Finebaum has for once said something I can agree with - that TN's proposed "talent fee" added to the ticket price is "utterly disgraceful". I have no sympathy for football players or some of the other college athletes; they are coddled and pampered. Anyone who goes to college to prepare for the future has an expectation that he/she is paying for an education that will serve as the springboard to a lucrative career - you pay your dues and take your chances. Certainly not all athletes are going to turn pro and benefit richly from their college experience - being taught/coached the sport and given the spotlight to showcase talent leading to a professional career. However, many players move into coaching and related athletic endeavors and make the contacts that enhance or lead to other opportunities. ALL students pay their dues, and the cost that most students pay for tuition and room and board says that even an athletic scholarship is lucrative ... that's without considering the tutoring, meal service, etc athletes alone are provided. True, athletes don't have time to work, but at least scholarship players are now provided "cost of attendance" stipends.
NIL opened the doors to a world of abuse. It violates all that amateur sports stands for. The original sin was that player name, likeness, and image were being used in a way that benefitted people who made electronic games or sold items with the players name or image. Maybe the better solution was to forbid the use of names etc rather than saying players should be reimbursed. The reimbursement scheme cracked the door open for abuse ... almost like NIL has gone from a minor correction (defense) rapidly to a full blown offense with no sense of reality, no control, and to fully out of control abuse. Th GA governor has issued an executive order that says the NCAA has no control of NIL in the state. Others are bound to do the same which WILL further ignite the bidding war for college athletes ... not rewarding popular and proven athletes for the use of NIL, but all out bidding wars for unproven HS recruits. And NIL itself is spreading to the HS athletic world. Should we play the band? What about reimbursing unpaid students for anything that brings in money to the school?
Students are students whether in engineering, medicine, law, arts, education, or apparently sport. If we cannot decide student athletes are simply students, then it's probably time to divorce athletics at the collegiate level; and that would be a shame.
. Before that time I’d never ridden a 2 stroke tuned to those extremes. My bike was a 2 stroke but not as extreme of course on tuning.
