How many years is too many for NCAA athletes?

So, your personal agenda is that we should continue to subsidize a very inefficient system of athletic development based on egalitarian 19th Century notions?

I am willing to give the NCAA system consideration if it can prove a societal benefit beyond branding and entertainment value. Are NCAA student/athletes proven to have better careers, achieve more senior leadership positions, create more shareholder or community value, or greater GDP contribution vs. the tens of thousands of non-athlete kids that attain college degrees? Can that even be quantified?

In a nation critically short of skilled workers in STEM fields, what is the economic point of funding more undergraduate communications, nutrition, and business majors that play sports? China and India don't seemingly care about keeping fat guys entertained on Saturday afternoons. Their universities are turning out boatloads of engineers, research scientists, medical professionals, and other skilled people creating the future. But, by all means, let's make it possible for a 26-year-old above average hobby jogger to live the dream before he uses his diploma to get a call center or retail manager job.

all due respect to the "minor leagues" arguments but despite NIL college remains essentially amateur. guys like boling, tinch, and smith have to turn down some of the money they might get professionally, or as a medal reward, to stay in college. in that context implying college should be treated as a de facto "minor league" is off.

personally what i find gross is you're in college on a scholarship and your team makes a bowl and you want to skip that to prepare for professionalism. i think that's more obnoxious and not in the spirit of NCAA than a 25 year old playing college sports who started late and is progressing towards a degree. i had an ex select teammate go back to school after an absence of a few years. i want to encourage that. if sports help, so be it. my d3 college keeper did some years in the marines. he got to start a couple games but on the merits was a backup. nothing says the older guy is bound to start. my experience quite a few of the ones who went back had gotten rusty and lost a step. pros might peak mid 20s but an amateur who takes time off takes a while to get back same level. many mid 20s players have families.

see i think while holding up "minor league" as your argument what you are actually trying to reinforce is the standard pro pipeline timing. that a college athlete will enter age 18 and be available for pro play in their early 20s. that is actually dictated by professional considerations and not college ones. college, we're trying to get people to pursue degrees even as they get older. education is the goal. sports is a carrot to chase the degree. ergo within some sort of bound we want to provide this thing for anyone any age who is pursuing a degree. the real reason we have limits is not it's a de facto minor league that needs to push players out, it's to avoid the teams building a permanent cast of sub-pro but talented players kept around as "ringers" by shuttling them around to various degrees, for the glory of old notre dame, so to speak.

so we give you 5-6 years max and we run the clock when you show up to school as opposed to with your class. i think the goal is education so i think ex-military, ex-minor league basebal, ex-drop out, i want them all back. i don't think it inherently slants for the older folks. and i think if they are as good as you think then what they are giving up by not going pro is your "check against excess." if an older athlete is actually that superior at their age they are usually producing pro level and the draw of a paycheck will resolve your concern. you don't have to be punitive and exclude the "u turn soccer dad" just because it's upsetting that cordell tinch was a 23 year old soph or JT smith in college age 25, winning titles. with what it takes to win in NCAA they will turn pro soon enough. they may have even more pressure than your average athlete as they know their clock is finite and ticking.

I agree with your sentiment.

As much as I understand the whole “But I just need one more year with coach and the squad to have a real breakout season” sentiment that lots of collegiate athletes hold, the reality is that 3-4 years of highschool running, and then 4-5 years of college running 99% of the time will show you if you are or are not good enough to go pro anywhere between 800-10,000 meters. At this point we really are getting to a decade of training, even more for those that started earlier on than highschool.

In D1, rosters are full of people that have the “never give up, keep fighting for success, tomorrow is a new day” mentality, because those tend to be the people that can make it to that level of competition and keep showing up every day no matter the odds. The hard thing is that at a certain point tomorrow isn’t a new day, even for pros. One day your efforts will never be enough for what you wish to achieve, whether it’s highschool kid with D1 dreams that can’t seem to dip under 4:40 no matter how hard he trains, or the guy in college who ran 80+ miles a week for 2-3 years straight and is still running 4:05-4:15, or what about the aging olympic champion who still trains like he did when he was #1 in the world but is only running 3:35 in the 1500m on his best days?

Its the cruel reality of our sport. The sad part of being willing to work until you hit your absolute physical limit is that YOU WILL hit your absolute physical limit. I love Kipchoges catch phrase and the way he’s inspired so many, but objectively, EVERY human IS limited. You’ve already won a genetic lottery of sorts if you go on to compete in college. You may not have hit the grand jackpot that means you have the potential to run as your job until you’re in your mid thirties though, and that’s ok. If you aren’t made to go pro, don’t waste extra time and tuition money trying to chase it. If you still want to compete, train and race unattached at meets! Our collegiate system has sold us the idea that we need college for running success, it definitely helps but you really don’t. But maybe it’s time to move it down to your 2nd, 3rd, or 4th most important thing in your life. Trying to go pro or win a title and going all in on it when you don’t have the physical potential and watching people 5-6 years younger than you winning instead will just be deeply frustrating, when you could just be training and racing out of pure love of the sport, while figuring out what you want to do and who you want to do it with for the next 60-80 years of your life.

the STEM argument is a narrow, vocational idea of college. that liberal arts majors should be illegal and we don't need sports. to me college is intended to create broadly educated people who can think for themselves, make decisions, and be the boss -- and who have balance in their lives, as opposed to produce a constant stream of middle class employees for the boss.

the leading major at yale is history. that is how people who know they will go to grad/professional school and lead, educate themselves.

personally what i would propose is double major. one for you. one for the world. i feel like an emphasis on vocationalism is focusing narrowly on the needs of others ie the business world. it is a ticket right back to the middle class. it produces morally and civically stunted people who think of the world in money terms, easily led around by politicians and bosses. all you have to do is scare them about the job they are obsessed with and the money they need to keep the hamster wheel going.

the chinese government is ethically obnoxious/shady and would just as soon toss important parts of their history eg tienanmen square down the memory hole. sort of desantis on steroids. this is precisely why we need history majors (funny, ron was one). so if the chinese become a history-less worker cult we have to do that too? maybe we should jail or send to camps people we disagree with.

it's odd how badly conservatives in this country start to mimic what they claim to dislike.

The 6th year runners that actually DID run/compete for 4 seasons and are back AGAIN this xc season baffle me. How can they get an exception when they have already used their 4 years of eligibility?? I am asking because I don't know. Runners that ran in 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2022 are back again???

it also bears reminding that some of the covid sports experience was just strange. personally i wouldn't shed a tear if some of the folks who got a truncated season while enduring going to school during covid got a nice full length year at the back end at their disposal, if they wanted it. i only think x% bother but it just feels mean to say, well, that 6 game season counts the same as when i would play 19 games in a year.

is the point being harsh for the sake of harshness? doesn't seem much of a point to the harshness other than the odd random athlete supposedly hogging a scholarship. or who precisely gets to go to conference or nationals in situatiions where there are numerical entry limits. which, begs the question. otherwise, in meets with unlimited entries, so what if the guy over there is 24. they took me to the meet too. we race and someone wins. this is how track works. we gonna call that harsh too?

last, the 24 mantra for some reason reminds me of the parents obsessed with punting their kids from the house age 18. in my experience this did not result in a superior outcome, and kind of felt like the legalism of cutting many paternal ties -- i don't owe you support past 18 -- posing as parenting strategy.

We already have a simple rule. It's fine the way it is.

Your second paragraph is a completely different subject which probably has some merit.. though many would disagree.

Thing is, the way things are going, w/ realignment of the football money and NIL deals what you are hoping for is likely to happen for all but 40-60 or so schools.

I agree but it could be even simpler. Allow 4 years of eligibility to everyone. That would eliminate all of the paperwork currently required for extra years. I don't care if it is due to mission or military or medical or merely because someone wanted to focus on academics for a few years. Give them all 4 years regardless of if they use it in 4 years or 5 years or 8 years.

ok, one year in soccer a guy runs into me and i get hurt game 7 of 19. i get released the last week of the season so i can run track in the spring but that fall i get barely over 1/3 of that soccer season with an injury. my soccer season was done in september that year. you gonna call that "1?"

to be fair, so did NCAA, but if i hadn't played every minute of every game as a starter and been on game 7 instead of 6, i get a year back medical reasons. if you ever experience such a season, you're like a forgotten person. i made an all-tournament team start of the year. my coach was sufficiently in the moment i got basically a no-frills letter award at the end, like the last guy on the bench who played 15 minutes all year. complete amnesia.

sorry but there are well thought out reasons for exceptions to 4 years. i do not see why NCAA would go out of its way to be harsh to players with season ending injuries, missionaries, ex-military, ex-minor leaguers, people with families, former drop outs, etc. you kind of just keep repeating a number like a mantra like there is something evil or unfair about that number.

the only one which is a little weird to me is the graduate exception, particularly if you go to another school. but i think the concept on that is rewarding those who graduate early and want their full 4, and we have just decided that for simplicity's sake, we'll extend it to those who have some eligibility left. i don't see how even that rule makes it so devastatingly unfair it needs to disappear. most people going to graduate/professional school will be too busy to bother.

last, i think the average is something like 6 years for most people to finish a nominally 4 year degree. the rules arguably reflect some of that reality. if we do it your way then the jock who needs 5 years and under the rules plays 5, loses his scholarship year 5.

You know what they call an athlete entering their 9th year at BYU?

Freshman!

Heey-yooo, I'll be here all week folks.

Maybe for sprints, the 800 and Mile, but for anything further age and lifetime miles really help. 5k and 10k guys really get screwed by the older athletes.

i found it far more difficult to be a 14 year old playing against 18 year old varsity in HS than an 18 year old playing 20-somethings in college. i could start as a college frosh and dominate. that is not how HS went. HS most fast frosh show up with the athletic talent of an average senior. over those 4 years i dropped over a second at 100m, 7 seconds 400m, 7 seconds 300H. and i didn't suck when i started.

23 is usually the outer bound for physical maturity growth. i think you have physical maturity processes confused with athletes in professional settings peaking due to training efforts despite stopping growing years earlier. you're like pretending it's some sort of unfair physical mismatch, but by the end of HS and start of college i am already having some 6' 4" soccer forward in his late teens try and back me over like he's lebron james. so spare me that the issue is 25 year olds.

i think i knew one dude who grew a lot in college and reality was he rode the bench 4 years. most people we're talking he was 6' he grew to 6' 1", wow, thanks for saving me from that physical mismatch change.

You might be shocked, but both Stanford and Williams, the 2 strongest all around athletic/academic schools, find exactly what you are asking. That athletes go on to be better leaders, more successful in their careers, and contributing active alums.

Also plenty of non stem grads go on to be contributing members of society. You have a very narrow viewpoint.

24th birthday and it is over. No exceptions. All you little byu apologists should agree to this because you claim that 19 is the peak and it is not an advantage for 28 year old to race teenagers.

Why would anyone to agree to am age cutoff if there is no advantage. That makes to opposite point that college athletes should be allowed to compete at any age. Why implement a random age cutoff? You are making no sense.

Chinese and Indian education systems aren't as great as you make them out to be. Because of the rampant cheating in their school systems, half the graduates are incompetent. At least anyone who graduates from a bottom tier US university is at least minimally competent in their field, not so in China and India.