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Comment by capkutay | Hacker News Reader

the worst argument I've heard from skeptics associated with the NCAA is "THE COLLEGE PLAYERS ARE ALREADY PAID!". As if forcing young student athletes who are often from very low income families to resort to illegal bribes is a better solution than regulated endorsements for something they're absolutely entitled to.

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NCAA college athletes are paid in completely allowable ways. They just aren't paid based on the value they generate for the school.

When I was in school all the scholarship athletes had food, clothing, and housing stipends that were considerably more than they needed for any of those three things. Not to mention that the free education they receive.

I understand that the "education" most top tier football players receive isn't quite the same as the other students (football is a full time job). I just don't know how you can start paying players without causing some really sweeping side-effects that change the reason that so many people love college football.

With the proper regulation, I suppose you could probably give the players money that they deserve, while still keeping some of that amateur sports magic. Hopefully it doesn't evolve into the pre-NFL where only schools with money have football teams.

I'm also a little interested what could happen with Title IX. As far as I know, all athletes in a school have to get the same benefits and if you start paying college football players (the only ones that typically make any money for the school) what do you do about the girls on the gymnastics team or the guys on the lacrosse team?

Tell that to any injured student... or those students not actually given enough time to study for classes that aren't excessively easy to pass.

IMHO, if you're accepted on a Sports scholarship, you should be allowed to complete at least 5 years of schooling regardless of injury or ability to continue playing, and if you fail to meet scholastic eligibility, you should be released for a year to "catch up" while continuing coursework.

That would more closely resemble a fair exchange. As it stands a significant number of student athletes don't get a real education and/or are dropped before able to complete because of injury.

> if you're accepted on a Sports scholarship, you should be allowed to complete at least 5 years of schooling regardless of injury or ability to continue playing,

This is significantly the argument between Bobby Dodd and Bear Bryant leading to Georgia Tech leaving the SEC.

> regardless of injury or ability to continue playing

And short term disability insurance, and long term disability insurance - along with the school paying for health insurance (currently students are required to have health insurance, but the school isn't required to pay.

I think an illuminating question is what do you consider more important, fair compensation to the workers, or maintaining the sports magic? Or, even, do you care about the tension of the two at all? For example, I don't care about the sports magic, which makes the solution simple to me - pay the athletes, and whatever happens as a result is a better result, because we're not longer exploiting them.

It's a tricky question, because they're not workers. They're players.

How are they not workers? They have to show up to work (practice) and play in games. If they get hurt, they loose their scholarship (just like an hourly contract employee).

Training for and playing the game is their labor, which generates enormous revenue for the institution they belong to. In any other setting - including professional sports - we would call them workers. And it's brutal, punishing work that they will live with for the rest of their lives.

If players are getting paid they should also be disqualified from receiving scholarships and ALL the other "free" benefits student athletes receive, while still maintaining academic progress. No more free "tutors," athlete-only[0] meal-plans and dining halls, and even access to trainers, PT's, etc.

Are top performing student-athletes being exploited? Maybe, but people seriously underestimate the value of benefits they receive on campus beyond scholarship amount. And there need to be substantial consequences for both students and universities if athletes fail to graduate.

[0] These dining halls might technically be open to all students, but non-athletes have to pay steakhouse prices for slightly better cafeteria food, while athletes eat for free. These are the ways universities get around NCAA rules today.

The amount of benefits is miniscule relative to the value they are generating and their true market value. Further, the biggest benefit, free college, effectively doesn't count because no one in a competitive program has the time to major in anything that would plausibly provide a good job right after graduation. It is a big story whenever a football player graduates with a STEM degree given how hard it is from a time management perspective (or at least this used to be very rare iirc). Also if we are being real, a lot of these players don't belong in college academically. They would not be accepted on grades alone and would not survive without the hilariously enormous support system in place solely designed to keep them in compliance with the rules.

Most college students in STEM won't even work unpaid internships and yet these guys are expected to generate orders of magnitude more value while being unpaid or hilariously under compensated.

You're right, it's unrealistic. But the benefit value to the player is only miniscule if you ignore the biggest benefit, which almost no one includes:

The biggest benefit is the free 4-5 year top-of-the-line professional training camp.

(I didn't mention it above because I don't think this dollar amount should be counted against scholarships, if you could even calculate it.)

They're getting (upto) 5 years of intense training in their field, by teams of professional-grade coaches. All of their required equipment is paid for, facilities are free, they're being marketed to the pro scouts, traveling across the country, and they're getting all of this with free room and board.

It's really hard to put a true dollar amount on that, but the closest comparison in the professional world is a college degree. Which they should be getting, and at no cost to them.

When this is included, I think it balances out enough to be fair.

Or to put it another way... How many of these players could go pro without the benefit of college training. I'd argue very few. And by definition, fewer than the number who declare early for the draft, which is already a small number.

And I don't feel any more sympathies for them than I do any other startup millionaire that probably could have skipped college but didn't.

Tangent: I've also argued that being an athlete should/could be a degree in and of itself, given a properly designed program. It should include classes in kinesiology, dieting, health, financial management, speaking to the media, marketing yourself, etc. I think that would also solve many of these issues.

Very fair point. I had never considered this before.

I'm unclear why these players are students at all. if your playing well enough to make millions for the university, surely you're good enough to make millions for a professional team?

The NFL has a rule for draft eligibility. You have to wait for four seasons if yo do not attend college. There are ways to get an exception, but it is rare. Makes it very hard to go from High School straight to the NFL.

https://www.nflregionalcombines.com/Docs/Eligibility%20Rules...

While this is true, if players weren't benefiting from college, more would declare early for the draft, after 3 college seasons. I don't know what the percentages are, but there are more players getting drafted after 4 years of college than those drafted after 3.

Which implies that players not only seem to value the training and experience of college athletics, but that they value all 4 years of it. Arguably red-shirting extends this to 5 years.

I knew some athletes at OSU. They get lots of free stuff, like backpacks, ipads, etc.

Shutdown unprofitable teams. That's what will happen.

We have an interesting societal conundrum here. Student athletes are below college material for specific sports (college football being a great example). If we do not allow the footballers in, then they would not be at the college, however, by allowing these sub par students into the college based on a need from the college, they are effectively subsidizing their educational capabilities to maintain NCAA eligibility (athletes at colleges have a different support system than us “normies.” With dedicated staff for tutoring, transportation, food, and housing). There can be a case made for the NCAA paying out more than living wages to these athletes while they are there.

What will be fun is to figure out how California is going to implement this wild hared idea if the sport is not profitable: looking at you water polo. The athletes are playing and doing similar workout regimens as the football, yet no pay... what do you do with this. What about Title IX discrimination when the men’s football gets monies while the ladies do not.

> What will be fun is to figure out how California is going to implement this wild hared idea if the sport is not profitable

The law does not require the sport to pay anything more, this removes the "you may not use your own likeness" rule as being bad for the players.

The new change does not apply to anything they do on-field and it only starts in 2023, so it will definitely change decisions for college admissions.

This does not add any significant burden to the sport organizers, except they lost their captive monopoly on the athletes appearing in a commercial.

Right to negotiate for yourself is a big one.

> forcing young student athletes who are often from very low income families to resort to illegal bribes

No one is forced to do anything here, as if children from low income families somehow have less agency than others.

You can complain about a system where children from low income families make a rational calculation to skirt the rules to better their position.

No one is talking about regulating endorsements. The law simply says you can’t keep a player off a team for being paid.

They're paid with a free education. That doesn't balance out the inequity of profits made off their labor but it isn't nothing.

Yes and no. Some, not all, are given full or partial scholarships. And of those that are given full scholarships, many have a very difficult time balancing their studies and their athletics. Athletes are generally limited in which majors they can choose due to study time requirements and class, practice time conflicts.

I once inadvertently enrolled in a "business calculus" class that was apparently hand selected by the football coaches. Almost the entire class was the football team. We barely got through the first 5 chapters of the book and that was the easiest A I ever got.

So while the free education and room and board have some value, they don't have nearly as much as people think. I have known student athletes that quit playing and got a full time job just so they could afford to pay their own way and have time for classes.

The average cost of 1 year of University is approx. 35k a year for private colleges according to collegedata.com. The average salary of 1 first year NBA player is 3 million. The lowest paid NBA player makes approx 500k. That doesn't sound like a "free" education to me. Players would be better off going straight to the NBA and going to college later, if they were still inclined.

The NBA tries to educate college players or prospects to focus on their education as much as possible. I think the numbers are that even if you're a Div 1 college player, you only have a 6% chance of being drafted to the NBA.

yeah, so why wouldn't you try joining the NBA first, then go to college to actually study when you don't get in?

Or forgoing college and play professionally in another country.

a tiny tiny sliver of college athletes will play professionally,

a good way to think about it, is that college athletics is sort of communist society in action where the future professionals athletes subsidize benefits for the athletes that won't be future professionals.

Relative to most minor league athletes or aspiring Olympians,

35K isn't a bad salary.

In theory they get a free education, but in reality the huge majority of a student-athlete's focus is on sports (at least football and basketball). Just look at the majors for athletes on the teams - almost never anything too difficult.

There are also plenty of examples of "classes" that athletes have taken in the news, i.e. University of North Carolina, and more

If they aren't interested in academics they don't belong in college.

This is backwards. The system is set up to make it impossible for players to both be successful students and successful athletes -- they're expected to spend most of their time on sport. That that's the case is absurd, but placing the onus on the students to rectify the situation bizarre; they have the least power of anyone involved. The onus should be on the schools.

Universities' principal missions should be pedagogy and research. If college sports as they now exist require hampering students' ability to learn (or, I suppose, do research), having those sports teams and operating them the way they do is in conflict with what should be their mission, and they should stop having sports teams.

The NCAA is a cartel. The absurdity is that Congress won't do anything about it. Of course that would irreparably damage football and the extra four years professional wannabes need to bulk up on HGH and whatever steroids they can sneak past the test regime.

but if college ball is the path to the pros... look at Basketball and Football vs. Hockey. Hockey has a well established Junior/Major Junior feeder system. NBA/NFL benefit from an unpaid sorting mechanism via the NCAA.

It isn't college's responsibility to serve as a farm league for professional sports. Particularly those with money to fund their own.

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