Kansas Crimson

Without football, the entire NCAA ecosystem, one in which a predominantly white managerial class profits from the efforts of a predominantly black and working-class labor force, collapses almost overnight. In other words, the concern over a potential lost season tells us just how important the labor of college football players is to the entire amateur sports landscape.

[...]

[F]ootball produces so much money that even after funding those programs schools are left with a surplus. And without players taking a cut, that money oozes out in some perverse yet predictable ways. The most obvious of these is the coaching salary arms race. For example: In 2008, LSU set an SEC record by paying national-championship-winning head coach Les Miles $3.75 million a year; 10 years later, the Tigers gave defensive coordinator Dave Aranda a $2.5 million annual salary.

College football coaches deserve to be paid handsomely—they work extremely hard, and while every so often an overripe Muschamp plops down unceremoniously from the coaching tree, most of them have honed their skills through decades of study and practice. But should the going rate for a Power Five head coach be in excess of $4 million a year, while the players get paid in exposure? And as much as the bit about coaches being the highest-paid public employees in 41 states has turned into a cliché, repetition doesn’t reduce its trenchancy.

Nor does that profit get cycled back into a university system that’s suffering massive cuts in public funding. Rather than scale back facilities upgrades and administrative costs, or dip into football’s money-printing machine, universities nationwide have cut the legs out from under teachers and researchers who supposedly give the system its reason for being. And all of this comes at a massive humanitarian cost.

In this respect, college football is no different, as facilities upgrades eat up another huge slice of the athletics budget. And we’re not just talking about upgrading the weight room and buying a few extra Final Cut licenses for the video staff. Without having an avenue to pay recruits directly, schools use facilities as a draw at a cost of tens of millions of dollars.

[...]

A system that pays out million-dollar salaries and nine-figure construction contracts can surely afford to cut its players in on the product of their work. If the axioms of the NCAA and its apologists ever held water, they surely don’t anymore, as the same people who six months ago thought schools couldn’t afford their players’ labor are now crying out about how they can’t afford not to have it. Iowa State AD Jamie Pollard put it succinctly in an interview with The Washington Post: “I don’t know how any of us, how the current NCAA model, could survive if we’re not playing any football games.”

College football players are one of the few workforces for whom the pandemic-based economic panic strengthens their negotiating position. They do a dangerous job for no pay, and as a direct result an entire multibillion-dollar industry exists. Without their compliance, there is no industry. If you doubt that, just ask the panicked ADs and administrators who said so to ESPN and Sports Illustrated. One could not ask for a more explicit and obvious illustration of the value of players’ work than this.

TDub wrote: ↑Wed May 13, 2020 9:06 am Allows them to escape blame. Chickenshit stance.

PhDhawk wrote: ↑Wed May 13, 2020 9:25 am I hate the ncaa too.

But, how could they do mandate a uniform return when some universities are planning on opening and others aren't.

If Cal-State is going online only, that pretty much means they aren't going to have sports. How would the ncaa force them to?

PhDhawk wrote: ↑Wed May 13, 2020 9:25 am I hate the ncaa too.

But, how could they do mandate a uniform return when some universities are planning on opening and others aren't.

If Cal-State is going online only, that pretty much means they aren't going to have sports. How would the ncaa force them to?

Geezer wrote: ↑Wed May 13, 2020 10:28 am What does having classes on campus have to do with athletics?

pdub wrote: ↑Wed May 13, 2020 10:36 am Don't need to be on campus really.
Live wherever they want.
Just make it to practice at the new arena, we good.

MICHHAWK wrote: ↑Wed May 13, 2020 10:42 am Move football to spring.

NDballer13 wrote: ↑Wed May 13, 2020 10:46 am

pdub wrote: ↑Wed May 13, 2020 10:36 am Don't need to be on campus really.
Live wherever they want.
Just make it to practice at the new arena, we good.

The guy who is as anti-pay the players as they come is suggesting they live off campus to play their sports for free. Who's paying for those houses/apartments all these players are living in, you know, since they don't receive any compensation?