re: College athletes being paid.

LSU football already has to give back to maintain the university budget and now you want them to pay their players?

To me when you combine the costs of education, room, meals, clothes, tutoring, coaching, medical care, travel, lodging when traveling and whatever other perks they get that I'm not aware of....to me they are paid. I bet that adds up to a tidy amount per year per kid. And they can all get cush well-paying summer jobs that they can put money aside from, if they so wish.

Now I would listen to an argument over allowing them to market themselves though I'm still against it because that's IMHO ripe for abuse by programs looking to get an edge.

Hell I can barely watch a TV broadcast now for all the commercials. How many more minutes of commercials will be required to raise the extra revenue for paid athletes?

They do get paid. I have 3 kids and it is more expensive for them than an athelet on scholarship. hmmmm that cant be... they are not paid anything!!!

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What's the value of everything they get now? Full ride, coaching and development, opportunities, etc.

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This is the aspect of the question that I think needs more discussion. On top of the thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of dollars worth of tuition, room, support, etc., the athletes are also receiving highly specialized and highly expert training in their field. How much does it cost to spend a week at a top QB camp? Now multiply that by however many weeks of practice a player spends with their QB coach. On top of that, consider the value of being featured 10-15 times a year on TV, especially national television. And that's just for football players. Basketball players could get even more TV exposure. Think about how much it would have cost Ed O'Bannon to put his game film on National Television even once. Now think about how many times he got to be on television because of the opportunities UCLA afforded him. Essentially everything Ed O'Bannon has ever done in his career has been because he played basketball for UCLA. Without college basketball, he would not be any of what or where he is. Without Ed O'Bannon, college basketball -- and specifically even UCLA basketball -- would be essentially unchanged from what it is now. His contribution to the history, tradition and standing of UCLA Basketball (much less UCLA or college basketball in general) is to insignificant to even be reasonably calculated. The notion that his specific participation somehow impacted the school or the sport to so much greater a degree than the hundreds of thousands of dollars of benefits and potentially millions of dollars worth of opportunities afforded him is so far beyond ludicrous as to be offensive. And the suggestion that he is even remotely significantly responsible for the millions of dollars of revenue generated by UCLA athletics is a direct insult to the generations of legendary players and coaches who came before him and have followed since. No one buys season tickets to UCLA Basketball because of Ed O'Bannon. They buy them because of guys like Lew Alcindor, Bill Walton, and Don MacLean not to mention that Wooden guy.

From a strictly financial standpoint, a school's athletic program revenues are a collective product of every player, coach, staffer, athletic director, athletic department staff, trainer, manager, and especially every single one of the thousands or millions of fans throughout the decades-long history of the program. The market demand created by the fan base is huge, and that's on us, the fans. The program architecture and maintenance is on the ADs and their staffs, including the coaching staffs but also including their administrative staffs. Everyone contributes. The actual portion of revenues attributable to a particular athlete's contributions is miniscule. Consider this: the vast majority of Texas A&M's football revenues came from a combination of season ticket sales and TV contracts -- both of which were completed before Manziel ever took a snap.

I don't think they should be paid.

They get access to
Free education.
Top notch training.
Top notch facilities.
Top notch nutrition.
Top notch equipment.
Help with grades.
Access to 2 the NFL and access to their degree field.
Etc.

Paying players would be difficult to regulate and the schools with the most money would run the sport.


They are getting paid, fwiw but the implications of getting caught usually make it more humble.

The only thing that needs to change is the players should be guaranteed 5 years of scholarship.

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The NCAA, according to the filing, wants the appeal decided before the association and the schools would be "forced to make fundamental changes to the administration of collegiate athletics and to their relationship with students."

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LINK

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The only thing that needs to change is the players should be guaranteed 5 years of scholarship.

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I would agree with that only if the student stays the entire ride. If he leaves early, all bets should be off. Why should a school be penalized, because a student tries to test the waters, with having to support them whenever they decide to come back with tuition, boarding, meals, books, etc? Once you give it up to move on, that's it.