Judging from the emails I received, a number of you have seen this clip of Tebow going off on the state of California for trying to ruin college football.
“I know we live in a selfish culture where it’s all about us, but we’re just adding and piling it on to that where it changes what’s special about college football and we turn it into the NFL where who has the most money that’s where you go,” said Tebow. “That’s why people are more passionate about college sports than they are about the NFL. That’s why the stadiums are bigger in college than the NFL because it’s about your team, about your university, about where my family wanted to go, about where my grandfather had a dream of seeing Florida win an SEC championship and you’re taking that away so young kids can earn a dollar. And that’s not where I feel like college football needs to go.”
First off, I don’t question Tebow’s sincerity on the matter. I don’t even doubt that, had been given the choice at the time, he would have turned down the opportunity to take money.
But that’s just it. No college athlete is given that choice, by NCAA diktat.
Beyond that, I also doubt Tebow realizes how incredibly tone deaf his comments are. His grandfather had a dream about Florida; most of Tebow’s teammates’ grandfathers wouldn’t have been allowed to attend Florida. As he talks about young kids earning a dollar, all I can consider it where that got Green and Gurley, both of whom grew up in considerably less comfortable circumstances than did Tebow, and wound up on the wrong side of the NCAA for relative pennies.
Had the COA stipend come a few years earlier, I wonder if Tebow would have had the willingness to stand up in a team meeting and fervently urge his teammates to reject it. What I don’t wonder is whether his teammates would have gone along with it. My bet is that most of them would have found this thinking more compelling.
Get The Picture 
Makes you wonder why anybody puts the work in to get a college sports scholarship. Who, other than all of them, would do such a thing?
The truth is that the vast majority of college athletes worked their ass off to get a free education for themselves, and to take that financial burden off their parents. Only a very few think they’ll ever make any money because of their abilities at cross-country, soccer, equestrian, gymnastics etc…
The millionaires to be are slaves. Sucks to be Gurley and Green. I’m literally weeping about the three year delay in their fortunes.
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Like I said, easy for you to be generous. I bet both had family members who could have used the money at the time, though.
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And when someone figures out a way to create a professional league for those guys, I’m all for it.
I’ve said many times here: limit college sports to college students. Then there are no issues. Let the nfl or nba nurse it’s own future talent and stop trying to fuck up college sports because 1% or less of intercollegiate athletes have a bitch. It is the professional leagues that create this issue, not the colleges. Their artificial eligibility rules make colleges the route to the league. Change their rules and fix everything.
Guess what? Most will still volunteer to be slaves, at least for awhile. Why? Because being a college athlete is a living hell.
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concur
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I agree with Derek.
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It being Sunday morning and all, I feel weird agreeing with Derek who I usually consider to be Satan incarnate, but he has hit the nail on the head. Everything in his post in 100% accurate. I don’t need to add anything else except : “kudos Derek”.
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I couldn’t do it so I found a way around it by just disagreeing with Bluto.
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Derek, when I enrolled at UGA scholarship athletes got a monthly check to cover expenses. It wasn’t a lot of money but Athletic departments didn’t make a lot of money, either. Gurley would have gotten money to send home to Momma to help with the light bill. College football was very popular then. What is the harm to the sport from returning to the days of s stipend, or expense check, or as they called it then, laundry money?
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They have a stipend now. I’m fine with it. Fine with it being more.
I’m not for professionalizing the sport. Salaries, contracts, endorsements, etc…. is what I have an issue with.
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I’m going to have to disagree with subsidizing parents income streams.
The young men in college have enough onbtheir plates just keeping grades where they need to be staying out of trouble with the NCAA which is sometimes hard to do and learning plays and getting better.
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Oh. You realize they’re doing that already in a lot of cases with the COA stipend, right?
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Of course and they can use that cost of attendance anyway they want but it’s not the reason for the cost of attendance( to subsidize either a parent or loved one) it’s meant to subsidize a player ….his nickel he can do what he wants with it.
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Senator: Please ban Derek. It gets extremely old seeing him leap on every thread about this as the first post with his pro-slavery arguments.
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Tim Tebow can kindly shove his opinion up his self-righteous ass.
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Well said. There’s a reason he’s in the minor league. He belongs there.
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The company store where the food is free?
The company store where official Nike apparel is all free and laundered by the staff fo free?
The company town where they give you a stipend to spend elsewhere?
The company town where fat middle aged men slip you $100 bills?
The company town where the car dealer puts a lease in your grannies name and the payments mysteriously are paid out of then air?
What a dumbass
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Yea, sounds like a pretty nice company store.
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Tebow is ridiculous ok, let’s get that out of the way.
The model of amateurism is not. If it were such an awful deal , why does anyone take it?
They get an education , world class training , coaching , and nutrition. They get a platform to display their skills to a market that can make them rich. As soon as they have gotten all they want or need from a university , they are free to leave. Indentured servitude? Give me a break.
I think we can all agree the number of players whose name/likeness value exceeds the value of their scholarship is small. And now a growing number hearts bleed over the idea that universities get a windfall when they can sell jerseys without having to give any portion to the player whose name is on the back —
Is this any different than a company owning the intellectual work created by its employees ? Who bleeds for them ? No one, of course – they have the same option players do – they can go it alone any time they want.
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Because there isn’t another viable option.
If college players could be paid, do you really think they’d turn it down because they already have such a fabulous deal?
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If they were in high school and had the choice of:
Alabama
Professional autograph signer
which would they pick?
We know the answer because that option is currently available. There is nothing stopping a Zion Williamson from signing with an agent and skipping the year at Duke. Nothing.
He reaped considerable profit by going to Duke for a year, which is why he went there instead.
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So, again, if amateurism ended, all these stars would turn down the money, because they’ve got it so good now?
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Who turns down both? I’m saying that they turn down the money outside of the college system because every other option is worse than the “indentured servitude” option.
How many of these kids could be riding around on a minor league baseball bus making a salary, but don’t?
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This is exactly right on point. The college scholarships offer these students a massive amount of opportunities that they would not get by simply going pro out of high school. The baseball example is spot on. To say that some kid from a poor family doesn’t realize he can choose a profession to make money out of high school, is just political discourse. HE just doesn’t WANT that JOB (military, retail, trade, etc). Welcome to America! Your future is not decided by who your father was. You decide it.
He makes his choice, and gets a golden opportunity and recognizes the gifts he was given by the Almighty. And I applaud him for that.
In fact, the longer and longer this issue goes on (and especially with the terms of servitude (which is a politically correct way of saying slavery. Which is EXACTLY what these pundits and tools think this system is. SLAVERY (which it’s not)). These people are Entertainers. Plain and simple. We pay money for them to entertain us.
This is so easily transparent. Hate the corporate system because the guys at the top make the money and the people at the bottom don’t. OH wait…except…we are exploiting the dumb kids who don’t know any better.
Tell you what, you people wanting to pay more money to these students are so smart…Why don’t you start giving up your seats in Sanford Stadium every Saturday, since you’re watching the servants battle it out! For no pay.
Oh wait..your guilt only goes so far. I enjoy my tailgate and food and drinking beer with my buddies too much. And who are you to tell me to give up my seats! It’s my time, my money, I’ll spend it how I want. Exactly! Perspective is a bitch.
Just like its’ the athletes choice on how to spend his future. I enjoy endlessly blogging about stats and how these poor students don’t get enough of a stipend. You fools act like these kids have no idea this is how the system works, and Kirby and his evil counterparts in the world lie to these kids and tell them they will get millions if they come to Georgia…and then we make them sleep in tents behind BM. We aren’t rounding these kids up on a bus and forcing them to play football.
Last time I checked, going to college wasn’t an inalienable right. You want to go to college, you want to shoot for the NFL, this is the system. You don’t like the system, lobby the NFL for change. But wait…they are servant-masters too! It’s all crooked!
I liken the whole thing to an a college internship that most of us had. We learn a trade, gain experience, get paid a reduced wage, but come out better on the other side if we work hard. Except the athletes paying DIV-1 have a helluva smaller chance of landing a professional job than I did. But wait..what’s that? oh right…we give them a stipend and a full education to cover that. Frankly, I’m a little tired of this particular brand of socialism.
I’m not Tebow fan and he’s way off on his argument, but its shit like this that makes me give up this blog for months at a time. At least he comes out and says it, instead of just stirring up the masses or playing a veiled race card. Or..wait for it…the religious bigotry of labeling the post “the passion of the GPOE” . Yeah, that wasn’t a swipe at his Christianity.
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Oh, puhleeze. Go find something else to be offended at while you give up this blog for the next few months.
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Obviously they wouldn’t turn it down. And they have other viable options. They have options to get paid to play football immediately if they want. College is the best of the viable options.
And I can’t game out the dominoes that would fall if all of a sudden the Greens and Gurleys could sell signatures, but I doubt the world would fall apart.
The point is , by and large the amateurism model is a great deal, and there’s no reason for me to think my watching and ticket buying is perpetuating some social injustice, as theManacho suggests.
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Perspective is a bitch, man.
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I agree with you , finally –
I like to think my fan value helps provide the life changing resources to these guys – including the medical and rehab care they get when they tear their ACLs , as well whatever post grad career support they may have available.
I didn’t have insurance in college. Had I torn my acl carrying beer into my apartment I would have been shit outta luck.
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“They have options to get paid to play football immediately”
Where?
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Only have to be 18 to qualify for Arena football. I’m sure Green and Gurley could have made a team. I doubt anyone would have ever heard of them or wanted their signature if they did , but the option was there.
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Because there isn’t a developmental league. The NFL doesn’t want to put money into developing talent, not when there a system that does it for them for free.
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I bet there would be if football and basketball players were admitted on the same basis as other students and all these kids ended up a east bumblefuck Mississippi juco.
And if they didn’t start one. So what? It’s still a good idea and would stop this nonsensical argument about professionalizing college sports.
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Or…..the universities and conferences could have just kept expenses in line with their purported mission.
This system is going to collapse under the weight of their greed.
Again, pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered.
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Timmy does not know that when his grandfather started rooting for the Gators folks such as Ben Hill Griffin could, within the rules, put star Gators on the company payroll and when Timmy’s father was a Gator student the scholarship included a monthly cash payment, and neither circumstance affected their passion for the game. Ignorance is bliss.
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Trippi worked for Coke.
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I could give a fuck what a fuck what a spoiled home schooled kid who played HS football at a school he didn’t attend and is currently holding down 2 jobs he absolutely sucks at (including blocking the path of more talented prospects for a vanity branding project) has to say about anything.
Sick of his hypocritical self righteous bullshit. Go open those North Florida Ford dealerships Timmy…it’s legal for you to profit from your likeness.
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My sentiment exactly, Gatriguy.
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He comes off especially hypocritical considering he carefully monetized and continues to profit from his own college image, which is all he has left after failing in the pros.
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👆🏼what he said. Batting .163 and stumbling over his words on television bc of he’s able to profit from his own likeness.
The epitome of “the system worked for me, so it’s fine”.
I wish he’d fucking just go away.
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It is too bad Timmy did not take more interest in soul-saving when he was a player….like trying to help Aaron Hernandez.
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How do you know he didn’t?
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If he did, he failed at that too.
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Exactly…..a real leader for his people. Maybe Mark should ask him, I am sure he would love to talk about it.
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If it is avenue for attention, then I’m sure he’s interested
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Precisely Gatri….the world needs another tearful Timmy show.
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Meanwhile, Danny Wuerfful builds a ministry in New Orleans and actually helps people.
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Exactly. Wuerfful has always been humble and gracious. Tebow has always been a microphone grabbing attention whore.
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Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. The entire system is going to learn that lesson the hard way.
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Y’all don’t forget when we’re talking about deprivation and hardship among student-athletes that they are competing at a very high level in a sport that they love to do and they are being compensated for it to some degree.
Should they be compensated for use of their NLI? I believe they should. Will lawyers and agents feast on it and turn it into a money grab? Yep.
OBTW, I’m not sure Timmy is anything other than a big, dumb, pretty jock that can’t hit a curveball. STFU Timmy.
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It amazes me how many of y’all can’t admit that the players ARE ALREADY GETTING PAID.
For fuck’s sake y’all are dense.
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This topic bores me.
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Don’t read about it then? Ask for your subscription fee back?
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I fear if Tebow had been in a position to stand up in a team meeting to urge his teammates to refuse a stipend, Hernandez would have waived his Glock in the air and made Tim sit back down.
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Who is against a stipend?
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“….you’re opposed to them being paid, you’re complicit with modern-day indentured servitude.”
What’s up with this kind of rhetoric today concentration camps, Nazis . I suppose running laps and doing sprints as a deterrent for unacceptable behavior will be seen
as analogous to whipping them some point
Certainly not anything like indentured servitude.
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This issue is sticking with me. It makes me feel that I am on the right side of it when Sir Teebs is on the other side. Do players get paid legally already? Yeah, sure, the scholarship and attendant benefits including the COA are currency of a sort. And that payment is for what they contribute to the school and the team.
The only current issue here is whether they should be barred from profiting on their name, image or likeness. The are a number of examples where relatively simple infractions have harmed the school and the student. Locally, we can point to Green and Gurley, but I am sure there are hundreds across the country. Then there are people who had to leave their team. EE raised the Katie Ledecky situation in the last couple of days.
Here’s my main point: it’s going to happen eventually, it is just a question of how much carnage is going to occur before it does. The NCAA can’t stop it. I am convinced of that. The NCAA could make the transition fairly smooth (well, for the NCAA) by simply facing it squarely and honestly by working on a compromise of some kind. Fortunately for them, this is a huge area where the legal system has a track record in the real world. If they will just work with it, they will find that most of the heavy lifting has been done already. California has already them to come to the table. Other states and even Congress are thinking about it. In one place the NCAA said it ‘wanted a national solution’, but right now its actions say that their mouths lie.
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Company store my ass. This is California we’re talking about. Nothing will beat some 18 yr old kid that runs a 4.3 40 and blows fools up realising their Scholarship + COA values will get them placed in the high earner tax bracket and they can watch damn near half of what they make, also known as their fair share, get withheld while they’re blowing out their knees and catching the CTE.
Oh and if you dummies really think these kids will get paid, I assure you the Faculty Senates in the University of California System will have some input and opinions that wrecks the whole scheme.
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I think Tebow is as big of a d bag as anybody here. But watching some of you hypocrites call him a hypocrite is hilarious.
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Tebow isn’t a hypocrite. As I wrote, he honestly believes what he said there.
The problem is, just like a lot of people who come from privileged upbringings, he thinks his worldview is both eminently reasonable and should be the case for people who come from different backgrounds.
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You have your nfl. Look at the empty stadiums across the country. Let us keep college football in the southeast and pockets of the midwest for a few more years until you ruin everything. Thanks.
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How selfish is the NCAA and their power brokers? Timmy accusing kids of being selfish when the schools they play for etc…make hundreds and millions off of them. I believe the NCAA made $1.1B in profit last year…yep kids are selfish. Oh and by the way who the HELL is the NCAA to tell Americans they can’t make money?
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