This comes from a member of Congress:
FYI
PAC-10 Commissioner Larry Scott makes $5.3M. If the only reform was to make his salary $450K (still a top 1% salary), every PAC-10 football player could get an annual $5,000 stipend to help their families with rent, health care, food, etc.https://t.co/QUVaitr2lH
— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) August 2, 2020
Filed under It's Just Bidness, Pac-12 Football
“We remember the Sugar Bowl, I think it my junior year of high school, we let Alabama beat us twice,” Brinson said of a team that also lost to the Crimson Tide in the SEC Championship game. “We’re not letting Alabama beat us twice. In the Sugar Bowl in 2018, they… thought they should have been in the playoffs and lost to Texas.” -- AB-H, 12/27/23
Get The Picture
THIS is a good idea.
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*Make it like the Pell Grant, but for athletes.
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Athletes are already eligible for pell grants.
https://www.thelantern.com/2018/05/student-athletes-look-to-pell-grants-to-subsidize-education/
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I meant, make the distribution of this money like Pell Grants. The Senator talked about sending it home to help pay rent, etc.
So economically disadvantaged athletes should get more on a sliding scale.
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Do it!!
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I’m a huge proponent of the free market system, but without athlete compensation in college sports or some other equalizing factor, way too much money accrues to the Coaches and ADs even if they’re totally incompetent. I bet there’d be a line of qualified applicants 2 blocks long if you capped HC salaries at $1M and ADs at $500k without any impact on the quality of play. If they wanna make more money, let them try to get a “promotion” to the NFL. The “new” college leaders wouldn’t do any worse than the existing bunch of overpaid clowns.
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I don’t think you really have to cap anything. If a portion of the revenue stream is redirected to the players, that leaves a smaller piece of the pie for coaches and administrators.
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I admit I don’t like pay for play. In that case, every benefit including the value of the scholarship would be subject to taxation. If the athletes are ok with that, more power to them. I don’t believe college sports should be NFL/NBA/MLB Lite (maybe that’s the last vestige of romanticism I have left). I am totally comfortable with appropriate NIL reform, medical coverage, and 5-year guaranteed scholarships. I don’t think the players will like the other side of pay for play … loss of choice of where to go to school because if you don’t think a high school draft will eventually result to maintain competitive balance, you’re kidding yourself (I don’t mean that to you, Senator).
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Why do you assume everything would become taxable? The players are already receiving pay from schools in the form of COA stipends and nobody’s taxing them on their schollys now.
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Because their stipend is considered part of the cost of attendance … students on some academic scholarships also get similar stipends. If a student gets paid for research, that benefit is taxable. Once a student-athlete meets the IRS definition of an employee, the scholarship and the value of the compensation would likely become taxable.
Without certain IRS protections, you could make the case they meet the definition of an employee now.
https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/employee-common-law-employee
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Who is FICA and why is he getting all my money?
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37% right off the top. Motherfuckers.
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Senator, I agree redirecting a large portion of the revenue stream to the athletes would help address the Imbalance. However, unless there’s a breakthrough in that area, price caps on salaries and facilities is the other way to address it.
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Price caps and floors never work. There’s a market distortion created by the current price floor created by the labor price-fixing cartel known as the NCAA. Doing the same thing with coaches and conference commissioners won’t change the real problem.
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I ASSume Chris Murphy has signed up for a 90% pay cut..
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If our politicians would work for free because they love our country they could feed a lot of people. Man this is some easy shit to do.
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… so could soldiers if they killed for free because they love their country.
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He makes less as a Senator now then Scott would after the reduction.
But, sure, whatever feels good to you.
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Sure, thats one perspective on it. Another is politicians always have a great plan to spend someone else’s money.
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And a Larry Scott makes less than Bezos. A dirt farmer in Bangladesh makes less than you. This is a silly game. As Megan McArdle wrote long ago Porgressivism is largely made up of grievances of the upper middle class against the upper class.
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The issue isn’t about class envy. It’s that the Pac-12 losing money (assuming for the sake of argument it is) isn’t an excuse to avoid responding to player demands for compensation.
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No snark —- Do you think the PAC-12 is actually pushing to support these changes ( behind the scenes) to create competitive advantage because they are losing money? Would actually be such a Larry Scott kind of move.
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I think they’ll try to settle for giving the players as little as they can get away with.
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I totally agree with you. I also think that the PAC 12 might be desperate enough to open Pandora’s box because of it.
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That may be your interpretation of Murphy’s comments, but that requires some heavy divination. He clearly poses a hypothetical of redistribution from Scott to the players.
I’m not here to defend Scott nor oppose players’ rights to NIL (imho). I am here to oppose a US Senator’s proposal to liquidate an individual’s contract and disburse the proceeds to others. It’s odious.
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Oh, he’s making a proposal there? Interesting. I guess we should expect him to introduce a bill, right?
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What a dumb way to think about all this. The rules (laws) the government puts down creates the market. Murphy as a US Senator has a major role in making these rules. He is demonstrating how distorted the market is under the current regime and using Scotts salary and how that would divide to demonstrate how unbalanced things are.
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Umm, the girls field hockey team, would like a cut of that pie also…
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You know the PAC12 took a loss last year…and has for sometime.
Does this mean they will also pay down the debt as a result of those losses? I don’t have an issue for players being able to profit from their NIL…I am all about free markets and capitalism but there are down sides…like taxes and loss…
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And yet Larry Scott makes over $4 million a year, more than any other P5 commissioner.
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Is Jimmy Sexton his agent?
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Heh. Good question.
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Good work if you can get it. I’d like to be a commissioner for a year. GTP can rail against me and my bad decisions!
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Is a Murphy the one who lied about his service? Stolen valor?
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No but great try.
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Try? What did I try? I asked a question.
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Dick Blumenthal.
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Thank you!
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Envy is such an ugly emotion.
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Not any more so than greed.
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That’s an understatement for sure.
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I am reminded of my favorite Dylan lyric, from Blind Willie McTell:
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Not my favorite John Prine lyrics, but appropriate tonight:
They screw you when you’re sleeping
They try to screw you blind
Some humans ain’t human
Some people ain’t kind
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Both definitely rank in the Top Seven.
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LOL. I see what you did there.
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Give them the money they did not earn and make them pay for tuition, meals and tutors. Sounds like a good balance to me.
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