[Goose]

This just proves the label student athlete doesn’t exist anymore… it should be just mercenaries. Good for her for going to the highest bidder and doing what’s best for her, but let’s drop the facade and call a spade a spade.

with all respect, "student athlete never existed." it's a term invented by the ncaa attorneys in the 50s to keep from paying for long-term care for catastrophically injured players.

The assertion that because the term"student athlete" was arguably invented by NCAA attorneys therefore student athletes never existed is obviously false. The premise has nothing at all to do with the conclusion. If anything, the opposite is true. If somebody describes the concept and names it, the concept at least exists. I think it is pretty obvious that "student athletes"  did exist at least at some point in time. I went to school with several of them.

further, does anyone really value amateurism any more? i don't know a single person who watches a sporting event because it's amateur.

The fact a single person may not exist that watches a sporting a sporting because it is amateur says nothing at all about whether people value amateurism. If some people did so, that would indeed prove that those people value amateurism. The absence of that does NOT prove the converse. A question that does directly address the value of amateurism would be "Does anyone NOT watch college sports (or watch less of them) because they don't like the professionalization of college sports?" The answer to that question is absolutely yes, as many posts on this board so conclusively demonstrate.

my observation is that escalating pay to players has not hurt viewship in the nfl and in the nba. the push for fair pay in women's soccer and women's basketball has coincided with (maybe helped) a large increase in viewers. take caitlin clark: has hearing that she landed millions in endorsements while still in college turned fans off? quite the opposite. same with cam. i don't personally know a single fan who was less interested in cam knowing that cam had endorsement money. did allowing pros into the olympics beginning in 1968 turn away viewers? i don't think so!

More than a bit of post hoc, ergo propter hoc. One can easily argue the hype has brought the viewership and also the money, not visa versa. However, I don't at all dispute there appears to be a market for more professional sports entertainment in the US viewership. When one says hearing that Clark and Cam landed millions of energized the fan base, I would point out those two athletes were on their way to the WNBA. That didn't happen when they were freshmen. Did allowing pros into the Olympics turn away viewers? As I remember it, yes it did, at least for a while. We had to beat the Russians so it was allowed. Lots of people were quite bitter about it as I recall. Now, it is an NBA all star game and as the great Tom Tolbert repeatedly points out, the US could easily get beat :-).

What is undeniably true at Stanford and quite a few other schools is the student attendance has dropped precipitously. Obviously that isn't true in Tuscaloosa, but it a very real problem in many places. The connection between the students and the athletes is going away. That doesn't hurt the "viewership" numbers, but it does reveal that the "product" today probably isn't compatible with an academic institution "sponsoring" it. There are those that say the students don't attend unless the team "wins". That certainly was not the case over the many years where Stanford didn't "win" much. They were still "our lads" and we would sit in the rain to watch them blow an immense lead to WSU. Not happening today, for lots of reasons :-).

i expect that with all the publicity, canady will be more visible next year, not less. same for kiki iriafen.

based on past examples, pay to college players will increase their visibility and popularity.

to my mind what is a problem is not pay; it's unequal pay from one school to another. the nfl, the nba, the wnba all have salary caps. i believe that major league baseball is one of the only major pro sports that doesn't. hello oakland, er...las vegas... A's!

To my mind the problem is that Universities are not sports franchises in the NFL, the NBA, etc. They have no earthly reason to care about salary caps and player compensation. That isn't their reason to exist. As long as college athletics could exist, however imperfectly, without the Universities having to function as "team owners", it was possible to have college athletics. If it is no longer possible for the Universities to not function as "team owners", the teams must be "spun out". If and when that happens, the resulting enterprise has very little interest for me.

[Goose]

This just proves the label student athlete doesn’t exist anymore… it should be just mercenaries. Good for her for going to the highest bidder and doing what’s best for her, but let’s drop the facade and call a spade a spade.

with all respect, "student athlete never existed." it's a term invented by the ncaa attorneys in the 50s to keep from paying for long-term care for catastrophically injured players.

The assertion that because the term"student athlete" was arguably invented by NCAA attorneys therefore student athletes never existed is obviously false. The premise has nothing at all to do with the conclusion. If anything, the opposite is true. If somebody describes the concept and names it, the concept at least exists. I think it is pretty obvious that "student athletes"  did exist at least at some point in time. I went to school with several of them.

further, does anyone really value amateurism any more? i don't know a single person who watches a sporting event because it's amateur.

The fact a single person may not exist that watches a sporting a sporting because it is amateur says nothing at all about whether people value amateurism. If some people did so, that would indeed prove that those people value amateurism. The absence of that does NOT prove the converse. A question that does directly address the value of amateurism would be "Does anyone NOT watch college sports (or watch less of them) because they don't like the professionalization of college sports?" The answer to that question is absolutely yes, as many posts on this board so conclusively demonstrate.

my observation is that escalating pay to players has not hurt viewship in the nfl and in the nba. the push for fair pay in women's soccer and women's basketball has coincided with (maybe helped) a large increase in viewers. take caitlin clark: has hearing that she landed millions in endorsements while still in college turned fans off? quite the opposite. same with cam. i don't personally know a single fan who was less interested in cam knowing that cam had endorsement money. did allowing pros into the olympics beginning in 1968 turn away viewers? i don't think so!

More than a bit of post hoc, ergo propter hoc. One can easily argue the hype has brought the viewership and also the money, not visa versa. However, I don't at all dispute there appears to be a market for more professional sports entertainment in the US viewership. When one says hearing that Clark and Cam landed millions of energized the fan base, I would point out those two athletes were on their way to the WNBA. That didn't happen when they were freshmen. Did allowing pros into the Olympics turn away viewers? As I remember it, yes it did, at least for a while. We had to beat the Russians so it was allowed. Lots of people were quite bitter about it as I recall. Now, it is an NBA all star game and as the great Tom Tolbert repeatedly points out, the US could easily get beat :-).

What is undeniably true at Stanford and quite a few other schools is the student attendance has dropped precipitously. Obviously that isn't true in Tuscaloosa, but it a very real problem in many places. The connection between the students and the athletes is going away. That doesn't hurt the "viewership" numbers, but it does reveal that the "product" today probably isn't compatible with an academic institution "sponsoring" it. There are those that say the students don't attend unless the team "wins". That certainly was not the case over the many years where Stanford didn't "win" much. They were still "our lads" and we would sit in the rain to watch them blow an immense lead to WSU. Not happening today, for lots of reasons :-).

i expect that with all the publicity, canady will be more visible next year, not less. same for kiki iriafen.

based on past examples, pay to college players will increase their visibility and popularity.

to my mind what is a problem is not pay; it's unequal pay from one school to another. the nfl, the nba, the wnba all have salary caps. i believe that major league baseball is one of the only major pro sports that doesn't. hello oakland, er...las vegas... A's!

To my mind the problem is that Universities are not sports franchises in the NFL, the NBA, etc. They have no earthly reason to care about salary caps and player compensation. That isn't their reason to exist. As long as college athletics could exist, however imperfectly, without the Universities having to function as "team owners", it was possible to have college athletics. If it is no longer possible for the Universities to not function as "team owners", the teams must be "spun out". If and when that happens, the resulting enterprise has very little interest for me.