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Athletes play the sport in college to pay for their tuition. They are not supposed to be paid with a fake degree to play for the school.

If all they want to do is to play sports then the USA and the NFL needs to establish valid minor leagues and a system where kids out of high school can play and can move up from there and take the educational system out of the equation.

What does reading have to do with the price of a quarterback?

Its rather difficult to even be considered educated when you can't read. So, what do you plan to do for the thousands of 'Football Majored' quarterbacks who leave college unable to read, who have an absolutely worthless degree that taught them no marketable skills, and have deluded themselves for four years thinking they can go pro?

 LordofHats wrote:

What does reading have to do with the price of a quarterback?

Its rather difficult to even be considered educated when you can't read. So, what do you plan to do for the thousands of 'Football Majored' quarterbacks who leave college unable to read, who have an absolutely worthless degree that taught them no marketable skills, and have deluded themselves for four years thinking they can go pro?

What do we do for them now?

So you agree that we should tell them to get a real degree and play ball on the side? Good.

I say let them get football degrees. They will be more likely to get a job then French literature majors

Unsurprisingly, there is not shortage of positions for french teachers which a french literature major is more than qualified to be (or just general English teachers, which are even more numerous).

The only argument for a sports major that could ever work is purposely wanting to leave people unable to qualify for anything better than a job at the corner Wal-mart cause that's exactly what'll happen when upwards of half your credit hours are playing bball rather than anything more applicable for the work force. EDIT: And of course, if you can't read you can't qualify for any position because you won't even make it through the application.

If people want a degree in Sports than they should go to the local vocational school where everybody else goes to get a degree in "stuff I do with my hands"...

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
But the point of the education is to obtain employment - the two are not mutually exclusive.

One of the benefits of an education is that it can improve your chances of employment, the point of an education is to enrich and expand minds. The fact that western school-age education is designed as essentially a factory to generate worker-drones and the higher-education systems have been repurposed into a factory to generate management-drones amount to perhaps the biggest problem with the system. My postman has a doctorate, the regular bus driver on one of my local routes has two masters degrees, half the people on the cashier line at the supermarket have a university education. They were told that education was about obtaining employment, so they worked hard and got qualifications, but more people capable of doing a job doesn't magically create more of those jobs for people to take.

The education system needs to be completely reformed, and "employability" should be right at the very bottom of the list of important considerations.

 Lordhat wrote:

If the athletes didn't learn anything by playing at the college level, then pro teams would recruit straight out of high school as a rule rather than as an exception.

That happens quite often in baseball, basketball, and hockey.

At any rate, what athletes learn by playing at the college levels are social skills, athletic skills, and the skills associated with their course of study. Your proposal does away with the third, and leaves those athletes who don't end up in a professional league high and dry when their coaches inevitably push them into majoring in "sport X".

 Lordhat wrote:

What does reading have to do with the price of a quarterback?

Quarterbacks, offensive linemen, and MLBs/SSs (depending on the defensive scheme) need to be intelligent*. An adult who can only read at an 8th Grade level in their native language is not intelligent.

*As do PGs, SGs, SFs, hockey centers, and hockey defencemen.

 d-usa wrote:
If people want a degree in Sports than they should go to the local vocational school where everybody else goes to get a degree in "stuff I do with my hands"...

They should pursue a degree in kinesiology, sports medicine, nutrition, education, communication, personal training, or physical therapy.

 Lordhat wrote:


If someone goes to school to be a physicist, being able to throw a ball more than 10 yards may not be a priority. But nobody is trying to force them to learn how.

Not being able to throw a ball does not actively damage the nation. Having a segment of the population being unable to understand different sides of important issues being voted on does. A reading level below that of an 8th grader in college just doesn't cut it.

 Lordhat wrote:
If the purpose of a college course is to impart an education resulting in a qualification that can be used to gauge one's ability to perform a job, then playing on a sports team would certainly fit the bill. Despite this, you can't major in Football, Basketball, Baseball, etc.

At UCLA you can..... well, it's a sports Coaching degree, but it's still "majoring" in sports

To be fair, a degree in coaching actually makes you pretty marketable and can teach you lots of things that can be applied to other jobs besides coaching.

That's because you spend your credit hours in classes that teach widely applicable skills rather than spending them playing a game. Schools rarely hire someone just to coach. They don't have the money for that. They need someone who can teach classes too and manage a curriculum which requires an education and of course, being able to read. Someone with a degree in coaching is easily qualified to teach health and fitness classes or even gen ed courses in most high schools which don't always hire teachers according to their degree;

-my junior year art teacher had a degree in engineering, not art*
-my law teacher had a degree in art history
-my psychology/sociology teacher had a history degree

For all the crap liberal arts majors get, their degrees are widely applicable. You just have to get creative with your resume and experiences.

*He was a good wood carver though.

My Sociology teacher was a philosophy major.
But I know realize what he was teaching was not sociology but "Poor people and how they live" class

This seems relevant.

The idea of paying players in college sports is quite absurd (like scholarships worth thousands of dollars while often lacking the academic talent that everyone else needs to actually pay to be there isn't enough reimbursement), but the essence of what the student says has some merit. I don't disagree with a desire on the part of players to be given representation in decisions that effect them. Very *takes off sunglasses* American, of them.

That said, also relevant

Double standards, something college athletes seem to revel in accumulating /bias

I thought the fact you get subsidized tuition and time off for work was enough payment.

 LordofHats wrote:
That said, also relevant

I love how it's greed for the players to want a cut of the profits, but it's fine for the for-profit businesses to make obscene amounts of money off their labor.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
I thought the fact you get subsidized tuition and time off for work was enough payment.

Subsidized tuition, sure, but no extra money beyond that (and you're not allowed to get extra money through other means if you want more than what your family can provide) and your free tuition is gone if you suffer a career-ending injury and are no longer worth a scholarship slot. And even when you are getting those free classes it's often a case of taking 2-3 years of "recreation management" and "leisure studies" just to keep up the absurd pretense of being a student instead of a minor-league athlete until they're eligible for the professional draft. I seriously doubt that comes anywhere near the fair-market value of their labor.

 Peregrine wrote:


I love how it's greed for the players to want a cut of the profits, but it's fine for the for-profit businesses to make obscene amounts of money off their labor.

Which would be relevant... If the NCAA wasn't a non-profit organization.

 LordofHats wrote:
Which would be relevant... If the NCAA wasn't a non-profit organization.

Sorry, but it isn't. The NCAA might have arranged the paperwork so that everyone gets their profits without technically making any money for the NCAA itself, but (major) college sports are a for-profit business. Calling it a non-profit organization makes about as much sense as calling Walmart a non-profit charity because they decided to make their shareholders all paid employees, issue the former dividends as "paychecks", and record a $0 net profit for the company.

(major) college sports are a for-profit business

With only a few exceptions most college sports programs are not profitable and the exceptions are almost all high profile foot ball programs and a few basketball programs (numbering about two dozen total across the entire country). Most sports programs are losing money. EDIT: The article I linked actually references this, because those profitable programs usually see that money eaten up by the unprofitable ones.

And before anyone asks, "why then do universities spend as much as six times on student athletes and non-athletes if they don't make any profit" the answer is advertising and brand recognition. A successful sports program that wins games draws in students, including those who don't play sports at all. It helps getting your university's name in the news and building up a reputation for success (not to mention building pride among students so they end up sending their kids to the same school).

There's also the issue of the NCAA, EA, and CLC profiting from the unauthorized use of player likenesses.

 LordofHats wrote:
With only a few exceptions most college sports programs are not profitable and the exceptions are almost all high profile foot ball programs and a few basketball programs (numbering about two dozen total across the entire country).

That's why I said major sports. I'm sure things are more balanced when you talk about, say, the golf team at a small university, but when we're talking about football programs that bring in millions of dollars in revenue it's just insane to argue that the athletes are getting fair compensation because they get a few "classes" towards a "degree" which has little purpose beyond meeting eligibility requirements long enough for the athletes to reach the professional draft.

And before anyone asks, "why then do universities spend as much as six times on student athletes and non-athletes if they don't make any profit" the answer is advertising and brand recognition. A successful sports program that wins games draws in students, including those who don't play sports at all. It helps getting your university's name in the news and building up a reputation for success (not to mention building pride among students so they end up sending their kids to the same school).

But why does this matter? If the university hired someone to run an advertising campaign to boost their reputation we'd consider it absurd if the university refused to pay them because it's a "non-profit activity". The point is that the university is getting a major benefit from the athlete's work, whether it's in the form of cash or millions of dollars worth of publicity. The ridiculous pretense that the (major) college sports are just a fun little side thing that some students do between classes and aren't functioning as employees in a for-profit business does not in any way reflect reality, and benefits the for-profit business at the expense of the employees.

purpose beyond meeting eligibility requirements long enough for the athletes to reach the professional draft.

The purpose is so they can go get a job, because less than 200 athletes get drafted by the NFL and less than 100 for the NBA. There are over 50,000 college athletes in the US a year. That's .0006% and some of those drafted are right out of highschool or from outside the US. If the only purpose of college sports is to make professional athletes, they'd have been abolished years ago because they're ludicrously inefficient for that task. Those men and women should not be there to become professionals. They exchange their play (and its not like they don't want to play) for a free ride, whether they appreciate that or not.

 Peregrine wrote:
The point is that the university is getting a major benefit from the athlete's work, whether it's in the form of cash or millions of dollars worth of publicity.

They are paid. They get to go to school for next to nothing.

A college football team has on average, 45-55 players. Most of the schools that have profitable football programs have tuition as high as $80k a year. I'll be generous and just do 45*50,000 = $2,250,000 just in tuition expenses for students who go to classes free (and remember my last post where I pointed out schools spend as much as 6 times more on an athletic student than a non-athletic), not including the massive costs of facilities and personnel. There are assistant coaches being paid over a million dollars a year. Assistants (actually a situation not too dissimilar from corporate CEO's and their rapidly rising pay). Even the schools that are making a profit aren't making much. A lot of money changes hands in college sports but most of it ends up spent in the end.

Colleges rolling in cash on the broken backs of student athletes is a myth. They aren't making that much money and most make no money at all. EDIT: Reminds me of all the people talking about all the money involved in the insurance industry while ignoring that the insurance industry is far from the most profitable for how much money its throwing around.

sue of the NCAA, EA, and CLC profiting from the unauthorized use of player likenesses.

Hence why an athletes union isn't the worst idea in existence on the face of things (though EA never made much money off its college sports games anyway).

 LordofHats wrote:
There are over 50,000 college athletes in the US a year.

This is why I'm trying to limit the scope of the discussion to major sports. Obviously some guy on the golf team at a small college is primarily there to be a student and isn't focusing on a career in professional golf. But I'm talking about schools like UNC, where the university arranged fake "classes" for the sole purpose of keeping the football team eligible to play. There is absolutely no way that a football player who can't even read at a middle school level and takes "classes" that never meet or have any assignments is attending the university to get an education. Their "student" status is nothing more than a pretense to keep them eligible to play for a couple years while they prepare for the NFL draft.

If the only purpose of college sports is to make professional athletes, they'd have been abolished years ago because they're ludicrously inefficient for that task.

No, the purpose is to earn prestige and money for the university that hosts the team. The employees just participate because they hope to make it to the professional leagues where they can get paid according to their market value.

They are paid. They get to go to school for next to nothing.

But you're ignoring two major factors here:

1) Not all of these "students" are at the same university as the real students. A football player with an elementary-school reading level is not even remotely qualified to take college classes, and isn't getting anything out of their "education" if the university has a graduate student write some papers for them so they can get a C- in "recreation management" or "film studies" or whatever ridiculous "degree" they're going to pretend to work on for a couple years. It's about as relevant as those honorary "degrees" universities award to celebrities.

2) Those tuition numbers are significantly inflated. According to UNC's own website in-state tuition (subsidized by state taxes) is ~$9k a year, out-of-state tuition is ~$30k, and there's an estimated $15k a year in housing/books/food/etc. So total the "salary", even if the football player is actually qualified to be taking real classes and makes good use of their opportunity, is $25-45k a year. Compare that to their fair market value in the NFL as even a low-tier player, or the obscene amounts of money the college football industry is making off their work.

There are assistant coaches being paid over a million dollars a year.

And this is just more proof that it's a for-profit business. You don't pay people a million dollars a year to coach a football team if you don't feel like you're getting millions of dollars worth of return on your investment.

They aren't making that much money and most make no money at all.

Only because you only consider cash. The universities clearly feel like they're getting millions of dollars worth of prestige/publicity/whatever from their sports programs, so why should they be allowed to act like it's just a few students playing a silly game between classes?

 Peregrine wrote:

But why does this matter? If the university hired someone to run an advertising campaign to boost their reputation we'd consider it absurd if the university refused to pay them because it's a "non-profit activity". The point is that the university is getting a major benefit from the athlete's work, whether it's in the form of cash or millions of dollars worth of publicity. The ridiculous pretense that the (major) college sports are just a fun little side thing that some students do between classes and aren't functioning as employees in a for-profit business does not in any way reflect reality, and benefits the for-profit business at the expense of the employees.

Many schools DO advertise, and get to do it for "free". Having watched enough college sports to have seen each school that's playing plus conference commercials, and basically all of them say the same thing in tiny print at the end: "This feature created by the students of X school's media school"

major sports.

That number is just football. There are 1000 schools in the NCAA. I'm not even including everyone else. The number produced on its face is miniscule enough.

Not all of these "students" are at the same university as the real students.

The willingness of people to advocate the illiteracy of another human being so he can spend 4 years essentially wasting his or her time on a pipe dream saddens me.

Compare that to their fair market value in the NFL

The NCAA isn't a the NFL. The most valuable football team in college sports is worth around $140,000,000 (its that Texas one). The Carolina Panthers are worth $1,000,000,000 and the Green Bay Packers are worth over $1,100,000,000 just for two examples. The NCAA deals in hundreds of millions of dollars, the NFL deals in tens of billions.

These two things are not anywhere close to being in the same league (sports pun) but that's part of the problem. Some college athletes have a wildly disproportionate idea of what they're actually worth when the real truth is that they aren't worth that much (and a lot of what they're worth gets spent on them by the school)..

You don't pay people a million dollars a year to coach a football team if you don't feel like you're getting millions of dollars worth of return on your investment.

Yeah, that's why companies like Disney are giving out huge cash sums to CEO's who essentially do nothing but walk in collect a check and walk out two years later. What someone is paid is not always on par with how much they're actually worth and most of that revenue from games? A nice chunk of it goes to coaches which is a problem in college sports but its a problem in several other industries too.

The universities clearly feel like they're getting millions of dollars worth of prestige/publicity/whatever from their sports programs, so why should they be allowed to act like it's just a few students playing a silly game between classes

Well, because that's kind of what it is. You can't really pay back a college student in prestige (they get that anyway). One of the biggest problems in the NCAA right now is how lopsided it is. The major sports are dominated by a small handful of school and the rest are pretty much just there as cannon fodder (which they get paid by the NCAA to be). If required to pay players most schools would probably just fold their sports programs, which would at the leas have the benefit of increasing a students chances to get drafted, but I have a feeling that's not the outcome desired.

Most teams are regional. They don't make money and they actually get paid to lose by the big teams (not literally, they just get paid to show up then they lose because they're program isn't even close). College players are amateur players in an environment involving huge cash sums with little profit. People love focusing on how much a school brings in via sports but completely ignores what happens to that money. It goes to the volleyball teams, the gold team, etc, and in a lot of big schools the marching band gets a cut too.

The Southwestern (it might be the southeastern) conference actually does advocate paying players; $300 a game. Pretty good deal actually for a student in one of the more profitable conferences only the students refuse to take it because they think they're worth Patton Manning money so the schools can't even get them behind the push to the NCAA (which would enver go for the deal because once one school starts paying, they'll all eventually have to pay and the NCAA collapses).

Does any other country use the educational system as a way to feed athletes into professional programs the way that we do in the USA?

My only other experience with professional sports is soccer in Germany. And if I remember right there is not really a connection between school and sports there. Cities have their own soccer/athletic clubs and you play in the youth teams for them and if you are good enough you move to the primary team and then play in regional leagues, then state leagues, and move on from there.

Not that I'm aware of, but sports are also worth a lot more money in the US than elsewhere. We used to do it the same way, but I don't know the history of how we went from A to B on that one. The minor leagues disappeared starting in the late 50's, probably because the major leagues just started recruiting people from highschool and college anyway if I had to hazard a guess and stopped seeing the point in paying for the lower leagues.

 LordofHats wrote:
Not that I'm aware of, but sports are also worth a lot more money in the US than elsewhere.

Um, the Premier League, Bundesliga, Serie A TIM, La Liga and FIA Formula 1 might disagree with that. The two richest sports teams in the world are Man U and Real Madrid.