Will paying college football and basketball players mean the end to college XC and track?

Take all the money that college sports generate and split it up by how it was generated. Football and basketball get a lot of scholarships with extra money going to the players, cross country and track athletes have to pay extra to even participate. It's the cold, harsh truth of where those sports rank and what they mean to a university,

Yes it will. There is absolutely no doubt

The coach at The Pompous Ohio State University makes 5 million dollars a year. If you took 3 million of that and divided it between 80 players, each would get $37,500.

Besides that, if they need more money, they can just raise your cable bill a couple extra bucks a month for the BTN and ESPN.

Josh Hamilton's Addiction wrote:

I'm generally in favor of college players getting paid. More power to them, really. However, the thought crossed my mind today. If schools will need to spend even more money on their big programs like football and basketball by paying the players, will that mean more cutting of XC and track programs? That might shift my opinion on the matter entirely. Anyone who is better informed than me care to weigh in here?

Thanks.

It will end all non-revenue men's sports. A few women's sports will stick around because of Title IX and track may be one of them. The fact that this isn't immediately obvious to you and all the idiots cheering on Twitter is disturbing.

been a joke for 30 years wrote:

The coach at The Pompous Ohio State University makes 5 million dollars a year. If you took 3 million of that and divided it between 80 players, each would get $37,500.

Besides that, if they need more money, they can just raise your cable bill a couple extra bucks a month for the BTN and ESPN.

Take 3 million of that and you lose 10s of millions more in revenue.

gghghhjhjggkffgk wrote:

Josh Hamilton's Addiction wrote:

I'm generally in favor of college players getting paid. More power to them, really. However, the thought crossed my mind today. If schools will need to spend even more money on their big programs like football and basketball by paying the players, will that mean more cutting of XC and track programs? That might shift my opinion on the matter entirely. Anyone who is better informed than me care to weigh in here?

Thanks.

It will end all non-revenue men's sports. A few women's sports will stick around because of Title IX and track may be one of them. The fact that this isn't immediately obvious to you and all the idiots cheering on Twitter is disturbing.

This.

I, for one, am not for this whole paying college kids (ok, young adults) to play sports beyond their tuition. No kidding it costs more to attend college - that doesn't stop them from essentially getting 150-200k for playing a game they love to play, and the opportunity to get a top-notch education at a respectable academic institution (which leads to even more $$$$ down the road, whether or not they are among the ~0.05% - or whatever the ratio is - that make it to the pros).

And the cost of the extra money going to the lucky select few who get paid beyond their scholarship? Further strain on athletic programs which the majority of colleges are already supporting, which means at least one of two things (but likely both): an increase in EVERYONE'S tuition so that the university can bring in enough money to support the additional expenses (although that wouldn't need to be much of an increase, but it could be used as an excuse nonetheless), or a reduction in scholarship/university support for OTHER sports (including but not limited to track and XC).

And for those that crow about how it's "unfair" that colleges "profit" off of their athletes in football and basketball - very few programs actually make a profit, and that profit goes towards paying for those poor athletes' tuition, paying for those poor athletes' coaches and training staff, and paying for those poor athletes' facilities to practice and play their games in. But yes, boohoo those poor athletes that are being "taken advantage of" by being given the opportunity to play the game they love and get an (essentially) free education in the process - and maybe even reaching their dreams of making it to the professional level in their beloved sport if they are so lucky.

It will result in the exact opposite. More athletes will stay in college, and Football and basketball already support T&F financially, so as football will grow, so will the revenues and the sharing to other non-revenue sports, like xc and track.

Micky Loving wrote:

It will result in the exact opposite. More athletes will stay in college, and Football and basketball already support T&F financially, so as football will grow, so will the revenues and the sharing to other non-revenue sports, like xc and track.

What in Gods name are you talking about. More Athletes stay in college? So the 80 roster...what..what. All athletes never take their own tests or do their own papers any longer. None even attend classes any longer...ever! Everything is by computer laptops now. Other students and God knows who take all tests etc for them. Heck all students do this now, its a total joke. Football will grow? What you gonna have 700 on the roster now? We don't even know what were gonna be paying them, and when that starts it will never stop...up and up and up and up.

Josh Hamilton's Addiction wrote:

I'm generally in favor of college players getting paid. More power to them, really. However, the thought crossed my mind today. If schools will need to spend even more money on their big programs like football and basketball by paying the players, will that mean more cutting of XC and track programs? That might shift my opinion on the matter entirely. Anyone who is better informed than me care to weigh in here?

Thanks.

There are plenty of D3 schools that have track and XC.

The sport is going anywhere.

A handful of big athletic schools will pay their revenue sport athletes and kick a few crumbs to non-revenue sports.

The non major D1 schools will revert to some sort of D3 or d2 system. People will still run and jump.

But it will also force track to grow up. Right now track relies on everyone else for the infrastructure of the sport. It's a chance to build it correctly now.

You conservatives should be estatic about this development. No longer can track athletes who produce NOTHING of value to anyone get a free ride on the hard work of football/basketball players.

I'm sick of joe-15:00 5k just mooching off the football program to get a free history degree and a chance to run around in circles.

Incredible2534 wrote:

What in Gods name are you talking about. More Athletes stay in college? So the 80 roster...what..what. All athletes never take their own tests or do their own papers any longer. None even attend classes any longer...ever! Everything is by computer laptops now. Other students and God knows who take all tests etc for them. Heck all students do this now, its a total joke. Football will grow? What you gonna have 700 on the roster now? We don't even know what were gonna be paying them, and when that starts it will never stop...up and up and up and up.

Is this even English?

In the grand scheme of things, a relatively small number of schools make money off of football and men's basketball (for many schools, what little revenue these sports generate is eaten up by their astronomical costs). Many more schools currently operate cross country and track programs, usually funded by donors and perhaps general student funds or small sponsorships.

If football and men's basketball players are eventually considered employees in the eyes of the law, I'm most interested to see whether track athletes will be similarly classified. If so, athletes could be entitled to minimum wage (at least) and workers' compensation protections.

Not all universities give scholarships.

Why do you call college school?

I was paid as a XC runner. I assumed most track/XC got/get a couple thousand per year.

Micky Loving wrote:

It will result in the exact opposite. More athletes will stay in college, and Football and basketball already support T&F financially, so as football will grow, so will the revenues and the sharing to other non-revenue sports, like xc and track.

I would say your argument is flawed. If it does happen that "more athletes stay in college" in football and basketball, then unless roster sizes in those sports increase or schools add these sports then you're just shuffling the names around. Instead of the kids who are one-and-done now, which clears a roster slot for someone else coming in, if you have a top level college player (not sure we'll be able to call them "student-athletes" any more) who sticks around for 4 years that team won't be bringing in new kids to fill roster slots that open up when someone exits their college program early.

It may or may not happen that "football will grow" if college players start being paid a salary. Growth, economic growth anyway, is probably more dependent on what "professional college football" can generate for television revenue above what they are currently generating. What the market will bear, I have no idea.

The idea that any additional revenues a "professional college football" system generates will be directed to other sports, outside of any Title IX requirements that are forced on the college system, to me that's a fantasy.

To me, the primary factor to look at is what is the potential cost to the college system of making athletes on college teams professionals. On the high end, let's say all DI sports become "professional eligible". The NFL has 32 teams with a roster limit of 90 = 2880 players with contracts. In DI the current roster size limit is 105. There are 125 schools in the FBS. Ignoring the DI FCS programs, DII and DIII schools, that means over 13,000 potential "professional college football" players. Assuming current practice is that nearly all the FBS schools fully fund football to the max of 85 scholarships, that is 10,625 student-athletes on full-ride athletic scholarships. Add in FCS, DII, DIII and the numbers escalate massively.

Let's say the FBS decides to "go pro". Unless tv money or some other revenue source is increased substantially can the market cover salary costs that are going to be 2-3 times NFL costs? (~4-5 times as many players in FBS schools compared to the NFL, but NFL contracts would be expected to be substantially higher, so I'm just making a wild guess.)

The only way I see this working in any way is for a college to essentially cut all non-revenue producing sports. Unless all the stats I've ever seen are wrong about how many colleges actually are in the black with their football and/or men's basketball teams. In any case, it certainly is an interesting time to be associated with college sports.

It will mean the end of major college sports as we know it. You can't pay athletes if you're losing millions every year.

Colleges are not making money off of football.

Maybe ALL colleges should just be D III.

Let football and basketball have a minor league like baseball if it's so financially lucrative.

This is just dumb. Most people can't even get into a good college or afford it. The only reason these athletes got in the first place is because they are good at their sport. It is a PRIVELAGE to be able to play a sport in college and get an education at the same time.

If they are going to be paid, then take away their scholarships (or get rid of athletic scholarships completely) and let them pay for their classes, tuition, housing, food, etc. themselves.

I do think however, they should be allowed to sign autographs for extra money or get paid for making an appearance and the like.

Josh Hamilton's Addiction wrote:I'm generally in favor of college players getting paid...

Total aside... About 10 years ago I had a conversation with one of our basketball players who wrote a series of articles for our school paper advocating that college athletes should be paid. His contention was that the full ride scholarship he was getting wasn't enough because he still had to pay travel costs to get home and living expenses, etc. My main point to him was, on the open market, what do you think an undersized center/forward (he was about 6'7" but no vertical ability) with no range (outside 10' he was brick city) and hands of stone (you had to see it in action to believe it) was worth. The $35K or so our college was investing in his tuition/r&b every year, to me our school was getting the worse of that deal.

If colleges end up not having to pay scholarships to college athletes if the system goes pro, it will be interesting to see how the value of players changes. It's one thing, as a coach, to know you have x number of scholarships to award, and everyone is either getting the same thing (football, basketball with full scholarships only), or you're figuring out how much of a deal you need to give someone to get them to your school (most other sports with partial scholarships), vs the calculations colleges will need to do if this becomes a free market situation.