triplethrea
Scout Team
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- Nov 17, 2011
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Agree. It's NEVER gonna happen! Once kids start getting paid by colleges to play sports then you bring in unions, agents, contracts, lawyers, Title IX, Workers Comp, FMLA and so much other stuff the list is endless. It will never happen, college athletes will never get paid. EVER!
It's a nice discussion on Talk Radio or message boards like this but the reality is it will NEVER happen!!!!
Sounds like you're trying to convince yourself.
Assuming that the current framework in the NCAA will not change, the improvement in the college game can be driven by the NBA and the NBA Player Association.
As the NBA feels it is better for players to stay at school longer its time to work some creative things into the CBA. They know its better from a development, risk minimization (draft) and marketing perspecetive, so they can take some steps to encourage it.
1. Increase the rookie scale salary significantly for each year you stay in college.. for example if the rookie slot is $1 million, you get paid $750K if you enter as a high schooler, $1million as a frosh, $1.5 million as a soph, $2.0 million as a junior, and $2.5 million as a senior. The raises are more for a lotto pick, and even more for a top 5 pick. At the minimum, you make an extra $0,5 million a year extra for every extra year you stayed in school on your first three year contract. For a senior drafted in the first round, that is worth $4.5 million in total over your first 3 year contract.
2. Allow opt out's one year earlier for a player that entered the NBA only after his junior or senior year.
2. Only the base slot salary countw against the salary cap. So teams don't get punished from a cap perspective by drafting a senior.
3. The pay increases for staying are shared equally by the entire league and are not only borne by the drafting team. After all, this initiative helps get better players into the NBA, more mature players, allows teams to take less risks, and you get players that are more well known entering your league. This should be an initiative that all teams should be happy to fund.
4, Some loan programs from the NBA for those first round quality players whose family are in need, but who want to stick around in the NCAA.
You create a system where:
a) Players who really want to get out after one year because they hate college will still get out and get a nice payday.
b) Players who like the college experience but leave for financial reasons, will be given financial incentives to stick around a bit longer.
We are still stuck with the inherent cheating / academic issues caused by the NCAA system. And you some kids may stick around with manipulated grades.
But I think at a minimum it improves the quality of the NCAA and NBA product, and still provides an opportunity for an athlete to gain a salary earlier if he so desires.
There's talk about including #2 in the next CBA. #1 is interesting but will only lead to Juniors and Seniors being drafted lower so teams don't have to pay extra. It may end up hurting upperclassmen even more.
I like the ideas, but I still feel it is the burden of the NCAA to reward players staying longer.
IMO, these kids trying to become professional athletes are no different than any other kid majoring in what he wants to do for the rest of his life. They are just majoring in a specific sport. Pre-med or pre-law students are trying to make the grade to be good enough to get into law or med school. Some do, some don't but they are both paying for the opportunity. Doesn't the school make revenue from it's prolific graduates? In SU's case, look at the breadcasting professionals they have put out. Do kids try to get into SU's school of broadcasting b/c of the success rate of their graduates? Is SU selective of who they let in? If so, shouldn't these kids be paid for helping make the broadcasting school the name that it is? Where do you draw the line?
Also, if kids got paid to play I assume they would not get a scholarship so they would owe room, board, and tuition. I think, at best, it would be a wash.
You draw the line like this: Will the broadcasting school PAY the student to become a student at Syracuse? They probably won't since one single student (or 13) won't increase the revenue of the broadcasting program. Although I could imagine a kid who is a phenom in high school for broadcasting with a lot of media attention, might get offered money to attend Syracuse if it was allowed.
Will the basketball programs pay money to a recruit if it was allowed? If the answer is yes (and with so much "shady" stuff going on today, I'd say it's a definite yes), then they should be allowed to. Otherwise you are denying the young adult a chance to earn money that he would be able to earn.
The same people in denial that colleges are willing to pay players are making "Pay Pal Cal" jokes in other threads for years. See the logical hypocrisy? On one hand you're denying colleges would ever pay kids, but on the other you're accusing schools of paying kids. In that case, would it not make sense to say that if it was allowed that some schools would pay money for some recruits? Why are we disallowing it? Because we hate to see 18 year olds make more money in a year than we ever will? I think there is a subconscious "they don't deserve it because they're too young and stupid" bias going on with a lot of people, that refuses to let them see the economic reality.
Also, why wouldn't they also get tuition, room, and board? The money they get paid would be on top of their tuition, room, and board. What player would go to a school that pays him and doesn't cover tuition? The point of paying players is to lure them to play for the school. People seem to take this to mean they are going to use it to screw the player somehow. It's the opposite.
2. Maybe you can't think of one economic reason (it's interesting you chose to boil down to only economics by the way), but not all reasons have to be economic. I know that some people thing economics rule all. I believe that is not the case.
I like how you try to take the rug from under my argument by practically saying "there's more to life than economics", but then don't offer any non-economic reasons.