They're not wrong, just hypocrites.

ESPN did the same thing for an entire week with wall to wall Simmons marketing. They showed five of his *high school* games in five days, with title sponsors for each event from corporations like McDonald's and Dick's.

Everybody knows the star players are driving this engine, and everybody is making money but them.

It's a little unseemly that LSU is being so overt about it, sure, but it's not exactly a secret that Simmons was going to increase ticket sales and provide a huge revenue boost to the athletic department.

This post was edited on 5/21/15 at 9:01 am

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Posted by King Joey

Just south of the DC/US border

Member since Mar 2004

12513 posts

Posted on 5/21/15 at 2:37 pm to LMfan

quote:
Everybody knows the star players are driving this engine

Yeah, that's why Texas A&M Football never made a nickel til Johnny Football showed up, and LSU Basketball never turned a profit until now that Ben Simmons has shown up to raise some revenue, and UCLA never sold any merchandise or season tickets or TV broadcast rights until Ed O'Bannon got there (or since he left, right?). Yeah, the decades of teams, coaches, administrators, fans and everyone else who work to build a brand like Bama or LSU or SC or Notre Dame or Texas have nothing to do with it; every penny they make is 100% solely due to whoever the current star-de-jour is.

The actual, dollar value impact of each individual player relative to the entire athletic department of their schools, compared to the actual, dollar value impact of the benefits provided by the school (scholarship, coaching, exposure, training, facilities, tutoring, housing, stipend, etc.) relative to that individual is completely out of whack . . . in the individual's favor. I struggle to imagine a college athlete whose absence from a program would have made a bigger difference to that program's bottom line than the difference not playing would have made to that athlete's bottom line. In other words, Ed O'Bannon minus UCLA Basketball is a much bigger loss than UCLA Basketball minus Ed O'Bannon. And the same is true for Manziel, Simmons, Bush, etc., etc.