Tuesday: Money & March Madness (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/money-and-march-madness/?utm_campaign=viewpage&utm_medium=grid&utm_source=grid)

Apparently the episode is having problems loading for a lot of people (me included). Probably too much traffic :/

Saw this link while trying to get the Frontline episode to play (get spinning wheels :( )

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/2011/03/ncaa-president-says-hes-ready-to-explore-paying-athletes.html

That's pretty smart on his part.  They'll never be able to pay the big stars what the agents can pay though, so they may be better off to go the route of  no scholarships and no payment at all just to get the hypocrisy out of it all.