(09-22-2019 05:24 PM)HawaiiMongoose Wrote:  

(09-22-2019 03:52 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  I’m almost to the point where I am done with P5 college sports, with the exception of hockey. The collegiate model has ceased to be about developing well rounded college athletes into educated, productive, employed adults in the given fields that they have chosen to pursue. At the top tier what we have now are a handful of universities running a side business in big dollar athletics. Then you have the players—they are no longer grateful for the opportunity to receive a free education from a great university. They want more than that. They demand to be pampered and treated like rock stars. They don’t care about the classes or value the career paths that their educations can open to them. Players do not need paid.

I agree. The politicians fighting the NCAA don’t realize that what attracts many fans to college sports are the ideals of amateurism and a level playing field, even if those ideals are imperfectly implemented.

These fans value recruiting and playoff participation rules that limit the advantages conferred by institutional size and wealth, and thereby give any school a chance to excel on any given day if the coaches and players can out-smart and out-work the competition. These fans are motivated to buy tickets, make donations and attend games at least in part because they view those things as enabling amateur student-athletes to be successful in both the classroom and on the field. These fans believe the kids are doing their best to represent their university and community in exchange for the opportunity to earn a degree from the same school many of the fans did, and they love them for it.

If the politicians kill amateurism in collegiate athletics most of these fans will just melt away. They won’t spend money to support university-sponsored pro sports leagues where outcomes are predetermined by whichever school’s boosters have the most cash to invest in elite talent. They won’t dig into their pockets to support a system where kids whose motives they used to admire are mainly in it for the paycheck.

The likely outcome is that the thousands of educational opportunities for non-elite athletes created by the current system will be diminished. Much of the cash that pays their way into the classroom as well as onto the field will dry up. And once again the law of unintended consequences will have prevailed.

The reality is that few athletes even in the top programs go pro. How popular is minor league baseball? Or minor league basketball?

Most athletes are overpaid for their value now. The ones who are worth more wouldn't get full value. The only advantage of any sort of pay system is that money is given to the athletes instead of spending it making their training facilities 5 star.

If players want to go pro, they have options in every sport but football.