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naslundfan19
Boredom Savant
The race to the dance is hitting the stretch run! Duke and North Carolina have their first game tomorrow. Gonzaga with Pepperdine and BYU this week.
This is incredible...
People were paying $10k to watch last night's game live. Barack Obama was there. They got one minute of Zion who plays for "tuition" and had the Nike shoe he's obligated to wear because Nike pays Duke millions annually for him to do so blow up and cause an injury that could've been much, much worse.
The NCAA is bullshit.
Those tens of thousands aren't distributed equally among post-secondary institutions and those players all take a risk in serious injury that can prevent them from future earnings for absolutely no reason.I still don't buy the "college athletes should be paid" argument and that there is a systematic problem. I do think the NCAA is poorly managed and that colleges should be able to pay students who qualify a living stipend so they can eat, buy books, etc.
But athletic revenues provide universities with tens of thousands of scholarships and support both athletic and academic programs for students. They also give athletes a chance to audition to become millionaires while getting a free education to fall back on if it doesn't work out. That isn't the case for the millions of student athletes who play with no hopes of some payday in the future. Basketball and football fund tons of sports programs (especially for women) that develop leadership skills and have many other positive benefits.
The problem is the "bowl commitees" and outrageous salaries of basketball coaches/athletic directors. I think it's great for the nonprofit educational institutions to benefit from these programs (which in turn benefits the students), but the fact that your highest public official in many states is a football coach or you have event coordinators around the game making millions is where the scam comes in.
Those tens of thousands aren't distributed equally among post-secondary institutions and those players all take a risk in serious injury that can prevent them from future earnings for absolutely no reason.
Don't get me wrong, for some it's fine. Not every good player was getting drafted out of HS in the 90s - some of that generation's best players were NCAA stars. I just don't think guys who would be in the NBA right now like Zion or, in the absolute worst case of this, Greg Oden should be forced to risk it all so some college program can make money off of his efforts.Just like students take a risk taking on debt in hopes of getting a higher paying and/or more satisfying job in the future. We all spend time and money on education, start out in lower jobs to work up to better ones, etc. I don't see how it's that different for college athletes except more people want to watch them and they don't have to take on the risk most of us do since their education is free (and often requires little to no effort).
The NCAA can't make the NBA change it's rule. I agree it's a stupid rule though. Baseball and hockey have it right. Football and basketball get that wrong.
Don't get me wrong, for some it's fine. Not every good player was getting drafted out of HS in the 90s - some of that generation's best players were NCAA stars. I just don't think guys who would be in the NBA right now like Zion or, in the absolute worst case of this, Greg Oden should be forced to risk it all so some college program can make money off of his efforts.
He did suffer from that looking like 43 when he was 19 disease.
It is an NBA rule, and it was put in place because some high schoolers were drafted and then teams would have no idea how to develop them. This was also before the D-league though.Agree with you on that. But like I said, isn't that an NBA rule? They don't allow players under a certain age to be drafted. That's not an NCAA rule or anything the NCAA controls.
Also, didn't Greg Oden just suck on his own? He did suffer from that looking like he was 43 when he was 19 disease.