[BostonCard]

I actually think you are the one with a misplaced sense of what this is all about. This has been professional entertainment longer than either of us have been alive. It had just operated under a system in which powers-that-be cynically used the term "amateur" to describe something that wasn't (it has been adults working a job to entertain people for a long, long time) and colluded to deny monetary compensation to the workers. Football players would not go to the schools they go to were it not for football. The recent move to a more one year at a time, transactional model just gives the employees more agency in this arrangement. That evolution makes it necessary for those administering programs to "manage" them as they try to construct a roster amidst so much player agency. 

Fundamentally, these players I talk about "managing" are at Stanford to play football. They wouldn't get into the school were it otherwise and their value to the school is the entertainment and revenue they produce. 

I'll go even more fundamental than that: college football has always been an extremely bizarre convenience for communities that want to benefit from the labor of young people in a way that makes them feel a swell of community pride. Everywhere else in the world this is recognized as professional or semi-professional sports. I think if we really were talking about the purpose of universities sports in the way we've defined it for decades would have nothing to do with the conversation. College football is not about college at all and it never has been. It's about entertainment and community. I can't get outraged or sad about the twists and turns of college sports finally bringing it toward greater alignment with that reality.

You are conflating two different trends in college athletics.  Whether athletes should be paid or not is separate from the idea of whether the University as an academic institution has a responsibility to educate its students, including the ones who also happen to play football. The two are mostly orthogonal and only converges in the extreme situation where professional athletes playing for a University are not students at that University (or students, period).  I think that’s a pretty radical concept even as we are careening in that direction.  And maybe that’s what a substantial number of people want; I don’t claim to know, but it’s not what I want.

I made no claim on whether athletes should be entitled to collect payments for their NIL (I think they do, but disagree with using collectives to funnel money that is really pay-to-play not for their NIL as it is defined) or whether athletes should be able to draw a salary (I don’t object in principle, though I think there are a host of issues that will pop up that haven’t been thought through, but I do think that is better than using collectives to skirt the issue).  Where I do have strong opinions on is that student athletes, whether they are paid or not, should be students, that we should have standards for admissions and transfers of athletes that we stick to, and that going 3-9 is not a valid reason to ditch the standards.  And while I recognize that athletes have special needs, those needs shouldn’t subsume the school’s responsibility to adequately educate them.

I think the proof is in the pudding.  We used to have a 97%+ graduation rate amongst our athletes and football players.  I think the last federal graduation rate was down to 94%, and the football GSR (notably more lax than the federally calculated rate) is down to 93%.  The fact that our players graduated used to be a point of pride and differentiation compared to the football factories.  Now, it is viewed as a failure to adequately manage the roster.

Most of our players will not be drafted and will never play in the NFL.  Even during the 2010’s (2010-2019), when we were mostly a good to excellent team, we had 42 players drafted by the NFL (an average of 4.2/yr), which is about 1/4 to 1/5 of the average number of players we recruited each year.  I think we do them a dramatic disservice if, because the move in collegiate athletics at large, we look at them as a roster to be managed rather than students to be educated.  Sorry, we are a University with a football team, not a football team with a University (though, financially, we are a medical center with a University side hustle).  And yeah, that means that some of the guys we recruit each year decide to major in something other than football and are proverbial steak eaters.  Maybe they are a recruiting “bust”, but I don’t want to see them run off to the portal just because they’ve been overrecruited.  And if that makes us less competitive on the field, so be it.  Let’s face it, there is a race to the bottom, and while I recognize that many people here are on board with joining the race, I think that a) we shouldn’t and b) even if we did, we are unlikely to win the race because, let’s face it, contra the SEC, it doesn’t actually mean more here (and yeah, it’s a bit of a circular argument, though the first is a statement of principle and the second a statement of fact).

BC

[BostonCard]

I actually think you are the one with a misplaced sense of what this is all about. This has been professional entertainment longer than either of us have been alive. It had just operated under a system in which powers-that-be cynically used the term "amateur" to describe something that wasn't (it has been adults working a job to entertain people for a long, long time) and colluded to deny monetary compensation to the workers. Football players would not go to the schools they go to were it not for football. The recent move to a more one year at a time, transactional model just gives the employees more agency in this arrangement. That evolution makes it necessary for those administering programs to "manage" them as they try to construct a roster amidst so much player agency. 

Fundamentally, these players I talk about "managing" are at Stanford to play football. They wouldn't get into the school were it otherwise and their value to the school is the entertainment and revenue they produce. 

I'll go even more fundamental than that: college football has always been an extremely bizarre convenience for communities that want to benefit from the labor of young people in a way that makes them feel a swell of community pride. Everywhere else in the world this is recognized as professional or semi-professional sports. I think if we really were talking about the purpose of universities sports in the way we've defined it for decades would have nothing to do with the conversation. College football is not about college at all and it never has been. It's about entertainment and community. I can't get outraged or sad about the twists and turns of college sports finally bringing it toward greater alignment with that reality.

You are conflating two different trends in college athletics.  Whether athletes should be paid or not is separate from the idea of whether the University as an academic institution has a responsibility to educate its students, including the ones who also happen to play football. The two are mostly orthogonal and only converges in the extreme situation where professional athletes playing for a University are not students at that University (or students, period).  I think that’s a pretty radical concept even as we are careening in that direction.  And maybe that’s what a substantial number of people want; I don’t claim to know, but it’s not what I want.

I made no claim on whether athletes should be entitled to collect payments for their NIL (I think they do, but disagree with using collectives to funnel money that is really pay-to-play not for their NIL as it is defined) or whether athletes should be able to draw a salary (I don’t object in principle, though I think there are a host of issues that will pop up that haven’t been thought through, but I do think that is better than using collectives to skirt the issue).  Where I do have strong opinions on is that student athletes, whether they are paid or not, should be students, that we should have standards for admissions and transfers of athletes that we stick to, and that going 3-9 is not a valid reason to ditch the standards.  And while I recognize that athletes have special needs, those needs shouldn’t subsume the school’s responsibility to adequately educate them.

I think the proof is in the pudding.  We used to have a 97%+ graduation rate amongst our athletes and football players.  I think the last federal graduation rate was down to 94%, and the football GSR (notably more lax than the federally calculated rate) is down to 93%.  The fact that our players graduated used to be a point of pride and differentiation compared to the football factories.  Now, it is viewed as a failure to adequately manage the roster.

Most of our players will not be drafted and will never play in the NFL.  Even during the 2010’s (2010-2019), when we were mostly a good to excellent team, we had 42 players drafted by the NFL (an average of 4.2/yr), which is about 1/4 to 1/5 of the average number of players we recruited each year.  I think we do them a dramatic disservice if, because the move in collegiate athletics at large, we look at them as a roster to be managed rather than students to be educated.  Sorry, we are a University with a football team, not a football team with a University (though, financially, we are a medical center with a University side hustle).  And yeah, that means that some of the guys we recruit each year decide to major in something other than football and are proverbial steak eaters.  Maybe they are a recruiting “bust”, but I don’t want to see them run off to the portal just because they’ve been overrecruited.  And if that makes us less competitive on the field, so be it.  Let’s face it, there is a race to the bottom, and while I recognize that many people here are on board with joining the race, I think that a) we shouldn’t and b) even if we did, we are unlikely to win the race because, let’s face it, contra the SEC, it doesn’t actually mean more here (and yeah, it’s a bit of a circular argument, though the first is a statement of principle and the second a statement of fact).

BC