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[Chichikov]

This is the hyperbole I mean. Which one is it, are they underpaid or are they slaves?? Like I said, I will never be mad at anyone who wants to get paid, but I'm not going to stick with the narrative like the bolded.

Let's not get into a semantic argument here, and I'm pretty sure I didn't call it slavery here.
Let me repeat my position - schools collude thorough the NCAA so that athletes don't get paid. If this collusion (which I believe is illegal and if it's not thwn it should be) didn't exist, those kids would be get compensated pretty damn handsomely for their talent and their effort.

 

[Wereroku]

One of the arguments NCAA makes for their rules on private income is that athletes get compensated through scholarships. If school tuition was affordable or free that would completely squash that argument. Poor and middle income students that have a golden ticket through athletic abilities are forced into sports that destroys their bodies in order to get ahead in life. It's another example of awful American capitalism.

What's sad is that the compensation is garbage for a lot of these kids. They get the tuition, room and board covered but they don't get any money for gas or other incidentals. They have no money to go out and watch a movie or have fun. So yeah they get compensated and get all their bills covered as long as they never want to do anything that costs money.

 

[Trojita]

NCAA is a garbage organization, but man

You need some leverage when you decide to go that avenue.

 

[Kill3r7]

One of the arguments NCAA makes for their rules on private income is that athletes get compensated through scholarships. If school tuition was affordable or free that would completely squash that argument. Poor and middle income students that have a golden ticket through athletic abilities are forced into sports that destroys their bodies in order to get ahead in life. It's another example of awful American capitalism.

Even if free tuition became the norm what happens with private schools? Also, my point still stands. These kids would still have to play sports to attend these institutions.

 

[CrunchyFrog]

I don't understand when everyone cries "no compensation!" People do realize the specific athletic scholarships most of these guys receive, right? That despite making up a third of total financial aid given out by universities, athletic scholarships go to close to only a tenth of the total student body on average. And on top of that, they're still eligible for non-athletic scholarships on top of those. TBF, the student tuition and debt crisis in this country is itself a huge issue and very much intertwined with this one, and in a world where tuition rates aren't skyrocketing this first paragraph might need to be rethought, but that day isn't today.

On top of that, do you really want what's supposed to be an amateur sports league dominated by only the top handful of organizations who have the $$ to buy athletes? Which itself also further incentivizes colleges to spend $$ on athletics programs over faculty and academic programs? LSU in my own home state rightly decries budget cuts in education (thanks Jindal, you dolt), plausibly claiming it's had to let go swaths of faculty due to inability to pay them. And yet the same article says this:

The LSU community was willing to raise a lot of money privately -- Canada will probably be one of the highest paid college football offensive coordinators in the country -- to have the most talented football coaching staff it could find. Meanwhile, high-quality faculty is at risk. "We would take notice if we were losing football coaches," he told the legislators of LSU's budget situation.

My sister was in the middle of her college career counting on the TOPS money she was promised and had studied her ass off to earn to help pay for her education, but when that well ran dry the university and its community decided instead of helping pay for programs for the general student body and their faculty they'd work on keeping that top shelf football coaching staff instead. You shouldn't get to bill yourself as an academic institution with those kinds of priorities in practice, much less a public one.

Moreover, why is time spent on and institutional monetary benefit from an extra-curricular used as the metric for compensation eligibility? If that's the case then maybe we should be paying the musicians and stage-actors who spend a dozen+ hours a week practicing for performances, the same performances that many colleges also make money from in ticket sales.

The REAL solution is to 1. crack down on circumvention of practice time rules and overwork culture in college sports programs and 2. create a minor league NFL, lower the NFL minimum age requirement, or create some other avenue for a potential professional football career not directly linked to universities. But I'm not gonna sit here and have our students and universities continually sold down the river for a game.

 

[tonysidaway]

Should you really be commenting on this if you don't know what the NCAA is?

Evidently I know more about NCAA than others commenting here.

Blaming the victim is a real stretch here. An unfair law or regulation is not justified simply by the fact that it exists.

I don't think he's a victim. If anything he was a beneficiary of a contractual arrangement that he decided not to honour. To presume that the conditions of the contract here are unfair, you'd probably have to make an argument. I don't really see any such argument here, simply declarations.

 

[geestack]

anyone who thinks 'free education' is what the athletes are being paid are suckers. don't be a sucker.

 

[Jebusman]

I don't understand when everyone cries "no compensation!" People do realize the specific athletic scholarships most of these guys receive, right?

I think the point some people are making is that for a lot of these programs, most of those scholarships are effectively worthless, as the students are put through easy courses, actually gain no real academic value, and if they play out their 4 years and don't end up going pro, they're now out on the street looking for work with little practical skills.

Like it doesn't matter if I tell you the piece of paper I handed you is worth $200,000 if no one else on the job market respects it. A lot of these athletic scholarships are effectively garbage and they in no way prepare the 98.5% of players who aren't going pro for the realities of life outside of sport.

It's a very specific pattern of indoctrinating kids at a young age of the glamours of winning, setting them up for success, control and profit off their drive, all the while paying them for their hard work in ways that hold no liquid value (so housing, food, "education"), and then discard them once they're no longer of any value to them. They've now spent easily most of their lives preparing for a moment that never came, and are left with little to no money, little preparation for the real world, and I'm willing to bet in a fair number of cases, an academic record that doesn't actually reflect their real skill level.

 

[Zen_Arcade]

That's a really dumb proposition he shouldn't even have to consider, but if I was in his shoes I would have just quit making the Youtube videos and played football.

 

[maxiell]

A person has a moral right to be free to make things and profit from their creation. He wasn't being compensated by Google for kicking a football.

 

[CrunchyFrog]

I think the point some people are making is that for a lot of these programs, most of those scholarships are effectively worthless, as the students are put through easy courses, actually gain no real academic value, and if they play out their 4 years and don't end up going pro, they're now out on the street looking for work with little practical skills.

Like it doesn't matter if I tell you the piece of paper I handed you is worth $200,000 if no one else on the job market respects it.

Ok, but then how does paying them a salary for those 4 years help them find a job when they're done if they're still getting the same shitty degree? Maybe the solution is to structure the programs such that players get an ACTUAL education that will serve them in a career outside sports instead of using them up for four years of entertainment. Of course these players are being used, I don't disagree with anyone on that. So put them in a position where they're not being or used or aren't dependent on NCAA participation to get ahead. If the product on the field suffers as a result, so fucking be it, and that's because these should be goddamn academic universities not football farms.

 

[n00bsauce87]

There's gotta be a loophole in here somewhere.

Like referencing himself in 3rd person in the videos. That could work right?

 

[O Canada Our Home and Native Land]

Even if free tuition became the norm what happens with private schools? Also, my point still stands. These kids would still have to play sports to attend these institutions.

Private schools would have less leverage because the student can learn and play at a public school where they could show their skills to join a professional league. The private school might be forced to actually compensate athletes unless the school can use its reputation of something close to an Ivy as a form of compensation. Even then it would be limited to a small number of schools.

Isn't that a good thing that athletes will have to earn good grades to play sports at a school?

 

[Jebusman]

Ok, but then how does paying them a salary for those 4 years help them find a job when they're done if they're still getting the same shitty degree? Maybe the solution is to structure the programs such that players get an ACTUAL education that will serve them in a career outside sports instead of using them up for entertainment. Of course these players are being used, I don't disagree with anyone on that. So put them in a position where they're not being or used or aren't dependent on NCAA participation to get ahead. If the product on the field suffers as a result, so fucking be it, and that's because these should be goddamn academic universities not football farms.

While yeah there are many other things about the whole deal that need to be changed, paying these players a salary is more of a short term "We know the NCAA has an ironclad grip on this entire racket" solution because I can guarantee you nothing outside of a simultaneous epiphany from the entire human race is going to decouple the NCAA and football careers, full stop.

It at least gives them some appreciable reward for their time rather than empty promises and a functionally useless piece of paper. It gives them some baseline to work with at the end of their 4 years if they didn't go pro.

There are a ton of better solutions. Actual academic level enforcement combined with stricter rules on practicing. And like you mentioned, an actual minor league removed from the universities. But I don't see either of those happening. The idea that even a slight bit of cash can go to these players, or at the very least they themselves can be allowed to profit off of their own literal self, is at least a bit more likely to happen in the near future.

 

[CrunchyFrog]

While yeah there are many other things about the whole deal that need to be changed, paying these players a salary is more of a short term "We know the NCAA has an ironclad grip on this entire racket" solution because I can guarantee you nothing outside of a simultaneous epiphany from the entire human race is going to decouple the NCAA and football careers, full stop.

It's not even a solution, though. What kind of salaries are people actually thinking here? Four years is nothing, you can't expect to ride out endorsement deals forever, if you even manage to get one. My problem is with people in here showing this seething outrage because the NCAA hasn't put in some bandage fix for a far more fundamental problem that quite frankly we are all here indirectly contributing to.

And as I pointed out, the "fix" of player salaries will almost certainly do more harm than good.

 

[Kill3r7]

Private schools would have less leverage because the student can learn and play at a public school where they could show their skills to join a professional league. The private school might be forced to actually compensate athletes unless the school can use its reputation of something close to an Ivy as a form of compensation. Even then it would be limited to a small number of schools.

Isn't that a good thing that athletes will have to earn good grades to play sports at a school?

I agree with your stance that athletes should be treated like regular students and have to meet general admission requirements.

 

[Wereroku]

Ok, but then how does paying them a salary for those 4 years help them find a job when they're done if they're still getting the same shitty degree? Maybe the solution is to structure the programs such that players get an ACTUAL education that will serve them in a career outside sports instead of using them up for four years of entertainment. Of course these players are being used, I don't disagree with anyone on that. So put them in a position where they're not being or used or aren't dependent on NCAA participation to get ahead. If the product on the field suffers as a result, so fucking be it, and that's because these should be goddamn academic universities not football farms.

Well I mean if the NCAA didn't exist there would probably be an actual minor league system like most other sports have. Players could then play there for a decent income even if they weren't skilled enough from the pro's.

It's not even a solution, though. What kind of salaries are people actually thinking here? Four years is nothing, you can't expect to ride out endorsement deals forever, if you even manage to get one. My problem is with people in here showing this seething outrage because the NCAA hasn't put in some bandage fix for a far more fundamental problem that quite frankly we are all here indirectly contributing to.

And as I pointed out, the "fix" of player salaries will almost certainly do more harm than good.

The biggest argument I have is that players should at least get a stipend as well. Yeah they have basic room and board covered but if they want to do anything else they have to get a part time job or something.

 

[The Greek Freak]

He's an idiot but fuck the NCAA they are one of the worst organizations in America once you get past banking conglomerates and oil corps.

I gave up my eligibility after one season (had partial academic scholarship not athletic) to play for a semi-pro team. Coaches were fucking pissed but the NCAA wasn't paying me and I didn't have NFL level talent to showcase so fuck letting them profit off me for nothing.

 

[LosDaddie]

He could still make videos and monetize, he just couldn't use his position on the team to monetize.

Yup.

 

[F34R]

Who pays for the students to train at the school? Who is paying for the coaches, medical staff, uniforms, the list goes on. Who paid for the stadium the student athlete gets to play in? Who is paying for their education?

They are being supported way beyond the tuition, housing, meals...
They are being given this to play a sport. A sport where they can move on from and have a great future even on a practice squad in the NFL.

When you have rules to follow to keep getting what you're getting, follow those rules. When you're warned about breaking those rules, you STOP doing it. Well, if you don't, you see what happens.

Nothing wrong with that.

 

[Glix]

The NCAA are disgusting.

Just vile and disgusting. I hate them so very much.

Who pays for the students to train at the school? Who is paying for the coaches, medical staff, uniforms, the list goes on. Who paid for the stadium the student athlete gets to play in? Who is paying for their education?

They are being supported way beyond the tuition, housing, meals...
They are being given this to play a sport. A sport where they can move on from and have a great future even on a practice squad in the NFL.

The NCAA doesn't give them ANY of this shit, the school does.

You can't sell your own autograph? Fuck that shit.

 

[JABEE]

Because once you open that door, you can't close it. Next thing you know schools boosters will give all of these kids jobs and their parents jobs and their grandparents jobs. It's bad enough now with school that clearly do it until they get caught. You open the door you have no idea what will happen to college football. Big schools will get even bigger, small schools won't be able to afford to have football. Scholarships dry up. So many kids will lose their shot at even going to school. Do you know how few kids actually play in the pros? They at least get a shot at an education. That'll go bye bye. I love how people always think "oh, it's as easy as.....". It ain't.

Then create a legal, collectively bargained system like the professionals.

Geting them for free and policing athletes isn't the only option.

This restriction is over-the-line.

 

[WaterAstro]

NCAA is shit and destroy students' career in sports.

 

[Dynomutt]

NCAA is a modern day feudal system and the player's are serfs.

 

[Epsilon-delta]

My alma meter in the news I see.

NCAA sucks and is greedy as fuck.

 

[RyanW]

I don't understand when everyone cries "no compensation!" People do realize the specific athletic scholarships most of these guys receive, right? That despite making up a third of total financial aid given out by universities, athletic scholarships go to close to only a tenth of the total student body on average. And on top of that, they're still eligible for non-athletic scholarships on top of those. TBF, the student tuition and debt crisis in this country is itself a huge issue and very much intertwined with this one, and in a world where tuition rates aren't skyrocketing this first paragraph might need to be rethought, but that day isn't today.

On top of that, do you really want what's supposed to be an amateur sports league dominated by only the top handful of organizations who have the $$ to buy athletes? Which itself also further incentivizes colleges to spend $$ on athletics programs over faculty and academic programs? LSU in my own home state rightly decries budget cuts in education (thanks Jindal, you dolt), plausibly claiming it's had to let go swaths of faculty due to inability to pay them. And yet the same article says this:



My sister was in the middle of her college career counting on the TOPS money she was promised and had studied her ass off to earn to help pay for her education, but when that well ran dry the university and its community decided instead of helping pay for programs for the general student body and their faculty they'd work on keeping that top shelf football coaching staff instead. You shouldn't get to bill yourself as an academic institution with those kinds of priorities in practice, much less a public one.

Moreover, why is time spent on and institutional monetary benefit from an extra-curricular used as the metric for compensation eligibility? If that's the case then maybe we should be paying the musicians and stage-actors who spend a dozen+ hours a week practicing for performances, the same performances that many colleges also make money from in ticket sales.

The REAL solution is to 1. crack down on circumvention of practice time rules and overwork culture in college sports programs and 2. create a minor league NFL, lower the NFL minimum age requirement, or create some other avenue for a potential professional football career not directly linked to universities. But I'm not gonna sit here and have our students and universities continually sold down the river for a game.

This hits close to home being a Louisiana college student. Fortunately for my university, athletics isn't successful enough to be a priority like at LSU and our University came out and said they'd cover what TOPS couldn't last semester.

 

[JABEE]

I'm sorry, what is a scholarship exactly???

Not money.

Maybe stockbrokers and engineers should be compensated exclusively in semesters of education at LSU.

Even PHD students working in labs at schools get stipends. The NCAA is exploiting their powerful monopoly and cartel-like relationship with the NFL.

 

[Exile20]

He could still make videos and monetize, he just couldn't use his position on the team to monetize.

Or talk about what he wants and not monetize it. He will still get his scholarship, build a youtube audience and not be censored.

I am sure the money you make from Youtube is far less than the scholarship money plaus the chance to play in the NFL.

 

[whitehawk]

I respect him for standing his ground. I just subscribed to him.

 

[excelsiorlef]

Or talk about what he wants and not monetize it. He will still get his scholarship, build a youtube audience and not be censored.

I am sure the money you make from Youtube is far less than the scholarship money plaus the chance to play in the NFL.

He should be able to do both. It's bullshit that he can't

 

[LoveCake]

I would have done the cowardly thing by compromising here. NCAA is trash, but id play the long game.

I would as well.

Wouldn't people know he was a player anyway even if he didn't reference it?

 

[YesThatGuy]

Funny thing, had he stayed in Costa Risca, his education would be most likely free.

Maybe he could apply at IPN or UNAM (Mexico's 1st and 2do best schools). They have handegg teams there.

 

[Hari Seldon]

The NCAA is complete trash and it needs to go away. Although he is probably better off not playing football with the giant risk of permanent brain damage. He made the smart decision, get a big boost to his channel and not have to sacrifice his long term health for a degree.

 

[Just_myles]

Nah, only reason he got shut down is because the NCAA doesn't get a cut, that's it. Fuck that, stand up for your rights, the NCAA cant forbid you from having a damn job.

Yup.

 

[perfectchaos007]

It's a job when every other streamer and youtube star does this.

But a college football player does it and suddenly the NCAA got issues.

Nah, only reason he got shut down is because the NCAA doesn't get a cut, that's it. Fuck that, stand up for your rights, the NCAA cant forbid you from having a damn job.

Take the Nintendo-Youtuber approach and force Youtubers who post Nintendo related videos or streams to give them a cut of the ad revenue

 

[JABEE]

Take the Nintendo-Youtuber approach and force Youtubers who post Nintendo related videos or streams to give them a cut of the ad revenue

He would have to use NCAA footage which he doesn’t own to make this comparable. He wasn’t going to repost entire replays of games on his channel.

 

[Frozenprince]

Who pays for the students to train at the school? Who is paying for the coaches, medical staff, uniforms, the list goes on. Who paid for the stadium the student athlete gets to play in? Who is paying for their education?

They are being supported way beyond the tuition, housing, meals...
They are being given this to play a sport. A sport where they can move on from and have a great future even on a practice squad in the NFL.

When you have rules to follow to keep getting what you're getting, follow those rules. When you're warned about breaking those rules, you STOP doing it. Well, if you don't, you see what happens.

Nothing wrong with that.

Billionaire boosters for the most part.

Wow. Room and board and food (despite rarely actually getting a decent meal since they burn through a shitload of calories a day on practice). Man. High living off their labor!

 

[Prophaniti]

So he had a choice? Why do we care?

 

[excelsiorlef]

So he had a choice? Why do we care?

Because the choice wasn't fair.

 

[Wereroku]

Billionaire boosters for the most part.

Wow. Room and board and food (despite rarely actually getting a decent meal since they burn through a shitload of calories a day on practice). Man. High living off their labor!

I don't think people realize how little you can do on a college campus without money. Even just giving them money equal to a work study job would be something. Unless the athletes family has money to give them for spending cash they have fuck all to do because they aren't given enough time to go to class and work.

 

[brochiller]

Fuck the NCAA.

 

[StrongBlackVine]

I think he messed up. Should have just kept doing the video without referencing his status as an athlete. Seems like he took a stand at the wrong time and now he is asking for handouts.

Also I can only chuckle at some people acting like these scholarships are worthless. Getting free rides to schools like Stanford, Michigan, Vanderbilt, Northwestern,Duke, North Carolina, UCLA, USC, Cal etc is no joke and many of these athletes would NEVER be accepted to most of these schools if not for being good at sports.

 

[sooperkool]

This kid is lucky they only took his scholarship, they could have taken away his football eligibility

 

[linkboy]

Sure, the athletes get scholarships, and that's great.

However, there's cases like what happened to Marcus Lattimore. Damn good RB who blew all three ligaments out in his knee and never got a chance to go pro (he was on his way to being a first round pick until that injury ended his football career).

The University of South Carolina make a lot of profit off of Lattimore's talent when he played, but he got nothing to show for it.

He's currently a head football coach at a high school.

The current setup of college sports exists only to exploit student athletes for the benefit of the school.

 

[StrongBlackVine]

Sure, the athletes get scholarships, and that's great.

However, there's cases like what happened to Marcus Lattimore. Damn good RB who blew all three ligaments out in his knee and never got a chance to go pro (he was on his way to being a first round pick until that injury ended his football career).

The University of South Carolina make a lot of profit off of Lattimore's talent when he played, but he got nothing to show for it.

He's currently a head football coach at a high school.

The current setup of college sports exists only to exploit student athletes for the benefit of the school.

Well if the solution is to compensate athletes what they are really worth then do you do with all the women's sports generate little to no revenue.? Should they still get scholarships just because? If universities weren't forced to fund non-revenue generating programs that would free up a lot of cash....this can go all sorts of places that people won't like.

 

[Squirrel Killer]

The NCAA certainly doesn't do itself many favors, but I have kind of a hard time signing on to the fuck the NCAA train.

The NCAA oversees 400,000+ student-athletes. According to this article (just a random one I googled, but in line with other stuff I've done on this topic,) athletic revenue for 48 colleges in the Power 5 conferences is $4.5 billion. For shits and giggles, let double that revenue (to $9b) since there's a hell of a lot more than 48 colleges with athletic programs.

Split across all the student-athletes, that's about $22k per student-athlete, or $725k per student-athlete in revenue sports. But not so fast, that was just revenue. That $9b ($4.5b*2) is offset by $8.8b ($4.4b*2) in spending, so that's $500/yr per student-athlete, or $16k/yr per student-athlete in revenue sports.

Could schools make cuts? Sure, they could get rid of all the non-revenue sports except just enough women's sports to stay on Title IX's good side, but that means instead of helping 400k+ student-athletes through school, they'd only helping ~25k (roughly 12,500 in football and men's basketball * 2 for Title IX compliance.) You know damn well they're not going to stop spending money on their moneymaking programs and stadiums.

So... yeah, fuck the NCAA, it has some serious problems. Just don't fuck them so much that you fuck 375,000 student athletes out of their opportunity.

 

[E92 M3]

Because the choice wasn't fair.

Life isn't fair. If he was intelligent, he would have gotten his education and then fought the NCCA.

 

[excelsiorlef]

Life isn't fair. If he was intelligent, he would have gotten his education and then fought the NCCA.

What a useful response.

 

[Big Blue]

Not money.

Maybe stockbrokers and engineers should be compensated exclusively in semesters of education at LSU.

Even PHD students working in labs at schools get stipends. The NCAA is exploiting their powerful monopoly and cartel-like relationship with the NFL.

College athletes in the P5 give football players stipends as well. Like I said, I know too much about FBS athletics to refrain from using the term "exploited", especially considering that they were playing for absolutely nothing in HS.

 

[JABEE]

College athletes in the P5 give football players stipends as well. Like I said, I know too much about FBS athletics to refrain from using the term "exploited", especially considering that they were playing for absolutely nothing in HS.

High schools exploit athletes too, but the scope of their exploitation is far less than the stolen labor of major state universities in this country. TV deals, video games, jerseys, licensing etc.


The NCAA controls high school students too with their stupid rules about amateur eligibility.