The other trial going on right now

[hartjack8]

https://www.cbssports.com/college-footb ... alignment/

The NCAA is in trouble.....

[jfish26]

Southern Utah University economics professor Dave Berri countered, "Is that [realignment] supposed to be a bad thing? What difference does it make if they realign again? If the argument is realignment ends classic rivalries, I grew up watching Oklahoma and Nebraska play every year. Apparently, we've all moved on."

Judge Wilken has indicated in the proceedings she might be agreeable to conferences finding compensation levels on their own.

The NCAA continues to assert athletics are merely a component of an overarching educational experience. The Alston plaintiffs compete for athletes in several ways -- highly paid coaches, palatial facilities -- but none of that money goes to directly to the athletes.

"One of my favorite stories about the ways they spend money is the Louisville facility has retinal scanners," Berri said. "You know they did that because they could. It doesn't make any difference whatsoever to anybody. We have this pool of money available, and we just arbitrarily decide we're not going to pay the people that are generating that."

[...]

The NCAA has been dead set against even a penny more than it is currently allowing, even though that treasured collegiate model has been under fire. The black market created by that collegiate model to compensate players is blamed for the college basketball corruption scandal currently being tried in New York.

Since 2015, players have been paid that cost of attendance. That once-taboo allowance is available only to athletes at universities, not the general student population, and can be logically tied to athletic performance. Elsewhere, compensation takes the form of bowl gifts that are capped at $550. Schools are allowed to pay insurance premiums of draft prospects that reach the upper five figures.

Oklahoma quarterback Kyler Murray is the highest-paid player in college sports, having signed a $4.6 million deal with the Oakland Athletics. NCAA rules allow a player to turn pro in one sport while retaining college eligibility in another.

It's hard, then, to rally around the NCAA assertion that paying players would tear locker rooms. Murray is not only Oklahoma's most valuable player, he's considered a top Heisman Trophy candidate.

The plaintiffs are arguing, since each school is held to more or less the same scholarship offering, athletes are being denied what Sports Illustrated legal analyst Michael McCann called "the full benefits of competition for their services."

The NCAA has argued in this -- and other trials – that paying athletes would turn off the average fan. Ratings continue to increase. Meanwhile, college football attendance hit an all-time high in 2013 (50.3 million). It had dropped lately because of concerns over length of games and lack of appeal to millennials.

"[The NCAA is] playing the long game and hanging their hat on amateurism," [veteran media consultant Chris] Bevilacqua said. "Each time Nick Saban gets $10 million a year and an athlete gets [only] a scholarship, it further undercuts their argument.

"They're going to get routed. They're going to lose. If I was them, I would have cut a deal [with the plaintiffs] a long time ago."

[Deleted User 75]

That would be fantastic. We could realign with Duke UNC UK etc and have 1 hell of a basketball league!

It'd be like the Jr. NBA!

just for phwitt.