re: Last Week Tonight With John Oliver hammered the NCAA

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why didn't they get a gymnast from valdosta state or a swimmer from texas state to speak on the issue? do you think those kids feel they're "getting fricked"?

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Because the gymnast from Valdosta State and the swimmer from Texas State do not compete in sports that produce billions of dollars in revenue for their school, their conference and the NCAA as a whole. All without them seeing a dime of that money.

The football player at Alabama and the basketball player at Kentucky make it possible for the gymnast at Valdosta and the swimmer at Texas State to compete.

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Because the gymnast from Valdosta State and the swimmer from Texas State do not compete in sports that produce billions of dollars in revenue for their school, their conference and the NCAA as a whole. All without them seeing a dime of that money.

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they get scholarships on the back of those revenue-producing sports. without those sports, they don't get scholarships. if we have to pay the players in those big sports, that money means less available to give scholarships to them, and they may lose their scholarship.

and don't act like it's impossible. that very thing happened with Title 9

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While there are a large number of individuals who are able to claim that their job is "making good grades", there are plenty of others who have to juggle work and school-related responsibilities simultaneously.

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I know that. I was simply highlighting that there is a large portion of the student population at these schools who do not. Thus validating Richard Sherman's point.

no i mean he would never have sniffed Stanford if he wasn't an athlete. he's not an idiot, but he didn't have "Stanford" stats

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I agree with you regarding Napier but what did Sherman say that was untrue or unreasonable.

Do you disagree that it is hard balancing athletics in college?

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I disagree that these guys are victims. As the video rightly points out it's laughable to pretend these guys are held to the same academic standards as the general student population. They also have access to all the help imaginable if they so choose.

But mainly, what's his point? He's complaining because he had to work hard for his cush million dollar job? Well, that's shocking. Oh and boo hoo. Making big money almost always requires hard work. I guarantee you every doctor in med school or lawyer in a legit law school would trade places with him in a second or the finance guys on Wall Street working 20 hour days.

The "average student" he is talking about also isn't getting a free ride, doesn't get free food and housing, will graduate and make like 45k, and work for the next 35-40 years to make half of what he will make in the next 9 months.

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But mainly, what's his point? He's complaining because he had to work hard for his cush million dollar job? Well, that's shocking. Oh and boo hoo. Making big money almost always requires hard work. I guarantee you every doctor in med school or lawyer in a legit law school would trade places with him in a second or the finance guys on Wall Street working 20 hour days.

The "average student" he is talking about also isn't getting a free ride, doesn't get free food and housing, will graduate and make like 45k, and work for the next 35-40 years to make half of what he will make in the next 9 months.

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And without those sports, the schools don't get the money and facilities they enjoy now.

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Money and facilties to provide for more sports. The amount of money they actually contribute to the school is often a building here or there, and maybe some extra cash. Here's one example, there are more:

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Take the University of Alabama’s football team, for example, which had the third highest revenue during the 2011-2012 season, generating $110 million. While a typical SEC program spends around $27 million on its football team each year, Alabama reported about $41.5 million of operational expenses. Those expenses do not include the athletic department’s debt service payments, which would have added about $13 million more to its overall expenses. There was also $37 million of the athletic department’s budget not allocated to any particular sport or gender of athlete, and it’s not clear how much of that piece of the pie football received.

The information recorded by the U.S. Department of Education shows that Alabama football did indeed subsidize almost all other sports at the university. Basketball was the only other team in the black, bringing in $12 million while its expenses were only $6 million. The deficit for all women’s teams combined, for example, was just under $9 million. While these allocations also show that a good portion of Alabama football’s $110 million goes toward offsetting the costs of having a big-time athletic department, the data also shows that some top-tier football programs do in fact use a significant portion of its revenue to provide for the expenses of most of the athletic department.

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LINK

Second problem:

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Without these sports, the universities are not as financially successful as they are now.

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Universities aren't really "successful," for one, most are just surviving. Two, science departments often bring more money directly into the university for the things they actually do, like learning.

Now, if you want to argue about the external dollars that the power of sports as a marketing tool brings in, that's yes, another discussion. But don't act like...

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It's a symbiotic relationship. To deny this is to deny reality.

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This anywhere near reality. It isn't. And honestly, universities, for what they intended, would be better off without sports as a business.

Of course it would be reduced to this.

Are schools using private donations to pay female coaches off the books? If so, why do CFB and MBB get more money? How is that not a violation of title IX?

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Are schools using private donations to pay female coaches off the books?

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pretty sure TAF pays a large chunk of nikki caldwell's salary

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Money and facilties to provide for more sports. The amount of money they actually contribute to the school is often a building here or there, and maybe some extra cash. Here's one example, there are more:

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I can guarantee you The University of Alabama would not be what it is today without its football program. Do you want to know why President Denny's name is all over that campus? It's because he launched a massive ad campaign in northern newspapers to bring their kids south to study at Alabama. His main selling point? The football team. Even today you get massive amounts of students from states north of the Mason-Dixon coming to UA. Their reasoning? "My family has always gone here."