Should Players Get Paid?

[TheDirector]

The question should be why do you think football players should be paid or basketball players. Then the next question is do you pay non revenue generating scholarship athletes? They do as much work as football and basketball players in their sports and school work. Title 9 would require that if u pay one student athlete you have to pay them all. So football and bball would have to shoulder that burden.

Great point! Which ones get paid and which ones don't? Men's BBall does but women's doesn't? etc... The numbers will never add up. When all these people claim that millions of dollars are being made by these institutions, those millions are going into the budget already and for most schools they fund all the other sports. Few schools have a surplus, very few. Tennessee is in the red currently.
Now take the lower tier teams in the FBS D1 division. Those school total FBall budget is probably 5 Million or less. How do they afford it? If they can't then the bigger schools would have a recruiting advantage and that would never fly. "Come to Alabama because we will pay you and they can't afford to"
I realize this has been Alabama's recruiting tactic for years but do we really want to make it legal?

 

[Vol4life25]

Like, on the basis that like, i've done research on like the NCAA.


"For 2011-12, the most recent year for which audited numbers are available. NCAA revenue was $871.6 million, most of which came from the rights agreement with Turner/CBS Sports."

Revenue - NCAA.org





Fat profits at NCAA while athletes play for free

You're insane if you're saying that the NCAA should pay.

 

[Vol865]

UT has spent dozens of millions of dollars on nice but unnecessary upgrades to almost every athletic facility on campus. The coaches make mllions of dollars. The money's there, should the universities find attracting top athletes is worth it.



Some schools would decide that football's not worth it. Other schools would double down and play players a nice salary.

Most of the people who post on this board think they believe in some flavor of free-market capitalism. I'm not sure why that's supposed to work in every walk of life except college athletics.

As soon as UT used the money to upgrade the facilities to pay players, everyone would complain that UT isn't putting enough money into the facilities and needs to put more of an emphasis on it.

I will use Josh Dobbs as an example for this:

Aeronautical Engineerring:
$105k total for 4 yrs

Room and Board:
$18k total for 4 yrs

Food:
$6-8k total for 4 yrs

(Not to mention anything medical that happens)

That is his payment
Posted via VolNation Mobile

 

[allvol123]

If you are one of those who want to pay them, just which sports are you willing to sacrifice in order for the AD to recoup the money? I get tired of the "ignorance" of some on here (even a moderator who shall remain nameless) who think that there is a bottomless pit of money in the NCAA and in the individual AD's and that everyone is getting rich. There are fewer and fewer AD's in the country that run in the black every year. Where is the money going to come from to pay players at the schools running in the red? Please give some thought to this before you step up and make a pro sport out of college athletics, in particular football. It is already nearly cost prohibitive to go to a game now, imagine when ticket prices go to over $100 for upper deck from the ticket office in addition to the required donation. You think a large flat screen and a cooler of beer on Saturday are attractive now?!?!?!?!? Pay those players, pay those prices, and please pay me some more!

» Self-Sustaining Athletic Departments: More Than What Meets the Eye

I'd sacrifice all the ones that can't sustain themselves on their own. This culture needs to get over the entitlement idea.

 

[82_VOL_83]

I'd sacrifice all the ones that can't sustain themselves on their own. This culture needs to get over the entitlement idea.

So all the sports except for football and basketball at the 22 schools whose AD was in the black? I don't think that would fly. I don't think athletic schollies are entitlements, however, thinking that you should be paid because of the sport that you participate in while others shouldn't be is an entitlement. MOST of the kids on the football team are raking in nearly 40k per year in benefits from the school, how much more would be correct?

 

[Bluetic]

Paying amateur athletes would by definition make them pro, thus making high school athletes amateur. Steroids, paying them to attend this or that school, no "governing" body to protect them from the flood of agents that would then be flocking to the high school level...come on. Where do we draw the line?

 

[KBVol]

Tennessee Vols Football - Should Players Get Paid?

No. Next question.

 

[rocky top buzz]

I can see where you're coming from with this. My idea, while I have no clue of the NCAA by-laws concerning it's legality, was to give 1 pct of ticket sales to the particular sport and split it between players. If the AD wanted to recoup this with a 1% increase, that brings 50 dollar tickets to $50.50. Brings $1000 dollar tickets to $1010. Not a noticeable difference in either regard, but would raise more than enough money to pay students legally at the end of the year based on how many fans they attract.

I actually think that's a workable idea. If ever team got a fixed percentage of ticket sales, it doesn't necessarily vary by gender (at UT, I'm sure the ticket revenue for womens basketball is far greater than mens swimming).

So the part I have never understood is why has there not been a successful minor league system for football? Take the south, it's clear we love football, would you pay $30 a ticket to see 18-21 year old's play for "Tennessee?" Even if it doesn't bring in as much revenue as SEC-level competition today, I guarantee if you can offer some of these kids maybe only $30k a year out of high school to play football and wait on their chance for the NFL, you would have a lot of takers. Of course most of those guys wouldn't make the pros and would not have the education either, but I seriously believe many would opt for the money over college even if it's not 6 figures.

So far we have had plenty of leagues challenge the NFL, but I don't believe anyone has challenged the college ranks. I just wonder why that is?

 

[Volosaurus rex]

Rocky Top Buzz, one can make a defensible argument that baseball was the one sport that got it right from the outset; their minor league system eliminates any perceived conflict with respect to the amateur status of athletes. College football, on the other hand, long predated the advent of the NFL. When fledgling professional football teams began to pop up on the athletic landscape, it was regarded, at the time, as a rather seedy enterprise. It was not until athletes the caliber of Red Grange decided to join “the League” that professional football began to gain some sense of public respect. I believe that it would be safe to say that, as a spectator sport in the United States, college football was, at that time, surpassed only by major league baseball. The bottom line is that college football existed as a truly amateur enterprise for decades and has been deeply entrenched to this day with a code of “pseudo-amateurism.”

 

[DaNuhNuh]

As long as non-student athletes tuition doesn't increase and boosters and alumni want to pay players- I'm all for it.