StrangeSox

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 7, 2013 -> 10:27 AM) Replace him with a bottom level coach, and the revenue from the program disappears with it. This doesn't apply to the players as well?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 7, 2013 -> 10:01 AM) The biggest reason is that the system would probably collapse if they had to change it for the 1% of the 1%. Stop and think about it for a while. The vast majority of schools aren't what are being talked about here. And within those schools, we aren't talking about the vast majority of their athletes. If you had to come up with a pay system to pay players, you would be adding how much? $2000 per athlete per year? $5000? $10,000? Minimum wage? Now start multiplying that times all of the players on each team, at each university. Also remember because of Title IX you couldn't pay just the teams making money, aka the male teams, you would have a system that gave equal pay to all female athletes as well, in equal headcounts as male teams. History has already shown non-top university programs being shuttered over the minimal costs of Title IX. Can you imagine what is would look like if you and added hundreds of thousands of dollars, at least, to non-revenue programs and sports, at non-revenue producing universities? Really all you are doing is taking away opportunities for a free educations for kids who might not have that chance otherwise (once those scholarships and teams disappear), in favor of kids who are going to make their money anyway. You don't actually have to do any of that. You simply abolish the NCAA cartel's rules that forbid a school from paying athletes or from athletes making money outside of the school. Doesn't Boeheim's $1.8M+/year salary take away opportunities for free educations? Why does this argument apply to some of the NCAA labor force, but not other parts? If the reality were that the billions of dollars generated primarily from basketball and football were being used to fund other scholarships, general campus improvements, etc. that would be one thing, but they aren't. They're used to make basketball and football coaches and the AD's some of the highest paid employees on campus and to build sports stadiums and training facilities.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 7, 2013 -> 09:48 AM) Nice move of the goalposts. What goalposts were moved, and from where? edit: moving goalposts doesn't mean changing the topic, but I wasn't trying to do that, either. I added that response as an aside. It's not really directly relevant to the topic at hand (why NCAA athletes shouldn't be paid), which is why I started with the "BTW."

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 7, 2013 -> 09:47 AM) I'm impressed you are so worried about rewarding the elite athletes of America. Is this supposed to be an argument for or against something? It just looks like an irrelevant sideswipe. Why should these athletes be frozen out of the multi-billion dollar revenue stream they generate and that makes piles of money for coaches, AD's, media networks, apparel companies, etc.? edit: I don't see how my concerns here don't align with my politics in general. I'm siding with labor getting a bigger share of the profits they generate and that wouldn't exist with their work over the NCAA cartel controlling all of it. Look to major league labor disputes, and you'll see me making similar stances. If there's one aspect of the labor market that actually approaches anything close to a true meritocracy, it's professional sports.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 7, 2013 -> 09:45 AM) Many cases? No. Not even close. A few anecdotal cases, yes. The vast majority of these people would never see a dime from their likeness, nor do they generate money for their schools. We are talking about an elite group, within an elite group. Ok. So where is the argument against allowing them to be paid or from signing outside endorsement deals? Some will sign lucrative deals, some won't. This is no different than the NFL, NBA, MLB, etc.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 7, 2013 -> 09:42 AM) Plus there is also the fact that they don't have to go to the NCAA if they want to get paid. They can strike out on their own, or they can go places that will pay them, like Europe or a semi-pro league. This doesn't actually justify the NCAA, though.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 7, 2013 -> 09:15 AM) lol, ok. Go ahead and backtrack now that you got called on how absurd your statement was. At the surface, it is a $25,000, or more, per year payment. That is the equivalent of a $12.50/hr job, given to you. That price goes up depending on if you got to a good school. That isn't counting interest not paid on student loans either. Then add to that the million dollar of extra lifetime earnings that are out there for the 99.9% of players who never do go pro. Handwaving away the value of the education here is silly. BTW this is a better argument against the absurdly high cost of college tuition these days in general. Subsidize the education for everybody, not just the ones generating billions of dollars for NCAA.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 7, 2013 -> 09:15 AM) lol, ok. Go ahead and backtrack now that you got called on how absurd your statement was. Please note what I said: Athletes are often 'encouraged' to take easy majors and easy classes in order to keep eligibility, as playing their sport is a full-time job. Graduation rates at many programs are abysmal. If they get injured, they can lose their scholarship. I've still yet to hear a reason why colleges shouldn't be able to pay athletes if they want to or why athletes shouldn't be allowed to profit off of their own name and likeness and why they should be frozen out of the multi-billion dollar revenue stream they generate. What is it about the multi-billion dollar college sports industry that makes it necessary that the bulk of their labor force go unpaid? Why should thousands of NCAA athletes be completely barred from negotiating for pay or from signing endorsement deals? The schools, media companies, apparel companies, etc. certainly aren't barred from profiting off of them. Even if we accepted a parity argument as a legitimate reason, it doesn't seem like the current model serves that end goal very well. I've been told in this thread that, really, it's the coaches and AD's and trainers and facilities and media deals that are the most important parts of the program and, really, the athletes are just incidental, easily replaceable. The NCAA doesn't limit schools from spending huge sums of money on any of those things. The same schools typically dominate year after year after year. The professional sports, with free agency and, in the case of baseball, no salary caps seem to do a much better job at producing parity than the NCAA.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 4, 2013 -> 09:55 PM) A college degree has minimal worth? Now I know you are just trolling. In no way, shape, or form, does a college degree have minimal worth. If that is the case, dismantle all college funding. I did not make as broad a statement as "college degrees have minimal worth."

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Oct 5, 2013 -> 12:25 PM) OK, Notre Dame haters, I'm going to serve one up on a platter for you: One discussion board I belong to is a professional board for ND alums. I've been getting hammered on there for blaming the Republican House for the shutdown. I pointed out that my family was without 100% of our income and one of the irreversible effects is having to 'furlough' our babysitter during the shutdown. One response: "You're lying. If you need a babysitter then your wife is working and you aren't losing 100% of your income. If your wife isn't working then you don't need a babysitter." I'm guessing Soxtalk can outsmart the ND alum and figure out at least one circumstance where my wife is neither gainfully employed nor available to take care of the kids. If reality doesn't conform to their ideology, clearly reality must be a lie.

QUOTE (DrunkBomber @ Oct 6, 2013 -> 02:57 PM) Despite the terrible drop by Bennett on 4th down and Lance Briggs jumping offsides I am still very pleased with what Jeffrey has been doing.

losing another d-line man would be brutal

Woo!

Pretty laughable tackling on this series

A major cause of the skewing was the part of the SC ruling that allowed states to reject the Medicaid expansion.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Oct 4, 2013 -> 09:07 PM) So...same goes for every other industry in the world? No, because in this industry, the major source of labor isn't paid for it's work because the NCAA (which is by definition a cartel) forbids payment to them. What I'm arguing is that college athletics really isn't any different from any other industry and that the main source of labor, the athletes, should be allowed to be compensated for their work.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Oct 4, 2013 -> 08:50 PM) No, but you implied they're overpaid for their meaningless, easy jobs. So, my response to your implications is f***ing get one. No, I used the framework of someone else's argument to criticize that same argument. I didn't say their jobs were meaningless or easy. I said that their jobs are valueless without the people who actually do the work fans pay to see, the athletes.

That doesn't justify not paying athletes, and I haven't said anywhere that coaches shouldn't be paid.

QUOTE (Jake @ Oct 4, 2013 -> 07:35 PM) I still think we're seriously undervaluing what it means to go to college for free. I'm happy to make some tweaks, increase some benefits, but I don't think they should be getting compensated like professionals. They are getting a tremendous benefit already. I think we should make sure they can make the most of the value of being in college, but I'm not particularly fond of turning college students into a college's highest paid employees. I think it harms the student community. People often don't like the special privileges given to athletes, but knowing that the athletes are doing something that ends up benefiting the school in general usually evens things out. Turning college students into free market assets is not what college is about, IMO. College students being a college's highest paid employees is bad, but college coaches being the state government's highest paid employees is good? Turning college students into free-market assets isn't what college is about (wait, I thought the whole drive these days was for 'marketable' STEM degrees valued by businesses?!?), but college sports, at least the big money-making ones for teh NCAA, aren't really about college. It's a multi-billion dollar industry staffed by well-paid professionals, major apparel providers, media outlets, TV and radio networks, advertisers etc. etc. in every regard, except they don't pay the players. Many of these students who are going to college "for free" 1) don't actually have the full costs covered and have a hard time making ends meet because they're generally forbidden from outside revenues 2) are 'encouraged' into easy programs that will be of little value post-graduation, if they even make it all the way to graduation. NCAA sports are a huge business, and pretending that this is not basically identical to professional sports is really just a fantasy. For whatever tremendous value student-athletes are getting from a scholarship, they are often generating far more value that is just going into the pockets of their coaches, ADs, NCAA, apparel companies, EA, etc. College sports hasn't really been amateur and 'pure' in ages.

Whether or not insurance companies are the sole problem, they are clearly, based on the real-world experience of many other countries, an unnecessary added cost. Health care access can be and is subsidized directly by the government in almost every developed country in the world, and even a lot of developing countries.

QUOTE (BigHurt3515 @ Oct 4, 2013 -> 04:45 PM) Is House of Cards all politics talk?? I'm not into politics and don't know any of the lingo so I never really started that. It's as much about politics as something like game of thrones. It's just the backdrop for a story about drama, alliances, deceit, backstabbing, etc.

Btw if a major part of a coach's value is their recruiting ability, then obviously the athletes matter.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 4, 2013 -> 04:57 PM) The NCAA isn't like any other job market, just like professional leagues aren't either. They can make their own rules. If you want to join, you agree to abide by those rules. If you don't like it, start up a minor league for football. That's not an argument in favor of why those rules are just or fair. A minor league football...league would be competing against an ncaa cartel with artificially suppressed labor costs as well as fighting for legitimacy in the eyes of the nfl. Monopolies are hard to break, even more so when they don't have to pay their labor.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Oct 4, 2013 -> 04:48 PM) It sounds like they did their jobs very well, actually. The bad guy is gone, and the kid that she put in danger is safe. And LOL to the "shooting the tires out" remark from earlier. Shows just how little people understand. they should have just shot her ankle so she could push the gas pedal

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 4, 2013 -> 04:47 PM) As a general response to all of this, here's where i'm at: if you pooled together the coaches, trainers, admins, etc and everything else that goes into a program, they still end up making the university more based on their skills than a player does with his. Yes, the occasional RGIII type player is, in a sense, a huge reason for the draw to a game. But the reality is the coach who has excellent recruiting ties/abilities landed him and brought him there. He coached him and trained him and developed him. If anything, the player is a small part in the greater success of a college program. To that end, 99.9% of athletes wouldn't be worth more than the amount of their scholarship and extra benefits put together. So I don't think the system really exploits all but the rare few transcendent players. You're making assumptions that just lead you right back to the conclusion you started with. If coaches and AD's are really where all of the money is made, fine. Let players be paid and sign endorsement deals and hold jobs and profit from their likeness. If there isn't competition for them, they won't be getting paid much. This should be like any other job market on the planet. Because he liked playing football but also wanted to go to UIUC.