05-09-2014, 01:57 PM
Athletes will be receiving stipends very, very soon. From the sound of things the breakaway mini-conference made of the PAC, ACC, Big/B1G, and SEC is coming this summer and will allow the paying of stipends via some automatic formula. Will that take effect this year? Hard to say, but the writing is on the wall there.
It's clear that college athletics are going to change pretty drastically here soon. I think there are solutions to the potential problems that address the concerns of Mick and those like him, while still allowing players to get some fair compensation (I like trust funds that are linked to graduation, personally). But right now there are too many variables for how it'll all shake out to really be able to say anything meaningful.
As for Muir, I'm sure Stanford would drop down to D3 (or whatever) if the system changed into something where you could do whatever you wanted with money. But that's just not going to happen. Everyone realizes that paying players "market value" would erode their market value. It's a catch-22. No one wants to see school-labeled semi-pro teams, so the athletes only have value if they're not allowed to fully capture that value. I strongly suspect that the solution will be some kind of trust fund that's based on jersey sales and the like and is only turned over after graduation or similar.
It's clear that college athletics are going to change pretty drastically here soon. I think there are solutions to the potential problems that address the concerns of Mick and those like him, while still allowing players to get some fair compensation (I like trust funds that are linked to graduation, personally). But right now there are too many variables for how it'll all shake out to really be able to say anything meaningful.
As for Muir, I'm sure Stanford would drop down to D3 (or whatever) if the system changed into something where you could do whatever you wanted with money. But that's just not going to happen. Everyone realizes that paying players "market value" would erode their market value. It's a catch-22. No one wants to see school-labeled semi-pro teams, so the athletes only have value if they're not allowed to fully capture that value. I strongly suspect that the solution will be some kind of trust fund that's based on jersey sales and the like and is only turned over after graduation or similar.