Quote:
Originally Posted by stevew
A 64 team mega conference could basically tell the NCAA to pound sand, right? They could basically pay athletes a reasonable wage, and there would be no more of these Bush type scandals?
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(not specific to stevew) Yeah, again, to all the "pay athletes" people- IT WILL NEVER EVER HAPPEN. EVER. EVER! EVER!!?!! I can't emphasize this enough.
Until you have some magical court challenge or structure that can work around Title IX, you will never, ever, ever have athletes being paid. They would have to become separate entities from the University (moreso than they are now where they are their own corporations) because as soon as you want to pay athletes, you have to pay EVERY athlete, not just revenue generating sports. The wink-wink, nudge-nudge agreement of giving everyone a scholarship while having fairly unbalanced budgets (about 60/40) is all they can do right now to keep from being challenged in court.
Bush had signed an executive order saying that you could have a survey around campus that demonstrated less demand for female athletics then you could unbalance the payment field further but that was recently struck down by an Obama executive order.
I don't like it at all because I think it completely decimates male non-revenue generating sports and, honestly, I don't think the interest is there.
Similarly, I don't really feel sorry for someone who gets to go to college for free, even the ones who "football is their life" because, really, they probably weren't going to go to college otherwise.
But it's not going to change. At all. Unless you have some magical court precedent or way around Title IX and I'm guessing you don't.
SI