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Comment by blastro | Hacker News Reader

I saw the commissioner of the SEC on TV this week. He called on Congress to put in place limits on how student-athletes can earn from their NIL as well as put in restrictions on the transfer portal, calling it a "return to traditional American values in college sports".

Pretty unbelievable how these institutions are creating billions of dollars of revenue / wealth off the backs of young (primarily minority) men and women. It's so gross.

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Gross is the perfect word here. “Traditional American values in college sports” means “we make the money, and lots of it. You (the athlete) get free exposure! Who do you think you are, getting your cut?”

I don’t know what it is about the current zeitgeist but people with power seem quite happy to vocalize their discontent with what they perceive as “lower classes” making decent money. It’s like they don’t even pretend anymore.

It's easy to lose sight of the fact that it's been like this for the vast majority of American history. The only change is the mechanism.

Usually they try to obscure this state of affairs. When the veil breaks, their backup plan is enforcement, first through threats and then through laws and then, if necessary, through violence. We appear to be mostly in the "threats" stage.

Not actually, for majority of that time no one was earning from college sports.

This south park excerpt is... frighteningly realistic https://youtu.be/Z5ZZ8bO9-Ig

Besides wanting to keep all the revenue, the NCAA talks up all that sanctimonious crap to justify their non-profit status so they don't have to pay taxes on it either.

The amateur tradition in football was, at one point, strong enough that professional football was viewed as grubby and second class.

I'm sure that commissioner, like any reasonable person calling for a return to those traditions, is also calling for the abolition of the NFL, all volunteer coaches, and gratis, advertising-free broadcasts of all the games, right? Right?!

Agreed, there was a long time when the olympics were for amateurs only.

> olympics were for amateurs only

For varying degrees of "amateur". A lot of nations employed their athletes to do nothing but train for the olympic and international competition.

That's actually why the amateur requirement was dropped.

The Soviet Union and other government-controlled-economy nations were sending essentially professional athletes to the Olympics while free-economy nations were sending amateurs. Removing the restriction allowed all nations to send their best athletes.

Ironically of course, there are some aristocratic motivations for why "amateur" was desirable in the first place that don't really align to modern sensibilities, but that's separate.

And then they’ll turn around and pay adjuncts a non-living wage to teach students at the University. Students who are paying thousands more than previous generations to learn. Greed and exploitation is given the thumbs up in many higher learning institutions.

How about returning to the tradition of college sports being merely a recreational break from academics, where scholastic merit cannot be trumped by athletic ability, and where the highest paid employees of states are not football coaches?

That actually exists. It's called Division 3 NCAA sports. There's no redshirting, no financial aid because you're good at sports and no making a profit from sports or paying coaches million dollar salaries in D3. The conferences are also based on where the colleges are geographically located. You just don't hear about D3 because their games usually aren't televised and 99.9% or so of their athletes actually go pro in something other than sports.

And it's still massively more of a deal for spectators then academic sport in, say, the UK.

I spent a term as an exchange student at the Catholic University of America, a smallish university with a completely unexceptional D3 football programme staffed with actual students. And they got two thousand people to their football games! Much of the campus! Alumni! People who lived in Brookland and fancied some live sport!

I mean, I knew how seriously people take high school football too. But even really good UK university sport can play to an audience of the players supportive romantic partners only. A different (and quite refreshing) world.

I think I would prefer the UK model for things like football. Where there is local community teams that are not limited just students, but larger age ranges. And then possibly also having kids programs.

But they get paid with an education! /s

What I want to see is higher education have their tax free status stripped and their endowments taxed as a total percentage (like property tax).

Both for creating the student loan mess and for having this ridiculous sports system that uses athletes as chattel.

"that uses athletes as chattel."

There is no shortage of people who want to play college football. Many would play even with out a scholarship. In Division 2 less than half the team is on scholarship. In Division 3 nobody gets scholarships. They are almost never on TV and there is very little chance they will make the NFL.

And yet when you see the Big Schools, like an Alabama or Clemson, playing much lower Division schools, those schools are getting a massive payout for that game, while their students get whooped, and not getting anything for the abuse other than experience.

That would be like a lower weight class boxer, say Canelo Álvarez taking on a fight with Tyson Fury (each in their respective class) for the "pay day", sure he may have a "puncher's chance" but few would consider it a fair fight.

Actually why not franchise the whole thing? Have the players be paid athletes. Let the schools own the teams and spot in franchise league. Thus allow them to keep the brand and whatever goodwill there to extract money from students.

Athletes are not forced to be play sports. They are there because they want to be. If they don't want to do it without pay, no one is making them do it.

Just because no one has a gun to their head, we shouldn't point out that they're being exploited? We shouldn't try to change the system?

What's even the logic behind that? It's okay to mistreat people because they want to be an athlete over working at McDonald's?

One thing I am bothered by is student athletes who don't even have to attend classes and have tutors do their work for them or there are special classes set up for them that guarantee an A.

I think the concept of a student athlete is an oxymoron at this point.[1][2] Either the sport really serves no purpose and could exist as a club or the student is not really a student at all and should just be a paid university employee like the coaches. But this inbetween area is odd. I guess the facade of being a student is more endearing maybe because otherwise the university sports team people cheer for is just a bunch of paid professionals basically. Maybe that would ruin the fun for people idk. Not sure I even care. It isn't right to treat some students different than others.

[1]: https://bleacherreport.com/articles/365303-cold-hard-fact-st...

[2]: https://www.cnn.com/2014/10/22/us/unc-report-academic-fraud/...

Honestly, what's even more bullshit, is the schools' excuse: We need the money from Football and Basketball to fund the other sports. So: "Sorry Johnny, I know you've been busting your ass scoring TDs, and 100,000's of fans pay to see you play in-person and millions more on TV, but we need that money so the Tennis and Golf teams can afford scholarships and travel to go to their tournaments. But don't worry if you break your femur and can never play again, we'll rip away that scholarship so fast you'll never think it existed to give it to the next guy."

If that was Greg Sankey, he made $3.7 million last year and the 5-year contract he just signed "substantially" increases his salary.

https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/38005718/sec-...

I imagine he's actually being out-earned by some of top players' NIL deals.

I think it's a tricky situation. The previous NCAA rules were idiotic and unfair to players. The current situation is better for players, but I'm worried that we're moving towards a future where the best teams are just the ones with the deepest pockets (or whose boosters have the deepest pockets). Considering most teams are already unprofitable, it could further increase stratification between P5 and G5 teams.

Maybe CFB needs to implement a per-team salary cap.

Why should the workers wages be capped; why not cap how much money the team can make and tax the rest?

>Maybe CFB needs to implement a per-team salary cap.

Maybe schools should not be involved in professional sports in the first place, especially one that inherently causes brain damage.

Let the NFL owners pay for a minor league.

They basically ran one of the most beloved coaches in NCAA football - Jim Tressel at Ohio State - out of town. The reason? Because while these ghouls were profiting off of his players' NIL to the tune of millions per year, a couple of them had the gall to take a couple hundred bucks for themselves - and Tressel didn't do enough to "turn them in" proactively.

Primarily young black men. Some of these coaches make 10s of millions of dollar and they are against paying the people who helped them make all this money. College football is the 2nd most popular sport behind the NFL.

https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/38277849/mi...

The coaches are usually actually all for paying the athletes. It is the university MBAs who are running a business off the back of them all -- and interested in maximizing profit -- that usually aren't.

The point here is not mainly focused on athletes ability to make money off of their work, although that is a part of it. The issue in this particular instance is that players are being bribed to switch teams.

The free market?

It's not supposed to be a job. It's supposed to be secondary to education. Admittedly, it's getting away from that, but I would like to hold on as long as possible.

But it is not secondary to education and was not for years. It is primary thing they do and if they fail at sports, they loose education entirely.

Only difference is that money don't go to athletes.

I might be misunderstanding you, but if athletes fail at sports, they do not loose the education. Once a scholarship is given to a player, it is not allowed to be taken away for performance. If a player is kicked off the team (barring something like discipline issues), they still get the scholarship.

You can loose athletic scholarship for performance or injury. There are some exceptions where athlete gets to keep them for four years. But generally, coach has a lot of power to not renew scholarship the next year.

Lol, getting away. That train pulled out decades ago

This is America, where being against-slavery-in-theory - but unable to reconcile that theory with the real-world property rights and financial interests of the slave owners - was an enormous legal and "moral" problem for a century or few.

Time to Unionize and take it the Supreme Court.

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