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Message: [QUOTE="Waltdods, post: 2593445, member: 2932"] I mean, they are by definition amateurs because that's the definition we've given them. If we said they were professionals, they'd be by definition professionals but that doesn't really change any of the substance. Hell, I'm not even sure you're right about the definition - everyone agrees they are receiving significant compensation for playing a sport. Are they really "amateurs" but a minor-league baseball player making $1,000 a month is a "professional"? I guess? Again, I think the focus on the small number of guys who ultimately play in the NBA is misguided, and it is definitely not my position. The issue is not (only) that the NBA prospects are being prevented from playing in the NBA for a year (there's actually an easy solution to this problem). It's that every guy is prevented from realizing his actual worth by the restrictive rules. You say these guys don't have value, but they pretty plainly do: in the absence of NCAA compensation rules, guys like Frank Howard or Trever Cooney would receive more money to pay basketball at SU than they did. Do you (or anyone) really disagree with this? To take a bit of an extreme example, Gerry McNamara was never going to be an NBA player, but the University still made hundreds of thousands of dollars licensing #3 jerseys with a wink-and-a-nod. GMac had significant marketable value, [B]which was in fact marketed[/B], only a whole bunch of people who were not Gerry McNamara made the money from it. To take another extreme example, as a high-school senior, Paul Harris was probably worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to a school on an open market. He didn't get a dime of that, and has probably not made as much money in his entire career as he could have by selling his services at 18. Finally, again, I think the it's-their-choice stuff isn't nearly as illuminating as it may seem at first glance. People make choices within parameters that exist. To take a hopefully non-politicized example: in 1772, it was a choice to live in the American colonies. By living there, you sacrificed certain rights and had to pay certain taxes to the British crown, and you lacked (more or less) the representation that people in England had. It was a choice to live here - someone who didn't like the system was free to move back to England. Each colonist who stayed was, in some sense, making a choice and taking the good with the bad. But that was not the end of the analysis. The question then was is this system fair? It is possible to advocate change to a system while acknowledging that people within the system are making choices. [/QUOTE]

Verification: What is a Syracuse fan's favorite color?