Yea I don’t blame you. Just something so different from shredding the gnar and fracturing your leg vs shitting your pants and forgetting your name in your early 20s.
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I don’t have all the answers. I just stopped watching football altogether. College is just so exploitative and pro is so incredibly violent / full of head injuries.
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And it’s still being framed in terms of “concussions”, when it’s becoming more and more clear that concussions aren’t actually the problem. It’s the repeated and constant sub-concussive blows. Although concussions are the only thing that football programs can plausibly control, so it is what’s being discussed.
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I’ve never been much of a NCAA fan because that culture just doesn’t exist outside the USA, but crusher blaming the kids is just bad. These schools are worth billions. Just because they charge 10x for a degree what it’s worth shouldn’t make exploitation an argument.
It’s not just concussions or repeated hits, it’s the travel. Its the bruising. Even athletes that don’t get seriously hurt have aches and pains other students don’t. How do you write a term paper with a bad shoulder Injury, never mind a concussion?
Football is probably the worst sport to look at here for this question, because it is so unbelievably brutal and punishing physically.
It’s not any harder for a woman’s NCAA basketball player at Connecticut to succeed academically than it is for a man at Gonzaga. Or a men’s wrestler, or track and field shot putter, or whatever other obscure sport anywhere. But the Gonzaga basketball player generates tremendously more revenue and value than the other athletes I’ve mentioned. Should college athletes be compensated for the value they create or for the sacrifices that they endure for attempting to succeeded at their sport?
And if men’s college basketball and football should be required to subsidize less popular and lucrative sports, why should the NBA not be required to subsidize the WNBA?
Football is on another level, but it is very tough for a wrestler or tennis player or whatever as well to be on the same level academically. It’s tantamount to a full time job on top of a full course load.
I dont think for colleges they should be passing the athletic dept money around. This leads to insane corruption and just stupidity.
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Right, that’s my point. And why it’s much more instructive to compare big time women’s basketball to big time men’s basketball than football to anything else. Big time men’s basketball generates billions of dollars a year, women’s NCAA basketball does not. Should the men’s players be compensated for the value they create, or for the academic hardship they endure, which is the same as the female NCAA basketball player wherever they play. For that matter, the men’s NCAA player at Gonzaga has roughly the same sacrifices as a player at Oral Roberts, or wherever. Should a Gonzaga All American be paid more than an Oral Roberts scrub?
I imagine an open market system which shouldn’t skew that differently from the current status quo of top recruits going to top programs seems like the best solution?
I imagine if players could be paid, Uconn women’s basketball might very well pay more than Oral Robert’s men’s program.
Not really relevant to this debate, just noting that the NBA does actually provide some funding to the WNBA. It’s not a lot but it’s still something like 1/5 of WNBA revenue.
Where in the fuck did I “blame” the kids. Fuck off with that nonsense. Can’t believe I missed this comment last night. That is absolutely gaslighting.
Forcing universities to pay athletes more will result in less opportunities for kids. Maybe that’s a net positive for society idk.
What do you do for a living? Is anyone being exploited in your endeavors?
Colleges have no business running professional sports programs, especially in sports that cause literal brain damage. Outlaw university tv contracts and tickets that cost more than 5 bucks. Or take away the tax exemptions, whatever it takes to get the NFL and the NBA to operate their own farm systems.
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I’m surprised pro teams beyond baseball don’t have farm affiliate leagues. There’d be way more appealing towards people uninterested in a college education.
The NFL tried that with the World League of Football and the NFL Europe but those were losing too much money.
Seriously, does anyone have a problem with how baseball runs things? Just have a minor league farm system for football and basketball for kids trying to get into the pros and a club league for college students who want to play recreationally.
NFL Europe and WLAF were run as their own leagues. They weren’t comprised of minor league affiliates of NFL teams like baseball farm leagues are.
Those teams were loss leaders designed to get American football more exposure in Europe. They weren’t cultivating young talent for the NFL.
This is the kind of position that could only be had by someone who doesn’t really get or follow cfb. Never going to happen.
Football is what we are usually talking about for obvious reasons but BMX ‘ers are definitely dealing with CTE.
Dave Mira killing himself would be the NFL equivalent of Tom Brady.
Colleges, college sports fans, and the athletes? Like, I haven’t looked at the numbers, but minor league baseball couldn’t possibly generating even the same order of magnitude of revenue that college football does. Minor league football might be more enticing than minor league baseball, but there’s no way it would generate the fanaticism of college football. College is a core personal identifier that runs deeper than current geographical location as a reason to get all tribal with your buddies, so there’s a very real risk in your proposal that the college recreational leagues might still generate more revenue than minor league football, in which case, why would a burgeoning pro play for a minor league team when he could potentially get paid more at college?
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College football is basically the religion at PSU. It had a cultist following with most students blissfully unaware or uncaring about how fucked the athletes were. It took me some time to realize how bad it was.
Those schools exploit the poor by claiming to offer an education when it’s just paper classes designed to keep them on the roster. Of course if they get injured and become ineligible to play then goodbye scholarship. Nevermind while the players get shit that coaches get several income sources to build their millions from.
A pro football farm league is a real threat to college teams because a farm league would be better preparation for the NFL than college football. College football has too many rule differences and college schemes that make players woefully unprepared for the NFL. A NFL farm league would have the same rules as the NFL and use the same schemes that exist in the NFL to make for a smoother transition to the pros. Plus, those players wouldn’t have the demands of a full-time education to meet in order to play. Instead, they’d get paid for their work.
There are tons of cities/towns all over America that are nowhere close to a pro football team. No doubt that it could be done if there was the will to make it happen. Instead of cutting players drafted, you could put them on your minor league team. Then, you can accept walk-ons from high school teams across the country and form a team like that.