Jay Bilas Tweets

[Dan]

Hard to beleive there's not a thread on the Jay Bilas tweets from the Johnny Manziel controversy. This may be the final straw for the NCAA. I don't have a problem not paying athletes, but if the athlete has the ability to earn money on their own, whether it's via camps, signing autographs or whatever, more power to them.

[SubGod22]

Hard to beleive there's not a thread on the Jay Bilas tweets from the Johnny Manziel controversy. This may be the final straw for the NCAA. I don't have a problem not paying athletes, but if the athlete has the ability to earn money on their own, whether it's via camps, signing autographs or whatever, more power to them.

But then you take the chance of boosters paying players thousands of dollars for "autographs" or whatever.

[Dan]

I understand it's a slippery slope and there's the whole "equality" issue, but it's such hypocrisy it's not even funny.

[The Mad Hatter]

Here is my problem with the whole concept that it is unfair to athletes not to pay them:

1. They are being paid. They are receiving a free college education, which is a commodity that a huge percentage of their peers are going into steep debt to acquire. Acting like that is not a big deal is ridiculous. Furthermore, if you are leaving school early for the pros and therefore don't get the full benefits of a college degree, you have little room to complain, because it means you are indeed getting your big payday.

2. College athletics serves as an opportunity to develop your skills and showcase your ability. Sure, there are paid opportunities that do the same thing, such as the minor leagues in baseball, but guess what? You don't get much money in the minors and life is a lot more miserable than in college sports. Furthermore, if it turns out you aren't good enough for the pros and wash out of the minors, you have nothing to show for it. If it turns out that you aren't good enough to head to the pros in college sports, you can stick around for 4 years and leave with a college degree.

3. The focus of these discussions is always about how unfair the whole process is the players and how the schools and the NCAA benefit. While that is true to some extent, what really is meant is that a players at the top end of a couple of sports that make a lot of money aren't getting paid. Why does this matter? Because a lot of the money that people are complaining about being raked in by the the schools and NCAA ends up going towards paying for athletes in non-revenue producing sports. Do we really care about all college athletes or only football and basketball players?

4. For all the talk about hypocrisy, the reality is that most athletic departments don't make money (in part because of point 3). It is only a handful of schools at the very top of the system that do. So if you are angry about the hypocrisy of the system that makes money for the institution, but not for the athlete, that ire should be directed at those schools. But what does allowing players to be paid do? It provides an additional advantage to those very schools, because whether they are paying directly or through their boosters, they are the ones with the most resources available to pay players. This, in turn, concentrates their power in college sports and allows them to take an even bigger share of the pie (at the expense of both the schools and players elsewhere).

[WuDrWu]

Genius

[Shoxfan11]

Doug Gottlieb had some Twitter posts today basically agreeing with you guys:

Doug Gottlieb @GottliebShow 3h
What is the value of 1. getting into a college? 2. Room,board,tuition 3.Free tutors,best classes 4.College degree 5.Promotion by school 6. coaches,trainers 7. television promotion? --like I said,college pay athletes

Doug Gottlieb @GottliebShow 4h
Apply for a job as a former athlete, then apply as some regular dude---guess who gets the gig? #benefits

A retweet he did:
brandon amaya @brandonamaya 4h
@GottliebShow I played d1 soccer. Scholarship was my best friend. My younger bro has 80k in loans. I'm loan free.

Doug Gottlieb @GottliebShow 4h
I completely respect @JayBilas but having no one combat him counter w/facts is not fair journalism on #ESPN #NCAA

[GoShockers89]

.

[shockmonster]

I'm would not be surprised that these elites will leave baseball out of this money fest. This is designed for those athletes who make big money for the university. The argument that has been presented by Stan Weber the other day when he talked about his son receiving a scholarship for football at KSU and his daughter not receiving one for Volleyball and he knows the difference in his pocketbook for his daughter is a good argument. Some would argue (and I don't agree) that the best players should receive more money than the worst player on scholarship (basketball this would the 12th player and in football this would be the 50-80th player).

[_kai_]

There are so many ramifications with paying college athletes, that a lot of these talking heads are absolutely not thinking about. Off the top of my head.

1.) Governing body of athletes, is there a player's union?

2.) Amateur status for world events, and on the flip side, professional status. For example: Shocker Bowling.

3.) Title 9 issues with fair payment. I don't see how they can have a scale for pay with federal regulations in place. The Heisman winner, who brings in millions of dollars for the NCAA, University & Conference should be paid equally to the last athlete on the Women's Softball roster.

4.) What happens to smaller sports, and I'm not talking Basketball. I'm talking Tennis, Golf, Track & Soccer. Small money earners for the university, yet would see a drastic increase to expenditures if they had to start paying a stipend to all these athletes. Is it enough to have university's just axe certain sports?

4.a.) If they ax certain sports, they could have issues with title 9 scholarships. It could be a big problem for smaller university athletic departments that are cutting it thin with having football and supplementing those scholarships through smaller women's sports that bring no money in.

That's just the few I could think of in a flash. Yet I don't see anyone talking about them.

[capnkirk]

I wonder how many different sports actually turn a profit. Even at WSU? Men's basketball, volleyball. I am guessing women's basketball might be close. But you have to factor in coaches salary, travel expenses, scholarships, health insurance, food, etc etc.

[SubGod22]

Men's basketball does. Baseball at least used to I believe. Volleyball may be close, but I'm not certain it actually makes a profit or not. I doubt women's basketball does. I'm not sure what kind of attendance they'd need to average in order to do so, but I'd think it's more than they've been getting. I know the coaching salaries are lower but there are a few more scholarships available to them.

[Rlh04d]

I don't think there is any easy answer. The entire NCAA system is teetering on a ledge as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, a lot of the programs lose money -- but at the same time, when the NCAA can clearly market their likenesses, can sell video games with their likenesses, teams can afford $6 million coaching salaries, tv rights go for $20-30 million a team ... I don't think anyone can argue that the system isn't broken.

A soccer player and Johnny Manziel both get a full scholarship. But Texas A&M makes millions off Manziel. Not the case for the soccer player.

I don't really think paying them is the right way to go about this ... But the money grab going on cant continue without paying them. The greed is getting to the point where it can't continue. Legally, I don't think it can continue. You can't continue with this blatant exploitation of football and basketball players and say they're in the same category as the other sports. Texas A&M can't charge millions to sit next to Manziel while the NCAA is selling his jersey on their website and then flip out because he makes money off his own signature.

I don't know what the answer is. But I think the NCAA is going to lose this lawsuit.

Let the damn kids sell their autographs. Who cares? And the top schools should be reinvesting their money into education rather than continuing the insane coaching salary race.

There are so many things wrong with the NCAA right now.

(I seriously dislike Manziel, so I hate that I'm defending him here. He should be suspended for breaking the rule ... But the rule needs to go.)

[shockmonster]

Yes, we can see from Manziel's example that 18 yr. olds will be better off with the coming system that you speak of.

[Rlh04d]

Yes, we can see from Manziel's example that 18 yr. olds will be better off with the coming system that you speak of.

It's not about who would be better off. It's about what's fair. And the current system is not fair.

Manziel, like most football players, will have to play at least two to three years before they have a shot at the NFL draft. Baseball players can jump to the minor leagues or even the MLB straight out of college; even if they choose to go to college, baseball is a fairly low risk sport where a player isn't very likely to ruin their future prospects in the sport by playing in college. Basketball players can jump after one year of college. Football players have to spend the longest in college while playing an exponentially more dangerous game.

There are a lot of very talented players who go to play college football, destroy their bodies, ruin any hope they had of a career, and potentially pick up life-threatening injuries. Just a few minutes ago I was reading a new story about a senior wide receiver at Florida State who was dismissed from the team for academic reasons that suddenly sprang into being after he suffered multiple severe concussions (http://www.tomahawknation.com/florid...ns-really-suck). His career is over, and that is primarily due to those concussions he picked up in his sophomore year. The kid isn't just done in football; he won't finish college and he'll never be the same again. Not in football -- he'll never be the person he was before going to college.

So what did he get out of it? A couple years of college that he now can't complete because of what looks like brain damage? This isn't anything that doesn't happen numerous times a year. Unlike in the NFL, most of these kids aren't name brands, so their injuries get a little coverage locally and then they're forgotten.

So what happens to Manziel if he goes out there, plays in the first game of the season, and immediately gets brain damage from a severe hit? And that brain damage causes him to become unable to follow along in his classes, and he ends up becoming the punch-drunk shell of a person we've seen dozens of times already in football? Is anyone here seriously going to say "well, he got a year of free college behind him, so it's fair!" Meanwhile Texas A&M boosters sold a seat next to him for $20k. Their coach got a $1.1 million raise because of the success Manziel led them to. Their Cotton Bowl appearance made them $7.45 million. The NCAA site and Texas A&M both sell #2 jerseys for $60 apiece. Texas A&M's own website says that Manziel earned $37 million for the college in media exposure. (http://www.aggieathletics.com/ViewAr...CLID=206020080)

And the response is that he gets the same compensation as a women's softball player, and that's fair? Look, we all know what's going on here -- generally when you take a scholarship for soccer, or softball, or rugby, or any of the other "non-revenue sports", the idea is that you are going for an education and so your scholarship is an incredible compensation for what you're providing to the college. You're not there for a pro sports career. If you're playing football or basketball at a high level, you're there because you're trying out for the professional leagues where you can get paid, and if you're good enough to be getting paid already, you're only in college because the rules are forcing you to be. An education isn't a fair compensation for most of those athletes. I'm sure there's still a pretty huge chunk of D1 football players that are functionally illiterate. We've seen it happen with Creighton, and they weren't facing anywhere near the athletic competition an SEC program is. At the high levels, NCAA revenue sports function in the same way as Minor League Baseball, without the salaries. High level FBS football players aren't going to college for an education; they're going to college because it's the only way the NFL will give them a shot. Academics is just a sideshow that they have play the game for because we want to pretend that the athletes we're cheering for are still really students. Even as WSU fans, are we compensating our players with scholarships or are we compensating them with four years of playing for Gregg Marshall? Come on, we know the answer to that.

Everyone involved in this is running around with bags of oversized cash like cartoon Monopoly men cackling insanely except for the actual players, who, particularly in football, have to play significantly longer than players in other sports to have any hope of actually earning money off of their careers, and face exponentially more dangers. Everybody gets rich but the people actually generating the money.

We spend all of this time talking about the effects of injuries in pro sports, but who looks out for the kids in college? What does a kid that gets injured in college really get? A guy in the NFL suffers brain damage and at least he was making millions for a few years. A guy in college suffers from brain damage and he just goes back home, no degree, no compensation, and fundamentally worse than when he left for college. What money is being set aside from the SEC's more than $5 billion TV contract over the next 15 years to make sure injured college players get long-term help if it's needed? Wait, don't worry, Alabama has zero gravity treadmills! Pay no attention to the fact that most SEC programs would almost certainly cover up murder if meant their star player was eligible for that next big game.

Let's not worry about Notre Dame football. It looks like their efforts to cover up the sexual assault by one of their football players drove a woman to suicide (http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor...ekua_more.html), but that barely even touched the news while we spent six straight months babbling about Teo's idiocy. Rees assaulted a cop and no one even acknowledged it. The coaches essentially killed a 20 year old by sending him into a rickety old tower and no one cared. What's really important is that Notre Dame is good again, so the money's rolling in! But at least we've learned our lesson from Penn State.

The head of the Sugar Bowl makes $600k a year. To run ONE game. Hell, his assistant director made $350k. (http://www.azcentral.com/news/articl...nclick_check=1)

But I digress. Who gives a damn if they can make money off their signatures. I could sell my autograph when I was in college; why can't they? Any money they make off of their names is directly because of their own success. If a basketball player, soccer player, or women's softball player wants to sell their autographs, let them. I don't give a damn.

I didn't give my college exclusive rights to my name and image in exchange for my education, and I sure as hell wasn't risking brain damage every day to get my degrees. It's not the same.

Manziel's going to be an idiot whether he has money or not. He's a child; he's supposed to be an idiot. What's the excuse of all of the adults involved?

It's exploitation.

[SubGod22]

I'm not buying it. Everyone knows the risks of playing football. They're not forced to do it, the choose to do it. They do it because they want to. They do it because of the potential payday. They do it for a FREE education. Some kids choose not to play football even though they could excel at it because of the potential risks, both short-term and long.

Once you start allowing payers to get paid, either through the U or by selling themselves, things will get really shady and be the end of college sports as we know it. And I don't really care if a football player has to be out of HS for three years before they can move to the NFL, that's not the fault of college. That's the NFL rules. So if you think that's unfair, complain to the League. Baseball players have the same rules if they choose to go to college. So yes, they have more flexibility, but that's because those are the rules that MLB has in place. Basketball players have to stay one year, but that's due to the NBA and not the NCAA. And lets not kid ourselves, if a kid doesn't want to go to college he can play in Europe for a year and make some good money before joining the NBA.

All kids, no matter the sport, risk injury. Yes, football is a more high impact sport than others, but they also have battle armor that helps. A baseball player still risks arm and leg injuries that could ruin their future athletic careers and even potentially keep them from finishing school. Same with basketball. And if FSU dismissed a kid because of injury that reflects poorly on FSU and not the NCAA. If a kid is unable to play sports anymore due to injury, the school can still pay for his education as if he were a player without it counting against their scholarship limit. WSU did that with Zach Green early in the Turgeon years.

And while schools may make millions off of the sports, they are the ones offering the opportunity for a debt free education and much of that money goes back into the opportunities and yes, even to educational purposes. As has been pointed out previously, not only do they get a debt free education, they're given opportunities that the general student body can only dream of. They're not abused or exploited and get so many perks that I find it laughable when I hear such things.

Hell, I've had to go back to school to finish my education. Had I not gotten ill in HS and been able to get a scholarship somewhere, I'd be a hell of a lot better off as I would have finished school at a much younger age. As it is, my debt will be ridiculous and there are no guarantees that my degree will actually do much to help me. It's a risk I'm taking.

And why are schools "greedy" for making money where they can? They have a lot to pay for and the exposure they generate attracts new money for sports and education as well as new students. If you want to do away with athletics all together, then fine. But if you want these opportunities to be there for others, complaining about someone making money doesn't make any sense. The kids don't have to play. They don't have to accept the scholarships. They know how it works before they sign anything. If you want them to make less money or pay their coaches less, stop paying to watch and support the schools. Supply and demand. Market rates. They all play a factor in these things. And lets not forget advertising. All of these things still lead to the opportunities presented to these kids.

If anything is going to lead to the ruin of college athletics, it's this topic and people deciding that the kids should be paid. If things really go that direction, I'm definitely giving up sports as a whole.