The whole NCAA issue

Your ideas are far from terrible. They probably could be tinkered with to various degrees. The problem is that you fall into the category of people who want to push collegiate sports more towards the "student" part of "student-athlete" while others know that's less profitable than pushing more towards the "athlete" part but who also know that a big part of the profits come from the perception that these guys really are student-athletes.

When Northwestern's coaches are telling their quarterback that his classes are interfering with football you need some reform. But which direction do you go? Do you water down the class load even more and make the "student" part even more of a farce? Do you truly make the "athlete" part secondary and maybe have platyers skipping practices to work on papers, study, etc. when the academic load is heavy?

The trouble with your ideas is that the people wanting to maximize profits made by DI marquee sports will fight them.

I Know You wrote:

L L wrote:

Pay the players. Then there won't be so much money left to overpay the coaches.

The OP's idea is to tell everyone involved to just stop trying to make money.

Ain't gonna happen.

You're a sad little man, aren't you? A Sad, Little man.

Star athletes come to college programs.

TV networks pay major money to the NCAA for the right to broadcast them because sponsors pay a lot to the networks to place their adds because many many viewers want to see these star players perform.

The NCAA sends money to schools for their participation in these televised games.

The Schools now have all of this money and need to pay someone for the efforts that generated all of this money.

The are not allowed to pay the players, who the sponsors are paying money to see.

So they give tons of money to the coaches.

The OP thinks these coaches shouldn't get so much money.

The NCAA and people like you and the OP think the players shouldn't get this money that they generated.

And I guess people here are saying the NCAA shouldn't take so much money.

Then the networks would be obscenely rich from the efforts of the players.

Maybe they should refuse to televise the games.

Okay, I played a revenue sport for a major D1 school. And yes, I actually played.

In college, I thought the athletic side was all that mattered. I was straight-up told that athletics were all that mattered. I was there to play basketball.

Now, over a decade later, I see the whole thing as stupid. I was never going to be NBA material, but I was still a good D1 player. I majored in Psych and had okay grades at best. The thing is, I am not a moron. I could have gotten solid grades/degree if I had tried. I just had no incentive.

I am in a weird situation where I can honestly say that I loved my time as an athlete for my school, but I look back on it with regrets. I know my coach made over 2 million dollars a year. I got a full ride, but it wasn't worth a huge amount of money. It was a state school and my parents could have easily afforded it if I had not received a ride.

So I busted my ass off so that a group of men made good money on my time as a guard. I don't think I should have been paid, but I wish I would have focused more on school. You can easily say that I made my own decision and could have spent my time in a more productive manner, but the truth is that I really couldn't have. I was traveling a lot, watching tape, practicing, meetings, games, team stuff. It wasn't up to me. If I had said, "you know what, I am going to switch to pre-med" it would have been an absolute sh1t show.

I think it is time to change things. I don't think paying players is the right thing to do. I think we need to reign in college sports. I think revenue sports need to mirror the non-revenue sports. Possibly look to Ivy schools as a guide?

Now that I have said all of that I do think another solution would be to have the schools keep the money and for them to reduce the outrageous tuition costs instead of giving all of that money to the coach.

DE-REGULATION wrote:

Eliminate the NCAA and their nazi regulations. Colleges and athletes should be free to decide what to do. It's the free enterprise system that made America great.

Do you realize that the university members vote on all the rules?

The sort of reforms I'd like to see are in line with what you're writing here. Even at the places that make massive profits on their basketball and/or football teams only a tiny handful of the players will go to the NBA or NFL. If their sport interferes with getting a degree they've been done a disservice.

D1 Revenue wrote:

Now, over a decade later, I see the whole thing as stupid. I was never going to be NBA material, but I was still a good D1 player. I majored in Psych and had okay grades at best. The thing is, I am not a moron. I could have gotten solid grades/degree if I had tried. I just had no incentive.

Be glad that your outlook has changed as you matured--plenty of adults are way too wrapped up in college athletics.

I don't think big time basketball and football can be brought back to amateur status. These are professional sports franchises at the big schools. Some are making more than NBA teams. No one would suggest that an NBA player should be payed in a scholarship, so why should an NCAA player at Duke or Louisville? The money is not going to stop until we all stop watching (not going to happen).

What if the school had restricted your basketball season to only the spring semester? Start in late Dec and finish in May. The school pays you as a pro and treats you as one during the season. You don't have to take classes. They limit practice to say a max of 10 hrs per week in the fall and summer to allow you to take classes, and they give you a full scholarship for 2 years after your eligibility expires to allow you to finish your degree. Looking back, would that have been fair for you?