[BillBradley]

Sure.  But they haven't really changed the structure of the teams being part of a university with other, broader goals.  If they were all just pro leagues of different levels, the pure "get all you can get" model makes sense.  But very few people attend semi-pro sporting events.  For me and my affiliation with Stanford, I don't really want to have pro teams that use Stanford as their marketing hook while having little to do with Stanford.  The pure capitalistic model really has no need for the athletes to attend school at all.  I still follow Stanford sports and have season tickets to three sports.  However, I am likely to drop that participation as the model shifts to the pure capitalist, non-student structure.  I will then just spend my money on the actual pros like the Giants, Niners, and Warriors. 

Cheers,
Pete F.

Oddly enough, I’ve gone the other direction. I’ve had a decade of following our kids on their sports teams -  mostly soccer, but some baseball, basketball, and swimming. Currently, we’re fans for travel soccer and I’ve found this more engaging (despite the usual complaints about coaches, playing time, refs, etc.) than watching college athletics descend into the septic tank filled with money. I wonder when we’re done with this stage if I’ll just keep showing up for high school basketball and soccer, keep my MLS tickets, and mostly disengage from college sports. Since I’m only one degree of separation from Kate Paye, I’ll follow WBB, at least for a while. Meanwhile, the greed factor for major pro sports (see e.g., John Fisher, Greg Johnson, plus all the distasteful NFL owners) has also caused my interest to wane for the major revenue sports. I want to pay attention to the last years of Steph Curry, and to keep listening to Kuip and Kruk as long as they’re still around, but I don’t know if I’ll still have any pro/college sports tickets 5 years from now.

I find myself wanting to spend as little money as possible supporting the pro sports industrial complex these days.

I'm similar. Love the high school sports scene and I still coach. I haven't paid to see live professional sports in years. But I do still watch at home, and I'm not really that caught up in the "principle of it all" when it comes to the money for the college athletes. It's just my opinion that the college players needed to be compensated above their scholarship, so here we are and I'm good with it. When stories like the UNLV QB come out, I view it as 2 steps forward, 1 step back.

[BillBradley]

Sure.  But they haven't really changed the structure of the teams being part of a university with other, broader goals.  If they were all just pro leagues of different levels, the pure "get all you can get" model makes sense.  But very few people attend semi-pro sporting events.  For me and my affiliation with Stanford, I don't really want to have pro teams that use Stanford as their marketing hook while having little to do with Stanford.  The pure capitalistic model really has no need for the athletes to attend school at all.  I still follow Stanford sports and have season tickets to three sports.  However, I am likely to drop that participation as the model shifts to the pure capitalist, non-student structure.  I will then just spend my money on the actual pros like the Giants, Niners, and Warriors. 

Cheers,
Pete F.

Oddly enough, I’ve gone the other direction. I’ve had a decade of following our kids on their sports teams -  mostly soccer, but some baseball, basketball, and swimming. Currently, we’re fans for travel soccer and I’ve found this more engaging (despite the usual complaints about coaches, playing time, refs, etc.) than watching college athletics descend into the septic tank filled with money. I wonder when we’re done with this stage if I’ll just keep showing up for high school basketball and soccer, keep my MLS tickets, and mostly disengage from college sports. Since I’m only one degree of separation from Kate Paye, I’ll follow WBB, at least for a while. Meanwhile, the greed factor for major pro sports (see e.g., John Fisher, Greg Johnson, plus all the distasteful NFL owners) has also caused my interest to wane for the major revenue sports. I want to pay attention to the last years of Steph Curry, and to keep listening to Kuip and Kruk as long as they’re still around, but I don’t know if I’ll still have any pro/college sports tickets 5 years from now.

I find myself wanting to spend as little money as possible supporting the pro sports industrial complex these days.

I'm similar. Love the high school sports scene and I still coach. I haven't paid to see live professional sports in years. But I do still watch at home, and I'm not really that caught up in the "principle of it all" when it comes to the money for the college athletes. It's just my opinion that the college players needed to be compensated above their scholarship, so here we are and I'm good with it. When stories like the UNLV QB come out, I view it as 2 steps forward, 1 step back.