Alumni to 5-star recruit...
Alabama Alumni: Dude you are awesome. Here is $1,000 for one of your autographed jerseys.
USC Alumni: Dude, ignore them here is $2,000 for one of your autographed jerseys. Did I mention we are near Hollywood?
What could go wrong?
” College “ football has been a joke for decades.
Why not just designate it as minor league football for the NFL ?
After all, colleges in general are rapidly pricing themselves out of existence.
Why not high school students then?
This is stupid and further splits the point of going to college (for scholarship/academia) as just a pathway to the NFL.
NFL should just pull directly from high schools and colleges should get out of varsity sports altogether.
College sports jumped the shark a long time ago. It’s time to return all college sports to a club basis. No scholarships. Pay coaches like any other faculty member. Regular academic standards (essentially non-existent on many campuses anyhow) with no tutoring combines to nurse athletes through. No time off or special arrangements for practice or travel. Treat athletes like all other students, no more and no less.
The NFLPA will be all over this as if the business can use “cheaper” athletes, the endorsement markets will closed up for the names in the “big leagues.” Money becomes the only issue.
https://www.nflpa.com/about/partnership-and-endorsement-policy
rwood
why would a good athlete go to podunk college in podunk usa which is a small town without vast need for advertising when he can go to big city school with lots of ad $$$$$ available...
we'll be down to a handful of big money schools that are competitive and then the rest of college sports...
female athletes will get no ad money except of course if they pose naked....
and forget about soccer players, or tennis players etc....no other athletes will get any money except the big school football and basketball players....
For those wondering Why Now?
This is likely a reaction to losing the NCAA tourney largesse from March Madness that normally goes to the colleges to fund non-revenue sports. March Madness and the BCS fund over $1 billion a year to the member schools to fund the less glamorous sports.
Paying athletes this way will help net out some of the lost scholarship money.
Remember, for many years the NCAA would not even allow a student-athlete to get a few bucks for spending money (many D1 football and basketball athletes come from pretty poor backgrounds and they WERE NOT ALLOWED TO GET A JOB by NCAA regulation) nor allow the school to fly the family in for something like a final home game.
If you were poor and BY REGULATION, could not work for your spending money that was a problem for a poor kid.
I’m all for college athletes getting paid .. Just give the scholarships to real students
With the buying of athletes out in the open the Alabamas and Clemsons will have all star teams more so than they already do.
I am wondering if some NFL retirees might still have some college eligibility left.
All the NCAA had to do is establish universal academic minimums (SATs) to ensure professional students with character and intellect over professional athletes.
But we like to be entertained.......
What could go wrong? Other that just about everything. I think they are leaving out High School kids, shouldn’t they profit too?
Capitalism for everyone except college football players because...reasons. And please don’t bring up the education. The education that most of the players get isn’t worth jack squat. “Studies” courses taught by Dr. Friend of the Program. Guaranteed A, gotta stay eligible.
So what’s to stop one of those “supporters,” who formally wasn’t allowed to even buy an athlete dinner, from paying him Jim Wright style sums to appear in a commercial for a plumbing supply firm?
ML/NJ
As if college sports wasn’t corrupt enough already.
I know the income from endorsements will be taxable, but have the resolved the question whether this now makes their scholarships taxable as income?
Back when the Northwestern athletes were pushing to unionize, the plan was scuttled when it was pointed out that would make the scholarships taxable income (for Northwestern it would be well in excess of $50,000 per year).
I wonder if this does the same. If so, they better get some damn good endorsements.