Gawd, I love these guys’ bullshit. (h/t)
“I think if we move toward true pay for play, if we give students money over and above that which reimburses them for their costs, then you kill the goose that’s laying the golden eggs,” says IU Athletics Director Fred Glass. “You take away the special sauce out of sports … I think you lose the magic of sports.”
In the end, Luck says he doesn’t foresee the NCAA moving away from their core values.
“Because those values, in my mind, are somewhat timeless, I think they’ll be around a long, long time,” he says. “I think if you take a [look] back at college athletics over the last 145 or 146 years, I think most folks would say it’s been a force for good in this country.”
If the special sauce is so tasty, why don’t they ever suggest serving it with their coaches and administrators, too? Don’t those folks love the game as much as the players do?
*************************************************************************
UPDATE: Here’s another perspective on that love.
“While I was at Clemson, I was one of those guys who thought totally different from the other guys around me. I wasn’t your typical athlete. I found myself more aware of other things that were going on behind the scenes. I could see how they [the NCAA] would cover things up, while also telling us that we’re privileged and we’re blessed because we have a scholarship. Even though it’s true that I was blessed, I viewed playing football as an investment. When you have schools that are spending $20,000 and more each year to get players on campus, but are bringing in $17,000,000 in a bowl game, it starts to devalue the scholarship.”
Get The Picture 
He is just so so dumb.
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Think the COA is scratchy when explaining why one team has more expense in their school than UGA? It’s gonna get downright itchy when you begin bidding on players at differing positions in the SEC.
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I would say schools should have to pay a percentage of their football spending/profits to the NCAA, which would then be lumped together and paid out to all scholarship football players. This would make the pay equal for all schools, even smaller schools, while still forcing larger schools who spend more money on football to have to pay more. Thus, you keep a school like Bama from just paying the max amount possible to players to get recruits to keep coming.
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Dude Bama is going to pay the max above/over/under/around/through the table even if the NCAA paid every player the same. Trent Richardson is still going to get paid his $250k fee.
Paying everybody the same wage isn’t going to stop the rampant under current of payment to players that exist today.
Make the future student athlete actually gain admission just like the regular student. Force the NFL/NBA to create a farm system. Lot of the troubles go away. Then the NCAA can really be holier than thou
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I know this isn’t a popular perspective, but college athletics should be about education, not salaries. The athletes are there, not to get money, but to get a degree. How much does UGA invest per athlete, including tuition, tutoring, food, board, etc? 250,000? Shouldn’t this be enough, especially coupled with a college degree at the end? Throwing cash at kids for playing football, IMO, will further degrade and diminish collegiate athletics. The “student” part of the student/athlete equation has rapidly become a joke, and the athletes are the losers in the end when money and football are all that really matters.
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Sounds nice, but I bet the basketball player who has to travel several hundred miles to play in a road conference game on a week day night might have a different perspective than you do.
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And I am quite sure that the recent graduate paying off massive student debt or the parent writing that check for tuition payment, room & board, meal plan, text books each semester will have a different perspective than you do as to whether they are getting paid now.
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If the graduate or the child of the parent you cite were helping to put millions of dollars in the athletic department’s bank account — or the head coach’s, for that matter — I’m sure you’d be right about that.
Although I admit Tyrone Prothro feels your pain.
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You want examples well, here you go. Students in the science departments that do research are not paid any of the royalties that the university receives when they patent the outcome of any of the research. Many universities receive huge amounts of money from their research. Should the student in the lab be able to claim part of that money? Apple had to pay the University of Wisconsin $234 million. Microsoft had to pay the University of California $520 million. Hewlett-Packard had to pay Cornell University 184 million and Marvell Technology had to pay Carnegie Mellon University $1.5 BILLION. These are just a few examples so we are not talking trivial amounts of money. Do the students that worked on this receive any of that money. Just like the football player the answer is NO.
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Do the institutions that pay for the research do so because of the students?
Sports programs obtain their value from entertainment. Subtract the players and that value drops dramatically.
As someone else said in this thread, if the players are being compensated adequately for their services, then what’s the problem letting the free market confirm that?
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And as others have said, what is the problem with making the incoming “student athlete” meet the same academic requirement for admission to the university as the general student population?
Maybe we need to do away with the “student athletes” and just have a minor league football team that is associated with the university. Not students, just employees like the President or professor or janitor. Let them be paid what ever the market will bear and do away with the illusion of a “student athlete”. They sign a contract to play just like the pros. If they choose to become a student in their free time, then apply to the academic portion of the university and let them be treated just like any other student. Otherwise they are just a hired hand.
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From the school’s standpoint? An enormous drop in revenues.
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I’ll just offer some support, TD. I would really like to get back to having the players on the team be actual students that were admitted to the University based on academic merit. I offer the gymnastics team as an example. They could all get in on merit, essentially have a 100% graduation rate, and some of them have forgone quite a bit of money in order to get a free education and compete for the love of the sport (e.g. Courtney Kupets and Courtney McCool).
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My daughters dream is to be a Gym Dawg one day and she is working just as hard as any football player to achieve that goal. At 10 years old she is in the gym 4 hours a day 5-6 days a week. She will have even less of a chance than a football player of ever hitting the big time jack pot as there are only 6-8 of those every 4 years. The best she can reasonably hope for is a full ride in gymnastics.
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I just don’t see how creating a victim mentality for college athletes helps anyone in the long term.
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No doubt the schools who profit from the status quo agree with you.
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I agree 85, unpopular or not. But I also feel it unfair that Athletic Associations capitalize on what amounts to fixed labor costs because we continue to throw money at them.
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Let volunteer students do the coaching and handle the AD duties through the regular university administration. Let athletes earn scollys through a yearly tryout. All money’s earned would flow to the academic side except legitimate expenses and necessary capital projects like stadium renovation. If the NCAA had the guts to do this there would be no more grumbling about exploitation, particularly if the NFL established a minor league to provide an avenue for athletes not interested in a college degree.
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“The sport is already professional. It’s the players that aren’t.”
Nailed it.
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I’d like to think Darius Robinson’s point of view is common, and that many players know the deal and keep quiet for whatever reason each finds sufficient.
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#waitingonJeffreyKessler
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Blow it up and start over. Make players have to be accepted to the school before they can receive a scholarship. This would absolutely force the NFL to create some sort of farm system where the best of the best players could be paid for developing their skills for the draft. It would do the same thing with the NBA. College baseball doesn’t have the issue football and basketball have because there is a farm system that gives the best young players an avenue to pursue their professional baseball dream without being forced to attend college for a year or two under a sham of being a “student”. Golf and tennis do not require the athletes to attend or play at a college. If a golfer or tennis player is good enough, they can go pro at pretty much any time.
The football and basketball sham are in place to enrich a lot of people while protecting the pro leagues from having to actually fund a farm system.
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Yeah, the whining about how tough and unfair life is on the plantation so ignores how many wish they ever had it so good. It is like being given a new car then bitching about the color. I mean come on, the dealer has so many on the lot….gimme some of those, and one for my girlfriend! There is never enough for some people. A do-over could be in the future…wouldn’t be so bad at all, imo.
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And people literally made the same argument about slaves. Isn’t picking cotton in South Carolina better than hunting and gathering in West Africa? They don’t know how good they’ve got it.
If college athletes are already being paid at or above the market wage for their talents, then what’s the harm in allowing the market to set wages?
And I’m sympathetic to those who want college football to be remade into an intramural sport. But there’s already intramural football. I don’t recall the stands being full when I graced the intramural fields in Athens. I don’t even recall there being any stands to fill up. But if you want to watch out of shape chemistry majors fumble around the field for a couple of hours without any commercial breaks, you can already do that.
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I dont get why college football fans think that college football players are given anything, they earn everything. They earn more than they are given.
Most of these guys @ 21 have worked harder to be good at something than most people will do in their entire lives.
Respecting that effort and rewarding it seems to be very difficult for most fans even though they consistently want their own efforts respected and rewarded.
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And here I thought a college education was worth something. I guess a four year degree is free for the taking for anyone, all they have to do is show up.
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The question isn’t whether a college education has value. It clearly does. The question is whether it represents fair value for a student-athlete’s services.
You think it does. Most people suspect that the free market would strongly disagree with you.
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I’m not sure if “most” people feel that way. Left to the free market, I doubt most of the players on any college team would get enough pay based on their on field performance to pay the full cost of a college education. I’m sure the Gurleys and Chubbs would make enough but I doubt the Brendan Douglas’s and our dropsy plagued wide receiver corps would. If players were compensated in a true free market system, they would receive exactly the “fair value” for their services. For a few, this would result in a windfall but for the vast majority, this would result in much lower “compensation” for their services.
It seems the majority of people clamoring to pay the players aren’t really interested in a free market solution, they are more interested in a sort of entitlement system based on Marxism’s principle of “from each according to ability to each according to need”. These people want the players to reap an equal share of a lucrative system regardless of their actual contribution to the profitability of the team. If this were the system, how long before the cries of “slavery!” were replaced with the cries of “socialism!”?
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I don’t know who “these people” are that you’re referring to, but you need to take a closer look at what relief Kessler and others are seeking. It ain’t socialism.
Ironically, if Kessler prevails, my bet is that either collegiate athletics gets an antitrust exemption or the players unionize so the sport can enter into collective bargaining agreements. Either of those would be more socialistic than what would come out of a win in antitrust court.
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The NLRB has already rejected Northwestern University’s players attempt to unionize in 2015.
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Because the schools objected to and appealed the initial ruling.
You don’t honestly believe that if the players wanted to unionize and the schools agreed the NLRB would block it, do you?
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I’m talking about pretty much everyone who talks about paying players. They all talk about the billions the programs are taking in and how the players should get a cut of it. We all know the vast majority of programs are losing money and having to rely on student fees to break even in sports. This is in spite of the billions tv sends to colleges. How does a college sell parents and/or students on paying more to the school, probably borrowing more on student loans, so another group of students gets paid for playing a sport that already allows them to go to school for free?
If the players are paid, I’m sure all the people calling for it will expect every player to be paid. After all, they are all working hard regardless of whether or not they actually contribute. How does a team decide how much to pay to a particular player? If a union does get involved, there will be a minimum but I’m sure there won’t be a maximum. If there is no union and the players still get paid, teams will pretty well have to pay everyone the same since they are all doing the same basic job. How long before the band unionizes along with every other team on campus?
If football or basketball players start getting paid, it will be the end of college athletics on any scale greater than intramural or Division III.
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They’re already being paid. We’re just arguing over how much.
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I heard Colin Cowherd ( in never expected to agree with Cowherd on anything) do a long segment on one of his shows about this and he was opposed to paying players. He said the same thing. The 5 star recruit would benefit from market based compensation, but the rest of the team not so much or would be hurt by it. In addition, he stated that these hand full of players that have a legitimate shot at the NFL already benefit by having the school showcase their talent to prospective employers by being on TV every week, a training staff to maximize their potential, and so forth and so on. The networking that is provided by being a player at Ole State U is something that is worth a fortune that the rest of the student body also does not enjoy.
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The schools are showcasing those athletes on the weekends because ESPN pays them a billion dollars a year to do so.
There used to be a lot less showcasing athletes on TV for the NFL before TV money got involved in the sport.
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“Left to the free market, I doubt most of the players on any college team would get enough pay based on their on field performance to pay the full cost of a college education.”
So you think that the NCAA is spending millions fighting against a system that would result in schools spending LESS money? Seriously?
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That sounds like a great soundbite for Emmert to use.
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This is incredibly dumb. No, college athletes have not worked harder than everyone else to get to where they(the players) are nor harder than others to get to where they(students,military, student paying their way through school) are. That’s beyond dumb. It puts these guys on a pedestal that simply isn’t warranted.
The guys who played D1 ball(basketball, baseball, football or soccer) from my high school were the most naturally gifted athletes in the school and barely had to work to outclass everyone else in the region and state. Sure they put in effort on the practice field, off of it playing sports growing up, but not like others without that god given talent weren’t working hard.
Do they work harder in college at their craft than most students? sure, by any standard. Do they work harder than the elite students? no, they just work physically to hone their craft while others put the effort in at the library, study lab, or elsewhere.
Do they bust their tail in a way I couldn’t imagine? yep. Are they supermen? no.
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“In the case of everything perfect we are accustomed to abstain from asking how it became: we rejoice in the present fact as though it came out of the ground by magic. ”
What you saw as effortless was simply your mind’s unwillingness to accept that someone else was outworking you. It appeared easy because of the effort that took place prior to your witness.
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um no. not at all. if you think that, you’ve never seen the truly talented play and train at that level.
Perhaps my mind was playing tricks on me when the guy on our soccer team who set state scoring records skipped conditioning, slacked through sprints after practice, went through the motions in practice, then scored 15 goals in a 4 game stretch.
Perhaps my mind was playing tricks on my when the guy who would show up late to practice, jog around in drills on the basketball court, sleep through film review, would then drop 35 on a rival on his way to being offered a basketball scholarship to Marquette.
For the record, I’m not bitter in the slightest. These two in particular were some of the most talented people I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing with and were awesome guys who were my friends on and off the court/field. They would admit they didn’t bust their butts to get to where they made it. I envy their natural abilities as they could effortlessly do things I couldn’t dream of doing.
I just don’t accept your premise that all college athletes have worked harder than everyone else on a college campus. If Nick Chubb’s work ethic were the standard, it wouldn’t be mentioned in every story of Nick Chubb what an absolute freakish devotion he has to training and preparation.
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no you created that premise and then decided to disagree with it.
my premise is that college athletes work really hard to get where they are and have earned everything they have gotten and more.
No one gave them a scholarship, they earned a scholarship.
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forgive me for mis-interpreting this:
Most of these guys @ 21 have worked harder to be good at something than most people will do in their entire lives.
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Don’t overlook the brilliant marketing plan of the South Carolina Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism in conjunction with the South Carolina Cotton Board:
“Don’t get left out in the cold! Sign up for our 6-week fitness extravaganza before the Middle Passage pleasure cruisestarts and receive an additional six weeks at 50% off!”
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There it is; the tired old “slavery” argument. Last time I checked, a college athlete can pack up and leave any time he or she feels like it. That really wasn’t the case for slaves, you might want to go look it up to confirm what I’m saying. If you think the college athletic system is so cruel and unfair to the poor young scholars who are getting nothing out of toiling on the field or court you should refuse to pay to attend or even watch the games on tv. Your support is tacit approval of the brutal system you despise.
There are light years between being a slave and being a scholarship football player who has all of his tuition, books, meals, housing, tutors, medical care, etc. paid for by someone else. Attitudes like yours are why the rules need to be changed so that only students who have been admitted to the school along with all the other regular students are eligible for athletic scholarships. If you want to see pro level skills and playmaking, go watch pro sports.
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Oh I love this argument … go look up the historical context for amateurism. It is rooted in racism, classism and segregation. It’s foundation is fundamentally flawed. Everything that has been borne out of it its to manipulate a flawed foundation.
You are right there might be a group of schools (a large group of schools in fact) that reject paying players and will reduce or eliminate special circumstance admission requirements for athletes. It is not without precedent. Look at the Ivy League and the Patriot League (?) which do not offer scholarships. But even their athletes get special admission treatments.
Scholarships, tutors, medical care, etc were all adjustments made to the system that came out of dealing with corruption, inequities and unfairness to the system. Do you really think that they offered scholarships to athletes in the 1890’s? Schools started offering enhanced tutoring when enough student athletes were finishing their eligibility and 4-5 years of college but they couldn’t read and/or schools were getting busted for not teaching students but just keeping them eligible. It usually took a groundswell of support from the public, the media and a few scandals too.
If the $$ continues to flow into college athletics at the present rate, it is inevitable that players, especially in the main revenue sports, will get a piece of it. It is the natural evolution of it.
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“There are light years between being a slave and being a scholarship football player who has all of his tuition, books, meals, housing, tutors, medical care, etc. paid for by someone else.”
Say what you will about amateurism, at least it’s an ethos rooted in racism, classism and segregation (h/t Union Jack and Walther Sobchak)
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I’m confused. Are collegiate sports the modern day equivalent of slavery or are they not? Would it not be more of an “Indentured Servant” relationship with the University?
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I’d say neither, even an indentured servant was contractually bound to work for his employer for a set period of time, usually 5 years, in exchange for transportation or for the repayment of a debt, The option of leaving early was not on the table. Obviously, slavery was complete involuntary servitude and the slave was viewed as property of the owner that could be sold. A scholarship athlete can leave the team and the school any time he/she chooses with the only real restriction being they may not play at another team in the same division of college football without sitting out a year unless the player has obtained an undergraduate degree and, then, they may transfer and play immediately at any school they wish.
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Totally off the present blog line, but I just learned a new name for the indentured servant, ie the head right program. Lots of folks came into the colonies on it.
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Don’t even respond to the idiocy of those who characterize scholarship athletes as slaves. No citizen of this country, alive today, or for decades, has been a slave. Ever. To link the life styles of scholarship athletes to those who actually were slaves is stupid beyond words, as are those who continue this line of “reasoning”.
I agree barring athletes from pursuing jobs in the NFL and NBA for 1-3 years is wrong, and would probably be undone by the courts. If they do not hire those athletes, they can pursue their jobs in other markets, perhaps Europe or Canada. If they cannot be satisfied with those paid options, some may find the university “plantation” life pretty satisfactory. While I have always supported a level stipend for college level spending money for full scholarship athletes in those sports that are revenue positive, I don’t think the games played with “cost of attendance” was a healthy approach. We would all love athletes to really be real students but I don’t see that happening until there is some semi-pro/minor league alternative, and that may happen in the next decade.
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What is stupid beyond reasoning is the argument that college athletes shouldn’t be free to negotiate wages because they already earn enough to satisfy what some college administrators have decided is fair. Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb!
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I wasn’t arguing that athletes are slaves. I was simply pointing out parallels in the compensation systems between athletes and slaves.
Most supporters of slavery believed that they were treating slaves fairly. They believed slaves were fairly compensated for their work in terms of room and board, clothes, etc. The fact that slaves weren’t free to negotiate wages was unimportant. Sound familiar?
Is it your belief that, as long as an employee is free to leave a cartel for a completely different line of work, the freedom to negotiate wages is an unimportant luxury? If so, I’ll disagree.
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IU Athletics Director Fred Glass: “You take away the special sauce out of sports … I think you lose the magic of sports.”
What the magic world needs now is more special sauce
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=special+sauce
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The universities are hypocritical. The athletes only want to be treated fairly. The NCAA is corrupt. Even worse, the NFL and NBA ride this free gravy train rather than having to spend tons of money to provide a real developmental league.
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Agree that the NFL and NBA are getting a free ride. They should be like baseball and create their own minor leagues for the ones who either are not college academic material or the ones who just don’t want to go to college. Head straight to the minors out of high school and get paid (market rates) or head to college and get paid via a scholarship. While college baseball is not on par with FB or BB in popularity, it is still a very fun game to watch.
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Texas, if Jerry Jones, Arthur Blank, Bob Kraft, etc. thought they could make money with “minor league” football, they would have done it already. Even minor league baseball is a money loser for the parent franchise. They have to subsidize the operation of the farm system. The NFL owners will never do that. Just my $0.02.
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They will never do it “willingly”. If the college gravy train ends, they will have no choice.
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They certainly won’t do it as long as the colleges continue to be their de facto minor leagues. I live in the Dallas area and I can assure you that Jerry Jones will find a way to wring every cent out of the fans (who will gladly continue to pay it). He won’t spend a penny to establish a money loosing minor league (and why should he) until it becomes in his best interest to do so.
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Student loan payments are a real thing.
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So is the labor market.
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Then the players should go get into the labor market if they want to be paid.
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They are in a labor market with an artificially capped ceiling per the O’Bannon ruling.
These guys are already getting paid via COA and it’s simply a matter of whether that is fair or not. As has been stated multiple times throughout this thread – if y’all are so confident the players are already being compensated fairly, then what’s your issue with allowing the market to set the price?
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If you think they are or aren’t being paid fairly what is your argument against letting the market set the price?
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Would you consider it fair for the schools to do away with the scholarships and simply pay the players to be on the school name affiliated “football club”? Require the players to be students at the school, they would have to be admitted to the school before they could receive the scholarship or join the team. The players could then use their football pay to pay tuition and other costs associated with being a college student. If a player didn’t perform up to expectations, could the school “fire” them from the football team to make room for a new player who might be better?
If you want a free market system for paying the players, you have to accept a free market system for getting rid of them too. In for a penny, in for a pound.
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Isn’t that already what they effectively are doing? Football and basketball players at major programs are pretty well segregated from the general student body anyways with bullshit majors created just to keep them eligible. I’m 100% in favor of knocking down that faux wall of “student” in the term “student-athlete.”
While you’re at it I’d also like a pony.
The schools can already do this by not renewing those one-year scholarships and recruiting new talent so I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make here.
No shit? That’s kinda how employment law works in most states. You offer your labor to an employer for a price that the market will bear and if you underperform expectations or somebody more talented comes along, the employer can replace you. I think pretty much everybody understand that.
As already stated, schools already can, and do, boot underperforming players by not renewing their scholarships. To answer your question, you’re damn right that I’m perfectly fine with somebody receiving real compensation that they can actually spend on tuition or whatever the hell else they want (just like I do with my salary) to take that risk that their employer may seek a more talented laborer same as you and I do everyday at our own jobs. I’d say earning some real cash is a hell of a lot more meaningful for many of these guys than a pretty useless degree in underwater basket weaving or whatever other fake majors schools put together to keep those guys eligible that have no business being in a college classroom other than they can run fast and jump high.
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Football and men’s basketball players aren’t eligible for the draft until they are 3 years or 1 year out of high school, respectively, due to the NFL and NBA collective bargaining agreements. They are frozen out of the labor market because the existing players don’t want younger players possibly pushing them out of a job and ownership doesn’t want to ante up for the cost of a developmental league like minor league baseball.
I’ve written here multiple times that the NBA and NFL owners may be a lot of things, but poor at making money isn’t one of them. If the owners believed they could build a successful business model on former high school football or basketball players in a developmental league, it would be in place already. If you held guns to the owners of MLB teams, I guarantee they would admit they would like the deal the other big professional sports have.
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As long as the colleges are willing to provide the free farm system, no one can blame the NFL and NBA for taking advantage of them. If college players end up being paid, I can easily see most colleges doing away with football and basketball on a level that would require paying the players and forcing the hand of the NBA and NFL.
In the long run, this is probably the best outcome.
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I don’t think the colleges at the highest level will give up the revenue that funds the entire athletic program without a fight. They will go along with some sort of “pay for play” scenario. This could have been headed off years ago if the NCAA had allowed scholarship athletes to trade on their name and likeness and to have jobs in the offseason just like any other student. Think the Olympic model, but the NCAA and its members never seriously considered it.
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‘I think if you take a [look] back at college athletics over the last 145 or 146 years, I think most folks would say it’s been a force for good in this country.”
OH, FOR GOD’S SAKE, WHAT CRAP!
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Hey! My son plays HS baseball because he likes it! The Booster Club gets money for admissions. They make money on the concessions. Taxpayers fund the stadium! Where is his COA Stipend? I mean he cant play in that league unless he is affiliated with a school.
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Exactly. At what point does it end?
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When the day comes that ESPN is ponying up over a billion dollars annually for the rights to broadcast high school baseball games, y’all might have an argument.
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You’re killing it today my friend. Saves me a lot of time to read your responses and like them rather than educate these archaic fools myself.
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Nice to know you think so highly of yourself that only your point is view is the correct one and all the rest are just archaic fools. Remember, there is a fool in every room. When you look around and don’t see him, guess who it is.
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I see a lot of them so I’m good. It’s not my opinion that I regard, it’s everyone else’s lack of knowledge about how things really work.
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I think your problem is that you are standing in a house of mirrors when you see all those fools.
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Clever
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is the headline going to be:
1. Young Black Athletes Finally Get a Piece of the Pie or
2. Male Football Pay Eliminates _ _ Female Scholarships at University ?
(I’m glossing over the Title IX morass that is implicated in this whole debate, but still).
I also don’t understand the argument that the free market is being manipulated. The only market manipulation may very well come from Federal Title IX law–Universities being compelled by law to do something outside of ordinary market demand (provide equal scholarship /benefits to both sexes, cumulatively across all offered sports…as I understand the law). Would millions of dollars flowed in to the Triple A Macon Falcons Football Club if Todd Gurley had matriculated straight there from Tarboro, NC ? Doubtful. Being a fan in SEC Country, it’s easy to have your world surrounded by amateur football exceptionalism—but frankly, you probably have more young kids substantially similar to Todd Gurley than you have ready made stages like Sanford Stadium and Athens.
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The labor market is fixed by schools colluding under the aegis of the NCAA’s amateurism protocol. Players can’t be compensated for their efforts, let alone names, likenesses and images. Everybody else in America, including coaches and athletic administrators, can. What part of this don’t you understand?
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Maybe Greg McGarity can become spokesman for Just for Men or Grecian Formula. Then again, I doubt either product would want to be affiliated with his dye job.
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Totally, lotta Todd Gurley’s in the world. Dime a dozen.
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If we are to believe that the AD’s believe what they’re trying to sell us wouldn’t they also believe the inverse to be true? Example: if the Rome Braves stopped paying their players then fan interest, attendance and revenue would rise as a result.
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Similarly, CB, I would suggest the main reason Arthur Blank and his fellow owners don’t have farm teams is that their research likely shows that the paying / viewing public would have zero interest in watching Deshaun Watson play for the Greenville Tigers of the NDFL while millions want to see him as the QB for the Clemson Tigers … neither of those have anything to do with whether Deshaun gets paid or not.
Really good point, by the way …
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Interesting reading all the comments. I do believe, somewhere down the road, the university and college football bubble will burst and the NFL will have to start minor leagues. The “free” college ride will eventually end for them. As someone above stated, it is the natural evolution.
Maybe we will watch Div. 1 that is now like the Ivy League. Hey if it is competitive go for it.
I do view the present system as a sham and due for some overhauling. If that means minor leagues, trading players, etc. ok with me. As an old curmudgeon, the team sticker on the helmet does not mean much anymore.
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