Are american college athletes exploited?

[Integral]

Yes, and colleges should be able to bid on players

 

[say1988]

Yes, particularly with two issues:

1) The use of the student's image and name for profits with no related compensation to students. Students should either retain the rights to their image and name or be granted a standard share of merchandise using them.
2) From what I have read, there are no protections for the students. If a student becomes unable to play the sport, he loses his scholarship and all other benefits usually resulting in him being effectively tossed from the school. When the school grants a scholarship they should have to guarantee it throughout the standard program length, thereby guaranteeing the student a reasonable opportunity for a degree under most circumstances.

 

[classical_hero]

What I think should happen is that money raised from college sports should go to a fund help the players that don't do well professionally so there is some sort of help available to them should they need it. The superstar athletes are more than likely going to make big money when they turn professional, so they won't need an help.

 

[cardgame]

What I think should happen is that money raised from college sports should go to a fund help the players that don't do well professionally so there is some sort of help available to them should they need it. The superstar athletes are more than likely going to make big money when they turn professional, so they won't need an help.

But that's SOCIALISM!

 

[downtown]

They have the benefit of booster legacies predating the invention of football. Even if it were possible for OSU or Stanford to adopt another business model, why would they want to? The current one is working pretty well.

Exactly, and it's worth noting that for for the nearly the entire first half of the 20th century, the Ivy league dominated the college sports landscape (they invented it after all), and they were able to use that to help build that super-duper rich donor legacy. There are really only a handful of research universities that do not bother with college sports (NYU, Chicago, Hopkins). Even the Ivies today recruit athletes whose scores are below that of a typical student.

DT, do universities pay into insurance programs for athletes? Say for instance Bob is a future first-round NFL pick, but Bob has his knee totally destroyed while playing college football. Is Bob compensated in any way?

They don't, although if the student is a sure-fire 1st round pick, he can easily take out an insurance policy on himself. The student is given great medical insurance, (athletes are probably never going to get health care that great again) but not against future earnings.

Yes, particularly with two issues:
2) From what I have read, there are no protections for the students. If a student becomes unable to play the sport, he loses his scholarship and all other benefits usually resulting in him being effectively tossed from the school. When the school grants a scholarship they should have to guarantee it throughout the standard program length, thereby guaranteeing the student a reasonable opportunity for a degree under most circumstances.

This is changing, and I agree that it's a pretty terrible problem. The Big Ten and several other more academically inclined colleges now give 4 year scholarship programs, instead of year to year. I imagine eventually the NCAA will force the Southern schools to do it as well.

As for Ga Tech players never graduating, according to the AJC and the NCAA, Ga Tech football players had a graduation rate of 55% in a 4 year period. That may not sound great, but the graduation rate for a typical Ga Tech STUDENT, according to Tech's own website, is only 41%. In 2001 (the latest year I could get the data), Tech also had the highest average SAT of any D1 football program.

It isn't great, but if the athletic graduation rate is comparable to that of the general student body, I don't think it is a crisis.

 

[downtown]

Yes, and colleges should be able to bid on players

I think if we did it this way, I don't think we would not have college sports anymore. Only the absolute largest schools could afford to do it.

 

[CivCube]

The student body is exploited by dumping so much funding into a professional recruitment pool. That's funding that could have been used for, you know, academics. My college actually ceased to exist in 2010 because they tried to do that.

 

[Kraznaya]

Amateurism is very much a scheme to get rich kids far more opportunities than poor ones. It's a terrible concept and should be abolished in general.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Exactly, and it's worth noting that for for the nearly the entire first half of the 20th century, the Ivy league dominated the college sports landscape (they invented it after all), and they were able to use that to help build that super-duper rich donor legacy. There are really only a handful of research universities that do not bother with college sports (NYU, Chicago, Hopkins). Even the Ivies today recruit athletes whose scores are below that of a typical student..

Sports obviously had little or nothing to do with their "donor legacy".

http://www.gocrimson.com/information/recruiting/helpfulinfo

Does Harvard offer scholarships?

No. As an Ivy League institution, Harvard does not offer athletic or academic scholarships to students. However, Harvard does provide need-based financial aid to those students who demonstrate financial need.

If a Harvard athletic team is recruiting me, do I have to go through the same admissions process as other applicants?

Yes. All prospective student-athletes must be accepted by the Harvard Admissions Office in order to play for a Harvard athletic team. Since all Ivy League schools do not award athletic scholarships, there are no signing dates for the National Letter of Intent. You will be notified of your acceptance into Harvard at the same time as all other applicants. To learn more about the application process, visit http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/.

As for Ga Tech players never graduating, according to the AJC and the NCAA, Ga Tech football players had a graduation rate of 55% in a 4 year period. That may not sound great, but the graduation rate for a typical Ga Tech STUDENT, according to Tech's own website, is only 41%. In 2001 (the latest year I could get the data), Tech also had the highest average SAT of any D1 football program.

You are comparing apples to oranges. The state of Georgia admission requirements for in-state high school graduates is extremely lax, although it has recently gotten a bit better. It used to be 33% when I was there. And you just helped make my point why Georgia Tech is at an extreme disadvantage to colleges like Ohio State that have a lot of "Mickey Mouse" majors which attract the vast majority of their jocks. They need to have the highest SAT scores because even the far easiest major is no pushover. That puts them at an extreme disadvantage compared to most other D1 schools:

http://www.ajc.com/sports/ap-enterprise-examining-football-1158812.html

ATLANTA — When Jay Finch arrived at Georgia Tech, he wasn't just interested in being a lineman for the Yellow Jackets football team. He wanted to study architecture, too.

Then he talked with some student advisers, who gave him a dose of reality.

"They were like, 'You can expect anywhere from 100 to 120 hours of studio time,'" Finch recalled. "I said, 'Oh, like in a month.' And they were like, 'No, in a week.' And I was like, 'On top of football?'"

With that, Finch hopped aboard the M Train.

At Georgia Tech, where the famous fight song proclaims "I'm a heck of an engineer," nearly 70 percent of the football team (43 of 62 players) has chosen to major in management, a business degree dubbed the "M Train" by those on campus who consider it an easier route to a diploma than the school's renowned engineering program.

But the Yellow Jackets are hardly the only school where players tend to congregate in the same fields of study. There are four others universities where at least half the sophomores, juniors and seniors playing football are pursuing the same degree, The Associated Press found in a survey of the 68 schools in the conferences which receive automatic bids to the Bowl Championship Series, plus Notre Dame and Big East-member-to-be TCU.

At Vanderbilt, it's human and organizational development (35 of 59). At UCLA, history is a big draw (27 of 47). At Wake Forest, there's been a gridiron run on the communications department (34 of 60). At Baylor, upset winners over TCU on the opening weekend of this season, expect to find a lot of big guys in general studies (27 of 53).

This is not mere coincidence, of course. While it's natural for a selected group of students — in this case, male athletes — to be interested in the same classroom subjects, it's also apparent many are drawn to courses that are more accommodating to their Saturday pursuit.

At Cincinnati, 40 players picked criminal justice as their major. At Mississippi State, 30 players have declared in kinesiology. Sports administration is the choice of 28 players at LSU. Twenty-one Iowa players are majoring in interdepartmental studies, while 20 players Clemson went with sociology.

"We used to call 'em Mickey Mouse courses. They exists at every university," said Murray Sperber, who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, is a professor emeritus at Indiana University and author of the book, "Beer & Circus: How Big-time College Sports Is Crippling Undergraduate Education."

"You have a lot of young kids, 18- and 19-year-olds, who want to do exactly what the coach says to get on the field. They go to college with the dreams of winning a national championship and being the best player they can be.

"But ultimately, after you're done with your school, you want to say, What did I gain from this school? Did I gain an education?"

 

[emzie]

That was cringe-worthy, From. I really hope you're just being contrarian not trying to make a point.

 

[downtown]

Sports obviously had little or nothing to do with their "donor legacy".

http://www.gocrimson.com/information/recruiting/helpfulinfo

That has nothing to do with what I was talking about...and the difference is really with semantics. GPAs for Ivy League football and basketball programs are still far below that of their regular student peers. While researching my last article, (and one that is going to be published either today or tomorrow), we found that basketball team GPAs at Dartmouth, Yale and Brown were around 3.2 (the student average was around 3.7, 3.8).

The Ivies used to give scholarships of course. They invented college football, and dominated the sport until around WW2. They were the guys who invented the concept of a "ringer" (bringing in a non-student to better whoop rivals). I don't think donations are connected to athletics like they are at FBS schools (including academically elite ones, like Duke and Stanford), but I don't see why they wouldn't be at all.

You are comparing apples to oranges. The state of Georgia admission requirements for in-state high school graduates is extremely lax, although it has recently gotten a bit better. It used to be 33% when I was there. And you just helped make my point why Georgia Tech is at an extreme disadvantage to colleges like Ohio State that have a lot of "Mickey Mouse" majors which attract the vast majority of their jocks:

http://www.ajc.com/sports/ap-enterprise-examining-football-1158812.html

Most athletes don't come from GA though, even for schools like Tech. As for the article, so what? Its not like management is a pretend major at Tech. If you lack the funds or skills to get into OSU (or whereever), getting elite tutoring and remedial coursework and a degree from a national brand, for free, is still a pretty sweet deal. A guy who goes to Tech on a music scholarship will have the same issue.

I don't think most schools publish their sport/major breakdown, but given the athletes that I knew personally (and I knew a lot, since I did college sportswriting), I think the Mickey Mouse major issue is overblown, at least with non-SEC schools.

 

[Silurian]

So what is to stop someone who owns a cable TV chanel and a few stadiums in large cities setting up there own league and paying the players. The players could then pay their own college fees and the person who owned the cable company would get more money because they would not have to pay for other stuff at the schools.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Series_Cricket

 

[ParkCungHee]

Why do americans attribute so much importance to college athletes anyway? And pour so much money into it? It seems like one more of those uniquely american things... almost everywhere else in the world college athletes are amateurs who mostly run their clubs as cheap hobbies.

Because money in makes money out. You have to understand that our College teams are followed by fans and sell as much merchandise as professional teams. They become especially big in areas underrepresented by professional teams, and among the alumni.

For whatever reason, Americans love college athletics, and colleges have put money in to take advantage of that.

 

[say1988]

So what is to stop someone who owns a cable TV chanel and a few stadiums in large cities setting up there own league and paying the players. The players could then pay their own college fees and the person who owned the cable company would get more money because they would not have to pay for other stuff at the schools.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Series_Cricket

Hundreds of millions of dollars, an established and entrenched fan base, and strong cultural support. The same reasons that most challenges to the major professional leagues have failed miserably, with the only notable challenger of the last 50 years being the WHA of the 1970s and the AFL in the 1960s and boht of those mergers were clearly in favour of the established league. And any group trying to do what you suggest would enter into competition with the professional as well as college leagues.
Something similar to what you are suggesting has happened twice, with the NBA and NFL, but they did not have a strong professional league to compete with and the college leagues were much weaker.

The only way it could happen is if the major professional league was working to establish lower tier professional leagues associated with them (as exemplified by Minor League Baseball) giving them the money and fan base to attempt it. And even that would be a challenge with the entrenched nature of college basketball and football in US culture.

For recruiting, college leagues also have a side benefit where players that don't turn pro will recieve an education, while it often isn't in the best programs it is still an advantage over a person who plays in a minor professional league for 4 years and realizes he can't make it.

I would also note that, in contrast to hockey and baseball which grew as local amatuer clubs, football (which was actually developed by colleges) and basketball originally grew largely as college sports.

 

[downtown]

Exactly. A few American businessmen have discussed the idea, but setting up a rival football league would nearly a billion dollars in start up. It's bad business.

 

[mangxema]

We dont really have a club system for most sports, so college sports are the only game in town for several US states. In the south you may live over 250, 300 miles from the nearest pro anything...so college fandom is even more passionate.

As an example, I live in Panama City, FL, which is awkwardly in between the major sports markets of New Orleans, Atlanta, Tampa, and Jacksonville, FL. At least in pro football, we don't really get to follow a team; we just get whatever the networks think we'll like at the time. I didn't mind so much as a casual observer, but it's hard to cultivate a fan base that way.

As for Ga Tech players never graduating, according to the AJC and the NCAA, Ga Tech football players had a graduation rate of 55% in a 4 year period. That may not sound great, but the graduation rate for a typical Ga Tech STUDENT, according to Tech's own website, is only 41%. In 2001 (the latest year I could get the data), Tech also had the highest average SAT of any D1 football program.

Some additional context: those stats are for four-year graduation, which is not something that's automatically assumed at Tech. I barely finished in four (electrical engineering) and I took a few classes one summer, and got to exempt a couple from AP credits (something that Tech is very stingy with). I also had to get creative in a couple places with my scheduling to make sure that four years was even an option with all the prerequisites. I honestly have no idea how I would put in such a huge commitment as football in addition to everything that I was already doing.

That figure would also not include all the students in the co-op program, which I recall was a sizeable amount of the undergrad student body.

 

[_random_]

Exactly. A few American businessmen have discussed the idea, but setting up a rival football league would nearly a billion dollars in start up. It's bad business.

There was this entertaining catastrophe.

 

[Silurian]

So XFL was solvent according to wiki. And there have been others attempts. So someone could set up a league paying featuring the best college players. If it survived for a few seasons it would change the financial relationships as happened with cricket.

From Random's wiki link.

One reason for the failure of the league to catch on, despite its financial solvency and massive visibility (perhaps infamy), was the lack of respect for the league in the sports media. XFL games were rarely treated as sports contests, but rather more like WWF-like sensationalized events

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFL

 

[rugbyLEAGUEfan]

Amateurism is very much a scheme to get rich kids far more opportunities than poor ones. It's a terrible concept and should be abolished in general.

Hear hear my good man !

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rugby_league

 

[amadeus]

Athletes are forbidden to accept wages for their athletic abilities, although they are given full academic scholarships, and stipends for food, housing and transportation.

Oh, so they get to go to college for free? Those poor, exploited people.

And where's the poll option for "college sports should be about fun and athleticism, not selling jerseys to dopey kids paying out the nose (among other orifices) for tuition?"