bear2be2 said:
BusyTarpDuster2017 said:
bear2be2 said:
BusyTarpDuster2017 said:
bear2be2 said:
BusyTarpDuster2017 said:
bear2be2 said:
Married A Horn said:
bear2be2 said:
Married A Horn said:
If I were a football player I would not be happy about this at all. 'My abilities and hard work are being used to give another person $ that didnt earn it.'
Socialism 100%. Wonder how long it will last. Alabama & ut players wont tolerate it for long when they are paid the same as women's rowing.
Where was this energy when the schools were making hundreds of millions of dollars off their efforts and they were getting scholarships and swag in return?
That's the root cause of this issue. College athletics were never intended to be a money-making venture. The schools made it one. And now they can't get the toothpaste back in the tube.
They fought the system as they could; most of the time under the table. Once the stakes got high enough, they went to work and finally broke down the barrier.
The stakes werent always this high.
TV money ruined the sport. Plain and simple.
You can't infuse that type of money, influence and obvious conflicts of interests into an amateur sport and keep it an amateur sport.
The schools' individual and collective greed killed college athletics as we knew them. And at this point, they're well are on their way to killing college athletics altogether.
It's going to be pretty wild when these hundred million dollar football and basketball palaces look like something from Omega Man here in a couple of decades. But that's not out of the realm of possibility.
No, tv money did not ruin the sport. If anything, it increased it's appeal, and made it accesible nation-wide to all fan bases. Without the incentive to make lots of money, tv stations would not bother to air games unless your name is Notre Dame, Ohio State, or Texas. If it weren't for the profitability, we would not have relished the Briles years together as an alumn community, or the Scott Drew rise to a championship as much as we wanted. Nowadays, we are able to watch every single Baylor game no matter where you are, without having to travel to Waco. Remember the days when we had to listen to radio, or read about the results in the paper? Couldn't do all this without tv money.
Yes, like everything, though, it's a double-edged sword. TV money didn't ruin the sport, but maybe the way they handled the riches could have been better. I honestly don't see why money can't continue to be made, and just keep the game the way it was, like those years when RG3 was playing and winning the Heisman, and our back to back conference championships - remember how awesome those years were? It was entertaining and super fun, and it was all amateur. Why was that such a problem?? Yeah, they made their money, but so what, If it weren't for that maybe we all couldn't have experienced it to the level that we did. So blaming tv money is like biting the hand that feeds us. I just don't get the take that tv money necessarily leads to the "killing" of college sports. If anything is killing it, it is the wild west of paying players making it all about buying wins instead of building programs.
And ... ???
The point of intercollegiate athletics isn't to line the pockets of TV executives or to have broad appeal.
Everything you just described -- and the pursuit of it over the literal mission of intercollegiate athletics -- is what has put us in the position we're currently in.
They turned amateur athletics into pro sports. And the system can not function as a pro sport.
"And"?? The fact that money was made from college sports did not ruin college sports - you know, you're whole assertion. It's only ruined it in your mind, because you feel it's "not the point of college sports". But whatever purism you feel was violated, the fact remains that our college teams have become completely accessible no matter where one lives. As a result we've become a very large fan community and enjoy our teams much more. That is not going to convince many that college sports was "ruined" because some tv execs got rich. You probably even benefited from it's broadened appeal in your line of work. So while you're cheering and benefiting from it, you're decrying it at the same time. If you're such a purist, then stop watching it and stop benefiting from it, and go back to reading about it in the paper or listening to the radio.
Amateur athletics wasn't turned into pro sports because tv execs got rich. It turned into pro sports when the athletes started getting paid. I doubt you complained about how college sports was functioning when we were winning Big 12 championships and winning the Heisman, while tv execs were rolling in it. You thought the same thing we all did - college sports was AWESOME. That was all before any player got paid.
Inserting hundreds of millions of dollars into college football absolutely killed it as an amateur sport. And without amateurism, intercollegiate sports do not work. It's somewhere between native and foolish to think that players weren't eventually going to demand a fair cut in a billion dollar industry. And the courts have told us that they're going to side with the players on every issue because in their mind the NCAA is running an illegal cartel.
You can argue all you want. The present landscape and utter lack of available solutions to the myriad problems TV money, in particular, have created is proof of my assertions.
And your whole point is from a fan's perspective, which is largely irrelevant to the discussion. I'm talking about the viability of college athletics as a whole and you're sitting here talking about your ability to watch them on TV. We're not having the same conversation.
TV money made your life as a fan easier. That's good for you. That it has simultaneously destroyed any semblance of order in the revenue sports and likely will destroy all non-revenue sports altogether is an objectively bad thing for intercollegiate athletics.
"It's somewhere between [naive] and foolish think that players weren't eventually going to demand a fair cut" -there you go, you pinpointed the moment college sports became pro, and when it was "ruined" as an amateur sport. You're barking up the wrong tree.
There isn't any reason why college sports couldn't have remained as it was during the great Heisman and Big 12 championship years, even while tv execs were getting rich. The courts weren't necessarily correct.
Answer the question, straight up - while you were cheering on the years of the Big 12 championships and Heisman, were you decrying how college sports was being "ruined" and whining about why the courts weren't putting them in their place? I didn't think so.
This is absolute nonsense. It's not the players' fault that TV money made a scholarship wholly insufficient compensation for their labor.
Blaming the players while the schools' were pocketing tens of millions of dollars a year off their efforts is absurd.
And I root for Baylor now. That doesn't mean I don't think the system is absolute bull***** I've felt that way for decades now. I have to hold my nose from January to August to enjoy the games from September to December.
Greed has absolutely ruined every other aspect of college football and men's basketball for me. The current landscape is the inevitable result of infusing hundreds of millions of dollars into an amateur sport. Money ruins everythng.
TV money didn't make their scholarships "wholly insufficient compensation for their labor". They've always been doing it this way, even before the tv money. If anything, because of tv money, the exponential growth of college programs allowed them to dole out even more scholarships for more kids and make their experience better with better facilities and perks. More kids than ever now have a chance to showcase their talent on tv and be picked up in the NFL draft. Not to mention more access to a college education. And the wealth spilled over into other less funded sports, especially those for women. There's been a lot of good along with your perceived "bad".
I'm not trying "blame" anybody. But the fact remains that when the players demanded their cut, THAT's when the sport ceased to be amateur. Not when tv execs made money. The tv execs' money doesn't have anything to do with how the game is played. It didn't have to. We're letting it. College sports was awesome because it wasn't about the money for the players, it was about the school and the program. Your school vs my school. Tribalism (in the fun way) in its purest. Paying players now makes it about which of us can hire the best mercenaries to wear our colors. No longer about the school, just about the dollars. Not about the green and gold, but only about the green, as I say. "We pay players" t-shirt total bullsheet.
It seems you want to decry "greed", but only against some and not others. You, like everyone else here, realized how crappy college sports was gonna get with this business of paying players, but you don't want to blame the players, so you're looking for a scapegoat to pin all the blame on. A question I have for you, is why not just keep college sports amateur (or, increase compensation in the form of stipends or long term disability insurance, etc equally for
all players, across
all schools) all while the tv execs make their millions? Why let their fortune end the amateurism, which is what you say destroyed college sports? Does it have to?
