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Reply to "California Lawmakers Vote to Undo N.C.A.A. Amateurism"

Chico Escuela posted:
PABaseball posted:
d-mac posted:

 

The athletes don't end up getting a piece of the action. The NCAA will still pull in all that money, coaches will still make 8-10 million. And that 8-10 million is justified when they put a product not he field that generates hundreds of million in revenue.

 

No disrespect, but I don’t understand this reasoning.  I have no qualms about a great coach getting paid a market rate salary, but no coach puts any “product on the field.”  I watch games to see the players, who are the ones actually competing. If Saban coached my local HS’s football team, they might win a few more games, but 50,000 people aren’t going to come to watch them play. 

For most athletes in most sports, a full scholarship is likely worth more than they could earn on the market. (Of course, many athletes get partial or no scholarships, and most sports generate negative net revenues.). But I have yet to see any commenter here even try to explain why players who generate outsized revenues for their schools (“name” players in basketball and football and a handful of Olympians, basically) shouldn’t be able to earn what they are worth. Are you opposed to capitalism in general?  If not, then why is it ok for college sports to permit capitalism for literally everyone involved except the “workers” who create the “product” people pay billions to watch?  It’s like arguing that every actor on a movie set should get $50k salary, including the big-time stars, even if the movie earns $300M after expenses.  There is a reason this doesn’t happen: because markets don’t work that way.  

There are all kinds of potential problems and pitfalls to changing the current system. But IMO the current system has to change. I don’t pretend to know what the answers are, but “pay everyone except the star players” just doesn’t sit right with me. 

Thank you. It’s easy to sit in wherever USA and take pot shots at this, but these new laws are trying to level the economic playing field so athletes are not discriminated against in their ability to earn from something uniquely theirs. I just don’t understand all of the pushback and negativity toward something like this. Yes there has been corruption in the past, but please remember the past is still the present. Nothing has changed from the past. The future, however, is yet to unfold and we can still shape it.

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