Will Olympic Sports become “Club Sports”

Cougar Football
21

I do worry that the current atmosphere of ‘fairness’ will have people complaining that the qb or rb on Bama’s football team makes more appearance money that the volleyball spike lady.

Not so much worry but waiting for that to happen. Like WNBA players complaining they don’t make as much.

22

I definitely worry about this opening the door to massive cheating, which will benefit men’s sports first, and premier teams second.

If a car dealership gives a kid $100K to man an autograph booth for a day, or to put posters of the kid sitting in an Explorer, whose to say that that is excessive? What about a million dollars? In my mind, this opens the door to whole new levels of payoffs/cheating.

But the difference in money is why schools will not be a part of it. While a school like Alabama probably wouldn’t mind paying its football players $100K per year, it doesn’t want to do that for the rest of its sports. So instead a car dealership or a wealthy executive and Alabama fan will pay the football player for autographs or pictures or ads or the like. The school stays out of it.

Meanwhile, other schools more like UH might be able to get its players some Whataburger coupons.

It may not be a new super league of football teams that ends or permanently minimizes UH football, it could this kind of scheme.

23

I don’t see anything wrong with this at all. The free market will take care of itself. Yes the Bama kid will make a lot at a dealership, but eventually good businesses with bottom lines and even crazy ass boosters with no bottom lines will not just keep paying backup safeties and a kicker. It will be the stars and if they can get it, great. A kid with a physics scholarship can take money from the private sector, so why not this? All because of some 100 year old rules by a governing body that does not even crown a champion in their biggest sport?

I don’t think of it as cheating but bringing it above board. Legalizing sports books, pot, mushroom, gambling in general brings it out of the criminal darkness and into the light.

24

An unfettered free market doesn’t work in a lot of areas, and it won’t work with college athletics.

BTW, the NFL shares nearly every dime it gets, has salary caps and floors, and enforces these and other competition rules staunchly, and it might be the strongest, richest league in world.