First of all, I agree that scholarships, room and board, and other benefits mentioned above given in exchange for performing a VOLUNTARY activity, including sports, are indeed compensation, and comparing such things to slave accommodations is indeed inappropriate. This isn’t forced labor with the laborers having no legal rights and having no ability to walk away.
Bad analogy.
That said.
I agree that they should get paid what their NIL is worth. It sucks that some programs won’t have the resources to compete against others that do in that arena, and that the rich will get richer as a result, but it is what it is. No way to stop it that I can think of.
But then again….
People that want to watch purely amateur athletics, generally without NIL, and without scholarships and other athletic benefits, can follow NCAA D3.
To me NCAA D3 jocks are the last true amateurs in college athletics.
NIL hypothetically could exist in D3, but I’ve sure never seen it at my D3 alma mater, and they made the D3 playoffs in more than one sport this school year.
And sitting above it all this controversy, a puppet master is quietly smiling as the true benefactor. What could be better than a developmental minor league from which they can pick and choose who they want, as recently done, and it doesn’t cost them a dime. The NFL says thank you NCAA D1
Looking at the millions and millions an NFL player can make and then saying it’s the same as the old college rule where they were limited to scholarships and living expenses is patently absurd.
I don’t have to try again. I said limit payroll, not salary cap. MLB has a luxury tax to limit payroll. They also have revenue sharing to help less wealthy team be able to spend more. All in the name of competitive balance which is essential for any league to survive.
All I know is that I assume everyone wanting a free for all is just the type of person that believes in winning at any cost and cheating to the top if necessary. People that lie about no compensation are just creating sensationalism to further a personal agenda. Lying does not contribute to developing a balanced and fair system which is what is needed.
In a free for all system, UH will get obliterated by UT and A&M not even counting outside the state national brands.
Now that we are paying players, the ones that are deserving of the most money can pay for everything you mentioned 10 times over with NIL. They were poorly compensated. Better?
PS. There is no free capitalism at work. No it will not work in sports that are supposed to have a level playing field. Free capitalism only benefits cheats and liars who can’t win on a level field. Any UH fan should be fully against it.
“They were poorly compensated. Better?” IF by better you mean using poorly compensated over uncompensated, then yes that would be an accurate statement.
If it has to do with your first sentence, then no idea as I have no real opinion on paying for school vs scholarship. That really is just an accounting difference.
Capitalism is the idea that capital does not inherently belong to the landowner on whose land it sits or is employed. Playing football is not the creation, possession, use, or lending of capital at a profit. It is labor which is compensated at an agreed rate, which has never been required to be done in money, only that money is a simple aggregation of tons of economic information that everyone can trust impartially.
Capitalism has nothing to do with extracurricular activities conducted by an association of government run institutions.
Allowing advertisers to pay for use of a players capital assets is capitalism, but it isn’t the game of football. We all know that most of the money pouring in now doesn’t represent actual use of NIL assets, it’s simply a way for conspicuous consumption to take over the operations, which is neither football, nor college, nor capitalism.
Correct. I get it. They were being compensated before in the way of scholarships. Which is still a huge deal. Especially with the cost of education these days. And for the 98% of NCAA players, this is all they need. But for those 2%, scholarship compensation was not enough. And I am glad they are able to capitalize on what the market would be willing to pay them today.
Possibly more than 2% as previously all extra earnings were banned to avoid being abused by people trying to buy teams. There were several athletes that had various social media and other ventures beyond their sport which could have been lucrative. They can now also benefit from those ventures as they should.
NIL, as intended, is beneficial and fair, and if the settlement goes through with the clearinghouse for NIL, I think it will fix most all NIL problems with pay for play.
Now transfer rules need work, and revenue sharing is a wait and see. I think it (revenue sharing) is more than the players are actually worth under current proposals.
Pretending Alabama players were not compensated in some way is a special kind of delusion.
Saban had the best under the table / bag man system to pay his athletes in all of college football.
Additionally, they had tuition, tutoring, counselors, food, shelter, clothes galore, training staff, coaches, facilities, etc. I just checked. None of those things are free.
Saban’s biggest unspoken complaint is that Alabama no longer has an edge. In Saban’s time, it was an arms race among schools that could develop and protect an under the table payment system that Alabama was the king of.
That being said, the current system as it stands now, will cause more than half the schools in FBS to be non-competitive in terms of pursuing a national championship. Not just non-competitive like they were pre-NIL but now just a farm team for the upper half. I know guys that played football at MAC schools and I’ve heard or read them say, (and I quote) “My school is a g##damn Junior college now”
Which league limits endorsements? NIL is endorsement money. What the endorser gets in return is up to them. LeBron, Tiger, Jordan, etc. all made the majority of their money not from the leagues they played for but from Nike or Gatorade or whatever.
No league I know of has a cap for that so why should college players?
Not as much anymore, but this was why the New Yorks and the LA’s could get better players than Kansas City or Milwaukee.
Whether it is or is not “productive” is for the market to decide. I mean, I can make an argument that almost 80% of what we consider “jobs” are just BS that push paper but don’t actually do anything. (I say this as a lawyer BTW, so I include much of what I do in this too).
Ultimately, college sports, like pro sports, movies, music, reality TV, instagram, blog sites, etc, are entertainment; they fill in time with stuff that make people feel good. That feeling is worth something. How much that is worth is up to each person. Now, I am of the opinion that there should be no college athletics; let the private sector take it over. The NFL is just using taxpayers to run a farm system. They should pay for it just like MLB, NHL and the NBA do.