Dr. ikesssssssssssss isn't in here saying the UM men's quidditch team should be getting paid, broham.

Yeah but he's not pissed about Title IX using men's football and basketball to fund other unprofitable men's sports, just women's. Us against them.

"Are you going to pay non big time atheletes?" is his point. And the men's ultimate frolf team can't take their school to court via Title IX.

Some very high percentage of revenue-driving college athletes at big time college athletic programs are steered away from even the hint of rigorous course work for just this reason. Of course the, uh, 'student athletes' can push back and take whatever courses they want once they're in, but many of these these schools have whole fleets of 'counselors' and 'advisers' who steer the kids to less difficult and time consuming classes. And that's the 'responsible' schools who even bother with the charade of pretending.

I don't know about like literally every school but most of the people working concessions at college athletic events are volunteers.

Jeezus suzzer only of those programs are literally required by law to be funded. The fact that the law requires schools to take money from football and basketball to fund women's sports. If athletes are paid, they'd most likely be required to pay females just as much as males for the same reasons.

I always assume when people complain about athletes not getting paid, it's an acknowledgement that college sorts are 'amateur' in name only. How are these new player salaries supposed to work? Are we just going to give them work study appointments or something?

I'll spare you the super sick SEC burn but regardless of the John Oliver interview, college athletic revenues are still completely dwarfed by revenues accumulated through these schools' academic endeavors. There's probably only ~50-75 schools in the country making any money off of athletcs at all and alot of those are in the Big Ten and Pac 12 which are making literally billions in tuition and research grants and publishing revenues or whatever, and there's still plenty of academic types at all of these institutions who find athletics a total distraction and only tolerate it because it can be self-funding and keeps alot of the rich alumni connected with the schools and writing checks. But there's alot wrong with assuming these schools are trying to become the NFL and that athletics is anything from a profitable distraction (e.g., Big Ten schools) to an unprofitable loss-leader. There's surely exceptions to the rule (e.g., some of the SEC, FSU) but by and large most of even the schools with big time college athletics could drop it entirely and nothing about academic quality or their academic mission (what they're "trying to do") would change drastically.

The NCAA is a different story of course, but remember like half of the big-time revenue driving schools who drive all the NCAA's revenues from college basketball will quietly threaten to drop out the scheme and play amongst themselves in their own conferences and at their own tournaments.

So is FIFA, which is also hilarious.

Let them hire agents and negotiate salaries. Why not?

Agree with ikes that it's kind of absurd to propose paying basketball/football DI male athletes the same as everyone else. They are the cash cows and while it would be somewhat better for them to get something, even if it had to be evenly distributed, it seems kind of ridiculous to pay some male crew team member or female lacrosse player the same amount.

I don't have a good solution, though.

Get out of the business entirely and let football and basketball have a minor league system the way baseball and hockey do.

Not sure disbanding major college athletics is a realistic solution.

Realistic solution? I mean, all you have to do is tweak title IX. When that law was written it was meant to stop a lot of unfairness going on against women in colleges, and college sports were not the big business they are today. It might only take a simple administrative ruling given how title ix is currently being bastardized to rule that colleges have to use a 'preponderance of evidence' standard. Don't see why it'd be discrimination to allow athletes to keep a % of proceeds that they generate.

Why not? It seems to work for hockey, baseball, and soccer. And I'm not talking of necessarily disbanding athletics, since it's not like there couldn't be club-level football and basketball teams. And like DVault pointed out, the industry is a money-losing proposition for the vast majority of NCAA schools.

I guess I should add that I don't think the current hypercynical arrangement of elite "student-athletes" getting paid literally nothing while fueling a bajillion-dollar industry should be considered a "realistic" solution.

why can no one spell dvauts name right?

Your mind corrects to an "l" for lefty.

I dont get the problem. Just let them sign contracts for whatever the schools are willing to pay them individually.

I just assumed it was one of those in jokes that happened before I got here which I'll never entirely understand.

Ya, I think certainly another option is to treat players as staff, hire them on contract, waive any academic requirements, have a player's union, etc. etc.

I don't quite understand though. College hockey, baseball and soccer (as revenue varsity sports, and in some places profitable ones) still exists, and there's nothing stopping the NFL and NBA from having minor/development leagues. In fact, the NBA already has one.

So I think the word 'let football and basketball have a minor league system' assumes there's something formal holding them back from having one. They don't bother because college athletics do the development at a high-level and create exposure and assume all the risk of young bodies now for them, for free. There's nothing stopping them from creating minor leagues but the natural incentives provided by college athletics makes it a losing proposition for them. Might as well let high-profile athletic institutions commoditize the young athletes, turn the best ones into marketable stars without having to pay a dime (see the hype for the NFL and NBA drafts), and assume all the risk for young knees, shoulders and skulls at least until they're 20-22.

Which I guess you understand, since this was predicated on college sports disbanding. but I also think the word 'disband' is a little unclear too. Disband what? The NCAA? OK, fine, but as I wrote before (admittedly poorly), big athletic schools and conferences don't exactly need the NCAA. The NCAA provides precious little for football; television contracts, scheduling and referees and the post-season system (bowls, the playoff) are all controlled by the institutions and conferences themselves. The NCAA's main hobby horse is the basketball post-season tournament and it's not hard to imagine the conferences figuring out how to do that on their own without the NCAA. And in the recent past, they have sabre rattled they'll pick up their balls and tell the NCAA to go **** itself and drop out.

If that's disbanding, then fine, but that won't do away with college athletics and the billions of dollars it generates. That's a bit of a fait accompli at this point even if the governing body (the NCAA) did disband and the whole affair became regulated by a conglomeration of the conferences or whatever. But that won't change the economic realities.

Because getting all of the schools that make money off football and basketball (and to a lesser extent hockey and baseball) to stop is a different matter entirely and much more atomized. Hypothetically, once the dark cloud off the NCAA and the pretense of a body enforcing amateur standards was lifted, you would see conferences and individual schools happily and transparently pay players; remember some of the unscrupulous institutions are informally, indirectly, and surreptitiously paying players now. I suspect in the end, that's what you were arguing.

Now, I'm all for getting rid of the NCAA, but I do sincerely believe you'll have alot of pushback from some institutions (not all) on abandoning the notion of amateurism. Even on the end of the spectrum where athletics are big and profitable. For one, remember the notion and ideal of amateurism (elite "student-athletes" getting paid literally nothing) is still an absolutely cherished notion for alot of people, particular academia. That they fuel a big profitable industry is only sometimes true at some places and for alot of professional academics, its complete happenstance, a distraction, and not revenue they really get to touch or feel or need anyway. They will happily enforce amateur standards on their own. People who follow it can surely name the Big Ten, Pac 12, ACC, etc. institutions who would rather jump to the Ivy League model and let the quality of athletics suffer than pay their players.

And the economic reality of the situation is still complex. The kicker here is, as it always is, is that demand to pay for and watch college athletics might not be diminished significantly even if amateurism was MORE rigorously enforced. You can imagine that if the NCAA were to go away and the pretense of a national regulating body were to end, some schools would happily pay players top dollar akin to NFL and NBA contracts or whatever and embrace that. And some will push back, as I said.

And yeah sure the quality of the athletics will suffer at the places and conferences that push back and enforce amateur standards but what's entirely unclear is if it that will completely remove demand to watch the games on teevee and spend $75 a ticket to be there in person or whatever. Remember this isn't some huge departure from the status quo. This is where 'lol Michigan sucks!' jokers really get to shine, but bear in mind the current reality is NOT like super far from this: some schools and conferences gleefully flaunt scholarship limits, has bag men with varying degrees of connectons to the athletic departments dropping piles of money on athletes doors to compel them to come to their schools, and treat the academic side as a completely optional pursuit -- and there's other parts of the college football world where the surreptitious paydays are frowned upon and some academic standards are enforced. The kicker here is that the most profitable institutions in this scheme that generate the highest TV ratings and are generating the most revenue from donors and filling 100k+ stadiums are the ones where the quality isn't as high and at least the superficial pretense of amateurism is more strictly adhered to. Of course there's lots of demographic and historical reasons for why this is the case, but that's sort of the point.

tl;dr: hard to disband something that is already rather decentralized and there might be significant demand to watch amateur athletics (and therefore lots of money to be made) for reasons outside of watching the highest quality young athletes

Well sure. There's always going to be a huge inelastic demand for college sports, the upside of this is that we could probably go back to a more amateur model, run the games with less skilled players, and still get people to tune in to Michigan vs OSU. If there's really a demand for near pro-caliber sports with elite athletes, then let the leagues set up separate amateur leagues. That seems to be how baseball operates afaict.

But I don't see how this solves the core of the moral problem at our feet here: a bunch of unpaid labor making millions for the institutions they play for. We seem to concede that Michigan vs. OSU would draw eyeballs and revenue even if they dressed up even less skilled and more amateurish players to compete. So I don't see how stratifying between some hypothetical Minor NFL league and college sports solves the problem. Your comparison to baseball is apt; are we any happier about the the NCAA and the College World Series of Omaha, Inc. making mint off of unpaid labor just because the Fort Wayne TinCaps exist?

Baseball is much less problematic because talented high school players can just go into the MLB draft and play developmental baseball for a salary. You can't do that in football.

But then the solution isn't to create a minor league but (forcibly, through the courts?) change the NFL's minimum age policy. It's questionable labor law anyway. Maybe one logical thing after that would be for the NFL to create a developmental league after that happens, sure.