We now go...yet again...to Knoxville, Tennessee

[SuperD]

SI has a clip from an upcoming documentary called Schooled: The Price of College Sports (which seems to have a very clear agenda to kill the concept of amateurism as defined by the NCAA) where Arian Foster admits to taking money on the side in his senior year (he then proceeds to relate a story about getting tacos from an assistant coach when they had no food...but its unclear if that is what he meant about taking money). I don't understand how Foster could have had no food if they have a meal plan for scholarship athletes, unless he was just on a monthly stipend or something instead and had blown the money. Probably nothing comes of this, but at this point it seems like the NCAA should just set up an office annex on the UT campus.

I dunno, I'm ambiguous on this "fair compensation argument", a couple hundred grand worth of services and training seems fair if you add a cost of living stipend. These people crying about all the money the NCAA is making never seem to respond to the argument that most ADs are losing money and that all those football and basketball "profits" are mostly poured back in to paying for the non-revenue and women's sports (outside of the rapidly growing coaching compensation costs).

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/co...ng-paid-at-tennessee/?sct=hp_t11_a0&eref=sihp

 

[TDbuff]

The meal plan provided by the AD is only 1 meal per day, I believe.

In theory the full cost of attendance increase would prevent desperate situations like this, but I have a feeling kids will still find a way to be broke. If NFL players have trouble making it through the offseason after making million(s), then college kids will find a way to burn through whatever money they get too. And they'll still be b*tching about how much money the coaches are making.

 

[GoBuffs08]

He came down and he brought like 50 tacos for like four or five of us. Which is an NCAA violation. [laughs] But then, the next day I walk up to the facility and I see my coach pull up in a brand new Lexus. Beautiful."

http://deadspin.com/arian-foster-sa...ource=deadspin_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

 

[Buffenuf]

The meal plan provided by the AD is only 1 meal per day, I believe. And if he didn't qualify for a Pell Grant, I guess he could be broke and have no way to get food, and absolutely need the money.

In theory the full cost of attendance increase would prevent desperate situations like this, but I have a feeling kids will still find a way to be broke. If NFL players have trouble making it through the offseason after making million(s), then college kids will find a way to burn through whatever money they get too. And they'll still be b*tching about how much money the coaches are making.

If they give 'em more for stipends, make 'em take classes on personal finances: savings, budgeting personal responsibilty. Lord knows few of them have any idea of those concepts.

Or we could send my wife to watch over them----one frosty glance from her was all it took for my offspring to learn how to save and spend responsibly! You don't want to be on the receiving end of "THE LOOK"! It''ll wither your soul.

 

[SINKRATZ]

Maybe it's because I wasn't a scholarship athlete in college, but I just don't get it - he says a lot if times he had to decide between paying rent and buying food - aren't scholarship athletes provided room & board, and the training table meal plan?

I know it's not real fun to be a senior living in the dorms, or to eat on the university meal plan for every meal, but I don't buy this issue of not being able to survive - am I missing something here?

 

[RalphieT]

Maybe it's because I wasn't a scholarship athlete in college, but I just don't get it - he says a lot if times he had to decide between paying rent and buying food - aren't scholarship athletes provided room & board, and the training table meal plan?

I know it's not real fun to be a senior living in the dorms, or to eat on the university meal plan for every meal, but I don't buy this issue of not being able to survive - am I missing something here?

Agreed. Like you, I don't understand the argument that's made frequently these days that the athletes are living in abject poverty and just trying to scrape together enough money to stay fed and keep a roof over their heads. I thought that was what they've been getting as a baseline for decades. If there really is a one-meal-per-day limit, that's what needs to get fixed and then problem solved. But, I think these stories are just being used to misrepresent the real situation to ease the transition to full-blown player salaries under one name or another.

For some reason, ESPN, SI, and the rest of the sports-entertainment industry seems to think eliminating NCAA amateurism will increase the insane amount of revenue they're getting off college sports already. I think they're miscalculating badly. I'm sure they can make a decent argument that "school pride" is an outdated concept and that students/alumni no longer see athletes as peers, members of the same community they inhabit or once inhabited. From there, it probably seems reasonable to conclude that no harm will come from making the divide between students and student-athletes a little deeper and a lot wider. Even if that's true (and I don't personally believe it is), I can't see how it could possibly be a good idea to remove the most obvious distinguishing factor between college and pro athletics. Once they turn, for example, the Huskies into a less-talented, lower-salaried version of the Seahawks, how does the NCAA think it'll be able to compete with the pro leagues? They should really take a tour around the minor-league baseball parks in this country and check out what those venues have to do to encourage attendance before irreversibly committing to this plan. Maybe this won't be as much of a problem in places like Tuscaloosa where they don't have to compete with nearby pro teams, but smaller markets is the whole reason those places don't have pro teams in the first place.

I'm worried that greed and a lot of powerful people who aren't as smart as they think are about to join forces to make a big, big mistake . . .

 

[Buffnik]

It's not that eliminating amateurism will directly result in increasing revenue for sports broadcasting.

It is that no one but the big boy programs will be able to afford paying the tab for a stipend representing the "real cost of attendance" for all athletes under scholarship -- similar to what is awarded to merit scholars. That's the domino that, once fallen, allows them to shape a new organization of schools with a scheduling and playoff model similar to the NFL cash cow. They don't give a **** about the athletes or anyone/anything else except for what would make college football as profitable as possible.

And I say that it's overdue that the big programs broke away. The NCAA allows programs that don't meet the minimum standards on attendance to remain FBS, thereby upsetting the balance and making athletic departments with Pac-12 budgets play by the same rules as schools with Sun Belt budgets. As things stand, there are about an equal number of votes coming from the haves and have nots, with the number in the have nots camp constantly increasing as the W Kentucky/ Georgia State/ UMass/ Old Dominion type programs are seeing the windfall represented by moving up to FBS. Hell, the MAC averaged under the 15k attendance requirement to even be an FBS program -- and that's with the NCAA allowing schools to calculate as "butts in the seat" instead of "paid" so a school like CSU can get to a 19k average through tickets given away. Increase the requirement to a 30k average and only 75 schools remain FBS (bye-bye Wake Forest and Duke).