So im guessing when a college athlete signs to play a sport, the sign away the right for the school to profit off their name through merchandising, right?

I played football, albeit not at that level, as well as doing a couple other incredibly grueling sports. I am aware they work hard. I think it's fine to pay them for it. I do think their hard work is different, and fundamentally less onerous, than the same amount of effort in other contexts (the ditch digger), but that's a minor point.

I do actually believe it. And I do believe that in the perfect word in which we clearly do not live, hard work would be the principle determinant of income, so they would continue to be paid reasonably well — but i also believe that "reasonably well" should not be much higher than average. To me, an income disparity of 2x between two different full-time workers is already cause for alarm; the thousand fold difference that actually exists is a travesty.

Oh it shouldn't? They make the ****ing market. No huge stadium, no network broadcast, no corporate sponsorship, no bazillions of dollars. They will all be fine without sports. Sports will not be fine without them.

You're being naive, too, if you believe that playing football, basketball or whatever, physically demanding though they are, is more unpleasant than most other full time jobs. Even with the sweat and the exhaustion and the pain, their lives are not bad, and yes, part of that is because they're playing a game. They get to experience a sense of accomplishment now and then, and at the very least tangible and achievable goals. They get adulation form fans (when they win anyway). Their lives are not all milk and honey, but they're not bad.

Presumably you understand the inefficiency inherent in your "solution"? No one will work hard with capped wages.

Your optimal world will lead to everyone having a much lower standard of living.

Plus what phildo said: Athletes and particularly business executives do work hard, which is definitely part of why they get paid a lot.

Sort of depends on what you mean. There isn't much demand to watch the 1500th best player face off against the 1450th best player.

But my point is just that through some combination of talent and hard work, doctors/teachers/athletes bring happiness to society.

I don't think schools can merchandise with players names. Numbers and whatnot yea, but I think names are off-limits (was a big deal when a local Ann Arbor t-shirt shop started selling shirts that said "Shoelace" because it's D-Rob's nickname).

Again, you are assuming your conclusion. You are assuming that because there is money to distribute, it should be distributed, and because the people who were necessary to the accumulation of that money should get their share, we should give them their share.

The words of mine that you bolded were clearly my opinion, and I made no effort to prove them because it's clear that I can't — but neither can you prove your own position. Each of us is expressing an opinion based on deeply held assumptions about how the world should work. You were raised a capitalist, and consequently think that capitalist solutions are good. I happen to disagree.

Even if we limit the discussion to only perennial Top 40, Division I, Men’s Football, Basketball, and Baseball programs, the number of players that should be grateful for scholarships and opportunity outnumber the exploited by 5 to 1. I vote for grateful.

Grunch.

Can't see how anyone can say they're being exploited. They voluntarily choose to take part in an organization that forbids them to be paid for their play. I don't see anything wrong with it.

One thing that I think is very hypocritical of the NCAA is to allow coaches to change schools freely with no financial impact while athletes who transfer must sit out one year. If they don't receive a scholarship during this period, that is even more messed up.

Also, does anyone know the rule on personal travel? An example would be if a player is from NYC but plays at USC. Does that person have to pick up the bill for going home during a break or going back to campus when the new semester starts?

Yea this makes sense, cause I go to UD, and you couldnt get a flacco jersey when he was playing, but now they sell Flacco UD jereseys in the school store and whatnot.

No, I think you're wrong that this is a serious flaw. For one thing, people would still have an incentive to work to get to the cap — remember, if we're rewarding based on effort, then failure to put in effort means not getting the reward, capped or not.

Extreme example: do you believe Michael Jordan would have worked much less hard if his income had been capped at ten million dollars a year? At one million a year? At a hundred thousand even?

Second, standard of living is a function not just of the fruits of labor, but of free time. If people work less hard, then to at least some extent the reduction in production is offset by the benefit of more leisure time. Or do you believe that aggregate happiness, across different economies, is strongly correlated with per capita income? It strikes me that once you eliminate the countries where significant numbers of people are starving (which is a different issue imo), people aren't any happier on average in the wealthier countries than the less wealthy.

Sorry what am I making up? Let's limit the discussion to football for the sake of simplicity. How much compensation do you think the average player would make in a hypothetical minor league football scenario? We can even make it so that colleges are banned from having football teams. My personal opinion is that not as many kids would be able to play football and they would get paid in peanuts. Some evidence in favor of my assertion is the wild success and awesomely high salaries of the XFL, Arena Football league, USFL and NFL Europe.

No, I'm expressing an opinion based on how the world does work within the confines of the United States at least, and last I checked the NCAA is a US-based organization. If the athletes (at any level) don't like the way they're being treated, they can go form their own league and fight the man. There's "nothing" stopping them.

If having your college tuition and room and board paid for while being a campus celebrity is tantamount to exploitation, please start exploiting me now.

I was just talking with a friend about this and it struck me that it might be best for almost everyone if the NCAA made a rule that its member schools may not hire a coach who is under contract within, or within the contract period of, another member school. In other words, coaches could get out of their contracts (because labor contracts are legally limited — no slavery allowed, even voluntarily), but other schools couldn't hire them if they did until the original contract term was up. Would be fairer (because people would be held to the terms to which they agreed), and would set a better example (to the extent NCAA gives a damn about that).

Unfortunately, it wouldn't surprise me (I don't know) if that were an antitrust violation.

I'm going to make up some more stuff.

Most athletes are smart enough to benefit from from a college degree. And by smart enough I mean they know how to look for a job after getting said degree. Having D1 college athlete on your resume will get you a crap ton of interviews and opportunities, especially right out of college.

Are you really this obtuse?

The first question was: Do you think athletes are being (unfairly — this part was implicit) expoited. My answer was no, because they are being reasonably well compensated considering that, among other things, the life of someone who plays a game for a living isn't bad relative to those of others. In the post that you originally quoted I did not say or imply that athletes don't work hard; the issue of hard work arose later.

A point that later arose during the discussion, and which I was addressing in the part that you originally quoted, was that I thought in a utopian system compensation would be based largely on effort. By this measure athletes would still do reasonably well if they worked hard (as most do); I implied I might downgrade for that fact that, as I explained, even hard-working athletes have it better than many who work equivalently hard at other sorts of professions.

sorry i didn't quite realize i was debating karl marx when i made that post. i apologize, comrade.
he's the one that claimed they weren't smart enough for college, not me.

your example is ******ed because i don't want to ban college football. do you think the coexistence of minor league baseball with college baseball and the ahl with college hockey somehow means that less kids get to play baseball and hockey and they make peanuts? stop being absurdly disingenuous.

you should have some idea of how much college athletes are worth to declare that you think their salaries are approaching fair territory. or you could be just making **** up. you also ignored the revenue of college football and basketball teams and whether they have gone up with tuition.

Uh, you said you would use a free market system to determine the amount of "hard work" that someone puts in, since it is near impossible to measure directly (especially since hard work isn't even that well defined). I don't have any incentive to work my hardest if less effort will put me at the cap.

The other thing is, what are you going to do when I offer a job at $1 above the salary cap? Throw me in jail?

Yes. Especially at a hundred thousand. Investment Bankers for example aren't going to be putting in 100 hour work weeks for a hundred thousand dollars in pay.

For Jordan in particular, he likely would have managed his media image differently, and then today we all might not have the luxury of wearing sneakers with a cool looking logo on them.

If you wanted increased leisure time, you would just take a job that allowed for more leisure time.

I also don't know how you can say that in general people that are wealthier are not happier. If this were not the case, then they would not work to make more money. I think standard of living is correlated with happiness because people tend to try to increase their standard of living. If this didn't make them happier they wouldn't do it.

what I gather from the poll results is that 51 people dont watch college sports in oot

You chose an interesting pair of examples: one on which, according to you, the harm to society is that an athlete "manages his... image" differently, and one in which the people who you say (and I agree in that case) would work less hard don't actually provide any benefit to society, but rather are in the business of redistributing wealth.

I'm not concerned (nor would I be if any of what I'm suggesting were actually possible in he real world).

The assumption that free market outcomes are undergirds the argument that the "exploitation" of athletes is bad, or at least every such argument that has been presented in this thread. I was just pointing out that the assumption is, in fact, just that — it is not a proven theorem nor a universally accepted axiom. And when you build in that way, you arrive at conclusions that are only as firm as the original assumption.

I was careful not to say that people [who] are wealthier are not happier. I said that in societies that are on average wealthier, people are not on average happier. (I cannot prove this, but my experience and reading suggests that this is so.) This is a very different assertion — and is the more apposite one, because I was responding to your argument that in my construction of the labor market the economy would suffer; my rejoinder was that even to the extent that might be true, aggregate happiness might well not.

Grunch, they should be grateful to be exploited. Voted ban dids

OK first of all I never meant to imply that you, Phildo, wanted to ban college football. I was trying to make a simple hypothetical and then argue from there. Maybe I was wrong to do that. The point I was trying to make was that all non-NFL football players get paid a crap wage, not just the college players. When you take in to account the cost of tuition and the value of a college degree, the college football players don't do that bad when compared to other minor league football opportunities.

Secondly, I never argued that the existence of minor league options for baseball and hockey players means that less athletes get to play those sports. That would be ******ed and I'm not ******ed. Therefore I never argued in favor of that position.

actually you are one playing Karl Marx here. Who gives a **** what the universities make? You don't want to play for Auburn? No problem. Go play somewhere else and make tons more money. It's a free country. From a pure cold hearted economic POV, it's my opinion that the university brand name and marketing engine is worth a lot of money and the athletes aren't worth quite as much as they think they are. I make this statement based on the multiple complete failures of football leagues that are not the NFL or the NCAA. From a "moral" standpoint, I do agree that college athletes should get more of a piece than they currently receive. How much more I'm not sure. But it isn't that much more.