Denying the $400 “advance” and admitting a dinner, which was the other part of that report. MSU called the allegations false, but don’t say whether the dinner was with Dawkins or a different agent. That leads me to believe it was Dawkins. NCAA allows improper benefits up to $100 to be repaid to charity with no suspension. So it’s not a big deal to admit to the dinner.
By “seems like the Christian Dawkins stuff in the report wasn’t true”, you mean “Bridges’ Mom whose son’s eligibility and legacy would be gone forever if she said it is true says it is not true, despite there being no reason for it to be falsified information.”
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I should say, the statement claims that the Dawkins stuff isn’t true.
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Dawkins stole from the agency’s clients. That spreadsheet yahoo published could be full of fake expenses.
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I guess we’ll know when the Dwayne Stephens - Christian Dawkins wiretaps get released.
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$40 dinner for the agent and the fam = Dollar Menunaires
HA! The first thing I thought was, “Did they just have appetizers or what?”
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I thought they left before the food was ordered. Or was that a different dinner that never happened?
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Would have been nice if MSU announced the charity the meal money was paid to as part of the reinstatement. Then again, that would come closer to admitting any wrongdoing in the first place.
That was Wendell Carter’s parents.
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Tangentially related from our very own Stu Douglas.
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Mitch Albom: How to fix college athletics? Let them make their own money
Mitch Albom’s column is a joke. what do sports have common with school plays?
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He’s always been a little sanctimonious for my taste, and is often the last guy on the bandwagon.
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For a sports writer, I am surprised that he is so far off on several of his observations and conclusions.
I agree with (most of) the above thoughts on Albom, but he’s not wrong on this issue. Football and men’s basketball athletes should make more of the total pie because it’s the right thing to do. Furthermore, it would be really good for Michigan basketball recruiting if the playing field were even a little bit more level.
I can understand the complaints against Albom… But I don’t think it’s hard to see his argument. Besides the NCAA sports, what other professions can you think of where you can’t profit off your own ability? Is a college scholarship nice? Of course it is, but no other profession says here you can have this but you may absolutely not have anything else. If one of us were in a situation where our child was worth 6 or 7 figures to a university but we saw no additional benefit we would be frustrated, especially if you were coming from nothing to begin with. So to Albom’s point, if a student can be on scholarship for music but profit of his or her music or be on scholarship for theater and profit off their acting, why can’t athletes who are under essentially NCAA control?
I don’t ever see a day where the NCAA starts paying athletes like some would like to see. It would cost them a fortune and they’re not about to cut their own hand off. With title IX they can’t pay some more than others. So the simple fix, and Emmert just was quoted saying they’re looking closely at it, is to have a model similar to the Olympics where athletes can make money off their ‘brand’ so to speak. This allows the greedy NCAA to still roll in the cash and allows the players who’s market value is worth something to actually make some money. If they don’t do this they run a real risk of their organization collapsing.
I don’t know how anyone can argue this… The NCAA creates ‘amateur’ athletes and then profits greatly (the NFL was a non profit so don’t even go there) off said amateur athletes. They make close to a billion dollars a year alone on March Madness. Allowing players who can make money to make money doesn’t seem any more unfair than allowing any other college kid (scholarship or not) to profit off their talents. Telling a kid they can’t sounds more akin to socialism than capitalism.
On a related note, if the NCAA were ever to allow kids to earn money from say endorsement deals and sponsorships it would greatly benefit a school like Michigan who has by all accounts played by the rules. In fact I’m not sure there’s a school who would benefit more.
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Absolutely.