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Message: [QUOTE="All4SU, post: 248550, member: 381"] I'm saying I want collegiate athletics to be amateur athletics -- with student athletes. IMHO, people are just too quick to abandon this concept. Their "solution" is just to pay the players. That will absolutely ruin a game and a concept that is already teetering on the brink. IF the system is broken -- which I think we both agree it is -- let's fix this system and not just cave in and allow the integrity and purpose of collegiate athletics to disappear. I am VERY concerned that people don't value education. I believe this is particularly true among the lower socioeconomic strata, who see drugs, professional sports and jail as their only options. Let's re-design the system so that those kids who want to play professional basketball, and don't want to do much in school (high school, college, et al) move on with their lives. Let them be professional athletes. Let other kids -- kids who also have athletic skills -- use those skills to better themselves...get an education, get a degree, have a career. Let them pursue real life aspirations -- be an accountant, be an engineer, be a banker. Ultimately, this does more to benefit society, and reinforce the idea that education is the answer to raising one's self up -- not some spare change that will be spent by tomorrow. Yes, the college game as it exists gives way more exposure. If more of these kids went D-League, maybe that wouldn't be the case. You're trying to compare college as it exists now, with the D-League as it exists now. I'm saying the system is flawed. The D-League is for aspiring professional athletes. College is for an education, and for some, a chance to compete at a high level of athletics. You see, I accept that college athletics has become too big for it's own good. The current debate on paying players is evidence of that, in my opinion. Would college programs make less money? Yes. I'm okay with that too. Consider this: Maybe if more kids saw that if they went to the D-League and made a modest pay check for a few years -- and STILL didn't make it in the NBA -- that an education would have had more value to them. Maybe reinforcing that message is a good thing. [/QUOTE]

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