Are you against an 18 year old making the same money from being a concert pianist or a painter?
Are you against, say a 25 year old, making the same money from being very good at throwing a football?
New NIL commission coming?
- Thread starter WestCoastWildcat
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Are you against, say a 25 year old, making the same money from being very good at throwing a football?
I have no doubt many here would agree because it is no longer really "college" sports to them. But, we can look forward to the center from Missouri snapping to the QB we got from SMU, who will try to connect with the WR from Stanford. And, we will hope for good years from recognizable returning Cats, and then wish them well after the season as they portal off to Baylor, Oregon, ND, etc.
So who, then, is moral enough to be allowed to earn millions of dollars in your eyes? Is it moral for hedge fund managers to earn millions? What about film and tv directors, are they morally pure enough to justify earning millions? Are real estate magnates moral enough to earn millions? Tech startups? Pop stars?
Every one of the examples you cite are businesses. I have no problem with people earning as much money as they can in legitimate businesses and professions.
But a university is NOT a business. It is an institution for higher education. Intercollegiate athletics are a part of a university's world, not the business world.
So yes, it is morally wrong for 18-year-olds to be earning millions of dollars simply for letting a business use their name. And it is a sad day for the society that not only lets it happen but endorses it as something good.
I don't really care if the person is 18 years old or 25 or anything else. I keep using 18-year-olds as an example because there is a lot of news about them recently.
The issue is whether the opportunity to make the money, regardless of the amount, is made available because of their fame associated with being a college player. If so, it corrupts the entire body of college athletics and turns it into a Professional league. That is what I am against and think it is morally wrong.
Hate to break it to you, but intercollegiate athletics, specifically football and basketball, have been a business for decades.
That's still a matter of opinion. It is true that they have taken in large sums of money, primarily from TV advertisers, but that does not automatically classify them as businesses.
Many of them are even officially LLCs!
We got any clouds we can bring in to get yelled at?
Being an LLC has nothing to do with being a business.
Any entity or individual can be a member of an LLC, with the exceptions of banks and insurance companies.
This is… perhaps… the most ridiculous post in the entire history of WR.
How is college sports not a multibillion dollar business? Praytell. 🤦♂️
Being literally a business: nothing to do with being a business!
College sports are not a multibillion-dollar business simply because they are not business at all. You can put as many big dollar amounts as like into the sentence, but that does qualify as them as businesses. Not unless you want to categorize universities themselves as businesses. And if that is the case then we have an even bigger argument to deal with.
So then I can only presume that it must be morally wrong for coaches to make their millions of dollars, and morally wrong for fans to pay money to attend sporting events, and morally wrong for university athletic departments to accept tens of millions of dollars from TV networks, and morally wrong for universities to build new buildings dedicated to athletic pursuits as well?
Why are we even paying teachers anywhere?
It is morally wrong. They should work for free like the rest of us proletariat pawns.
For this to make any sense, which it doesn't atm, I think we need a clear understanding of HtP's definition of what constitutes a business...
What say you, will you clearly define what constitutes a business?
I never said that or anything even close to it.
You seem to be very confused over my position on the matter. So here it is one more time:
To pay a college student, some as young as 18 years old, millions of dollars for having achieved nothing other than being very good at playing football, is morally wrong. It cheapens the value of the university system and upper education in general.
It is being done largely because college football brings in huge amounts of money and the people in charge need someplace to put the money. But that doesn't justify giving it to the student athletes. That money rightfully belongs to the university and is entirely fungible. It can be put to use in many different ways where it will serve a very good purpose for other students and causes.
Yeah, the university should be paid all the money off the back of the labor. Makes no sense.
Students are not "labor". They are students. They are consumers of an education.
They pay money for receiving an education, or in some cases are granted scholarships so that they themselves don't have to pay.
But in either case their basic relationship to the school is that of a customer, not a laborer or employee.
Whether a university or school receives payments, regardless of the amount, from sources such as TV advertisers of football games in no way changes the relationship of students to the school. Players on all teams, football, basketball, field hockey, etc. are all the same. They are students. Not employees.
TV advertisers don't pay anything to universities.
They pay the networks that broadcast the games, and the networks pay money to the universities for the rights to broadcast the sporting events.
Exactly. Our man Cappy is a little confused it would seem.
Ah! But the flaw in the logic is that many players (football and basketball) are not students. Not anymore. They traverse various campuses plying their athletic trade. The QB who started NU’s first game last year is on to his fourth team, I believe.
They are employees, if temporaries from a placement firm, who cannot be expected to persist.
They should be paid, no? Just not by a university which, as you note, serves students. Who then would be an appropriate employee of athletic tradesmen? There should be some kind of league.
I don't agree that they are not students. It is true that some athletes have transferred every year and end up going to three or four different universities. As unfortunate as that is, it still doesn't change their relationship to the schools. They are without any questions students in every sense of the word.
Cut the condescending crap.
The point I'm trying to make is that the only reason any of this happens is because of the 18 year old who can throw a football well. So your belief apparently is that everyone else is allowed to make money off of the ability of said 18 year old that throws a football well, but that it is morally wrong for the actual student in question who puts his physical health on the line to make any money off of his ability to throw a football well because he is a student and students should only be at a university to learn.
Turns out the market value of their labor is worth a lot more than what you wish to cap it at for... reasons? Age? Nonsense? Whatever it is, it doesn't matter. Bummer for you!
Not condescending at all, I just don't agree with you. I guess disagreeing with the moderator is somehow "condescending crap". Hopefully, I won't be punished for disagreeing with your erroneous observation about television money and advertising.!
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You certainly have a way of twisting things around. So let me try to straighten them out for you.
No one has said that students should only be at a university to learn. I don't know where you got that from, but it's far from anything said here. Students should participate in any other activities that the university provides and fits their skills and desires. Playing varsity football is one of those activities for some people who have the skills to do it.
The student who can throw a football well IS being properly rewarded with a full tuition free scholarship plus full coverage of his living expenses. That is the proper and adequate compensation for his participation in the football program. As it is in other sports programs as well. The fact that football and basketball bring in large sums of money to the university is irrelevant to the relationship between the student and the school.
Anyone who plays football, whether on scholarship or not, is taking some risk of injury. That comes with the game. It's a personal decision that the player has to make regardless of how his tuition is being paid.
A university can be a business with customers, sort of. The chief distinction is that organizations chartered as “businesses” have a fiduciary responsibility to their investors. Organizations chartered as non-profits - NCAA universities - have a legal responsibility to the public. However, non-profits can legally operate businesses making related income - to a point. Think the store at the Art Institute, which does very nicely. They can also make money that goes into their endowments, or to very highly paid coaches, administrators, and sometimes faculty. When I have given talks on this, I sometimes refer to OSU football as the nation’s most successful social enterprise.- a term of art for some business functions tied to non-profits. So, as a whole, the university does have a public responsibility, and perhaps a moral one, depending on how expansive your view of “moral” is. But that said, doesn’t mean it can’t run a business on the side that makes money and has customers.
When you get yourself appointed economic pricing arbiter, let us know and we'll be ready for the labor price of college athletes to be adjusted accordingly. Until then, the multi-billion dollar industry they are key participants in has set a different value on them.
I'll be on the lookout for when you call my company and tell us all what our new proper and adequete compensation is. Who needs the invisible hand or the price signal when you have the wise hand of *random boomer dope on the internet*
Nonsensical post and you're missing the point. There are some people like HailToPurple and me, as well as my old roommate and All American, Jack Cvercko, who believe that it is enough for football players to receive a free ride with all expenses paid. Others, of course, believe that players should be compensated in addition to all of that using substantial NIL funds. Obviously, the latter group will prevail at NU, or we wouldn't be at all competitive. The question is whether that's the right thing to do from a moral perspective. It's interesting, in my view, that most of the players who leave to play elsewhere don't do so until they have their NU degree. So carry on, NU will continue to pay players whether some of us like it or not, and it will further widen the gap between NU and the so-called big-time programs
Perhaps in some senses of the word. Certainly not all. And it will be fewer and fewer as compensation becomes the fundamental purpose of their relationship.
All employees could be said to have a relationship to their employer as a student, no? Doesn’t one learn every day on the job? However, one does not envision oneself primarily as a student but, instead, as an employee.
I didn’t realize that a poster here had to have previously been a college athlete in order to be able to express an opinion on the subject at hand. If that is the case, then the following people need to state whether or not they were college athletes before creating any further posts in this thread:
WestCoastWildcat, mickbula, CapppyNU, Purple Pile Driver, Vassar69, phatcat, AdamOnFirst, TheC, Sheffielder, prez77, FeralFelidae, CMcCat, corbi296, FLCaa07, FightNorthwestern, AtlantaCat, CatManTrue, EagerFan, and NoChores.
I was not.
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I could have been, but it didn’t pay well enough back in my day. 😉
Lol, just asking because your perspective comes from someone that has no idea of the time commitment it takes to be a college athlete, the impact it has on your classes, the physical issues that can occur later in life, or the internal/external pressures that come with it.
I saw “student athletes” that struggled to comprehend anything they read. I saw good athletes wind up at very good academic schools that had next to zero chances of graduating or worse yet actually learning anything. They were completely used to enhance performance on the field. You are living in Shan-gra-la if you think they didn’t happen 50 years ago and still isn’t happening today. All the while, University coffers are being filed and Administrators live in fine estates on a hill will nice white picket fence.
I don’t begrudge any player who makes $5M a year because some idiot booster wants to pay them. Not at all. I don’t tell the booster how to spend his/her money. The same way I don’t tell you to support the program either financially or emotionally. That’s your money and your choice of how you want to spend your free time. I just wish everyone that constantly bemoans the current state of affairs and always threatens to turn in their fan card, just takes up Golf and stops with the constant whining.
Yes, I was.
BEEN there. With a good education you can take care of yourself. Speaking as one who had 3 knee surgeries in the 60s
