Wait. There is an NCAA compliance expert named Smrt? You can’t make this stuff up.
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Romeo Langford in the news…
You’ve heard it from me before, level the playing field, pay the players. The amateur status of college sports is finished. Guys like JB who play by the rules are at a huge disadvantage. Big money talks!
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This is paying players in HS, not college.
Believe it or not athletes on full scholarship are receiving at least $1700 (some places get more based off cost of attendance) per month as part of their scholarship. And their expenses are basically lodging and some food because most food is provided. Could there be more done? Probably, but the only way in my mind is getting paid through their own likeness.
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That’s the obvious answer. Let them profit off their own likeness. It’s fair, it costs the university nothing and the market will dictate what a player is worth.
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Anyone who thinks that the hundreds of millions of dollars created annually by college basketball will not find its way to the main determinants of success (players) either legally or illegally doesn’t understand the absolute most basic economics. It is the literal definition of how Black Markets are created. There is too much money for the schools to make from these kids, for the shoe companies to make from these kids, and from agents to make from these kids to keep the money out.
Trying to stop it is the silly part.
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How do you prevent a booster from paying more than market value?
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Or don’t pay the players
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As hard and fast law of economics, I think you’re going to need to qualify that. We have two many historic cases of the people who do the work or inventing not ending up with the cheese to make such blanket statements.
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Market value is what someone is willing to pay. I agree with a lot of the previous comments here. Straight up paying players isn’t going to work because the NCAA can’t discriminate in their pay and therefore will still underpay certain stars. Allowing players to make money off their likeness just brings all of this above board and doesn’t allow the cheating schools to benefit while the honest programs lag behind.
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I don’t personally have an issue with compensating players. I just want an even playing field. Right now, I feel like some coaches and schools (Duke, UNC, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisville, etc) treat it like a business, while the Michigan athletic department wants to believe in amateurism. We haven’t had a McDonald’s All American since Daniel Horton. If that doesn’t change under Juwan - who seems like he is probably an incredible recruiter - that probably says it all.
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I have unfortunately have friends who are Duke fans, who are in denial, that would always cite Coach K “having Kobe’s number” and a great relationship with him as something that really appeals to high schoolers and that would be their explanation as to how they were all of a sudden getting more one and done players than Kentucky. Juwan played with Lebron for years and was publicly endorsed by him when he got the job. By their logic we should get all 5 star players now!!
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The extreme view is that colleges are places of education, not amateur sports, and shouldn’t be running billion dollar athletic departments that in all but about a dozen cases are actually harmful to the mission of the university.
I think that answers the title IX issues.
Alternatively, if Michigan wants to pay Naz Hillmon I’m cool with it.
The rest of the post doesn’t make too much sense to me. If a player agrees to go to school X for $Y, why would they still need to be enticed by additional money?
Look, the second the system decided to enrich themselves off of uncompensated kids, this got messed up. Now you want the people pointing that out to come up with the logistics to preserve the enrichment of fat guys in suits while getting the kids like $40k a year.
I dunno man.
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Yeah I agree with that sentiment. My only point is that in a competitive market where the drivers of performance are uncompensated but willing to be compensated…someone’s gonna find a way to compensate them if it gets them a competitive advantage.
I have questions about how various ways of compensating players will actually work in practice. I’m assuming that basketball won’t have their own system. The rules will apply to football and possibly all other sports.
As I understand it, as things ares done now, it’s high school players and their families that get big money under the table. The payment is for committing to the school. If we make it a free market where players can take money from anyone for any purpose, getting their signature on an LOI is still what holds the most value for boosters. Are we really going to see most players paid once they’re in school?
There’s a lot of talk and support for changing NCAA transfer rules. The main difference would be that all players can transfer once without sitting out for a year. I’ll be surprised if this doesn’t happen very soon. This leads to my next question.
How do we feel about players taking money from boosters of other schools? What’s to stop them from paying them to transfer? Do we get bidding wars during the season? What about paying them to sit out a game against the booster’s school? This would be more of an issue for football.
I guess my point is that making it a free market may not work the way we’d like. I’m not aware of any pro leagues that operate in a free market. They use lots of restrictions to promote competition. My guess is that the NCAA will start by taking steps where they control where the money comes from. EA video games and shoe contracts. Maybe letting players go through the draft, sign a contract and return to school.
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Post withdrawn
Ok, so maybe paying the players isn’t the solution. I’m not sure what the answer is, there are smarter people on this board than me. I do know this, kids/families are taking cash and the NCAA is not strong enough to prevent it, maybe no entity is. When the NCAA has to use the FBI to police the programs it’s out of control.
IMO, the NBA controls the future of NCAA hoops now along with the publicly traded big brands. As stated above, way too much money and upside potential to stop the corruption. With one TV contract the G (GATORADE) League can expand and pay the kids 6 figures.
Whatever a booster will pay IS the market value. What does it matter what that value is?
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Again
We are calling a billion dollar business “amateurism”.
Merely because the term allows them not to compensate the product.
In a sane world it would be called “minor league football/basketball”. But doing that would eliminate the romance or something.
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The profit off your likeness thing is going to be a slippery slope as well. There’s no easy answer. What’s going to stop a future Michigan long snapper from signing a weekly appearance deal at the Centerfold’s Lounge in Detroit?!
And so what if that happens? Why is that a bad thing?
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