A Proposal to end college athletic scholarhips

I guess he just wanted us to know he wasn't dead yet.

Irrelevant, but not dead.

"NCAA spokesman Bob Williams said referring to college athletes as professionals defies logic."

When you have adults -- young adults, but still adults -- working their hind parts off to receive considerations worth as much as $50,000, even more at times, in AFTER-TAX VALUE, that is professional sport.

NCAA sports are a form of professional sports. You get paid to play, it's that simple. If you don't do well enough at your job you can lose it.

Even in baseball, the typical partial scholarship is worth more, in after-tax cash, than the paycheck in Rookie League.

I guess I don't understand why the NCAA has to respond to a totally silly idea with a patent lie.

And I don't understand why it still bothers Ralph Nader that some institutions and people still gather together of their own free will to do things that he might disagree with. I guess he thinks the government ought to order people to stop doing anything he doesn't care for personally.

I have one child who benefits from athletic scholarship money in college and one wh does not. One at a public snd one at a private college. The one at the private school benefits from grants and endowments while tyhe benefits recieved by the other are ffrom state supported taxpayer funds.
I was thinking to myself tyhe other day...should public universities that provide scholarships write in their agreements that if the athlete signs a professional contract to play a sport they give back a portion to the schol? Or if they leave school early to enter the draft affter their Jr year they pay back the scholarship they recieved?
Just thinking out loud as a tuition taxpaying parent who pays for my kids but also contributes $ for kids who become higgh paid professional athletes

Absolutely no way......

Scholarship money is EARNED not given. The players bring value to their schools through public exposure and baseaball has become a "for profit" sport at MANY more schools in the last 10 years.

The system is not perfect now but it certainly doesnt need any help from clowns like Ralph Nadar.

There is an unwritten rule for draft picks to give back to their schools. Obviously the amount of the bonus/contract will effect how much.

Here is one example...
http://www.fullertontitans.com...c-rel/030311aab.html

THis is definitely true and its awesome when it happens, I just dont think it should be a requirement by any means.

Kind of hard to quantify how much money each athlete is responsible for bringing into the school due to their participation in sports though. As the father of a son who recently accepted a scholarship offer to a VA school I can tell you that I personally feel that an athlete's worth to a school is hard to measure. The rabid fans that buy millions and millions of dollars worth of school spirit wear etc. do not do so because of the debate team winning a title. They do so because people the world over compete with each other via sports. Whether that is nations, towns or schools it is something the entire world does. To simply lump them in with all other students and say that they are all the same is to do them a big injustice. They are still expected to earn the grades so we are not asking for a pass on that piece and you cannot simply ignore their financial impact on the school. More often than not these things originate from someone who is not part of the athlete cliche and is simply either jealous of the attention that the athletes receive or does not really take all the pieces into account.

So....Va Tech goes to a bowl game...gets a 18 million dollar payout sells a bunch of shirts...where does the money go?
Which Virginia baseball programs are contributing money to the schjools bottom line?
I am not advocating anything be changed thinking out loud.

If an "average" non athlete student is going to a school and through research develops a cure for a disease or invents something who benefits financially?

quote:

Originally posted by hsbasballfan:
I have one child who benefits from athletic scholarship money in college and one wh does not. One at a public snd one at a private college. The one at the private school benefits from grants and endowments while tyhe benefits recieved by the other are ffrom state supported taxpayer funds.
I was thinking to myself tyhe other day...should public universities that provide scholarships write in their agreements that if the athlete signs a professional contract to play a sport they give back a portion to the schol? Or if they leave school early to enter the draft affter their Jr year they pay back the scholarship they recieved?
Just thinking out loud as a tuition taxpaying parent who pays for my kids but also contributes $ for kids who become higgh paid professional athletes

Not sure I understand which of you kids receives "athletic scholarship" money. Athletic scholarships come from money raised out of private "endowments" or annual giving specific to athletics. No public taxpayer money is used for athletic scholarship even at public universities. Grants, need based fundings, and other fundings are not mixed with athletic funds.

The Va Tech bowl payout helps fund many non-profit "olympic" sports. Think field hockey, volleyball, wrestling, etc.

Off the top of my head, UVA baseball contributes to the "bottom line" of the athletic dept for sure. I believe that VT and JMU have both reached that point as well. Not sure about ODU but others on this board would know for sure.

The other D-1 programs in Virginia I am just not sure about but UVA is a good example of the widespread increase in interest/popularity in college baseball. 10-12 years ago the program made no money whatsoever, now I believe it is the 3rd most profitable sport at UVA after football and mens' basketball.

I don't like the current system, but Nader's system wouldn't work either IMHO.

The current system does not reward the elite student athletes that brings in revenue to the school usually football and basketball. Yes, I have a problem with that, but there are far bigger problems in the world right now. It always chaps my *ss during the NCAA basketball tournament about where all this money goes. It is not equitable. I don't like it, but I don't have a solution, yet. Others have floated the idea that a new organization is formed outside the NCAA or a new NCAA Division created that allows for some type of revenue recognition for the revenue producing players. That may be a start, but the devil is always in the details.

Nader's system proposes need based financial aid for everyone....this works for the D1 Ivy & Patriot Leagues (possibly others) today. Neither is close to being a powerhouse league, and both opt out of providing D1 athlete scholarships. Their recruited athletes are typically not elite, but a greater emphasis is put on academic performance to get admitted. I just don't see need based financial aid working when applied to revenue generating elite D1 athletics. It really does little to reward the elite invidual athlete because everything will be tied to and reflected on what Mom and Dad bring home in pay and file on their taxes. Naders proposal falls short on where does the revenue money go in rewarding a program or athlete.

IMHO Naders proposal at least gets people talking about it, because something has to change. The numbers are in the many billions. College athletics is a business, yet they seem to operate with little scrutiny.

Poor Ralph likes the slave labor idea.

It would be OK with me to kill the scholarships, if they get money from their jersey sales, speaking fees, and their share of gate fees.

/sorry for butting in, but you VA folks have some good topics.

What is the life time value of a college education to college athletes who othewise would not have gotten into most colleges? The NCAA eligibility requirements with the sliding GPA/SAT system would not get you looked at for admission to a UVA or most of the other state schools if you are not an athlete.

They do not get jersey sales revnue but they do get alot of benefit by just having the opportunity to study at a university they would othrwise.

Not saying these guys dnt work hard at what they do but there is a bigger picture and thinking thy are more entittled than other kids who do alot of great things in colleges around the country is wrong - we need more kids who can solve problems than ones who can dunk a basketball.

They are student/athletes...not athletes then students

Ralph is out there for sure, always has been, but it does raise an intresting discussion.

When a college team goes to a major bowl game or the NCAA Basketball Tournament and receive a major payout - that money goes to the conference they are associated with and divided amongst all schools, not just the school that goes to the bowl game. So an 18 million payout to VT would probably be more like 2 million.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by hsbasballfan:
What is the life time value of a college education to college athletes who othewise would not have gotten into most colleges? The NCAA eligibility requirements with the sliding GPA/SAT system would not get you looked at for admission to a UVA or most of the other state schools if you are not an athlete. [QUOTE]

To some degree I agree with you on the opportunity to attend a certain school but I also would point out that many athletes, and I will use my son as an example, spend dozens of hours a week honing their athletic skills. If he did not do that and he instead focused that extra time on studies my guess is that he would get into that same university anyway. (He is an honor student even now). So in some ways it might be a wash.

The bottom line is that these athletes, and since Nader did not specify so neither will I, bring in millions of dollars to schools. Those dollars are enjoyed by athletes and non-athletes alike at these schools.

I agree that they are student-athletes during the off-season but these colleges need them to be athlete-students during the season in order to be successful and raise money. Otherwise we simply tell the universities that they are all club-sport athletes and be done with it. The universities do not lean on the average student to be a success outside the classroom until after college like they do the athlete so there should be some compensation for that.

quote:

Originally posted by hsbasballfan:
They are student/athletes...not athletes then students.

I think that my other point on that would be that it is nice to say that amongst a group of people who are not actively playing or have a student who is a player but you could never make the case that they should only worry about being a student first. How long do you think that a kid with a GPA that is good enough to retain eligibility would last if he took time off from practice in order to tweak his GPA an extra 10th of a point. He would be gone in a minute as would his scholarship... They certainly do have to ensure that they study hard but they can NEVER lose sight of the fact that they are there to perform athletically. Something that the average student doesn't give a care about...

quote:

Originally posted by Prep Ballfan:
Athletic scholarships come from money raised out of private "endowments" or annual giving specific to athletics. No public taxpayer money is used for athletic scholarship even at public universities. Grants, need based fundings, and other fundings are not mixed with athletic funds.

I don't know where you heard this but it is not true. Not all athletic department money is raised through endowments and / or annual giving. Athletic departments get some of their money this way but not all of it.

Again....there are exceptions but a large number of college athletes are admitted to the schools based on a lower standard and given an opportunity to recieve an education that will benefit them the rest of their lives.
There is nothing wrong with that BUT they dont deserve compensation

I remember calling a state school's admissions department when on of my hildrn was a high shool freshman.... I called to ask what type of courses she should focus on and geneally what their standards are for admission... By the time she finished the discussion I was thinking WOW...wonder how many AP or years of foreign language classes Mike and Marcus Vick took in high school or how high his SAT score was.
Before I hung up I said to the lady.... what if I told you my daughter can run a 4.4 40? She then went on to explain to me the NCAA eligibility guidelines.
Point being here...it's the athlete that is fortunate to be there...not the other way around

I would then ask you a question. How many of those athletes actually get their degree from said university and/or how many of them actually get a degree in something that is really worth anything. How hard does the college really work to ensure that that athlete receives the education that you imply that they should be grateful that they got. I would say that the majority do not.

The bottom line is that the lion's share of these athletes are used for their talent to earn money for the college and then dumped once they are finished with their eligibility. (Primarily football and basketball players) You can only play for 4 years, how many regular students finish college in that amount of time? My point being that I would bet scant few really end up getting the great deal that you talk about. And for the record, I would bet that VT profited FAR more from Vick than he EVER got from them by way of scholarship money...

Just some info... My point is that in the workplace, some college isn't much different than NO college. They want to see the parchment. So if a player can't graduate in the 4 years that he has then what real good did it do him to go to school? If he DOES happen to graduate in 4 years then what did he study when the average student can't even do it in six...

"Men's basketball and Football Championship Subdivision teams (formerly Division I-AA) had the lowest rates of any sports, coming in at 64 percent under NCAA calculations. Basketball players scored 48 percent on the federal report, while FCS athletes were at 54 percent. Baseball came in at 69 percent on the NCAA study, but had 47 percent on the federal report."

"Even as colleges nationwide celebrate commencement season, hundreds of schools are failing to graduate a majority of their students in six years, a report says today.

Nationally, four-year colleges graduated an average of just 53% of entering students within SIX years, and "rates below 50%, 40% and even 30% are distressingly easy to find," says the report by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank."

HS asked:

"I was thinking to myself tyhe other day...should public universities that provide scholarships write in their agreements that if the athlete signs a professional contract to play a sport they give back a portion to the schol? Or if they leave school early to enter the draft affter their Jr year they pay back the scholarship they recieved?
Just thinking out loud as a tuition taxpaying parent who pays for my kids but also contributes $ for kids who become higgh paid professional athletes"

There are some misconceptions here.

First, scholarships are year to year. If your son is a baseball player -- or in any other partial scholarship sport -- you can find this out the hard way when they reduce or eliminate your money from one year to the next. Since the school NEVER (and by NCAA rules, CANNOT) gets itself legally obliged to pay for the full four years, there is no logical reason for thinking that an athlete who might leave school early should have to pay back money that was never four-year money in the first place. That is, if it's year to year for one side, it's year to year for the other side, too.

Second, I don't know of any programs that use taxpayer money for scholarships. They have to use ticket revenues and fund raising for it. Most schools use an Athletic Educational Foundation to raise money for sports scholarships. So, you have never paid any taxes for this, and to the extent you wondered whether you have some right to be asking for money back, you were mistaken.

quote:

Originally posted by JMO:

quote:

Originally posted by Prep Ballfan:
Athletic scholarships come from money raised out of private "endowments" or annual giving specific to athletics. No public taxpayer money is used for athletic scholarship even at public universities. Grants, need based fundings, and other fundings are not mixed with athletic funds.

I don't know where you heard this but it is not true. Not all athletic department money is raised through endowments and / or annual giving. Athletic departments get some of their money this way but not all of it.

Check out Midlo's response above also.

If you know something I don't, guess I could also ask you where your info comes from. I have served on the Board of a DI school's athletic fund-raising "Club". That's one place my info comes from. I saw lots of data from lots of schools and NCAA data.
Secondly. I know there are some schools that offer scholarships (mid-level and smaller DI's and DII's) that may not raise all the funding needed for their programs thru Athletic fundraising arms and some of them have acknowledged charging all students an "activity fee" that covers ticket prices for students. But the earlier post made reference to taxpayer monies being used to fund scholarships. Ain't so.

I also sometimes wonder about people's perception of a "dumb" jock. I know from our time in the process that many schools asked our coach for the names of the kids over a certain GPA. Not all schools have academic referrals and the kids aren't able to simply walk into a school with a minimum GPA/SAT score. At least not baseball... Most of the players on our team are honors students because they know that schools focus on those things during the recruiting process. My own son was asked to ensure that he was in the top 10% of his class with SAT scores to match so as to ease the process. Not really my idea of the school that he ultimately committed to just allowing him to slide in at the NCAA minimums...

I realize that this might not be the process for everyone but it has been something that we have seen so...

NovaBBall13 you have a PM.

It's worth clearing up the misperception that college athletes get to lead cushy lives just "for playing a children's game" a few months a year.

The typical college athlete works harder nearly all year round than the typical non-athlete has ever worked at anything for even a single week, and has done so since before high school.

You want to know some things that are a whole lot easier that "playing a children's game"? Posting a high GPA, good test scores, and a nice sampling of community service in high school when you aren't committed to sports or music or something else that requires true dedication to excel at. That's a whole lot easier than never getting to study when you're not physically exhausted.

Another thing that's easier than "playing a children's game" is going to college with no obligations other than attending class and looking down your nose at the "dumb jocks," who, by the way, have a higher group GPA than the non-athletes at nearly every college and high school in the country.

Anyone who thinks it's unfair that students with 3.9 GPA's can't get into elite state universities while athletes with lower GPA's are accepted should consider the supply and demand. UVA or William and Mary could fill their freshman classes ten times over with kids who have GPA's near or over 4.0 who would attend for 4 years while increasing their own earning power and not making a meaningful contribution to the school's reputation or student life. It's not that hard to succeed at school if all you're doing is working on your own resume.

quote:

Originally posted by fenwaysouth:
NovaBBall13 you have a PM.

Go Red Sox!!!

During one of our talks with a school my son was really interested in they went over his daily schedule (off-season).

Wake up at 0515 to be at the gym for cross training. Done with that at 0700. Off to breakfast and first class at 0800. At 1200, lunch and then off to specific position training at 1400. Done with that at 1700 and off to dinner. Back at the stadium by 1900 for mandatory study hall until 2100 at which time I was told most of them went to the library for more study time until 2300. Then to bed where it all starts again... So much for cushy...

Not much time for a social life and most importantly NO time for a job. So to me, the college team demands so much time from the athlete that the scholarship is mostly a repayment for the loss of his/her time. And when you throw in the fact that baseball players (outside of some select pitchers) are on partial scholarships, it really isn't such the "great deal" that many believe it is...