08-17-2020, 04:04 AM
Teejers, this doesn’t mean we’re gonna “take long hot showers together into the wee hours of the morning” a la Sgt. Highway (Clint Eastwood) in Heartbreak Ridge, but...
I couldn’t agree more with your “should” about de-emphasizing college as minor league pro sports. Another way to fortify the de-emphasis of professionalization is to increase the entrance and/or eligibility requirements to put the incentive on the 4.4 GPA and not the 4.4 40. Not saying the requirement to play college sports should be a 4.4 GPA, just put the incentive structure in line with school education mission.
Go back to the Prop 48 model. Allow athletes into school with a min. level of academic qualification, but don’t allow them to be eligible to play for their schools until meeting certain NCAA mandated levels of academic achievement.
The problem is we don’t live in the world of “should.” We live in the world that is. There are challenges to standardizing academic requirements, with a wide range of rigor among the schools, and we know schools have a history of academic fraud to make athletes eligible. But the biggest one is obviously asking schools to give up the revenue and exposure they get from commercialized amateur sports. It seems unlikely they will.
Making matters even more difficult is the fact some players are now organizing, trying to play sports in the Big Ten. You couldn’t have a more clear indication of the divergent missions of the school and the athletics department, when the school shuts down sports to look after the health and safety of students, and the sports playing students want to be the tail that wags the dog. This is arguably worse than athletes asking for compensation, because if they got their way - seems possible with the revenue for schools at stake - it would remove any pretense that major conference universities rule their sports programs and force a reckoning that sports runs them, strengthening the case for more athlete rights. Having Justin Fields being the guy leading this charge is even worse, because he transferred from Georgia to play sports at Ohio State. It’s obvious why he is on a college campus.
I couldn’t agree more with your “should” about de-emphasizing college as minor league pro sports. Another way to fortify the de-emphasis of professionalization is to increase the entrance and/or eligibility requirements to put the incentive on the 4.4 GPA and not the 4.4 40. Not saying the requirement to play college sports should be a 4.4 GPA, just put the incentive structure in line with school education mission.
Go back to the Prop 48 model. Allow athletes into school with a min. level of academic qualification, but don’t allow them to be eligible to play for their schools until meeting certain NCAA mandated levels of academic achievement.
The problem is we don’t live in the world of “should.” We live in the world that is. There are challenges to standardizing academic requirements, with a wide range of rigor among the schools, and we know schools have a history of academic fraud to make athletes eligible. But the biggest one is obviously asking schools to give up the revenue and exposure they get from commercialized amateur sports. It seems unlikely they will.
Making matters even more difficult is the fact some players are now organizing, trying to play sports in the Big Ten. You couldn’t have a more clear indication of the divergent missions of the school and the athletics department, when the school shuts down sports to look after the health and safety of students, and the sports playing students want to be the tail that wags the dog. This is arguably worse than athletes asking for compensation, because if they got their way - seems possible with the revenue for schools at stake - it would remove any pretense that major conference universities rule their sports programs and force a reckoning that sports runs them, strengthening the case for more athlete rights. Having Justin Fields being the guy leading this charge is even worse, because he transferred from Georgia to play sports at Ohio State. It’s obvious why he is on a college campus.