Re: NCAA Will Not Renew EA Sports Contract, NCAA Football Series is Dead in Name Only
I am so sick of this argument that college athletes don't get paid. They DO!!!! Far more than you might realize or think about. Beyond full ride or partial scholarships.
Think of a player for your favorite school that was average. Not great, never lived up to expectations, just average. If that guy stays out of trouble and doesn't put his foot in his mouth, he will NEVER have trouble putting food on the table, assuming he stays in that area.
A company in Ann Arbor, MI is hiring for some position. Doesn't matter what. There are two leading candidates. One played football at Michigan. One didn't. All, or most else being equal, who do you think is gonna get hired??? And I use Michigan strictly as an example. It happens everywhere.
Another problem is that once you start paying the Football, or Basketball players, you have to pay EVERYONE, all the way down to Women's swimming and other sports no one cares about. As an example, the University of Akron, where the football team sucks and wins but one game a year, and the Soccer team is awesome and won the national championship a few years ago. I want to hear that conversation where the soccer team finds out they aren't being paid but the football team is. Or at Iowa where the wrestling team that's been national champs 4 times since 2000 isn't being paid but other sports are. and so on....
Keeping with Akron soccer as an example, once enough of a crapstorm is raised about it and they start getting paid, you then obviously have to start paying players on ALL NCAA soccer teams, for the sake of maintaining competitive balance in both the MAC and NCAA. This trickle down effect will make its way to all NCAA sports given enough time. The problem then, is how do you determine which sports get paid more? You could pay all scholarship athletes equally, but I really don't see this happening, considering this isn't what happens under the current model of granting scholarships. Some sports are given enough scholarships to cover a whole roster, while lesser followed sports are only given a few scholarships for coaches to slice and dice as they see fit. Like reflected in the current schlarship model, the NCAA isn't going to want to pay full rosters of teams in sports that generate no revenue, or operate at a loss. Which leads to the next option.... You could do it based on revenue generated by the programs, but then we're back to complaints by Akron Soccer and Iowa Wrestling and other dominant programs of less popular sports. You could do it based on winning within the sport, but that would piss off most of the small schools, as well as simply creating an even bigger gap in recruiting between the haves and have nots of each sport. The point? I don't see how you pay players and have it be balanced fairly for all involved in college athletics.
TL;DR- College athletes are already paid in more ways than once, and if you start paying players $$$, good luck trying to balance it fairly.
I am so sick of this argument that college athletes don't get paid. They DO!!!! Far more than you might realize or think about. Beyond full ride or partial scholarships.
Think of a player for your favorite school that was average. Not great, never lived up to expectations, just average. If that guy stays out of trouble and doesn't put his foot in his mouth, he will NEVER have trouble putting food on the table, assuming he stays in that area.
A company in Ann Arbor, MI is hiring for some position. Doesn't matter what. There are two leading candidates. One played football at Michigan. One didn't. All, or most else being equal, who do you think is gonna get hired??? And I use Michigan strictly as an example. It happens everywhere.
Another problem is that once you start paying the Football, or Basketball players, you have to pay EVERYONE, all the way down to Women's swimming and other sports no one cares about. As an example, the University of Akron, where the football team sucks and wins but one game a year, and the Soccer team is awesome and won the national championship a few years ago. I want to hear that conversation where the soccer team finds out they aren't being paid but the football team is. Or at Iowa where the wrestling team that's been national champs 4 times since 2000 isn't being paid but other sports are. and so on....
Keeping with Akron soccer as an example, once enough of a crapstorm is raised about it and they start getting paid, you then obviously have to start paying players on ALL NCAA soccer teams, for the sake of maintaining competitive balance in both the MAC and NCAA. This trickle down effect will make its way to all NCAA sports given enough time. The problem then, is how do you determine which sports get paid more? You could pay all scholarship athletes equally, but I really don't see this happening, considering this isn't what happens under the current model of granting scholarships. Some sports are given enough scholarships to cover a whole roster, while lesser followed sports are only given a few scholarships for coaches to slice and dice as they see fit. Like reflected in the current schlarship model, the NCAA isn't going to want to pay full rosters of teams in sports that generate no revenue, or operate at a loss. Which leads to the next option.... You could do it based on revenue generated by the programs, but then we're back to complaints by Akron Soccer and Iowa Wrestling and other dominant programs of less popular sports. You could do it based on winning within the sport, but that would piss off most of the small schools, as well as simply creating an even bigger gap in recruiting between the haves and have nots of each sport. The point? I don't see how you pay players and have it be balanced fairly for all involved in college athletics.
TL;DR- College athletes are already paid in more ways than once, and if you start paying players $$$, good luck trying to balance it fairly.
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