Holy Shit!
Death to the NCAA!!111
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/college-athletes-unionize-federal-agency-192347319--ncaaf.html
Quote
College athletes can unionize, federal agency says
By MICHAEL TARM (Associated Press) 39 minutes ago AP - Sports
CHICAGO (AP) -- In a stunning ruling that could revolutionize a college sports industry worth billions of dollars and have dramatic repercussions at schools coast to coast, a federal agency said Wednesday that football players at Northwestern University can create the nation's first union of college athletes.
The decision by a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board answered the question at the heart of the debate over the unionization bid: Are football players who receive full scholarships to the Big Ten school considered employees under federal law, thereby allowing them to unionize?
Peter Sung Ohr, the NLRB regional director, said in a 24-page decision that the players ''fall squarely'' within the broad definition of employee.
Pro-union activists cheered as they learned of the ruling.
''It's like preparing so long for a big game and then when you win - it is pure joy,'' said former UCLA linebacker Ramogi Huma, the designated president of Northwestern's would-be football players' union.
The ruling addresses a unique situation in American college sports, where the tradition of college competition has created a system that generates billions but relies on players who are not paid. In other countries, elite youth athletes turn pro as teens, but college sports are small-time club affairs.
Under U.S. law, an employee is regarded as someone who, among other things, receives compensation for a service and is under the strict, direct control of managers. In the case of the Northwestern players, coaches are the managers and scholarships are a form of compensation, Ohr concluded.
The Evanston, Ill., university argued that college athletes, as students, do not fit in the same category as factory workers, truck drivers and other unionized workers. The school announced plans to appeal to labor authorities in Washington, D.C.
Supporters of the union bid argued that the university ultimately treats football as more important than academics for scholarship players. Ohr sided with the players.
''The record makes clear that the employer's scholarship players are identified and recruited in the first instance because of their football prowess and not because of their academic achievement in high school,'' Ohr wrote. He also noted that among the evidence presented by Northwestern, ''no examples were provided of scholarship players being permitted to miss entire practices and/or games to attend their studies.''
The ruling described how the life of a Northwestern football player is far more regimented than that of a typical student, down to requirements about what they can eat and whether they can live off campus or purchase a car. At times, players put 50 or 60 hours a week into football, Ohr added.
Alan Cubbage, Northwestern's vice president for university relations, said in a statement that while the school respects ''the NLRB process and the regional director's opinion, we disagree with it.''
Huma said scholarship players would vote within 30 days on whether to formally authorize the College Athletes Players Association, or CAPA, to represent them.
The specific goals of CAPA include guaranteeing coverage of sports-related medical expenses for current and former players, reducing head injuries and potentially letting players pursue commercial sponsorships.
Critics have argued that giving college athletes employee status and allowing them to unionize could hurt college sports in numerous ways, including raising the prospect of strikes by disgruntled players or lockouts by athletic departments.
For now, the push is to unionize athletes at private schools, such as Northwestern, because the federal labor agency does not have jurisdiction over public universities. But Huma said Wednesday's decision is the ''first domino to fall'' and that teams at schools - both public and private - could eventually follow the Wildcats' lead.
Outgoing Wildcats quarterback Kain Colter took a leading role in establishing CAPA. The United Steelworkers union has been footing the legal bills.
Colter, who has entered the NFL draft, said nearly all of the 85 scholarship players on the Wildcats roster backed the union bid, though only he expressed his support publicly.
He said the No. 1 reason to unionize was to ensure injured players have their medical needs met.
''With the sacrifices we make athletically, medically and with our bodies, we need to be taken care of,'' Colter told ESPN.
The NCAA has been under increasing scrutiny over its amateurism rules and is fighting a class-action federal lawsuit by former players seeking a cut of the billions of dollars earned from live broadcasts, memorabilia sales and video games. Other lawsuits allege the NCAA failed to protect players from debilitating head injuries.
NCAA President Mark Emmert has pushed for a $2,000-per-player stipend to help athletes defray some expenses. Critics say that is not nearly enough, considering players help bring in millions of dollars to their schools and conferences.
In a written statement, the NCAA said it disagreed with the notion that student-athletes are employees.
''We frequently hear from student-athletes, across all sports, that they participate to enhance their overall college experience and for the love of their sport, not to be paid,'' the NCAA said.
All of the big NCAA conferences, including the SEC, also disagreed with the decision.
''Notwithstanding today's decision, the SEC does not believe that full time students participating in intercollegiate athletics are employees of the universities they attend,'' Michael Slive, the SEC commissioner, said in a written statement.
The developments are coming to a head when major college programs are awash in cash generated by new television deals that include separate networks for the big conferences. The NCAA tournament generates an average of $771 million a year in television rights itself, much of which is distributed to member schools.
Attorneys for CAPA argued that college football is, for all practical purposes, a commercial enterprise that relies on players' labor to generate billions of dollars in profits. The NLRB ruling noted that from 2003 to 2013 the Northwestern program generated $235 million in revenue - profits the university says went to subsidize other sports.
During the NLRB's five days of hearings in February, Wildcats coach Pat Fitzgerald took the stand for union opponents, and his testimony sometimes was at odds with Colter's.
Colter told the hearing that players' performance on the field was more important to Northwestern than their in-class performance, saying, ''You fulfill the football requirement and, if you can, you fit in academics.'' Asked why Northwestern gave him a scholarship of $75,000 a year, he responded: ''To play football. To perform an athletic service.''
But Fitzgerald said he tells players academics come first, saying, ''We want them to be the best they can be ... to be a champion in life.''
---
Follow Michael Tarm at https://twitter.com/mtarm .
Already in the College Football thread. Appeals are going to tie this one up for awhile. But change is upon us.
Quote from: Valmy on March 27, 2014, 12:44:00 AM
Already in the College Football thread. Appeals are going to tie this one up for awhile. But change is upon us.
Schools force students to miss class to attend extracurricular activities. I kind of wonder if the judge's ruling wasn't primarily meant as a not-so-subtle "You want to play by different rules? You get employee rules" fuck-you.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 27, 2014, 12:41:23 AM
Holy Shit!
Death to the NCAA!!111
Yes, maybe in 12 or 15 years or so it'll wind its way to a court where a ruling will really matter. Until then, meh.
I don't see why anyone would advocate the elimination of college sports, like Timmay does. I actually enjoy college football and basketball much more than their pro equivalents.
It will be interesting to see if Northwestern decides to keep college football at all if this ruling is upheld. Most of the current demands of the players are reasonable, but we all know what happens when bureaucracy sets in, and it will be interesting to see how the players deal with union dues and the fact that, as employees, they will have to pay taxes on some of their compensation. It will also be interesting to see if the football players allow non-revenue-sport athletes (who, after all, have the same concerns) to join their union. If they do, it will dilute their power a lot; if they don't, they will demonstrate they they aren't really about athletics at all, just about their own narrow self-interest.
I just say "thank hod this isn't happening at any place that matters."
Quote from: grumbler on March 27, 2014, 06:30:57 AM
I don't see why anyone would advocate the elimination of college sports, like Timmay does. I actually enjoy college football and basketball much more than their pro equivalents.
It will be interesting to see if Northwestern decides to keep college football at all if this ruling is upheld. Most of the current demands of the players are reasonable, but we all know what happens when bureaucracy sets in, and it will be interesting to see how the players deal with union dues and the fact that, as employees, they will have to pay taxes on some of their compensation. It will also be interesting to see if the football players allow non-revenue-sport athletes (who, after all, have the same concerns) to join their union. If they do, it will dilute their power a lot; if they don't, they will demonstrate they they aren't really about athletics at all, just about their own narrow self-interest.
I just say "thank hod this isn't happening at any place that matters."
They wouldn't have to pay taxes. Athletic scholarships (including room, board, books, tuition, etc) are not compensation under tax law--that is well established. Rulings by the National Labor Relations Board don't impact that.
Quote from: grumbler on March 27, 2014, 06:30:57 AM
I don't see why anyone would advocate the elimination of college sports, like Timmay does.
He said death to the NCAA. Not death to college sports. Not the same thing.
Quote from: alfred russel on March 27, 2014, 09:59:38 AM
They wouldn't have to pay taxes. Athletic scholarships (including room, board, books, tuition, etc) are not compensation under tax law--that is well established. Rulings by the National Labor Relations Board don't impact that.
They are not compensation under law unless the students in question are employees (which is what the NLRB has ruled). If tuition is remitted, then it is not taxable, but other compensation is (see: Graduate Student Instructor).
Quote from: DontSayBanana on March 27, 2014, 12:57:23 AM
Schools force students to miss class to attend extracurricular activities. I kind of wonder if the judge's ruling wasn't primarily meant as a not-so-subtle "You want to play by different rules? You get employee rules" fuck-you.
Athletics are (or imo at least should be) an integral part of the educational experience. I don't see any contradiction with the educational mission of a university to miss a small number of classes to participate in athletic events.
Should high school athletes be considered employees? Musicians? Actors?
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on March 27, 2014, 11:34:20 AM
Quote from: grumbler on March 27, 2014, 06:30:57 AM
I don't see why anyone would advocate the elimination of college sports, like Timmay does.
He said death to the NCAA. Not death to college sports. Not the same thing.
You can't have inter-collegiate sports without an agreed set of rules and framework to enforce them. If there is no NCAA (or something just like it under a different name), there are no inter-college sports. The university presidents that run the NCAA would never give up their responsibility for something with such an impact on their students.
Quote from: grumbler on March 27, 2014, 11:36:34 AM
Quote from: alfred russel on March 27, 2014, 09:59:38 AM
They wouldn't have to pay taxes. Athletic scholarships (including room, board, books, tuition, etc) are not compensation under tax law--that is well established. Rulings by the National Labor Relations Board don't impact that.
They are not compensation under law unless the students in question are employees (which is what the NLRB has ruled). If tuition is remitted, then it is not taxable, but other compensation is (see: Graduate Student Instructor).
College athletics has already been litigated. College athletic scholarships aren't taxable. Rulings by the labor relations board doesn't overturn existing tax case law.
Quote from: alfred russel on March 27, 2014, 11:38:40 AM
Athletics are (or imo at least should be) an integral part of the educational experience. I don't see any contradiction with the educational mission of a university to miss a small number of classes to participate in athletic events.
Agreed. It is no different than band students missing classes to participate in band contests, or engineering students missing classes to participate in the Solar Challenge. It can be carried too far (and probably is for football and basketball), but there isn't any principal being violated by the mere missing of classes.
Quote from: alfred russel on March 27, 2014, 11:40:54 AM
College athletics has already been litigated. College athletic scholarships aren't taxable. Rulings by the labor relations board doesn't overturn existing tax case law.
The case of graduate student instructors had already been litigated, and then the law (and tax law) changed when GSIs at some universities declared themselves employees and formed unions.
Quote from: grumbler on March 27, 2014, 11:43:52 AMthere isn't any principal being violated by the mere missing of classes.
Well I'd hope they were playing sports during those times, not doing *that*. :unsure: :P
Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 27, 2014, 11:39:08 AM
Should high school athletes be considered employees? Musicians? Actors?
Some soccer players maybe actors, but not generally I think.
Quote from: Capetan Mihali on March 27, 2014, 11:48:42 AM
Quote from: grumbler on March 27, 2014, 11:43:52 AMthere isn't any principal being violated by the mere missing of classes.
Well I'd hope they were playing sports during those times, not doing *that*. :unsure: :P
:lol: Damn spell-correct!
Quote from: grumbler on March 27, 2014, 11:46:26 AM
Quote from: alfred russel on March 27, 2014, 11:40:54 AM
College athletics has already been litigated. College athletic scholarships aren't taxable. Rulings by the labor relations board doesn't overturn existing tax case law.
The case of graduate student instructors had already been litigated, and then the law (and tax law) changed when GSIs at some universities declared themselves employees and formed unions.
We shall see. I would bet quite a bit that college athletes don't have to pay taxes on their scholarships.
I thought the NLRB shot down the GSIs on the basis that they were "primarily" doing their teaching (i.e. work) to fulfill a requirement for their own education.
Quote from: Capetan Mihali on March 27, 2014, 11:56:53 AM
I thought the NLRB shot down the GSIs on the basis that they were "primarily" doing their teaching (i.e. work) to fulfill a requirement for their own education.
There is a tax difference between Graduate Assistants (not employees) and GSI (are employees). As far as I can tell, that difference is just that GSIs are GAs who have formed a union and declared themselves employees but that may be too simplified.
Remember that NRLB rulings apply only to private schools. At public universities, any employees are public employees and so bound by their own state's rules.
Quote from: Capetan Mihali on March 27, 2014, 11:56:53 AM
I thought the NLRB shot down the GSIs on the basis that they were "primarily" doing their teaching (i.e. work) to fulfill a requirement for their own education.
In a blaze of glory?
Quote from: grumbler on March 27, 2014, 12:05:05 PM
Quote from: Capetan Mihali on March 27, 2014, 11:56:53 AM
I thought the NLRB shot down the GSIs on the basis that they were "primarily" doing their teaching (i.e. work) to fulfill a requirement for their own education.
There is a tax difference between Graduate Assistants (not employees) and GSI (are employees).
Ah right. I think that was sort of the purpose of the GSI appellation in the first place.
Here is the 197 IRS ruling on the topic: http://www.charitableplanning.com/document/672289 (http://www.charitableplanning.com/document/672289)
Quote from: grumbler on March 27, 2014, 11:39:57 AM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on March 27, 2014, 11:34:20 AM
Quote from: grumbler on March 27, 2014, 06:30:57 AM
I don't see why anyone would advocate the elimination of college sports, like Timmay does.
He said death to the NCAA. Not death to college sports. Not the same thing.
You can't have inter-collegiate sports without an agreed set of rules and framework to enforce them.
Correct. But that leaves a lot of room to discuss what those rules and frameworks should be.
Something like an NCAA is needed, but not necessarily the NCAA we have.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on March 27, 2014, 12:41:39 PM
Quote from: grumbler on March 27, 2014, 11:39:57 AM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on March 27, 2014, 11:34:20 AM
Quote from: grumbler on March 27, 2014, 06:30:57 AM
I don't see why anyone would advocate the elimination of college sports, like Timmay does.
He said death to the NCAA. Not death to college sports. Not the same thing.
You can't have inter-collegiate sports without an agreed set of rules and framework to enforce them.
Correct. But that leaves a lot of room to discuss what those rules and frameworks should be.
Something like an NCAA is needed, but not necessarily the NCAA we have.
Perhaps one could go further and say certainly not the NCAA we have today.
Quote from: alfred russel on March 27, 2014, 11:38:40 AM
Athletics are (or imo at least should be) an integral part of the educational experience. I don't see any contradiction with the educational mission of a university to miss a small number of classes to participate in athletic events.
Sure, as long as the dog is the one wagging the tail and not the other way around.
But if you get to the point where non-trivial numbers of students are being admitted without proper academic preparation and qualification and little is done to educate them, it starts to look like a chihuahua hanging off a sauropod tail.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on March 27, 2014, 12:41:39 PMSomething like an NCAA is needed, but not necessarily the NCAA we have.
You go to college athlete unionization with the NCAA you have, not the NCAA you wish you had.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on March 27, 2014, 12:47:22 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on March 27, 2014, 11:38:40 AM
Athletics are (or imo at least should be) an integral part of the educational experience. I don't see any contradiction with the educational mission of a university to miss a small number of classes to participate in athletic events.
Sure, as long as the dog is the one wagging the tail and not the other way around.
But if you get to the point where non-trivial numbers of students are being admitted without proper academic preparation and qualification and little is done to educate them, it starts to look like a chihuahua hanging off a sauropod tail.
Certainly not at Northwestern.
Quote from: crazy canuck on March 27, 2014, 01:25:41 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on March 27, 2014, 01:17:39 PM
[Certainly not at Northwestern.
Certainly?
97% graduate. I'd *certainly* say something is being done to educate them.
Quote from: alfred russel on March 27, 2014, 01:29:05 PM
Quote from: crazy canuck on March 27, 2014, 01:25:41 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on March 27, 2014, 01:17:39 PM
[Certainly not at Northwestern.
Certainly?
97% graduate. I'd *certainly* say something is being done to educate them.
Well that must be the source of Northwestern's problems. If they'd left their students dumb and uneducated, they wouldn't know enough to go and unionize themselves.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on March 27, 2014, 12:41:39 PM
Correct. But that leaves a lot of room to discuss what those rules and frameworks should be.
Something like an NCAA is needed, but not necessarily the NCAA we have.
There is a world of difference between "a lot of room to discuss what those rules and frameworks should be" and "Death to the NCAA!!111." What would you change about the NCAA we now have? Not the rules and frameworks 9those have changed many times over the lifespan of the NCAA), but the NCAA itself? Would you put someone other than university presidents in charge of it? Would you make it a for-profit entity? What?
Quote from: alfred russel on March 27, 2014, 01:29:05 PM
97% graduate. I'd *certainly* say something is being done to educate them.
Your certainty is misplaced. That 97% is just football GSR. GSR is an NCAA standard, and Minsky wants to kill the NCAA, so NCAA stats can't mean anything.
The NCAA GSR is indeed a statistic designed to flatter. That is not to say it is inaccurate but it is a way of presenting the data that looks more favorable Independent studies like the AGG report rather different results.
As it happens Northwestern ranks #1 in GSR. Assuming they are applying rigorous and consistent standards for graduation, that says good things about Northwestern and their athletics program.
I've never really understood the US system. Why don't professional clubs simply hire high school kids?
Fuck the Union.
Quote from: Iormlund on March 27, 2014, 06:43:27 PM
I've never really understood the US system. Why don't professional clubs simply hire high school kids?
NFL doesn't allow it. NBA doesn't anymore. I think.
MLB, you can be drafted out of high school.
Quote from: Iormlund on March 27, 2014, 06:43:27 PM
I've never really understood the US system. Why don't professional clubs simply hire high school kids?
Because they don't want to. The pro game grew out of the college game, and the pros never saw a need to create a training league when they could just force the colleges to undertake the player training, and then skim off the best college players. I don'[t think you'd find much public resistance to forcing the pros to have their own development league, or at least to providing a means bar college for kids to develop and demonstrate their skills.
I can understand that attitude coming from clubs with a big wallet. They can get the best of an already proven group. But what's in it for the small clubs? The only way they can compete is finding talent before the big ones. Otherwise they will always be left with the leftovers.
Quote from: Iormlund on March 27, 2014, 07:18:16 PM
I can understand that attitude coming from clubs with a big wallet. They can get the best of an already proven group. But what's in it for the small clubs? The only way they can compete is finding talent before the big ones. Otherwise they will always be left with the leftovers.
That's not how it works here though. All four major sports (NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL) use a draft. The worst team gets to pick first and the best team picks last. It's a little more complicated in the NBA then that, but the aim is the same, to provide an equal playing field with regards to the aquisition of new talent.
USSA.
Quote from: Iormlund on March 27, 2014, 06:43:27 PM
I've never really understood the US system. Why don't professional clubs simply hire high school kids?
Since this is mostly about football, it is also worth pointing out that high school football players simply aren't physically ready for pro football with a very few exceptions.
Quote from: alfred russel on March 27, 2014, 08:17:12 PM
Quote from: Iormlund on March 27, 2014, 06:43:27 PM
I've never really understood the US system. Why don't professional clubs simply hire high school kids?
Since this is mostly about football, it is also worth pointing out that high school football players simply aren't physically ready for pro football with a very few exceptions.
I started to type 'with no exceptions' then second guessed myself but now I am back. I do not think anyone, even a kicker, could compete in teh NFL right out fo high school.
Quote from: Iormlund on March 27, 2014, 07:18:16 PM
I can understand that attitude coming from clubs with a big wallet. They can get the best of an already proven group. But what's in it for the small clubs? The only way they can compete is finding talent before the big ones. Otherwise they will always be left with the leftovers.
Don't try to apply European sport club logic to American leagues, they work in completely different ways.
Quote from: The Larch on March 27, 2014, 08:25:50 PM
Quote from: Iormlund on March 27, 2014, 07:18:16 PM
I can understand that attitude coming from clubs with a big wallet. They can get the best of an already proven group. But what's in it for the small clubs? The only way they can compete is finding talent before the big ones. Otherwise they will always be left with the leftovers.
Don't try to apply European sport club logic to American leagues, they work in completely different ways.
Yeah baseball use to be that way, but then Curt Flood has to fuck it all up!
Quote from: sbr on March 27, 2014, 08:20:06 PM
I started to type 'with no exceptions' then second guessed myself but now I am back. I do not think anyone, even a kicker, could compete in teh NFL right out fo high school.
I remember Adrian Peterson, when he was in high school, talking about maybe jumping straight to the NFL, and people (including me) were like :frusty:. But then we saw him as a true freshman at OU just flattening people. I don't think I've seen a lineman or QB that was NFL ready out of high school, but "no exceptions" at all positions is a high bar.
Isn't this kind of a tautology though? 18/19-year-olds aren't ready for the NFL because 18/19-year-olds don't play in the NFL..?
Quote from: alfred russel on March 27, 2014, 08:37:15 PM
Quote from: sbr on March 27, 2014, 08:20:06 PM
I started to type 'with no exceptions' then second guessed myself but now I am back. I do not think anyone, even a kicker, could compete in teh NFL right out fo high school.
I remember Adrian Peterson, when he was in high school, talking about maybe jumping straight to the NFL, and people (including me) were like :frusty:. But then we saw him as a true freshman at OU just flattening people. I don't think I've seen a lineman or QB that was NFL ready out of high school, but "no exceptions" at all positions is a high bar.
I think that you could make the argument that no kid is ready to start in the NFL out of high school, but they are almost never ready to start when they come out of college, either.
Quote from: Capetan Mihali on March 27, 2014, 08:38:42 PM
Isn't this kind of a tautology though? 18/19-year-olds aren't ready for the NFL because 18/19-year-olds don't play in the NFL..?
I don't think so. 18/19-year-olds are not physically well-enough developed to play in the NFL. They haven't had the weight training or the dietary support they need until they get to college. That's not to say that they couldn't play in a D-league. I think that they can, and should. College ball should be for those kids that want the college experience. That works well in hockey and baseball. An NFL D-league wouldn't be profitable, because of the high costs and limited number of games, but the NFL (and NBA) can afford to lose a few tens of millions a year to develop their own talent.
I'm as clueless about football as Dorsey is about most other things (know one or two things and can turn a decent sentence), but yeah, if the NFL means pro football as played in its current incarnation, then I doubt many 18-year-olds can stand up to flattening by 375 pound fellows in their mid-20s.
But I get the sense that the whole specter of TBI is increasingly making big hits a less appealing element for the NFL. I don't know really what the league can do to change the style of play so it is safer for the head, but I imagine it could let them expand into younger players.
Quote from: grumbler on March 27, 2014, 08:44:48 PM
Quote from: Capetan Mihali on March 27, 2014, 08:38:42 PM
Isn't this kind of a tautology though? 18/19-year-olds aren't ready for the NFL because 18/19-year-olds don't play in the NFL..?
I don't think so. 18/19-year-olds are not physically well-enough developed to play in the NFL. They haven't had the weight training or the dietary support they need until they get to college. That's not to say that they couldn't play in a D-league. I think that they can, and should.
For the vast majority of athletes, I agree. However, there are some athletes that are 20 when they start playing college ball and have been basically groomed for football with private coaches most of their lives (see Jimmy Clausen).
Also, take Adrian Peterson's scouting report from high school (per wiki, via rivals):
height 6'1 weight 217 40 time 4.3
And then when he went to the NFL:
height 6'1 weight 217 40 time 4.40
So he didn't bulk up at all in college. It isn't inconceivable his 40 yard time dropped in college--he took a lot of abuse on a lot of carries and had some serious injuries that caused him to miss time in 2 of his 3 years. He was an absolutely beast from the time he hit college as well as the NFL. He really didn't show much improvement from the time he got to college to the time he left college--his first year was by all accounts his best, although he was derailed by injury his last two.
The point being: Adrian Peterson was the best running back in college football his true freshman year (I would argue by some distance), he was the same size as he was when he went to the NFL, and sustained a heavy workload without significant injury. Can you really say with certainly he couldn't have contributed to some NFL team that year?
Quote from: alfred russel on March 27, 2014, 09:04:57 PM
Quote from: grumbler on March 27, 2014, 08:44:48 PM
Quote from: Capetan Mihali on March 27, 2014, 08:38:42 PM
Isn't this kind of a tautology though? 18/19-year-olds aren't ready for the NFL because 18/19-year-olds don't play in the NFL..?
I don't think so. 18/19-year-olds are not physically well-enough developed to play in the NFL. They haven't had the weight training or the dietary support they need until they get to college. That's not to say that they couldn't play in a D-league. I think that they can, and should.
For the vast majority of athletes, I agree. However, there are some athletes that are 20 when they start playing college ball and have been basically groomed for football with private coaches most of their lives (see Jimmy Clausen).
Also, take Adrian Peterson's scouting report from high school (per wiki, via rivals):
height 6'1 weight 217 40 time 4.3
And then when he went to the NFL:
height 6'1 weight 217 40 time 4.40
So he didn't bulk up at all in college. It isn't inconceivable his 40 yard time dropped in college--he took a lot of abuse on a lot of carries and had some serious injuries that caused him to miss time in 2 of his 3 years. He was an absolutely beast from the time he hit college as well as the NFL. He really didn't show much improvement from the time he got to college to the time he left college--his first year was by all accounts his best, although he was derailed by injury his last two.
The point being: Adrian Peterson was the best running back in college football his true freshman year (I would argue by some distance), he was the same size as he was when he went to the NFL, and sustained a heavy workload without significant injury. Can you really say with certainly he couldn't have contributed to some NFL team that year?
I am not taking a position on Peterson at all, other than noting that (1) he did bulk up in college, going from 210 (if you believe rivals) or even 205 (sayeth scout) [first lesson: never trust numbers in Wikipedia] and (2) 217 pounds of weight could be 217 different pounds after three years of weight room and proper diet.
I would agree with you that running back is one of the prime (maybe even THE prime) positions from which a player can contribute immediately or early (just as is true from high school to college).
Actually, on reflection I'm going to say Adrian Peterson could have gone straight to the NFL.
If he had the durability and skill to rush for 1900+ yards in the Big 12 and finish second in the heisman voting, he had the durability and skill to at least be a reserve RB and/or special teams contributor in the NFL.
Plus, college conditioning and training really isn't the same as the NFL. If he left school in December and focused on fitness, that would give him 9 months to get ready for opening day. 9 months of hardcore training from a very strong starting position isn't going to outclass 3 years of lesser intensity training interupted with some major injuries (broken collar bone, broken foot) and a bunch of dents and dings.
The NFL would rather College Football weed out the bad players and train their prospects for them. Sure beats having to pay for a development and minor league system.
I've come to dislike the college game, I used to like it more for various reasons but I've come to dislike just about every aspect of college football and prefer NFL in almost all respects. At least part of that is the stupidity of pretending some of these guys are college students or that people who spend 60 hours per week on football are just "student athletes" and not basically minor league football players.
I think the European "club" system for Euro football is a much cleaner system to me and still lets you have a lot of the local/tribal affiliations that make college football so popular.
I just want college football to be like it was in the 80s :mellow:
I hate the spread offense.
Quote from: Ed Anger on March 28, 2014, 01:06:03 PM
I hate the spread offense.
Three yards and a cloud of yuk.
Quote from: derspiess on March 28, 2014, 01:05:25 PM
I just want college football to be like it was in the 80s :mellow:
Dominated by Miami? :yuk:
Think how insufferable Dorsey would be.
Quote from: alfred russel on March 27, 2014, 09:04:57 PMThe point being: Adrian Peterson was the best running back in college football his true freshman year (I would argue by some distance),
Bummer about that Doak Walker Award, right?
Quote from: Valmy on March 28, 2014, 01:26:14 PM
Quote from: derspiess on March 28, 2014, 01:05:25 PM
I just want college football to be like it was in the 80s :mellow:
Dominated by Miami? :yuk:
Think how insufferable Dorsey would be.
Obvious jokes about how Miami has sucked aside (and good god they have sucked), have I really given you reason to believe that I'd be insufferable the last 9 or so years? :huh:
Quote from: MadBurgerMaker on March 28, 2014, 02:13:41 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on March 27, 2014, 09:04:57 PMThe point being: Adrian Peterson was the best running back in college football his true freshman year (I would argue by some distance),
Bummer about that Doak Walker Award, right?
There were more exceptional performers in 2004 than I remember. I still think he was the best. He had more yards and yards per carry than the award winner. Probably freshman bias contributed to him not winning. He was second in the heisman voting, losing to a QB.
However, more to the point, did you know he had more carries than anyone in college football his freshman year?
I'd like to hear the argument that a guy durable enough to hold up in the Big 12 while turning in exceptional performances and more carries than anyone in the country still doesn't have the physical maturity to contribute in some capacity to an NFL team.
Quote from: alfred russel on March 28, 2014, 02:39:44 PM
Obvious jokes about how Miami has sucked aside (and good god they have sucked), have I really given you reason to believe that I'd be insufferable the last 9 or so years? :huh:
You used to really give it to the FSU fans around here. But all Miami fans were back then.
Where did Peterson play college ball and what year did he come out?
While you're at it, remind me how many years of college ball the NFL requires before someone is draft eligible.
NBA I know only requires one, i.e. the Calipari model.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 28, 2014, 02:50:16 PM
Where did Peterson play college ball and what year did he come out?
A horrible horrible place whose name is synonymous with all that is evil about college sports. Yes. Oklahoma *shiver*
I believe he came out after his Junior Year. You have to be out of High School 3 years to be drafted, but not necessarily have ever played in College (though almost everybody has played College ball, what else are you going to do for three years?).
Quote from: Valmy on March 28, 2014, 02:48:34 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on March 28, 2014, 02:39:44 PM
Obvious jokes about how Miami has sucked aside (and good god they have sucked), have I really given you reason to believe that I'd be insufferable the last 9 or so years? :huh:
You used to really give it to the FSU fans around here. But all Miami fans were back then.
I actually like FSU. Half my family went to school there and I am from Tallahassee. My generation of Miami fans tend to respect FSU--FSU and Miami were the two independent schools that UF was trying to freeze out and kept playing each other even though they didn't have to (this feeling is not universal and the younger generation seems to have more of a "fuck fsu" mentality).
However, put yourself back in the first half of the 2000s. They had a coach that went senile and apparently couldn't remember his players' name, an inept offensive coordinator hired through nepotism, they had some really serious gambling allegations regarding a starting QB, and worst of all they had a 4 year starter named Chris Rix.
This is old (Oct 2011) and long, but I thought it was interesting and I don't think it has been posted here before.
I am only copying the first 3 pages here, rest to be found at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/10/the-shame-of-college-sports/308643/
QuoteThe Shame of College Sports
A litany of scandals in recent years have made the corruption of college sports constant front-page news. We profess outrage each time we learn that yet another student-athlete has been taking money under the table. But the real scandal is the very structure of college sports, wherein student-athletes generate billions of dollars for universities and private companies while earning nothing for themselves. Here, a leading civil-rights historian makes the case for paying college athletes—and reveals how a spate of lawsuits working their way through the courts could destroy the NCAA.
"I'M NOT HIDING," Sonny Vaccaro told a closed hearing at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., in 2001. "We want to put our materials on the bodies of your athletes, and the best way to do that is buy your school. Or buy your coach."
Vaccaro's audience, the members of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, bristled. These were eminent reformers—among them the president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, two former heads of the U.S. Olympic Committee, and several university presidents and chancellors. The Knight Foundation, a nonprofit that takes an interest in college athletics as part of its concern with civic life, had tasked them with saving college sports from runaway commercialism as embodied by the likes of Vaccaro, who, since signing his pioneering shoe contract with Michael Jordan in 1984, had built sponsorship empires successively at Nike, Adidas, and Reebok. Not all the members could hide their scorn for the "sneaker pimp" of schoolyard hustle, who boasted of writing checks for millions to everybody in higher education.
"Why," asked Bryce Jordan, the president emeritus of Penn State, "should a university be an advertising medium for your industry?"
Vaccaro did not blink. "They shouldn't, sir," he replied. "You sold your souls, and you're going to continue selling them. You can be very moral and righteous in asking me that question, sir," Vaccaro added with irrepressible good cheer, "but there's not one of you in this room that's going to turn down any of our money. You're going to take it. I can only offer it."
William Friday, a former president of North Carolina's university system, still winces at the memory. "Boy, the silence that fell in that room," he recalled recently. "I never will forget it." Friday, who founded and co-chaired two of the three Knight Foundation sports initiatives over the past 20 years, called Vaccaro "the worst of all" the witnesses ever to come before the panel.
But what Vaccaro said in 2001 was true then, and it's true now: corporations offer money so they can profit from the glory of college athletes, and the universities grab it. In 2010, despite the faltering economy, a single college athletic league, the football-crazed Southeastern Conference (SEC), became the first to crack the billion-dollar barrier in athletic receipts. The Big Ten pursued closely at $905 million. That money comes from a combination of ticket sales, concession sales, merchandise, licensing fees, and other sources—but the great bulk of it comes from television contracts.
Educators are in thrall to their athletic departments because of these television riches and because they respect the political furies that can burst from a locker room. "There's fear," Friday told me when I visited him on the University of North Carolina campus in Chapel Hill last fall. As we spoke, two giant construction cranes towered nearby over the university's Kenan Stadium, working on the latest $77 million renovation. (The University of Michigan spent almost four times that much to expand its Big House.) Friday insisted that for the networks, paying huge sums to universities was a bargain. "We do every little thing for them," he said. "We furnish the theater, the actors, the lights, the music, and the audience for a drama measured neatly in time slots. They bring the camera and turn it on." Friday, a weathered idealist at 91, laments the control universities have ceded in pursuit of this money. If television wants to broadcast football from here on a Thursday night, he said, "we shut down the university at 3 o'clock to accommodate the crowds." He longed for a campus identity more centered in an academic mission.
The United States is the only country in the world that hosts big-time sports at institutions of higher learning. This should not, in and of itself, be controversial. College athletics are rooted in the classical ideal of Mens sana in corpore sano—a sound mind in a sound body—and who would argue with that? College sports are deeply inscribed in the culture of our nation. Half a million young men and women play competitive intercollegiate sports each year. Millions of spectators flock into football stadiums each Saturday in the fall, and tens of millions more watch on television. The March Madness basketball tournament each spring has become a major national event, with upwards of 80 million watching it on television and talking about the games around the office water cooler. ESPN has spawned ESPNU, a channel dedicated to college sports, and Fox Sports and other cable outlets are developing channels exclusively to cover sports from specific regions or divisions.
With so many people paying for tickets and watching on television, college sports has become Very Big Business. According to various reports, the football teams at Texas, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, and Penn State—to name just a few big-revenue football schools—each earn between $40 million and $80 million in profits a year, even after paying coaches multimillion-dollar salaries. When you combine so much money with such high, almost tribal, stakes—football boosters are famously rabid in their zeal to have their alma mater win—corruption is likely to follow.
Scandal after scandal has rocked college sports. In 2010, the NCAA sanctioned the University of Southern California after determining that star running back Reggie Bush and his family had received "improper benefits" while he played for the Trojans. (Among other charges, Bush and members of his family were alleged to have received free airfare and limousine rides, a car, and a rent-free home in San Diego, from sports agents who wanted Bush as a client.) The Bowl Championship Series stripped USC of its 2004 national title, and Bush returned the Heisman Trophy he had won in 2005. Last fall, as Auburn University football stormed its way to an undefeated season and a national championship, the team's star quarterback, Cam Newton, was dogged by allegations that his father had used a recruiter to solicit up to $180,000 from Mississippi State in exchange for his son's matriculation there after junior college in 2010. Jim Tressel, the highly successful head football coach of the Ohio State Buckeyes, resigned last spring after the NCAA alleged he had feigned ignorance of rules violations by players on his team. At least 28 players over the course of the previous nine seasons, according to Sports Illustrated, had traded autographs, jerseys, and other team memorabilia in exchange for tattoos or cash at a tattoo parlor in Columbus, in violation of NCAA rules. Late this summer, Yahoo Sports reported that the NCAA was investigating allegations that a University of Miami booster had given millions of dollars in illicit cash and services to more than 70 Hurricanes football players over eight years.
The list of scandals goes on. With each revelation, there is much wringing of hands. Critics scold schools for breaking faith with their educational mission, and for failing to enforce the sanctity of "amateurism." Sportswriters denounce the NCAA for both tyranny and impotence in its quest to "clean up" college sports. Observers on all sides express jumbled emotions about youth and innocence, venting against professional mores or greedy amateurs.
For all the outrage, the real scandal is not that students are getting illegally paid or recruited, it's that two of the noble principles on which the NCAA justifies its existence—"amateurism" and the "student-athlete"—are cynical hoaxes, legalistic confections propagated by the universities so they can exploit the skills and fame of young athletes. The tragedy at the heart of college sports is not that some college athletes are getting paid, but that more of them are not.
Don Curtis, a UNC trustee, told me that impoverished football players cannot afford movie tickets or bus fare home. Curtis is a rarity among those in higher education today, in that he dares to violate the signal taboo: "I think we should pay these guys something."
Fans and educators alike recoil from this proposal as though from original sin. Amateurism is the whole point, they say. Paid athletes would destroy the integrity and appeal of college sports. Many former college athletes object that money would have spoiled the sanctity of the bond they enjoyed with their teammates. I, too, once shuddered instinctively at the notion of paid college athletes.
But after an inquiry that took me into locker rooms and ivory towers across the country, I have come to believe that sentiment blinds us to what's before our eyes. Big-time college sports are fully commercialized. Billions of dollars flow through them each year. The NCAA makes money, and enables universities and corporations to make money, from the unpaid labor of young athletes.
Slavery analogies should be used carefully. College athletes are not slaves. Yet to survey the scene—corporations and universities enriching themselves on the backs of uncompensated young men, whose status as "student-athletes" deprives them of the right to due process guaranteed by the Constitution—is to catch an unmistakable whiff of the plantation. Perhaps a more apt metaphor is colonialism: college sports, as overseen by the NCAA, is a system imposed by well-meaning paternalists and rationalized with hoary sentiments about caring for the well-being of the colonized. But it is, nonetheless, unjust. The NCAA, in its zealous defense of bogus principles, sometimes destroys the dreams of innocent young athletes.
The NCAA today is in many ways a classic cartel. Efforts to reform it—most notably by the three Knight Commissions over the course of 20 years—have, while making changes around the edges, been largely fruitless. The time has come for a major overhaul. And whether the powers that be like it or not, big changes are coming. Threats loom on multiple fronts: in Congress, the courts, breakaway athletic conferences, student rebellion, and public disgust. Swaddled in gauzy clichés, the NCAA presides over a vast, teetering glory.
Founding Myths
From the start, amateurism in college sports has been honored more often in principle than in fact; the NCAA was built of a mixture of noble and venal impulses. In the late 19th century, intellectuals believed that the sporting arena simulated an impending age of Darwinian struggle. Because the United States did not hold a global empire like England's, leaders warned of national softness once railroads conquered the last continental frontier. As though heeding this warning, ingenious students turned variations on rugby into a toughening agent. Today a plaque in New Brunswick, New Jersey, commemorates the first college game, on November 6, 1869, when Rutgers beat Princeton 6–4.
Walter Camp graduated from Yale in 1880 so intoxicated by the sport that he devoted his life to it without pay, becoming "the father of American football." He persuaded other schools to reduce the chaos on the field by trimming each side from 15 players to 11, and it was his idea to paint measuring lines on the field. He conceived functional designations for players, coining terms such as quarterback. His game remained violent by design. Crawlers could push the ball forward beneath piles of flying elbows without pause until they cried "Down!" in submission.
In an 1892 game against its archrival, Yale, the Harvard football team was the first to deploy a "flying wedge," based on Napoleon's surprise concentrations of military force. In an editorial calling for the abolition of the play, The New York Times described it as "half a ton of bone and muscle coming into collision with a man weighing 160 or 170 pounds," noting that surgeons often had to be called onto the field. Three years later, the continuing mayhem prompted the Harvard faculty to take the first of two votes to abolish football. Charles Eliot, the university's president, brought up other concerns. "Deaths and injuries are not the strongest argument against football," declared Eliot. "That cheating and brutality are profitable is the main evil." Still, Harvard football persisted. In 1903, fervent alumni built Harvard Stadium with zero college funds. The team's first paid head coach, Bill Reid, started in 1905 at nearly twice the average salary for a full professor.
A newspaper story from that year, illustrated with the Grim Reaper laughing on a goalpost, counted 25 college players killed during football season. A fairy-tale version of the founding of the NCAA holds that President Theodore Roosevelt, upset by a photograph of a bloodied Swarthmore College player, vowed to civilize or destroy football. The real story is that Roosevelt maneuvered shrewdly to preserve the sport—and give a boost to his beloved Harvard. After McClure's magazine published a story on corrupt teams with phantom students, a muckraker exposed Walter Camp's $100,000 slush fund at Yale. In response to mounting outrage, Roosevelt summoned leaders from Harvard, Princeton, and Yale to the White House, where Camp parried mounting criticism and conceded nothing irresponsible in the college football rules he'd established. At Roosevelt's behest, the three schools issued a public statement that college sports must reform to survive, and representatives from 68 colleges founded a new organization that would soon be called the National Collegiate Athletic Association. A Haverford College official was confirmed as secretary but then promptly resigned in favor of Bill Reid, the new Harvard coach, who instituted new rules that benefited Harvard's playing style at the expense of Yale's. At a stroke, Roosevelt saved football and dethroned Yale.
For nearly 50 years, the NCAA, with no real authority and no staff to speak of, enshrined amateur ideals that it was helpless to enforce. (Not until 1939 did it gain the power even to mandate helmets.) In 1929, the Carnegie Foundation made headlines with a report, "American College Athletics," which concluded that the scramble for players had "reached the proportions of nationwide commerce." Of the 112 schools surveyed, 81 flouted NCAA recommendations with inducements to students ranging from open payrolls and disguised booster funds to no-show jobs at movie studios. Fans ignored the uproar, and two-thirds of the colleges mentioned told The New York Times that they planned no changes. In 1939, freshman players at the University of Pittsburgh went on strike because they were getting paid less than their upperclassman teammates.
Embarrassed, the NCAA in 1948 enacted a "Sanity Code," which was supposed to prohibit all concealed and indirect benefits for college athletes; any money for athletes was to be limited to transparent scholarships awarded solely on financial need. Schools that violated this code would be expelled from NCAA membership and thus exiled from competitive sports.
This bold effort flopped. Colleges balked at imposing such a drastic penalty on each other, and the Sanity Code was repealed within a few years. The University of Virginia went so far as to call a press conference to say that if its athletes were ever accused of being paid, they should be forgiven, because their studies at Thomas Jefferson's university were so rigorous.
The Big Bluff
In 1951, the NCAA seized upon a serendipitous set of events to gain control of intercollegiate sports. First, the organization hired a young college dropout named Walter Byers as executive director. A journalist who was not yet 30 years old, he was an appropriately inauspicious choice for the vaguely defined new post. He wore cowboy boots and a toupee. He shunned personal contact, obsessed over details, and proved himself a bureaucratic master of pervasive, anonymous intimidation. Although discharged from the Army during World War II for defective vision, Byers was able to see an opportunity in two contemporaneous scandals. In one, the tiny College of William and Mary, aspiring to challenge football powers Oklahoma and Ohio State, was found to be counterfeiting grades to keep conspicuously pampered players eligible. In the other, a basketball point-shaving conspiracy (in which gamblers paid players to perform poorly) had spread from five New York colleges to the University of Kentucky, the reigning national champion, generating tabloid "perp" photos of gangsters and handcuffed basketball players. The scandals posed a crisis of credibility for collegiate athletics, and nothing in the NCAA's feeble record would have led anyone to expect real reform.
But Byers managed to impanel a small infractions board to set penalties without waiting for a full convention of NCAA schools, which would have been inclined toward forgiveness. Then he lobbied a University of Kentucky dean—A. D. Kirwan, a former football coach and future university president—not to contest the NCAA's dubious legal position (the association had no actual authority to penalize the university), pleading that college sports must do something to restore public support. His gambit succeeded when Kirwan reluctantly accepted a landmark precedent: the Kentucky basketball team would be suspended for the entire 1952–53 season. Its legendary coach, Adolph Rupp, fumed for a year in limbo.
The Kentucky case created an aura of centralized command for an NCAA office that barely existed. At the same time, a colossal misperception gave Byers leverage to mine gold. Amazingly in retrospect, most colleges and marketing experts considered the advent of television a dire threat to sports. Studies found that broadcasts reduced live attendance, and therefore gate receipts, because some customers preferred to watch at home for free. Nobody could yet imagine the revenue bonanza that television represented. With clunky new TV sets proliferating, the 1951 NCAA convention voted 161–7 to outlaw televised games except for a specific few licensed by the NCAA staff.
All but two schools quickly complied. The University of Pennsylvania and Notre Dame protested the order to break contracts for home-game television broadcasts, claiming the right to make their own decisions. Byers objected that such exceptions would invite disaster. The conflict escalated. Byers brandished penalties for games televised without approval. Penn contemplated seeking antitrust protection through the courts. Byers issued a contamination notice, informing any opponent scheduled to play Penn that it would be punished for showing up to compete. In effect, Byers mobilized the college world to isolate the two holdouts in what one sportswriter later called "the Big Bluff."
Byers won. Penn folded in part because its president, the perennial White House contender Harold Stassen, wanted to mend relations with fellow schools in the emerging Ivy League, which would be formalized in 1954. When Notre Dame also surrendered, Byers conducted exclusive negotiations with the new television networks on behalf of every college team. Joe Rauh Jr., a prominent civil-rights attorney, helped him devise a rationing system to permit only 11 broadcasts a year—the fabled Game of the Week. Byers and Rauh selected a few teams for television exposure, excluding the rest. On June 6, 1952, NBC signed a one-year deal to pay the NCAA $1.14 million for a carefully restricted football package. Byers routed all contractual proceeds through his office. He floated the idea that, to fund an NCAA infrastructure, his organization should take a 60 percent cut; he accepted 12 percent that season. (For later contracts, as the size of television revenues grew exponentially, he backed down to 5 percent.) Proceeds from the first NBC contract were enough to rent an NCAA headquarters, in Kansas City.
Only one year into his job, Byers had secured enough power and money to regulate all of college sports. Over the next decade, the NCAA's power grew along with television revenues. Through the efforts of Byers's deputy and chief lobbyist, Chuck Neinas, the NCAA won an important concession in the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, in which Congress made its granting of a precious antitrust exemption to the National Football League contingent upon the blackout of professional football on Saturdays. Deftly, without even mentioning the NCAA, a rider on the bill carved each weekend into protected broadcast markets: Saturday for college, Sunday for the NFL. The NFL got its antitrust exemption. Byers, having negotiated the NCAA's television package up to $3.1 million per football season—which was higher than the NFL's figure in those early years—had made the NCAA into a spectacularly profitable cartel.
"We Eat What We Kill"
The NCAA's control of college sports still rested on a fragile base, however: the consent of the colleges and universities it governed. For a time, the vast sums of television money delivered to these institutions through Byers's deals made them willing to submit. But the big football powers grumbled about the portion of the television revenue diverted to nearly a thousand NCAA member schools that lacked major athletic programs. They chafed against cost-cutting measures—such as restrictions on team size—designed to help smaller schools. "I don't want Hofstra telling Texas how to play football," Darrell Royal, the Longhorns coach, griped. By the 1970s and '80s, as college football games delivered bonanza ratings—and advertising revenue—to the networks, some of the big football schools began to wonder: Why do we need to have our television coverage brokered through the NCAA? Couldn't we get a bigger cut of that TV money by dealing directly with the networks?
Byers faced a rude internal revolt. The NCAA's strongest legions, its big football schools, defected en masse. Calling the NCAA a price-fixing cartel that siphoned every television dollar through its coffers, in 1981 a rogue consortium of 61 major football schools threatened to sign an independent contract with NBC for $180 million over four years.
With a huge chunk of the NCAA's treasury walking out the door, Byers threatened sanctions, as he had against Penn and Notre Dame three decades earlier. But this time the universities of Georgia and Oklahoma responded with an antitrust suit. "It is virtually impossible to overstate the degree of our resentment ... of the NCAA," said William Banowsky, the president of the University of Oklahoma. In the landmark 1984 NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma decision, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the NCAA's latest football contracts with television—and any future ones—as an illegal restraint of trade that harmed colleges and viewers. Overnight, the NCAA's control of the television market for football vanished. Upholding Banowsky's challenge to the NCAA's authority, the Regents decision freed the football schools to sell any and all games the markets would bear. Coaches and administrators no longer had to share the revenue generated by their athletes with smaller schools outside the football consortium. "We eat what we kill," one official at the University of Texas bragged.
A few years earlier, this blow might have financially crippled the NCAA—but a rising tide of money from basketball concealed the structural damage of the Regents decision. During the 1980s, income from the March Madness college basketball tournament, paid directly by the television networks to the NCAA, grew tenfold. The windfall covered—and then far exceeded—what the organization had lost from football.
Still, Byers never forgave his former deputy Chuck Neinas for leading the rebel consortium. He knew that Neinas had seen from the inside how tenuous the NCAA's control really was, and how diligently Byers had worked to prop up its Oz-like façade. During Byers's tenure, the rule book for Division I athletes grew to 427 pages of scholastic detail. His NCAA personnel manual banned conversations around water coolers, and coffee cups on desks, while specifying exactly when drapes must be drawn at the NCAA's 27,000-square-foot headquarters near Kansas City (built in 1973 from the proceeds of a 1 percent surtax on football contracts). It was as though, having lost control where it mattered, Byers pedantically exerted more control where it didn't.
After retiring in 1987, Byers let slip his suppressed fury that the ingrate football conferences, having robbed the NCAA of television revenue, still expected it to enforce amateurism rules and police every leak of funds to college players. A lethal greed was "gnawing at the innards of college athletics," he wrote in his memoir. When Byers renounced the NCAA's pretense of amateurism, his former colleagues would stare blankly, as though he had gone senile or, as he wrote, "desecrated my sacred vows." But Byers was better positioned than anyone else to argue that college football's claim to amateurism was unfounded. Years later, as we will see, lawyers would seize upon his words to do battle with the NCAA.
Meanwhile, reformers fretted that commercialism was hurting college sports, and that higher education's historical balance between academics and athletics had been distorted by all the money sloshing around. News stories revealed that schools went to extraordinary measures to keep academically incompetent athletes eligible for competition, and would vie for the most-sought-after high-school players by proffering under-the-table payments. In 1991, the first Knight Commission report, "Keeping Faith With the Student Athlete," was published; the commission's "bedrock conviction" was that university presidents must seize control of the NCAA from athletic directors in order to restore the preeminence of academic values over athletic or commercial ones. In response, college presidents did take over the NCAA's governance. But by 2001, when the second Knight Commission report ("A Call to Action: Reconnecting College Sports and Higher Education") was issued, a new generation of reformers was admitting that problems of corruption and commercialism had "grown rather than diminished" since the first report. Meanwhile the NCAA itself, revenues rising, had moved into a $50 million, 116,000-square-foot headquarters in Indianapolis. By 2010, as the size of NCAA headquarters increased yet again with a 130,000-square-foot expansion, a third Knight Commission was groping blindly for a hold on independent college-athletic conferences that were behaving more like sovereign pro leagues than confederations of universities. And still more money continued to flow into NCAA coffers. With the basketball tournament's 2011 television deal, annual March Madness broadcast revenues had skyrocketed 50-fold in less than 30 years.
Quote from: sbr on March 28, 2014, 08:32:39 PM
This is old (Oct 2011) and long, but I thought it was interesting and I don't think it has been posted here before.
I am only copying the first 3 pages here, rest to be found at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/10/the-shame-of-college-sports/308643/
Lol, this would have been absolutely amazing! :D
QuoteWilliam Friday, the former North Carolina president, recalls being yanked from one Knight Commission meeting and sworn to secrecy about what might happen if a certain team made the NCAA championship basketball game. "They were going to dress and go out on the floor," Friday told me, "but refuse to play," in a wildcat student strike. Skeptics doubted such a diabolical plot. These were college kids—unlikely to second-guess their coaches, let alone forfeit the dream of a championship. Still, it was unnerving to contemplate what hung on the consent of a few young volunteers: several hundred million dollars in television revenue, countless livelihoods, the NCAA budget, and subsidies for sports at more than 1,000 schools. Friday's informants exhaled when the suspect team lost before the finals.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 28, 2014, 09:04:43 PM
Quote from: sbr on March 28, 2014, 08:32:39 PM
This is old (Oct 2011) and long, but I thought it was interesting and I don't think it has been posted here before.
I am only copying the first 3 pages here, rest to be found at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/10/the-shame-of-college-sports/308643/
Lol, this would have been absolutely amazing! :D
QuoteWilliam Friday, the former North Carolina president, recalls being yanked from one Knight Commission meeting and sworn to secrecy about what might happen if a certain team made the NCAA championship basketball game. "They were going to dress and go out on the floor," Friday told me, "but refuse to play," in a wildcat student strike. Skeptics doubted such a diabolical plot. These were college kids—unlikely to second-guess their coaches, let alone forfeit the dream of a championship. Still, it was unnerving to contemplate what hung on the consent of a few young volunteers: several hundred million dollars in television revenue, countless livelihoods, the NCAA budget, and subsidies for sports at more than 1,000 schools. Friday's informants exhaled when the suspect team lost before the finals.
It highlights the shitty state of journalism today.
Essentially the article goes through things that are already known and gets interview comments from key people about what has happened and the state of things today. None of it is groundbreaking. But here you have something that would be a huge story: a planned strike from a team from the NCAA tournament. And think how many people would have to know. The team obviously, and if the story made it to the college president of North Carolina, their coaches, and who knows how many administrators. It would be very difficult to keep that quiet, and if it was, it probably wouldn't take much prodding to find people willing to talk.
It is an unlikely story. I would think the journalist would try to get the name of the team and investigate. If Friday wouldn't give that name even off the record, it would be evidence that he is an unreliable source. I think the author should document why he didn't find evidence of this (either Friday wouldn't give leads off the record to enable him to follow up, or he did and he when he contacted the former coaching staff and players they wouldn't confirm it).
The author is playing this as though "his research for this piece woke him up to the NCAA's injustice". Here is a guess: he had an ax to grind all along. Atlantic FTL.
Quote from: alfred russel on March 28, 2014, 09:28:35 AM
Actually, on reflection I'm going to say Adrian Peterson could have gone straight to the NFL.
If he had the durability and skill to rush for 1900+ yards in the Big 12 and finish second in the heisman voting, he had the durability and skill to at least be a reserve RB and/or special teams contributor in the NFL.
Plus, college conditioning and training really isn't the same as the NFL. If he left school in December and focused on fitness, that would give him 9 months to get ready for opening day. 9 months of hardcore training from a very strong starting position isn't going to outclass 3 years of lesser intensity training interupted with some major injuries (broken collar bone, broken foot) and a bunch of dents and dings.
You of all people should know how important it is to age a player.
Besides, Peterson being capable against men and against boys is two different things. And even if he managed to get onto a team, why would he want to get himself crippled playing second string for chump change against players who are bigger, stronger and faster than he is. He's still finishing his physical development after all.
Quote from: alfred russel on March 28, 2014, 02:46:04 PM
There were more exceptional performers in 2004 than I remember. I still think he was the best. He had more yards and yards per carry than the award winner. Probably freshman bias contributed to him not winning. He was second in the heisman voting, losing to a QB.
Yes, there were quite a few exceptional performers.
QuoteHowever, more to the point, did you know he had more carries than anyone in college football his freshman year?
I'd like to hear the argument that a guy durable enough to hold up in the Big 12 while turning in exceptional performances and more carries than anyone in the country still doesn't have the physical maturity to contribute in some capacity to an NFL team.
You keep talking about how durable he was, but you realize he needed surgery after his freshman season and never played a full season again in college, right? And this was in a shorter college season, with less punishment than what he would be taking in the NFL. Adrian Peterson is a monster, but I still don't think it would have done him any good to go to the NFL right out of high school, unless the goal was to shorten or stunt his career.
Quote from: MadBurgerMaker on March 29, 2014, 03:07:01 PM
You keep talking about how durable he was, but you realize he needed surgery after his freshman season and never played a full season again in college, right? And this was in a shorter college season, with less punishment than what he would be taking in the NFL. Adrian Peterson is a monster, but I still don't think it would have done him any good to go to the NFL right out of high school, unless the goal was to shorten or stunt his career.
You are moving the goalposts. The discussion was whether a player out of high school could hang in the NFL, not whether it was good for him.
He was durable because his freshman year he carried the ball 339 times and lasted the season. 339 times! The most in college football. Even with a shortened season, that was more carries than anyone had in the NFL this year, and only 2 guys were over 300. Yeah he had injuries in his sophomore and junior year, but in his freshman year--the relevant year for him hanging in the NFL out of high school--he had the durability to last the season.
But here is another thing...Peterson was 19 his freshman season. Amobi Okoye was drafted 10th overall in 2007 at the age of 19. He was 20 by the time the season started, but he played all 16 games his rookie year. Okoye was about 9 months older than Peterson would have been had he gone straight to the NFL. I'm not aware of a physiological change in those 9 months them critical. Not to mention a guy like Jimmy Clausen was 20 during most of his first season out of high school (turned 20 in September).
He required surgery after a season against those monster Big 12 Ds, and never made it through a full season again. What part of that makes you go 'oh yeah, he can hang for 16 games against NFL defenses'?
And Amobi Okoye? Really? Is the topic shifting to 'first round mistakes' now? Damn Texans.
E : is Okoye in the league anymore? The Texans drafted him basically on potential, after four years at Lville, but he was gone before his rookie contract was even finished iirc.
Quote from: MadBurgerMaker on March 29, 2014, 04:34:12 PM
He required surgery after a season against those monster Big 12 Ds, and never made it through a full season again. What part of that makes you go 'oh yeah, he can hang for 16 games against NFL defenses'?
And Amobi Okoye? Really? Is the topic shifting to 'first round mistakes' now? Damn Texans.
E : is Okoye in the league anymore? The Texans drafted him basically on potential, after four years at Lville, but he was gone before his rookie contract was even finished iirc.
Fuck MBM, this is football. The average NFL career is between 3.5 and 6 years, depending whether you listen to the league or players association. It is a brutal sport that beats people down. Getting surgery after the season is what you do after you carried the ball more than anyone in college football. If you can still suit up after carrying the ball more than ANY OTHER PLAYER --many of whom have been out of high school 4 and 5 years -- you are durable. If development is so great during college, then how do you explain that a guy like Peterson that you apparently think can't contribute in the NFL is outperforming guys 4 and 5 years in college and about to go to the NFL?
Yeah Peterson broke his foot and collarbone in other years at OU. Shit happens. He has had big injuries in the NFL too. Over his career he has been remarkably durable at arguably the toughest position in the sport. Could he shoulder the burden of 339 carries in the NFL his first year out of high school? That isn't the argument. Lots of running backs contributed to NFL teams with just a fraction of those carries. In the NFL he would be collecting a paycheck.
As for Okoye, the argument isn't that he is good, or that he was a solid draft pick. The point is he apparently played for 6 years, and was able to contribute to the NFL at roughly the age of Peterson.
I hear you, but I just don't think even AD would have been able to hold up right after high school. Now, if the argument really is *only* 'can he contribute' well then sure. A whole shit load of HS and college athletes could contribute in some way. This doesn't mean they're ready to be a regular NFL player on a regular NFL roster though. There aren't enough slots to hand them out to guys who can play 5 games a season, no matter what the dumbshit Texans front office has done in the past.
Amobi only played for Houston that long because his contract made it hard to get rid of him iirc. He was pretty ineffective most of the time. Nice guy by all accounts though.
AP was getting all those carries against creampuff NCAA 'defences', not powerful NFL defences.
Okoye had the advantage of playing a low-impact position. He was ineffective and constantly defeated, so I'm not sure if that helps your case at all. A guy playing RB and getting teed off on by defenders would have a much rougher ride than a guy who is just getting manhandled by offensive guards.
Wait what is this about Christian Okoye?
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fcdn0.sbnation.com%2Fimported_assets%2F230732%2Fokoye.jpg&hash=8f5d4876c1c9675ee987349dd88e37609543d6ac)
No, the Nigerian Nightmare was like 26 when he got drafted. Amobi Akoye was the was the youngest first-round pick ever, and he was a bust.
Quote from: alfred russel on March 29, 2014, 05:27:49 PM
Fuck MBM, this is football. The average NFL career is between 3.5 and 6 years, depending whether you listen to the league or players association. It is a brutal sport that beats people down.
Careers aren't short because of the brutality of the sport--they're short because after 3 years or so, if you're not a star, they can replace you with a younger player who is just as good but cheaper. I've never seen comparable stats for the NBA or MLB, but I bet the average career there (and in the NHL and MLS as well) is about the same length as in the NFL.
Quote from: derspiess on March 28, 2014, 01:05:25 PM
I just want college football to be like it was in the 80s :mellow:
Yeah, back in the 80s players didn't have to spend 60 hours a week on football. Hell, if guys like Schembechler or Dooley had known that players today would be spending 80 hours a week on football, they'd spin in their graves, and they'd be right. There is no reason why someone who is a college student should be spending 100 hours a week on football. Now that players can form unions, at least at private schools, they can negotiate their 120-hours-a-week football requirements down to something more reasonable; the current 140 hours a week just isn't reasonable by any standard.