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This is a really interesting article that asks some tough questions. Most importantly, how long will college basketball and football players who make all the money for athletic department allow those funds to be used to pay for nonrevenue sports. Should capitalism work in college sports too?

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/ncaa-still ... ncaab.html

Non-revenue sports? How about coaches salaries. I just read that Coach K is the highest paid coach in all sports....including pro.

The only way Duke or other colleges can afford these salaries is if the labor is free.

Great topic for offseason discussion. I have an unnaturally biased opinion towards the non-revenue athletes, being that I ran cross country and track at a DIII program in Michigan, and I loved every minute of my 4 years doing it. IMO, schools should not be paying the athletes beyond the value of a scholarship, but the athletes should be able to go out and make money off of their likeness, have a job on the side or whatever else they need to do to pay for their college experience. That was something I was not prevented from doing, as I had a job every semester except the last one at college.

Even ignoring legal ramifications of Title IX, cutting non-revenue sports in order to pay those in revenue sports is a terrible precedent, and the people that would end up suffering the most from paying the income generating athletes are those in non-revenue sports, the normal everyday student, and the fans of those teams. If we're thinking in a purely capitalistic sense, do you think the school, or its administration is going to wind up just eating the costs from their own wages? Nope, higher ticket prices, student activity fees and various other things the school can do to pass off these costs will be done.

I do think something should also be changed in the structure of scholarships, as one of the complaints of the Northwestern kids is that the scholarship is a one-year renewed item based almost entirely on their athletic performance. One solution would be that the scholarship is automatically renewed every year as long as the athlete is in good standing academically. However, if a coach decides to cut a player or if someone is injured, each school should have an allotment of "inactive" scholarships that they can allocate those kids to (assuming the kid wants to stay at that school), and in special cases where a team has a lot of guys who get injured, the school could then apply for an additional inactive scholarship spot.

Even at most publicly or privately-held companies, money is spent on plenty of functions that don't make that particular Company money. R&D, admin and support staff, IT are all areas that private companies have in which their employees receive compensation and similar, if not exactly the same medical and retirement benefit opportunities. Sorry for the lengthy post, but just a few of my thoughts on what is a very important subject for all collegiate sports going forward.

Dew wrote:This is a really interesting article that asks some tough questions. Most importantly, how long will college basketball and football players who make all the money for athletic department allow those funds to be used to pay for nonrevenue sports. Should capitalism work in college sports too?

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/ncaa-still ... ncaab.html

Capitalism is already at work in college sports. Conferences are like companies competing against each other to put better product (football teams) that they can sell to their buyer (TV networks).

It's comical to hear the ADs and presidents talk about student athletes when every single realignment move they make is about bottom lines.

Even when they were talking about paying stipends they weren't doing that to give back to the players. They want to kill all non-BCS conferences cause they know those smaller schools wouldn't be able to keep up. it is cut throat free market capitalism at full force i tell you.

Sports in general is an interesting combination between capitalism and 'socialism'. The sport itself wants to make as much money as possible, and be a better product than other forms of entertainment (including other sports), but they do want balance/parity between their own teams. No one is going to watch the NCAA tournament if they know Duke is going to win year in and year out...kinda like how (at least it seems to me) no one pays attention to the NBA playoffs until the conference finals.

Of course, the presence of conferences in college sports complicates things as well; one one hand the SEC would love to dominate the Big 10, the AAC would love to see the Big East flounder...but on the other hand, if there is no competition, then whats the point?

In my opinion (as a former non-scholarship athlete, not that it really matters), don't pay the kids, but allow them to make money from their likeness. The schools don't need to worry about coming up with the extra money, or paying non-revenue athletes, but the 'big stars' can get some 'compensation'. It's kinda BS anyway that an athlete is limited in the way they can present themselves, but the school and the NCAA make bank off of them.

I assume the whole NCAA is about to blow up. Or I wonder if the football and basketball programs can separate from the NCAA entirely which is what they should do. When those two groups of students athletes made every penny used to fund multi-million dollar athletic departments, they deserve to be treated better in terms of travel and possible "compensation".

Let them get jobs in the off season. The idea that Napier went to bed hungry is silly. They get food as part of their scholarship and many places have special eating areas just for the athletes. Three meals a day isn't enough?

Like it was said previously, let them get paid for their likeness. Though not individually, make it where an NCAA game is made the company making said game lets say EA as an example would put 10% of the gross profit into an account and then pay every player that appears in the game. If they want they can just put the starters in and have the rest of the team be computer generated.

ArmyVet wrote:I assume the whole NCAA is about to blow up. Or I wonder if the football and basketball programs can separate from the NCAA entirely which is what they should do. When those two groups of students athletes made every penny used to fund multi-million dollar athletic departments, they deserve to be treated better in terms of travel and possible "compensation".

People keep saying that, but whatever comes after the NCAA will look just like the NCAA. These schools still want 98% of the rules that are currently in place and changing the name of the organization will not change that. They still want rules about recruiting and standards set for it;s members and how they are expected to act and conduct themselves.

Also, many of those multi-million dollar athletic departments use that money to build/renovate multi-million dollar practice facilities and multi-million dollar stadiums/arenas.

My opinion on the matter is this, like every other college student these kids are striving to be professionals in their field of interests. Some make it and some do not, but when they go to these big schools with big budgets they are getting world class training in that field and like all students have to take classes in things other than their majors. That is no small potatoes.

Practicing at the University of Texas and it's facilities are a heck of a lot better than some NFL developmental league thats for damn sure.

One great point that the article makes is that conferences constructed around football force non-revenue athletes to fly all over the country to compete even when there are plenty of schools a bus ride away with whom they can compete.

Rules should be changed so that a conference can be developed just for football and/or basketball, bit there can be a different conference for non-revenue sports.

Bill Marsh wrote:One great point that the article makes is that conferences constructed around football force non-revenue athletes to fly all over the country to compete even when there are plenty of schools a bus ride away with whom they can compete.

Rules should be changed so that a conference can be developed just for football and/or basketball, bit there can be a different conference for non-revenue sports.

I agree, they should allow conferences to be FB/BBall and then allow the schools to compete in more regional conferences for non-rev sports. In that regards I could see the Big East break into two sub-conferences for those sports. An eastern and western branch that has the five current members plus a few associate members.

East:
SJU
SH
PC
Nova
GTown
Temple
Rutgers
Army
Navy
UConn

West:
X
Butler
Marq
DePaul
CU
Dayton
SLU
Notre Dame
Northwestern
Air Force