George Will on College Football

[cowboycane]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...59-657e0c72fec8_story.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions

Goes over a lot of the same ground that has been covered before but I particularly enjoyed this section:

"Meanwhile, to preserve college football’s purity, the NCAA has approximately 70 pages of stern rules about dealing with recruits: “An institution may provide fruit, nuts and bagels to a student-athlete at any time.” Cookies? See the relevant regulation. In 2008, Easterbrook notes, the Raleigh News & Observer “reported that University of North Carolina football and men’s basketball players were enrolled in email Swahili ‘courses’ that had no instructors and never met and always led to A’s.” There was, however, no evidence of cookie corruption."

 

[RBhurricane87]

I can just see the recruiting pitch now.

"Come to our school. You'll get free cookies (and onset diabetes)."

 

[drifters1234]

Regardless of your politics, he's one of the most brilliant writers out there.

 

[Consigliere]

I don't trust that Green Bay Packers statistic on it's face, there is some latent ambiguity. I don't think you can compare the expenses for a college team and an NFL team, in terms of revenue...

Packers generated $259 Million in 2010.
Auburn generated $66 Million in 2010.

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2011/30/nfl-valuations-11_Green-Bay-Packers_302814.html
http://www.forbes.com/sites/sportsmoney/2011/01/26/whos-making-money-in-sec-football/

 

[dk72]

The whole set of rules is ridiculously skewed. That the NCAA finds it to be a horrific, unfair advantage when a booster buys a recruit a dinner or a program provides cream cheese with the bagels given to the players, but doesn't find a problem with boosters being allowed to pay for better coaches (much of the salary of top coaches at state schools comes from supplements provided by boosters) and unnecessarily fancy facilities (such as the Nike-provided Oregon facilities) without limitations, is ridiculous.

 

[FullyERicht]

The whole set of rules is ridiculously skewed. That the NCAA finds it to be a horrific, unfair advantage when a booster buys a recruit a dinner or a program provides cream cheese with the bagels given to the players, but doesn't find a problem with boosters being allowed to pay for better coaches (much of the salary of top coaches at state schools comes from supplements provided by boosters) and unnecessarily fancy facilities (such as the Nike-provided Oregon facilities) without limitations, is ridiculous.

this is a great great point that doesn't get discussed enough. there ABSOLUTELY should be spending limits across division one on coaches and staff, and possibly facilities.

 

[thebutcher]

sonny came into the athletic office last year and we had bagels out for the team. one of the funniest conversations i've ever seen was our compliance guy explaining to sonny that he couldnt have cream cheese on his bagel or else he could lose his eligibility. ******* ncaa

 

[cowboycane]

sonny came into the athletic office last year and we had bagels out for the team. one of the funniest conversations i've ever seen was our compliance guy explaining to sonny that he couldnt have cream cheese on his bagel or else he could lose his eligibility. ****ing ncaa

Slippery slope, my man. If you give them cream cheese for the bagels, who is to stop a rogue booster from giving them hookers and blow to put on their bagels?

 

[xereus]

Some of you should really research how the NCAA came about amassing such power. Fear,intimidation, political lobbying...you name it. They are nothing more than the "Big Tobacco" of sports.

 

[cowboycane]

Some of you should really research how the NCAA came about amassing such power. Fear,intimidation, political lobbying...you name it. They are nothing more than the "Big Tobacco" of sports.

It has been written about a lot and I wholeheartedly agree: The NCAA actually operates a very similar model to the plantation owners of old.

Amateurism was originally allowed to flourish because these were sports of the white privileged, so no one really cared about being denied benefits because they could afford it themselves. Now it is a bunch of rich white dudes protecting their interests while employing a bunch of poor black kids (in the money sports, at least) and paying them for their room and board and little else. Strong parallels.

Funny aside that I just find too perfect: When you type in "NCAA plantation" in to Google you get 920,000 hits.

 

[SmokeyRone]

Had an ex NCAA president, (one of my Law professors) drunk as usual, explain to me how the rascalism (extreme at both schools) going on at Washington and Colorado (this was 20 something years ago) was completely whitewashed, because they had pull inside the NCAA.

Ironic, while I was in undergrad, we had to threaten them and him personally (legal threats) to get the NCAA to look into a tennis dispute.

Two years later, I end up in his class.