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Probably Magic
Oct 9, 2012

Looking cute, feeling cute.
This has been coming up in light of the b-ball kerfuffle, and so I feel that this can be a great resource center for talk about how athletes can profit from their product instead of the veneer of amateurism get thrown around except for when it comes, magically, to broadcast licensing and the like. It's a bit D&D, but I figure there's different regulars between the forums, and we might as well discuss it in here.

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Metapod
Mar 18, 2012
athletes should be paid with blockchain

Edward Mass
Sep 14, 2011

𝅘𝅥𝅮 I wanna go home with the armadillo
Good country music from Amarillo and Abilene
Friendliest people and the prettiest women you've ever seen
𝅘𝅥𝅮
Get rid of college athletics and replace it with the European academy system.

Power of Pecota
Aug 4, 2007

Goodness no, now that wouldn't do at all!

Very Carefully

Edward Mass
Sep 14, 2011

𝅘𝅥𝅮 I wanna go home with the armadillo
Good country music from Amarillo and Abilene
Friendliest people and the prettiest women you've ever seen
𝅘𝅥𝅮
Really, the question we should be asking is what sports should be done strictly by amateurs.

Kim Jong Il
Aug 16, 2003
They should. Let's be honest about what's at stake though. Take a look at USA Today's revenue database. which they obtained by FOIAing a bunch of public university's annual reports to the NCAA. If you see a school's individual reports (a bunch of local papers often do that and publish them), they have the sport by sport breakdown. (Don't look at anything that cites the US Department of Education - those numbers are trash because they don't break out subsidies from revenue.)

There are two things that are apparent when you look at the revenue & expense reports. All the money is made by the big two sports. No other sport, not rifle at WVU, not women's basketball at UConn, is viable on its own without the two revenue sports. Very often many schools, especially ones that don't have a full share of P5 revenue, are subsidized. Undoubtedly a lot of this too is the arms race in big sports for coaching salaries and amenties, and undoubtedly a lot of that should be cut and given to the players.

But there's no doubt about it that currently the revenue sports subsidize the non-revenue. That'll be the first to go. Undoubtedly the Alabamas of the world would stop subsidizing football last. What I'd like to see happen is for football and men's basketball to be spun off to clubs that license the likenesses and still have their students enroll in universities (because undoubtedly most players aren't going pro, even if they're good.) But end this façade of amateurism and student athletes.

Ramadu
Aug 25, 2004

2015 NFL MVP


Metapod posted:

athletes should be paid with blockchain

Kibner
Oct 21, 2008

#1 Pelican Fan
Let them profit off their own name and likeness while in school. That's the least that could be done.

Ramadu
Aug 25, 2004

2015 NFL MVP


If the school makes money off the athlete they should be paid.

Hed
Mar 31, 2004

Fun Shoe
I’m sympathetic to the argument that athletes should be paid, especially in light of the money they bring in.

It would honestly just cause me to move on from college athletics. The best way to explain is the bit of guilt I get from seeing athletes, entire athletic departments, school administrators brush things under the rug. I feel a little guilty for causing that to be the case, by watching and thus making the product valuable enough that morals become flexible. I’m not naive enough to think that this doesn’t happen all over society, but in academia where we pretend there is something valuable to educating people and contributing research in the arts and sciences, having this be out there makes athletics an even more explicit distraction from that core mission than it already is.

Right now there’s a thin veneer... again I agree players generate the value and it makes sense they should capture more. But rather than have the money of college athletics shoved more in my face I might just say to hell with it.

GobiasIndustries
Dec 14, 2007

Lipstick Apathy
Do students on scholarships still have the insane rules about how much food they can eat in cafeterias and at outside events and stuff? Like if you get one too many bowls of pasta you've gotta pay for it?

balancedbias
May 2, 2009
$$$$$$$$$

Hed posted:

But rather than have the money of college athletics shoved more in my face

Where was it before?

\/\/\/\/ exactly

balancedbias fucked around with this message at 15:43 on Feb 25, 2018

ElwoodCuse
Jan 11, 2004

we're puttin' the band back together
If your position is "the money and effort concentrated on college sports is a distraction from the academic mission of universities" (and that's a valid one, I'm not arguing that), you should have checked out of college sports decades ago

iospace
Jan 19, 2038


Edward Mass posted:

Really, the question we should be asking is what sports should be done strictly by amateurs.

I'm fine with high school and lower, but the major junior hockey leagues, which are open to players 16 (15 if you're drat good) and older and where something like 70% of the NHL players come from (exact number not certain), do actually pay their players. If you play in them you're no longer NCAA eligible because of that (but if you fail to make the NHL you get a nice scholarship for a Canadian school).

My take is this: football, baseball/softball, hockey, and basketball (both mens and womens) should get 1k a month, plus whatever money they get via scholarships. Basically the Big 4 sports in the US qualify for this. For the football players that aren't on a full scholarship, it'll help them make up the difference. This would also open up the NCAA to major junior hockey players who didn't make the NHL but want to continue on. You could also argue that the bat and ball sports and hockey could receive a bit less as they aren't as popular as basketball and football.

Also this:

Kibner posted:

Let them profit off their own name and likeness while in school. That's the least that could be done.

Making a kicker ineligible because of a youtube channel? Come the gently caress on.

iospace fucked around with this message at 16:20 on Feb 25, 2018

ElwoodCuse
Jan 11, 2004

we're puttin' the band back together

iospace posted:

My take is this: football, baseball/softball, hockey, and basketball (both mens and womens) should get 1k a month, plus whatever money they get via scholarships.

This system cannot be legally established unless it's collectively bargained.

They should get whatever someone is willing to pay them.

Mahoning
Feb 3, 2007

ElwoodCuse posted:

This system cannot be legally established unless it's collectively bargained.

They should get whatever someone is willing to pay them.

I would mostly agree, but would that violate Title IX?

I’m honestly asking because I have no clue. If it would be a Title IX violation then that’s a much larger battle than simply deciding to pay the players.

iospace
Jan 19, 2038


Mahoning posted:

I would mostly agree, but would that violate Title IX?

I’m honestly asking because I have no clue. If it would be a Title IX violation then that’s a much larger battle than simply deciding to pay the players.

I think Title IX would get involved if a college has one more paid sport for men than women, which in my example they would (football would not have a women's equivalent).

So pay the woman's soccer team? :shrug:

General Dog
Apr 26, 2008

Everybody's working for the weekend
Athletes should be paid, but that does not make paying them under the table a righteous act.

Kibner
Oct 21, 2008

#1 Pelican Fan

iospace posted:

I think Title IX would get involved if a college has one more paid sport for men than women, which in my example they would (football would not have a women's equivalent).

So pay the woman's soccer team? :shrug:

It's on a per-player basis and not a per-team basis, iirc. So, if you pay everyone on the football team, that's like 85 women athletes also getting paid.

ElwoodCuse
Jan 11, 2004

we're puttin' the band back together

Mahoning posted:

I would mostly agree, but would that violate Title IX?

I’m honestly asking because I have no clue. If it would be a Title IX violation then that’s a much larger battle than simply deciding to pay the players.

No, Title IX is brought up to oppose paying college athletes entirely as a concern troll. It has never required complete monetary equality. If it did, Nick Saban would not be allowed to make $11 million a year

El Gallinero Gros
Mar 17, 2010
There should, at the very least, be a stipend that covers food, clothing, and room. I remember watching a move a while back (cannot remember the title or even the sport, but it's irrelevant) where a plot point is that a coach gets in huge trouble because a player's mother died, and he had the audacity to buy the kid a suit.

I could absolutely, 100% see that happening IRL.

Dejan Bimble
Mar 24, 2008

we're all black friends
Plaster Town Cop
Put together a revenue sports union and negotiate how much their education costs, housing, etc, how much money low income families are losing by having a player not contribute his 12 dollars an hour toward the light bill etc, establish that as the baseline for the basketball programs with revenue over X. Then have players agree to compensation in the programs that make a lot of money, with say a modest amount being paid out during the season and then the rest being broken down based on NCAA tournament success, since that's how most teams make money in basketball.

For football, you do the same thing except you decide the salary before the season since they make their money on tv deals and gate revenue, and aren't as dependent on the results of a single elimination tournament.

For title IX purposes, you create a chinese wall, where the schools provide the education of players on affiliated club teams, lawyers can figure it out.

The surplus of revenue brought in by big sports programs seems to be spent mostly on stadiums, fancy facilities, coaches, ADs, and college administrators. I don't see much money going to the non revenue sports or the rest of the school. It makes sense to detach them in a legal sense.

But that would be admitting that you're just running a minor league, and that makes the NCAA furious for some raisin.

kayakyakr
Feb 16, 2004

Kayak is true
I could see 2 ways this could go that maintain the college sport and yet still allow players to be paid:

1) All D1 players (FBS football, men's and women's basketball) join a union. That union licenses names and likenesses. Players are welcome to take endorsement deals, but until their eligibility has expired, the revenue from that is placed into the union to be distributed. The NCAA subsidizes this union until it's able to pay out 1-2k/month to each player (collectively bargained, of course).

The downside to this is that players are unable to capitalize on their individual fame, but it still maintains an even playing field among rich and poor teams.

2) Football and basketball are spun off as associated but independent entities of the universities. They operate as a minor league with a draft, slot values, free agency, salary caps, trades, waivers, and all the other trappings of professional leagues. College education is still tied in, but no longer compulsory.

A complicated system of school preference that excites the algorithm nerd in me would be in place where a player could specify a set of schools (for football, first 5 rounds), a conference (next 5 rounds), a region (next 10 rounds) and then the final 5 rounds would be open. Basketball would have 4 rounds with the same stipulations. Could make this a live draft that takes ages, or a computer draft that's over in seconds. Would have to figure out how you build draft order.

It'd get rid of the pretense of the "student athlete" while still limiting them to 4-5 years of eligibility. Would increase parity. Could make a deal with the NBA to keep high draft picks with their minor league teams longer, but I think measuring the risk of drafting a one-and-done player with an early pick makes things very interesting.




Of course, none of this will happen. The NCAA will either win their suits that allow them to keep not paying anyone or the whole thing will implode and college sports will revert to being a bunch of unrecruited club teams and the NFL/NBA will have to pick up the slack with a true minor league system.

Kibner
Oct 21, 2008

#1 Pelican Fan
The NBA will have minor league teams for all 30 teams as soon as next season, iirc. Right now, I think there are only four teams that don't have their own dedicated G-League team.

ElwoodCuse
Jan 11, 2004

we're puttin' the band back together
Problem is the NBA has an age limit and Silver is actually somewhat interested in raising it as the NCAA pisses and moans more about 1-year players. And that's not going away in a court battle, Maurice Clarett already lost that.

General Dog
Apr 26, 2008

Everybody's working for the weekend
It's always seemed kind of dubious to me that the teams of the NBA and NFL are effectively allowed to collude to exclude players under 19/21. If that restriction was lifted it seems like it would incentivize the creation of full-fledged developmental systems for both leagues where teams could stow young talent, making participation in the NCAA just another option for elite players (rather than the only option). Basically like college baseball is right now.

Edit: Also the draft should he abolished

General Dog fucked around with this message at 23:54 on Feb 26, 2018

Kibner
Oct 21, 2008

#1 Pelican Fan

ElwoodCuse posted:

Problem is the NBA has an age limit and Silver is actually somewhat interested in raising it as the NCAA pisses and moans more about 1-year players. And that's not going away in a court battle, Maurice Clarett already lost that.

Most recently, Silver was talking about removing the age limit. This came about with the G-League being used by more and more teams.

iospace
Jan 19, 2038


Again, I bring up the NHL's system. It's been well established, and the players can be drafted before they finish their junior career, whether that is in the junior leagues or college. If drafted, the player can either go to the NHL and try to make it there, or continue playing at their current level (it also works because a lot of hockey players are Canadian, so they don't have to deal with the NCAA).

If a basketball or football version of that came up, it'd be interesting to see, but the NCAA has so much inertia at this point that it'd be hard to do barring an anti-trust suit. Basketball does have the advantage of overseas leagues though as pressure, and maybe more players would follow the Balls over.

ElwoodCuse
Jan 11, 2004

we're puttin' the band back together

General Dog posted:

It's always seemed kind of dubious to me that the teams of the NBA and NFL are effectively allowed to collude to exclude players under 19/21. If that restriction was lifted it seems like it would incentivize the creation of full-fledged developmental systems for both leagues where teams could stow young talent, making participation in the NCAA just another option for elite players (rather than the only option). Basically like college baseball is right now.

There are two important cases here. The first is Spencer Haywood v. NBA, where the Supreme Court vacated the NBA's rule that a player could not be drafted until 4 years after he's out of high school. They ruled this was an illegal restraint of trade which violated the Sherman Act. Maurice Clarett sued the NFL to try and overturn their rule that required players to be 3 years out of high school. The biggest difference he faced, though, was that the NFL's 3-year rule was collectively bargained with the NFLPA. The 2nd circuit, for a huge list of reasons, ruled in favor of the NFL; the whole opinion is here, perhaps the most important part is "This is simply not a case in which the NFL is alleged to have conspired with its players union to drive its competitors out of the market for professional football...This lawsuit reflects simply a prospective employee's disagreement with the criteria, established by the employer and the labor union, that he must meet in order to be considered for employment."

kayakyakr
Feb 16, 2004

Kayak is true

Kibner posted:

The NBA will have minor league teams for all 30 teams as soon as next season, iirc. Right now, I think there are only four teams that don't have their own dedicated G-League team.

30 teams is nice, sure, but there are 351 D1 basketball teams. Only baseball and hockey get anywhere close to that for quantity.

General Dog posted:

Also the draft should he abolished

Why?

General Dog
Apr 26, 2008

Everybody's working for the weekend

Doesn't it seem pretty anti-labor for these players to have no agency as far as what team they go to, and to be paid well below market value for the first 5ish years of their career? (which in the NFL is basically their entire career)

The NCAA has at least the facade of amateurism, what's the NFL's excuse?

kayakyakr
Feb 16, 2004

Kayak is true

General Dog posted:

Doesn't it seem pretty anti-labor for these players to have no agency as far as what team they go to, and to be paid well below market value for the first 5ish years of their career? (which in the NFL is basically their entire career)

The NCAA has at least the facade of amateurism, what's the NFL's excuse?

Some players are paid below market value if they are drafted lower than their ability, could fix that by adding standard performance-based incentives to all slots.

Draft helps promote competitive balance and controls costs for teams. Otherwise the rich teams would be able to offer salary-cap friendly contracts with big signing bonuses to get the equivalent of 5-6 first round players each year.

It's a business, controlling the cost of labor is part of business. NFL has a union to negotiate on the players behalf which really changes all of the rules about how one should feel about their pay.

Personally, I think the groups getting screwed by all this aren't the players or owners, it's the fans who can't afford tickets anymore or the cities who are being asked to foot the bill for giant stadium projects.

ElwoodCuse
Jan 11, 2004

we're puttin' the band back together
Ticket prices are based 100% on what people will pay for them. The idea that greedy players are driving up the prices is a lie told by owners to get fans on their side.

Mahoning
Feb 3, 2007

ElwoodCuse posted:

Ticket prices are based 100% on what people will pay for them.

Not really, since when demand drops, the price doesn't drop with it. Attendance at sporting events across the board is going down, ticket prices aren't. The fact is that owners no longer care if they price fans out of attending their games since the majority of their revenue comes from TV contracts and not attendance at the games.

iospace
Jan 19, 2038


Mahoning posted:

Not really, since when demand drops, the price doesn't drop with it. Attendance at sporting events across the board is going down, ticket prices aren't. The fact is that owners no longer care if they price fans out of attending their games since the majority of their revenue comes from TV contracts and not attendance at the games.

At least at the top level. Minor leagues are cheap.

My family spent around 125 dollars to go see a Badger Hockey game (24/ticket plus fees), with seats right in the corner next to the student section. By comparison, roughly similar seats for the Bucks would run 66+ bucks a ticket. Similar seats for the Admirals, the Nashville Predator's AHL affiliate, run 18 dollars/seat.

Dunno how much Bucks tickets will cost with the new arena (likely similar).

To conclude the tangent, the thing is, CFB and CMBB know they'll sell the place out, no matter what. Pro sports don't have that luxury in most cases (exceptions being teams with deeply entrenched fanbases, such as the Packers or Maple Leafs) but for some odd reason are failing to see the impending burst of the bubble.

iospace fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Feb 27, 2018

ElwoodCuse
Jan 11, 2004

we're puttin' the band back together
Teams aren't going to cut prices at the box office but you're a fool if you are paying box office prices

General Dog
Apr 26, 2008

Everybody's working for the weekend

Mahoning posted:

Not really, since when demand drops, the price doesn't drop with it. Attendance at sporting events across the board is going down, ticket prices aren't. The fact is that owners no longer care if they price fans out of attending their games since the majority of their revenue comes from TV contracts and not attendance at the games.

Whats stubhub precious

Kibner
Oct 21, 2008

#1 Pelican Fan

Mahoning posted:

Not really, since when demand drops, the price doesn't drop with it. Attendance at sporting events across the board is going down, ticket prices aren't. The fact is that owners no longer care if they price fans out of attending their games since the majority of their revenue comes from TV contracts and not attendance at the games.

NBA season tickets for teams that aren't easy sellouts no matter what do fluctuate in price from year to year, up and down.

General Dog
Apr 26, 2008

Everybody's working for the weekend
When I lived in San Antonio, I could regularly find Spurs tickets for less than $10 on the secondary market for games against bad teams.

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gtkor
Feb 21, 2011

Let them make money off their image rights. Schools start streaming non-rev sports on a cord cutting package for like 10 bucks a month targeting all the alumni.

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