[2006alum]

Well that's easy: a rich family is by definition only going to be buying their own kid's love, happiness, well-being, etc. With sports, lots of third parties are involved, and those involvements undermine a recruiting and admissions process by massively scaling the potential for haves to buy away players from have-nots, while also creating tensions between players and their teams/coaches when the players have several other influential voices in their ears. There's definitely issues with helicopter parents in sports, but by definition those parents' influence is limited to their own kid.

That happens right now, without the money. Plus the issue is mitigated almost completely by squad size and scholarship limitations.

Water will seek its ow n level in no time.

Next.

Maybe I'm missing something, but "squad size" varies wildly from sport to sport, as do "scholarship limitations." A "small" recruiting class for football is 15-17 recruits; a 5-recruit basketball class is enormous. A 3-recruit tennis class is highly unusual. There's almost no universe where you'd have a 3-recruit golf class with all three on full scholarships, because golf only gets 4.5 scholarships per team total. So do you have a particular sport in mind? 

I also don't see how the issues I raised are mitigated by squad size or scholarship limitations, insofar as a student who can make $500,000 per year from an endorsement deal may care more about what the endorser has to say than what his coach does regardless of the sport. And if U of O has a relationship with top sports agent X, there'd be nothing to stop the Ducks from saying "sign with us and you'll get an agent and an endorsement deal too." Scholarship limitations would be irrelevant in the licit pay-to-play world.

By contrast, no matter how Aunt Becky tries to use her money to get her kid into school, she's not in the position to manipulate a whole bunch of other kids. And one her kid gets in, they're quitting the team anyway. Family trust money sure isn't "pure," but I'm failing to see how it generates that kind of perverse incentive structure, because that money remains with the student regardless of which university they go to, and those kids almost never ended up playing the sport in question.

Please enlighten me if I'm missing something.

[2006alum]

Well that's easy: a rich family is by definition only going to be buying their own kid's love, happiness, well-being, etc. With sports, lots of third parties are involved, and those involvements undermine a recruiting and admissions process by massively scaling the potential for haves to buy away players from have-nots, while also creating tensions between players and their teams/coaches when the players have several other influential voices in their ears. There's definitely issues with helicopter parents in sports, but by definition those parents' influence is limited to their own kid.

That happens right now, without the money. Plus the issue is mitigated almost completely by squad size and scholarship limitations.

Water will seek its ow n level in no time.

Next.

Maybe I'm missing something, but "squad size" varies wildly from sport to sport, as do "scholarship limitations." A "small" recruiting class for football is 15-17 recruits; a 5-recruit basketball class is enormous. A 3-recruit tennis class is highly unusual. There's almost no universe where you'd have a 3-recruit golf class with all three on full scholarships, because golf only gets 4.5 scholarships per team total. So do you have a particular sport in mind? 

I also don't see how the issues I raised are mitigated by squad size or scholarship limitations, insofar as a student who can make $500,000 per year from an endorsement deal may care more about what the endorser has to say than what his coach does regardless of the sport. And if U of O has a relationship with top sports agent X, there'd be nothing to stop the Ducks from saying "sign with us and you'll get an agent and an endorsement deal too." Scholarship limitations would be irrelevant in the licit pay-to-play world.

By contrast, no matter how Aunt Becky tries to use her money to get her kid into school, she's not in the position to manipulate a whole bunch of other kids. And one her kid gets in, they're quitting the team anyway. Family trust money sure isn't "pure," but I'm failing to see how it generates that kind of perverse incentive structure, because that money remains with the student regardless of which university they go to, and those kids almost never ended up playing the sport in question.

Please enlighten me if I'm missing something.