THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Divorcing hockey leagues from schools also means that many players don’t get an education, and certainly not a free education.

Ian: education is very cheap in Canada.  In any case, if the college athletes are in a college league where they get paid money, that money can go toward their education if they so choose.

The problem is that capitalism is not being allowed to be practiced by the workers (student-athletes).  What’s being done by the NCAA is much closer to socialism or communism than capitalism.

i can see calling BS on the big time money making NCAA football and basketball programs, especially couples with the age discrimination practiced by the pro leagues, but scholastic sports encompasses way more than that.  the system works wonderfully for D-3 sports.  without BS system in the USA i never would have been able to play football in college.  also clubs are expensive, you have much better equality of opportunity when the sports are subsidized by the schools. 

i agree there should be more freedom of labor for the semi pro college athletes but i think the system is pretty sweet, personally.

without BS system in the USA i never would have been able to play football in college.

I don’t see how that’s necessarily a good thing.  It’s not something that you necessarily deserve, is it?

Everything has a cost to it, in some way.  There’s always going to be some disproportionateness to it, where some group is paying more or less than its fair share.

The problem is when your choices are limited, to non-existant, because of the structure that’s been created.  The NCAA owns it in ways that doesn’t exist in other countries, and in ways that are not capitalistic.  The NCAA would feel right at home in communist countries.

depends on how much value you put in team sports and athletics in general.  i think athletics are a important part of education, and people are generally better off participating in team sports (football or otherwise) so dont mind that sports are subsidized along with all sorts of other programs that are included in high school and college (art appreciation, dance, home ec, health class etc included). plus the choices arent limited.  plenty of random sports have expensive clubs for people who want alternatives to NCAA sponsored sports (swimming, fencing, boxing, water polo, archery, luge, and so forth).

i guess thats communist, socialist, at least, sure.  better than only having rich people be able to send their kids to expensive sports clubs, in my opinion.

Except you are not selling 1 million tickets to watch someone dance or paint. 

They take in 100 MM$ or whatever they do from their athletes’ performances, and they take in almost nothing from the rest, right?

And so, the athletes are subsidizing in part everyone else, and in return do they get 100MM$ worth of scholarships?

please, an education is priceless.

no im kidding, but thats a separate point from early and i agree with you.  a large percentage of the people you see on college football and basketball games should be in minor leagues or should be getting compensated differently.  but only up to a point.  even every everyone with a shot at playing pro football is removed from NCAA play, 100,000 people are still going to go and buy tickets for ohio state and LSU games.  so if the schools give scholarships and make tons of money but plow that money back into the system thats still ok with me. as long as players left have no other other chance at playing professionally elsewhere or would prefer the scholarship. thats why the NFL and the NBA having age limits is garbage, and are just doing that because they know NCAA will subsidize their own minor leagues.  baseball at least gives its the players choice. 

but just having sports in high schools and college?  that to me is a great thing, way better than pay to play clubs.  but again thats me.

I’ve always thought they need a scholarship penalty on the school and the student athlete.

For the athlete they would have to pay back some multiple of their scholarship value if they leave school early without a degree.  Ostensibly they are taking the spot of someone who is not quite as good an athlete, but a better student who has fallen out of the range of an athletic scholarship. 

The schools should also be penalized as they should be working to retain student athletes so that they may fulfill their student duties.  A loss of a scholarship slot in the next season would be sufficient.

That said the athletes should get some cut of the pie.  The major sports at a lot of schools subsidize the others by having large draws and ticket sales.  It only seems right that the players involved receive a portion of that.  The trick would be to make it flat league wide.  The quarterback at USC would be paid the same as the one at BC, so the financials do not factor in to where a student athlete attends their school.