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Comment by dmode | Hacker News Reader

This was long overdue. Thank you. College coaches get paid millions of dollars a year, yet when a poor athlete gets rent money for his dad, all hell breaks loose. Let's stop pretending that college sports is anything but a glamorized professional sporting franchise, and pay the people who make it happen. Actually, this bill doesn't even ask the colleges to pay the athletes their fair market value. It simply allows athletes to make money from their own brand. Not sure how anyone can be against this. If someone is making money off me, in a free society, I sure should be able to make money off myself as well.

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I agree completely. I truly don't care for sports, despite attending several of my alma mater's football games, but I've always felt the same way.

Why are college players limited to "scholarships" (which are essentially 100% tuition coverage, 100% on-campus food/dining coverage, and a $1500 scooter to get around -- of course nothing to scoff at when compared to a student taking out loans for the same education), while the colleges rake in millions?

Colleges - at least the one I attended - make a ridiculous amount of money off these games via tickets and merchandise, the latter even when the team is in the off-season. There's a reason why colleges are able to pay their coaches millions. (My own alma mater left a "bad" coach with a multi-million dollar severance package.)

I have long thought the NCAA model actually does a lot to undermine/harm "student"-athletes as well.

Not only can they not make money and send it home ... they can't even make enough money for a normal social life. It's no wonder players (especially from poor backgrounds) end up making dumb choices and find themselves in bad situations.

At a basic level, you've got division one basketball players who don't even have enough cash to take somebody out on a normal date. It's no wonder a lot of players end up at parties in dumb situations every year - they can't afford paid entertainment to stay out of trouble.

>I have long thought the NCAA model actually does a lot to undermine/harm "student"-athletes as well

The athletes most hurt by it are certainly the football and basketball players. All the other athletic programs, men and women, benefit immensely. American collegiate sports program is probably the best in the world, so much so that I suspect that a good chunk of all Olympic athletes (American and foreign) are probably go through the NCAA program.

Basketball players have many options for a professional career. They can jump to NBA or G League directly from high school, or play overseas - so they are fine. Football players don't really have those options and their careers are shorters and their bodies are beat-up more. I feel for those guys. Those guys should be able to make money.

Even athletes from sports without any professional outlook at all are hurt by it. I knew people who were on the women's swimming team with zero post-college prospects who couldn't hang out with friends because they weren't allowed to have a part time job to have spending money.

Yeah, the scholarship meant they could go to school, but it wouldn't have anyone (or their "amateurism") if they'd been allowed to work enough to afford a trip to the movie theater once in a while.

To be fair though, college basketball and football players, especially in competitive schools wouldn't need a part-time job, scholarships and sponsorships would probably be enough to give them a nice amount of cash.

On the other side, without the revenue coming from those sports, your friend's program wouldn't be nearly as competitive, facilities wouldn't be as good, scholarships would be reduced, and coaching would be lower quality, and quite possible that there would be out of pocket expenses. There is a huge net positive to all other student athletics that comes out of the most competitive college sports programs. The programs that can usually pay their own way are mens/womens basketball, mens football, and womens gymnastics. Tennis, volleyball and soccer can probably break even. Everything else needs big subsidies.

NCAA literally has the slave model and most likely has origins in that mentality. Just like a race horse can't ask for money because it is a property of its owner, student athletes are not any different from NCAA perspective. It is strange to think that such rule existed for so long in the "free" society.

I'd say this is confusing where we've ended up with where we started.

In the beginning, the "amateur" in "amateur athletics" was taken quite seriously; college athletics was seen and treated as part of the education system.

There's been considerable erosion of this ideal, and at this point it's better to treat college athletes as minor leaguers who happen to be affiliated with colleges.

The history of how we got here is very odd. The NCAA's worship of amateurism has it's roots in Ivy League gentleman amateurs, and for many, many years was explicitly racially segregated.

The roots were very much more in the public's insistence that college students had to stop dying while playing football. Lots of players were paid in the old Ivy League days. Those like Theodore Roosevelt who "saved" the game did so mostly by not letting students handle the payments. Only much later (1940s and '50s) did NCAA take on the form it has today.

>It simply allows athletes to make money from their own brand. Not sure how anyone can be against this.

Indeed. I'm not necessarily opposed to amateur sports remaining "amateur" (whatever that looks like). But the fact that these athletes aren't allowed to make money from their likeness on their personal social media accounts is preposterous.

Trying to go pro is not easy. Most people dedicate their entire young lives to the effort and end up with nothing to show for it.

I understand what you're saying about being able to market your own brand.

A serious question, though, "Who is truly building that brand?" In many respects, it is the NCAA and member schools which are making the athlete famous and marketable. It is rarely talent alone which makes the athlete's marketability so valuable. Put the best quarterback at Alabama and Wyoming and which is more valuable? Should Alabama be allowed to negotiate a cut upon acceptance? What if they are the best collegiate 10k women's runner? Their fame is at least partially built by the league itself.

Another issue is the collusion of the NFL and NCAA to establish dual monopolies over the same sport.

My personal opinion on the NCAA is that it is all corrupt and it should be burned to the ground.

Correct. The university also provides tremendous support in media training and publicity garnering. For example, when you see a media interview blitz for a Heisman candidate - that's certainly not being organized by the 20 year old athlete.

It will be interesting to see the schools strong-arm athletes into giving a revenue cut.

> Let's stop pretending that college sports is anything but a glamorized professional sporting franchise

For 95+% of colleges athletes, their experience with college sports has absolutely nothing in common with professional sports. The pro-football edge case should probably be addressed somehow, but not in a way that ruins amateur sports for everyone else.

Amateurs don't need NCAA to play sports. I was on my college kendo team, and NCAA doesn't care about kendo. There are lots of other competitive collegiate club sports that have escaped NCAA's plundering. The obvious solution to most schools' Title IX woes would be to declare that all sports are club sports. A compromise would be to say that basketball, football, and softball are official, and everything else is club.

I agree that the NCAA is terrible. But imho a much better solution would be to ban schools from making money on sports, rather than letting students profit.

Most institutions don't "make money on sports", in the sense that their athletic departments operate at a loss, which if it can't be covered by alumni donations or by taxes for public institutions must be extracted from students. (College administrators might not see a difference between the latter situations and "profit"...) Like many other aspects of the modern university, a huge portion of athletic expenses are incurred by employing many times the number of administrators required in decades past. The NCAA functions on the athletic side in much the same way that the bankruptcy-impervious student loan functions on the academic side: ratcheting up revenue to support the inexorable growth of administrative staff. Colleges and universities aren't doing a better job than they did years ago, so by charging more they defraud both students and society.

Whether students are allowed to profit or not, I certainly support your proposal to ban colleges and universities from taking commercial interest in student sports.

What top athletes are paying for rent? The ones who could get endorsements are surely on full rides. IIRC, they even get a modest monthly stipend.

USC got heavily penalized and the football program was set back decades because Reggie Bush's father got free rent from an agent. It is laughable, when USC's coach was Pete Carol who minted millions

Why would the college I went to pay my dads rent? That’s so far from an athlete getting housing I can’t even call it apples to oranges.

I don't see what business the government has in regulating what athletes get paid anyway. Just let the market sort it out.

I don't think the government is the limiting body in what the players can make. The NCAA was the restricting governing body that prohibited players from making money. What this bill does is guarantee the college athletes can make money from external sources and the NCAA can't supercede the legal system. I think I'm getting that right.

Right, and now money will not change the game one bit. Alabama players will get millions and your school will lose every game by 100pts. Now every player will go to whatever school pays the best by their affiliations (no company will pay your to go to Alcorn State).

I am not against paying them, I am against paying them right away, and I am against paying them millions. Forget college sports, it's now just pay for play. Most of them will not get a degree, the best will be rich and blow it all on drugs and cars and gambling. The pay should be given to them after they turn 21. Or just forget sports entirely, let's just have professional teams and call them by sponsor. Instead of cheering my college team, I can just cheer the Microsoft Manglers.

We shouldn't have to have scholarships either, why act as if anyone will go to school? If you aren't good enough to earn millions you can't play. Alabama's pros against your crappy team of walk-ons. In the end maybe no one will pay most of the players because their school is pathetic to watch on ESPN.

Oh god, can we read the bill first ? No college is paying anything to anyone. This is about a person using their own image to make money. There is no benefit in going to Alabama vs. Acorn state, as you can be a big star in a small program as well.

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