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Pac-12 California schools forced to offer extra benefits? - Printable Version

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Pac-12 California schools forced to offer extra benefits? - OutsiderFan - 06-08-2012

Kinda surprised nobody has posted this yet. http://discussions.latimes.com/20/lanews/la-sp-0601-college-senate-bill-20120601/10

If this bill passes, California, Stanford, USC, and UCLA will offer more benefits to football players than any school in the country.  USC won't be helped much by these requirements because they already get elite talent.  Stanford will be helped a little because who is going to turn down Stanford if admitted, and also getting extra benefits like medical coverage, etc.  But California and UCLA will clearly benefit the most.  Frankly, USC will be hurt because the bill will help California, Stanford, and UCLA become stronger. 

These extra benefits may bring more talent to the California Pac-12 schools and do more to make it competitive with the SEC than any media deal could hope to achieve. 

What do y'all think?

Re: Pac-12 California schools forced to offer extra benefits? - jayasena - 06-08-2012

I guess the CA Senate needed a feel-good break. Surely there are bigger fish to fry...

Re: Pac-12 California schools forced to offer extra benefits? - Farm93 - 06-08-2012

The extra regulation will force all of the athletes to sit in seminars and courses.  That probably won't go over well as Frosh would need to sit in the Sacramento Training program.  Yawn. 

How many Stanford athletes get injured and then are told to hit the street?  Whatever rate it happens at today must be mighty small compared to the rate at Fresno State or SJSU.  Ironically, those schools appear set to be given a pass because they don't get all of this extra TV revenue.

And if that "they have money now" is the premise, then the rule will hurt all four schools.  The four Cali Pac-12 schools will be forced to spend money on a benefit healthy 16 & 17 year-old kids can't possibly appreciate or value correctly.  Big cost, big logistics burden, a benefit with little value to those that are injured, and a benefit with no perceived value for those that don't expect to get hurt (Almost All HS recruits).

I did note one line item about not being allowed to deny transfers.  That's probably nice for disgruntled athletes, but not helpful for the programs.  And what HS commits to a program they anticipate they will want to leave because they hate the school???

All together these problems are more common in the WAC and MWC programs.  I am not sure this effort would solve the problem and ironically it is getting applied to the schools without the problem because they have funds.  Getting forced to put funds into this effort places all Pac-12 Cali schools at a disadvantage.  Let's face it distributing iPad (as a place for to store and update the playbook  ;)) would be a far better recruiting tool than any complex government mandated health care protection policy.  And I would say that is true even if the HS athlete is actually concerned about injury, which is rarely the case.

If a football athlete is really THAT concerned about catastrophic injuries then they probably should just stop playing football.

Oh, and the fine folks working in Sacramento MUST have better things to do with their time. 

Re: Pac-12 California schools forced to offer extra benefits? - washingtonismoney - 06-08-2012

Not being allowed to deny transfers is a fine rule and something the NCAA should have done a long while ago. They should have also gone a step farther and ended the mandatory one-year wait (which is arbitrarily applied--in football and basketball, you have to wait; in soccer and tennis, for example, you don't.)

The one-year sit-out rule has a logic behind it. - Redrum - 06-08-2012

Recruiting season would NEVER be over for five or six years if one coach could entice a player from another coach's college program.  You could easily see some school badly in need of a WR  contacting a player (officially or unofficially through (ahem) alternate means [like Twitter discussion or using players at one school to keep after players at another to keep the interest alive or bait the hook] )  The advantage is they could target players who had already proved themselves at the college level.  The transfer pitch would be:  You've proved to be great kid,  but how many major bowl games you been to... Hmmmm?"  or  " You've got talent kid, why not play for a stronger program with a better QB who can put you into the NFL".

Unevenly applied regs are not the reason to abandon any rule.  Maybe there's a logic behind even that.  At the Div. 1 level the economic stakes are astronomically higher.  And the economic stakes vary from revenue sports to more minor sports.  There's more incentive to push compliance to the hairy edge when getting a player to fix a short term gap can yield immediate benefits.    In basketball, where one player can change the complexion of a whole team and season,  it might start looking like the Viking raids of yore.    The one-year sit out doesn't stop transfers now,  so making it even easier is hardly some human rights issue.

Re: Pac-12 California schools forced to offer extra benefits? - fullmetal - 06-08-2012

The current transfer rules seem to treat athletics as an optional extracurricular that is secondary to the academic focus of the university experience.  Imagine that :p

Re: Pac-12 California schools forced to offer extra benefits? - washingtonismoney - 06-08-2012

(06-08-2012, 12:37 PM)fullmetal link Wrote:The current transfer rules seem to treat athletics as an optional extracurricular that is secondary to the academic focus of the university experience.  Imagine that :p

Yes. This is why, when students transfer schools for academic reasons, they are barred from joining any a cappella groups for an entire year. It's for their own good.

Re: Pac-12 California schools forced to offer extra benefits? - Farm93 - 06-08-2012

The current transfer rules are crazy and unfair.

Coaches, faculty and administrators can leave at any time, but the college football players are stuck.  Convenient for the program? Yes.  Fair to the student?  No.  Programs are apparently more important than the students, it is as simple as that.

However, I have a problem with the 4 Pac-12 schools getting a bunch of expensive and one-sided mandates.  First, I doubt the programs will actually help the students in this particular circumstance.  The system is still strong enough to get rid of the kids.  I believe it puts all 4 Pac-12 schools at a competitive disadvantage (transfer inbalance) and a budget disadvantage (compliance costs).  And the CA Senate seems to acknowledge it is unfair, but claims the Pac-12 schools can afford it.

Seems like some CA Senator in MWC/WAC friendly Central Valley is looking for votes IMHO.

But my biggest problem is that it would give UCB AD an excuse to lose money.  "Oh, we lost $15 million this year, but that's because of the cost of implementing the expensive Student-Athlete Empowerment bill.  If it weren't for the costs associated with the bill we would have had a balanced budget.  Honest."