College basketball corruption charges

Recruiting
505

It’s difficult to calculate the exact value of a college scholarship + degree, but a rough estimate would be the monthly stipend using HoopsForHires’ numbers starting it off at $96,000 for their 4 years, plus $60,000 for 4 years of tuition or $188,000 for out of state students, and then housing adding $12,000 per year and books at about $1000 per year.

So at a school similar to Michigan you could expect a tangible and concrete value of $208,000 or so through your 4 years for an in state kid, $336,000 for out of state. Now, obviously there’s parts that this scholarship that hold value beyond the 4 years. If this hypothetical student uses effort he can graduate at this point! Thanks to the fantastic researchers at Georgetown we can get a rough estimate of how much that degree they got was worth!

A 2002 Census Bureau study estimated that in 1999, the average lifetime earnings of a Bachelor’s degree holder was $2.7 million (2009 dollars), 75 percent more than that earned by high school graduates in 1999. Today, we find similar numbers — but since 1999, the premium on college education has grown to 84 percent. In other words, over a lifetime, a Bachelor’s degree is worth $2.8 million on average.

So basically the bare bones @bebopson opinion of “a scholarship to a prestigious University has no added value to your expected life earnings and that person will somehow earn less than the general Power Conference athlete’s fellow neighbors who didn’t get into college” you have gotten paid more than $200,000 worth of cash plus services over four years as an in state student or over $335,000 out of state. That’s the unrealistic minimum approach. Now, looking at it from a normal and reality based approach in which a scholarship grants someone a valuable academic opportunity that otherwise wouldn’t have been open and allows them to choose to work towards their degree which will aid them later in life…

We come out with a value getting into the millions from four years of shooting a basketball well over a graduated player’s lifetime. Sure, add on the fact that Michigan only graduated 77% (no indication from the person who provided that source whether or not it takes transfers and NFL guys into account so it’s rather useless, but I’ll play along) and that average goes down a tiny bit. Still millions.

I don’t know many people who wouldn’t take the illogically conceived bare bones $200,000-$300,000 deal even if it provided zero additional income to what they would get without a degree, which I mean… Obviously it wouldn’t provide zero additional income. And would you look at that? I guess most athletes agree, because I can count on one hand how many high profile basketball recruits have decided to skip college in favor of a year in Europe or China before the NBA, not counting shoplifters and their little brothers. “Oh, but some are getting paid under the table which totally proves my point!” you angrily shout at your monitor. If you think that those people make up any kind of majority of scholarship athletes you’re delusional. Thousands of athletes don’t get paid anything by outside sources and still decided it was the right choice for them. Hell, why would a guy like Wagner who had a surefire payday awaiting him in Germany choose to come here if it’s as bad of a deal as the “NCAA are slave masters” crowd want to believe? Would Wagner even end up anywhere on a draft board had he stayed there? The exposure given by the NCAA sure seemed to help him, you might as well add that to the value also.

I will continue to state the bottom line, which is the fact that everyone makes their own choice here along every stage. The athletes decided it was worth whatever possible cost you can come up with to have the opportunity to play their favorite sport and get an education. They already get paid at minimum $200,000 during their 4 years at a school like Michigan and nobody is arguing that they shouldn’t be able to profit off of their likeness (that has been made very clear by now…)

so at this point I just don’t know what else you could possibly want. So tell me, do you honestly think that at least $200,000 of concrete money plus about $1 million in extra lifetime earnings on average is not enough? If not I don’t think it’s worth continuing this discussion, as anyone who thinks that plus (hopefully soon) the ability to profit off of themselves isn’t enough value is just plain wrong in my opinion.

506

I actually veer away from paying them - I think college sports should be de-monetized. I understand it’s impractical.

Finally, about their free will when choosing majors - I think one needs to realize how hard it is for a teenager to stick to their guns on major choice when an array of adults who carry titles like “academic advisor” are encouraging you to do a certain thing. Think what Stanley Milgram’s experiments showed about people’s in-born adherence to authority figures.

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507

I find the free will argument severely lacking in rationality. Why would your free will to choose a certain path in life take away one’s ability to request change? By that logic, since we all live in the United States by our free will, we should never debate what our politicians do. We should simply thank them for the opportunity to live here and be glad we have the opportunity that others do not have and move on with our lives. And by using this same logic, if you don’t like it here you shouldn’t try and change it you should just leave and go somewhere else.

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508

Here’s the real bottom line. Calculating the cost of a watered-down university education does not begin to capture the value that NCAA revenue sport players are adding to the NCAA top line. All you have to do is look at the market value of soccer players around the world (based on real transfer fees) to get an approximate idea of what NCAA revenue sport players are being cheated out of.

This list is for the under-19 players.
https://www.transfermarkt.com/spieler-statistik/wertvollstespieler/marktwertetop/plus/0/galerie/0?ausrichtung=alle&spielerposition_id=alle&altersklasse=u19&jahrgang=0&land_id=0&yt0=Show

509

Without dusting off my econ texts from college, this is not a capitalistic system. This is not a free market.

While the top end athletes from basketball (there is an argument in football that more time is required for the body to mature in preparation for the NFL) are not being compensated at their true current value, thus their overall earnings ceiling has been lowered, the idea is that for all athletes (revenue, non-revenue, women’s sports) their earnings floor has been raised across the board.

Also, on occasion some students have majors that sound like fluff but really are not.

https://lsa.umich.edu/orgstudies/current-students/current-os-pathways/human-capital-management-and-leadership/ajhatch.html

510

NCAA didn’t suffer at all financially when NBA let high school graduates play immediately. The argument that revenue sports players are under-compensated is largely delusional. Any players who feel that way can test their true market value in the G-league or overseas.

511

I’d say on average revenue athletes aren’t really under-compensated. But Marvin Bagley, Deandre Ayton, etc. are very much undercompensated and could easily get contracts worth over a million dollars in Europe.

512

NCAA has no part of the one-and-done rule and does not benefit from it financially either. Without Bagley and Ayton, the TV rating will be the same. Bagley and Ayton alike always have the options to play in any professional league except NBA, and NCAA has no obligation whatsoever to compensate them for their choice.

513

The stipend they’ve been getting has happened for years. It use to cover the room and board. If meals were provided, what they call training table, that money for the meal was taken out of their scholarship check. A team pre-game meal was not. They were then given “snacks” which included a fruits, veggies, oatmeal, yogurt, granola bars, etc aka “fueling stations.” The scholarship check is for basically room and nothing else now. Meals can and are provided by the schools. That changed when Shabazz Napier said he was starving at night while at UConn.

If someone is given a monthly check for $1,600 or more for their scholarship and their only expense is rent, I’d say that’s a pretty good deal. That’s more take home money per month than what I have with a child, a mortgage, and all the other expenses that working adults have. Even if you spent half of that money on rent, your take home money is good enough to eat at Chipotle every night without an issue.

The NCAA has it’s flaws, there is no doubt about that. I think they could put way more money into enforcement. They tried a few years back to have some of their staff “monitor” college coaches during the live period. All the employees did was flirt with the coaches and nothing happened. It was laughable. What they have done is changed the way things are done for the athletes. When I was working at WVU, athletes that lived off campus were getting a check of roughly $800-$900 a month from the university. Now, they are getting much more than that. They also changed the practice/competition rules for this season. All athletes MUST have a true off day during the week. Meaning, they aren’t required to do anything in regards to the program they are associated with (hosting recruits, practice, lifting, and even travel).

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514

As Reegs said, the average athlete (majority of athletes) are not under-compensated. But the best of the best absolutely are, otherwise they wouldn’t be getting compensated illegally. There’s a big difference between leagues as well, the value of Marvin Bagley to the NCAA (and his team/coach) is much greater than it would be to the G-League. The same goes for coaches, which are going to be much higher compensated in the NCAA than they would be overseas or in the G-league. Heck, there’s college coaches (Saban, Harbaugh) who make more than their NFL counterparts.

As for the NCAA has no obligation to compensate them… Then why on earth should they be able to make billions off these kids? It’s ridiculous people support the NCAA and how they have taken advantage of this situation.

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515

There will likely be a legal obligation to compensate them at some point in the future if they don’t do it of their own choosing. The NCAA’s model is very much an illegal venture that has lost basically every court ruling they’ve ever been in.

As I’ve said earlier, I don’t want the NCAA to turn into pro sports, but from a legal and fairness perspective it’s on really shaky ground.

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516

Well, nobody twisted their arm to play for NCAA, they can take their service to the highest bidders. I don’t remember NCAA basketball suffered a bit without Kobe and Lebron.

517

NCAA is far from the most competent organization in the world, but its business model as a whole is nothing illegal.

518
519

Final four ratings since 1975. There is a noticeable drop-off from 1995 on, which coincides with the modern wave of early entrants.

520

They are taking their services to the highest bidder, that’s why this thread exists to begin with. And the business model is illegal. There have been two class action lawsuits that the NCAA has lost recently because of antitrust behavior. Don’t get me wrong, college athletes don’t have it bad, but if the elite athletes were being properly compensated we wouldn’t have this massive FBI investigation.

521

SVG mentioned this in his recent rant, but if the NCAA could get the NBA to adopt a model similar to the NBA it could solve a lot of these issues. Let HS kids enter the draft, if they like where they were selected they could go pro, if they don’t they can go to college but have to stay until their junior or senior year. Would help the NCAA because guys would become household names (image if Trae Young had 3 years at Oklahoma) and improve the NCAA’s brand. I don’t think it would solve the under the table compensation though, but it would remove a few of the one and done types where the illegal behavior is most likely to occur. The hardest part would be for schools recruiting kids and not necessarily knowing what their plan is, but the benefit is they would know that any kid who comes is there for 3 to 4 years.

522

If you are talking about recent 208 million settlement over the class-action lawsuit, it applies to all athletes but not the few elite ones in revenue sports. None of the lawsuits challenges NCAA’s business model as a whole but its specific policies on compensation.

523

This is what you said earlier.

524

There is an overall downtrend but no noticeable difference btw 1995 and 2005. A lot of voice within NCAA wants the abolishment of the one-and-done rule. Ironically, the biggest supporter of the one-and-done is NBA Players Union, who originally seek an age limit at 20 instead of the current 19.