The NCAA is appealing the O’Bannon case. Wait, you say, did I miss something? Has there already been a trial?
Nah, but why should that stop anything? Other than the trial’s start, of course.
Lawyers for the NCAA on Friday night filed two motions that could further delay the start of a long-awaited trial in a lawsuit relating to the use of college athletes’ names and likenesses and the association’s limits on what major-college football and men’s basketball players can receive for playing sports.
Every day of delay is another day the schools don’t have to cut the student-athletes in on the deal. And that deal is looking more lucrative by the day.
Negotiations for the next Big Ten television contract haven’t started, but that hasn’t stopped the league from projecting revenue for the 2017-18 academic year — the first year of the new deal.
In a document obtained by the Journal & Courier through an open records request from Purdue University, 12 of the 14 schools are projected to receive $44.5 million each through the league’s distribution plan.
My fingers and toes don’t work as well as they used to, but that looks like a contract running north of half a billion smackers a year for the conference. And Jim Delany would have you believe his guys would walk away from that kind of money in a heartbeat if student-athletes get some. Division III, my ass.
Get The Picture 
“Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. And no way out.”
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I would openly applaud the Big 10 if they walked away from D-1 sports if it came down to paying players. I would love to see someone, anyone, stand their ground. Players simply do not have a righ to be paid one red cent more than they currently are receiving via tuition, food, training, housing etc in my opinion. I know that the Big 10 will not walk away from the huge payday of major D-1 sports, but I sure love to see them do it!
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If I could get in on a scam where everyone who wanted a particular service also had to pay me even if they cared not one whit about what I offered, I would not walk away from it. Neither will the Big Whatever.
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Cashing in before their gig is up.
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I would like to ask the players the following:
1. Do you play sports at all for the scholarship/education?
2. Do you play sports at all for the chance to mature and grow up as BMOCs on great campuses being treated very well?
3. Do you play sports at all for the training/exposure that deveops a possible professional career?
4. Where would you be and what would you be doing if the opportunity was eliminated?
5. Why don’y you go sue the NFL & NBA for the opportunity to work for them whenever you want? (You may not even have to graduate from high school if you win. But you will have to be able to count & read/understand a playbook)
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Do you have any questions for the NCAA, and the Schools?
So a player is given a jersey and cannot sell it without punishment. What about medical treatment for injuries they receive that have lasting effects?
Why should a player only get a one year scholly guarantee and cannot transfer without sitting out a year and yet the coach that recruited him and demanded loyalty can move on at will?
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I agree that they should get 4 year scholarships with a spending $ supplement, should get lifetime medical treatment, work a legitimate job, etc. No selling school supplied clothing/uniforms, gifts etc or marketing their name/autograph until you leave school. This is all about $/getting a piece of the big pie to the athletes who don’t care much about the education or the school. They are using the school as much as the school is using them. And no single athlete produces the product on the field. The team produces it. Good bosses/deans/professors leave for better jobs all the time. Not just coaches; who often have buyout clauses. Lets let the players quit & transfer at will but make them pay a buyout clause based on the value of the school expenditures to date.
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With what money? They’re amateurs who don’t have the time to take summer jobs, remember?
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I have begun to wonder if Delany and Emmert and any of the others realize they are not dealing with fan bases who live in the dark ages? In places like this blog across the country, these issues are being debated every day.
Yet the college football bosses seem to have little understanding that any of us can either read or understand what is going on with college football,
The obvious question is: “Who are they trying to fool?”
They must be trying to fool themselves, cause they sure as hell ain’t fooling us.
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Is there some sort of prohibition on televising or re-broadcasting DIII games? Or making money off of them?
Let’s say that you run a major conference. You can pay players and head down that path – or you can find a legal model where you don’t pay players and try to market that.
The first reduces net revenue by adding payments to players as a line item on the cost side. You start a never-ending battle on percentage of revenue splits and the like, just like pro sports.
The second reduces gross revenues by some percentage, but it also eliminates the payment of players as a cost item. So – would you watch Georgia play football on Saturdays if 80% of the current roster were still out on the field and reclassified as DIII? Would Michigan fans still tune in to watch the Wolverines? I think Delany believes they would, leaving his marketing deals intact and dissolving the rest of his headaches in one fell swoop.
I don’t think it would happen because it would take all of the big schools doing it together, and I just can’t see all of them drinking that kool-aid. But I can see the theoretical attraction for Delaney.
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