Not sure if Bama outweighs Oregon in any of those pics. Oregon's weight room and theater are absolutely amazing. I can easily see Oregon having the best in the nation.
I have not seen many finished pictures of UT's practice facility yet, aka the artwork, so I am not sure how ours compares to Bama. I will say out weight rooms look the exact same just with different colors and logos.
Basically Oregon is under the ownership of Nike. And yet we claim that scholarships are sufficient compensation for football and basketball athletes? They were getting scholarships since before WWII...before there was ever any TV and billions of $$$ dropping into the NCAA and the program's coffers.
If facilities like these and corporations funding them, doesn't prove NCAA Football isn't a quasi-PROFESSIONAL venture, what more does it take? This is BIG Business. Each SEC team is raking in over $20mill/yr in just TV contracts with ESPN alone! You're telling me that they shouldn't return a small portion of that to the very people who drive this profit-making machine?
You have 85 scholarship players. Each SEC program could easily afford to pay each player an "Added Value" stipend of $10-20K x 85 = $850k - $1.7mill. Out of what, 22mill in TV revenues alone, that isn't even 10%.
The bottom line is...if the NCAA really felt they needed to protect the amateur aspect of the sport(s), then they should have banned TV coverage long ago. They should have banned Universities from receiving licensing fees, etc. They know it's a cash cow and they are still trying to hide behind the
AMATEUR label, while raking in profits as any
PROFESSIONAL entity would.
The moment TV contracts and "Brand" licensing came about, it became a BUSINESS, not an academic/amateur venture. The made it a business, and they should pay a portion of the proceeds to those who generate it.
These kinds of facilities are making a damning case against the NCAA. That's why there is a major class-action lawsuit underway, already.
