What kind of business is a College + how does this relate to player and scholarships?

[Carlsbad7]

What kind of business is a College + how does this relate to player and scholarships?

Colleges are broken down into a couple of different business entities...

1. Private Colleges are usually registered as Corporations or Non-Profits
2. State Universities are usually owned and operated by the individual state governments, not the U.S. federal government
3. Junior colleges are generally registered as Non-Profits

The reason all this is important is because it relates to Student Athletes.

- Are Student Athletes "Students"?
- Are Student Athletes considered "Employees"?

Since its inception in 1906, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has governed intercollegiate sports and enforced a rule prohibiting college athletes to be paid. Football, basketball, and a handful of other college sports began to generate tremendous revenue for many schools in the mid-20th century, yet the NCAA continued to prohibit payments to athletes. The NCAA justified the restriction by claiming it was necessary to protect amateurism and distinguish “student athletes” from professionals.

The question of whether college athletes should be paid was answered in part by the Supreme Court’s June 21, 2021, ruling in National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Alston, et. al. The decision affirmed a lower court’s ruling that blocked the NCAA from enforcing its rules restricting the compensation that college athletes may receive.

• As a result of the NCAA v. Alston ruling, college athletes now have the right to profit from their name, image, and likeness (NIL) while retaining the right to participate in their sport at the college level. (The prohibition against schools paying athletes directly remains in effect.)
• Several states have passed laws that allow such compensation. Colleges and universities in those states must abide by these new laws when devising and implementing their own policies toward NIL compensation for college athletes.

Now that we've established that colleges don't own players likenesses it's time to go after the next big scam that colleges have been implementing on students.

• The scam is Scholarships.

Scholarships are a scam because they turn students into indentured servants. What I mean by that is in the Student / College relationship colleges maintain all the power in the relationship. Colleges can end a scholarship for any reason. Players only leverage is to leave the school. Some argue that businesses can fire employees at anytime so Employment and Scholarships are equal. This is 100% wrong and it's because those with scholarships have no right to recourse. Meaning if your scholarship was pulled for an unjust or unethical reason you can't take colleges to court to get it back or get compensation. In the college athlete situation this often plays out in unwanted sexual advances, or exploitative actions in any number of different ways by coaches who know that they're in a position of power.

The easy way to solve all these issues is to pay students a wage instead of providing scholarships. Throw the whole amature / professional nonsense out the window + stop the exploitation.

If above is too much words just watch the video below...

 

[Grace T.]

The easy way to solve all these issues is to pay students a wage instead of providing scholarships. Throw the whole amature / professional nonsense out the window + stop the exploitation.

The problem with this is that not every athlete is a scholarship athlete. What's more is some of the athletic scholarship money is hidden around as an academic scholarship. The moment you start paying a wage to one, you have to pay a wage to all your athletes. This means, if we rely on a market entirely, basically what you'll have left for sports is men's football and basketball. You'll also have some niche schools specializing in sports like soccer, equestrian, cheer, fencing and swimming, but that's pretty much the end for them since budgets have to be met, and those budgets have to pay minimum wage at a minimum for hours worked. Women get the short end of the stick since there's less of a market for women's sports.

Oh, but I hear, we'd keep title ix. Well that only saves certain sports, like women's soccer, but if you have to maintain a woman's slot for every man's slot, that basically ensures on the men's side we only have football and basketball....goodbye soccer, water polo, hockey and baseball....and goodbye to d2 and d3

If we were going to do such a radical rethink, I'd actually prefer to go the European route: decouple sports from college admissions and everyone plays intramural, but there's too much money in gridiron football and basketball to ever make that a realistic possibility.

 

[Carlsbad7]

The problem with this is that not every athlete is a scholarship athlete. What's more is some of the athletic scholarship money is hidden around as an academic scholarship. The moment you start paying a wage to one, you have to pay a wage to all your athletes. This means, if we rely on a market entirely, basically what you'll have left for sports is men's football and basketball. You'll also have some niche schools specializing in sports like soccer, equestrian, cheer, fencing and swimming, but that's pretty much the end for them since budgets have to be met, and those budgets have to pay minimum wage at a minimum for hours worked. Women get the short end of the stick since there's less of a market for women's sports.

Oh, but I hear, we'd keep title ix. Well that only saves certain sports, like women's soccer, but if you have to maintain a woman's slot for every man's slot, that basically ensures on the men's side we only have football and basketball....goodbye soccer, water polo, hockey and baseball....and goodbye to d2 and d3

If we were going to do such a radical rethink, I'd actually prefer to go the European route: decouple sports from college admissions and everyone plays intramural, but there's too much money in gridiron football and basketball to ever make that a realistic possibility.

I dont really care about the schools or anything they provide.

I do care about addressing exploitative situations that are designed to take advantage of youths.

 

[Grace T.]

I dont really care about the schools or anything they provide.

I do care about addressing exploitative situations that are designed to take advantage of youths.

The problem with respect to sports is that the "exploitative" Cartman-like situations are only a small segment of athletes mostly clustered around D1 schools in a handful of sports. The rest of the sports system is set about to have kids play and to recruit them to a particular college.

Indeed, a similar problem exists with academic scholarships. It's why Harvard and Yale don't give out academic scholarships....they don't need to in order to recruit students. If you are receiving an academic scholarship, it's because the school is trying to ensure they lure you away from other higher ranked/bigger opportunity schools. As with any market, it's a discount they are giving you to attend their school.

"I don't really care about the schools or anything they provide". O.k. But the entire system is more exploitative than just sports or academic scholarships. It's a business which has built up a whole bunch of bells and whistles (like athletic centers or students centers) to support a growing cadre of administrators (deans, DEI experts, admissions, lawyers, donor recruitment), with government guaranteed money (student loans which you can't bankrupt out of) and ever growing tuition for degrees (many of which have no or little value) which are credentials to pass the velvet rope into polite society. If you care about addressing exploitative situations designed to take advantage of youths, you'll have to burn it all down.

 

[Carlsbad7]

The problem with respect to sports is that the "exploitative" Cartman-like situations are only a small segment of athletes mostly clustered around D1 schools in a handful of sports. The rest of the sports system is set about to have kids play and to recruit them to a particular college.

Indeed, a similar problem exists with academic scholarships. It's why Harvard and Yale don't give out academic scholarships....they don't need to in order to recruit students. If you are receiving an academic scholarship, it's because the school is trying to ensure they lure you away from other higher ranked/bigger opportunity schools. As with any market, it's a discount they are giving you to attend their school.

"I don't really care about the schools or anything they provide". O.k. But the entire system is more exploitative than just sports or academic scholarships. It's a business which has built up a whole bunch of bells and whistles (like athletic centers or students centers) to support a growing cadre of administrators (deans, DEI experts, admissions, lawyers, donor recruitment), with government guaranteed money (student loans which you can't bankrupt out of) and ever growing tuition for degrees (many of which have no or little value) which are credentials to pass the velvet rope into polite society. If you care about addressing exploitative situations designed to take advantage of youths, you'll have to burn it all down.

You'll never get rid of bureaucracy.

You can stop the exploitation of Student Athletes by paying them in $$$ vs indenturing them via scholarships.

And who knows maybe once colleges start paying players they'll discover an entirely new way to scam the youth via agencies and representation.

 

[Grace T.]

You'll never get rid of bureaucracy.

You can stop the exploitation of Student Athletes by paying them in $$$ vs indenturing them via scholarships.

And who knows maybe once colleges start paying players they'll discover an entirely new way to scam the youth via agencies and representation.

It's a classic forest through the trees problem. You want to cut down a tree (which is a small part of the larger problem and a sacred sequoia that they'll never let you cut down and that in order to do so will bring down a couple of endangered species which like to hang out there). I'd prefer it if the entire forest just burned to the ground.

 

[GT45]

College athletics are amateur sports. If you want to get paid, go pro. Simple stuff really. The majority of colleges cannot afford to pay their athletes. They will simply drop sports. Be careful what you ask for.

 

[Emma]

You'll never get rid of bureaucracy.

You can stop the exploitation of Student Athletes by paying them in $$$ vs indenturing them via scholarships.

And who knows maybe once colleges start paying players they'll discover an entirely new way to scam the youth via agencies and representation.

Paying doesn't stop the exploitation because the amount of pay and the treatment of the individual may still be an issue.

College Soccer is fine so long as we try to weed out the bad coaches and solve new problems as they arise. Like anything in life, there will always be people looking to manipulate the system for their own personal gains or what they think is the "greater good".

Looking for a perfect system is not possible.

We need to revamp the college loan system where federal loans are only for public schools or schools that cost the same as public schools and have an established a high employment after graduation in the field of education.

All non federal school loans can be forgiven during bankruptcy. And all these new loans asking for a percentage of grad pay plus increasing interest rates need to be removed, only can ask for a percentage of first 5 year capped at 10% after taxes and no increases regardless of payment. This will make banks not hand out these loans like candy to students can't repay. All parent loans will be discharged too if student can't pay their own loan, and no increase in interest rates, must stay below 5%.

 

[timbuck]

I love college sports - Football and basketball mostly. But if my school is on TV somewhere, I'll watch most any sport.
BUT- I am in favor of burning it all to the ground and maybe starting over.
Get completely rid of athletic aid. Get rid of relaxed admissions standards for athletes.
Make it so a kid has to be admitted to the school first- Then they can "tryout" for their sport the week before classes start.
The level of competition will probably go way down- but so will the opposition- But that's ok. I'll still cheer for my school even if the qb is a slow 5'9" 180 crappy athlete.

Let the "Elite" kids play semi-pro somewhere else.

 

[Carlsbad7]

Paying doesn't stop the exploitation because the amount of pay and the treatment of the individual may still be an issue.

College Soccer is fine so long as we try to weed out the bad coaches and solve new problems as they arise. Like anything in life, there will always be people looking to manipulate the system for their own personal gains or what they think is the "greater good".

Looking for a perfect system is not possible.

We need to revamp the college loan system where federal loans are only for public schools or schools that cost the same as public schools and have an established a high employment after graduation in the field of education.

All non federal school loans can be forgiven during bankruptcy. And all these new loans asking for a percentage of grad pay plus increasing interest rates need to be removed, only can ask for a percentage of first 5 year capped at 10% after taxes and no increases regardless of payment. This will make banks not hand out these loans like candy to students can't repay. All parent loans will be discharged too if student can't pay their own loan, and no increase in interest rates, must stay below 5%.

Here's the difference. If you're an employee there's certain things Coaches can't do.

Examples if what coaches cant do...

• Work players more than 40 hours per week (unless salary or paid some type of bonus)
• Yell, demean, scream at players in a way that's not related to what's being coached
• Retaliation for XYZ
• etc

And there's things you can do as an employee vs scholarship player..

• Get holidays off (or business pay more for you to work on these dates)
• Unionize
• Have representation

What I'm showing is that "Talent" has value + if colleges are pushing against paying as employees. (which they are) Most likely the reason that they're doing this is because they're not paying Talent at the market rate. If they were making players employees wouldn't be an issue.

 

[Grace T.]

What I'm showing is that "Talent" has value + if colleges are pushing against paying as employees. (which they are) Most likely the reason that they're doing this is because they're not paying Talent at the market rate. If they were making players employees wouldn't be an issue.

There are other laws that employees sweep in like the minimum wage law.

The only "talent" that really has value is men's gridiron football and basketball in division I. Title IX artificially creates value by ensuring equal women's spots to offset those 2 in the men's sports. Otherwise, for most other sports, the local college quiddich team might have more value than their men's soccer or lacrosse teams. Also if you have to do it for division 2 and 3, those divisions will just fold.

For the rest it's not a market value thing. It's a way to funnel money in order to swipe students from higher ranked schools in the guise of scholarships, without ticking off the other students which are coming in and paying full freight. It's actually a loss that the colleges take (and make up by billing their full freight students) to try to push their prestige value vis-a-vis competitors. But if you have to pay them salary, the sport just goes away because there's a difference between incurring a substantial new cost and just giving a discount for your inflowing revenue (a lot of which is offset by alumni funds specifically earmarked to sports, which also go away).

 

[paytoplay]

How about free college tuition for all to public schools. Mandatory tryouts. And ban club collusion with the colleges. Or is this impossible too?

 

[Dargle]

The problem with this is that not every athlete is a scholarship athlete. What's more is some of the athletic scholarship money is hidden around as an academic scholarship. The moment you start paying a wage to one, you have to pay a wage to all your athletes. This means, if we rely on a market entirely, basically what you'll have left for sports is men's football and basketball. You'll also have some niche schools specializing in sports like soccer, equestrian, cheer, fencing and swimming, but that's pretty much the end for them since budgets have to be met, and those budgets have to pay minimum wage at a minimum for hours worked. Women get the short end of the stick since there's less of a market for women's sports.

Oh, but I hear, we'd keep title ix. Well that only saves certain sports, like women's soccer, but if you have to maintain a woman's slot for every man's slot, that basically ensures on the men's side we only have football and basketball....goodbye soccer, water polo, hockey and baseball....and goodbye to d2 and d3

If we were going to do such a radical rethink, I'd actually prefer to go the European route: decouple sports from college admissions and everyone plays intramural, but there's too much money in gridiron football and basketball to ever make that a realistic possibility.

I'm curious why you think paying athletes wages instead of scholarships would end D3 sports. Those colleges have the strongest argument that their athletes aren't employees since they don't pay them scholarships, they don't make any money off them, and they generally don't even cover their costs with what little money they get from tickets and commercial rights. The NCAA does provide a very small subsidy to D3, which largely comes from what it gets from big-time D1 football and basketball and therefore could go away if those schools need to retain all of the money to pay their players. It's not that large though. The NCAA claims that $35.1 million of its budget in 2021-22 was allocated to DIII sports, but most of that was to help fund 36 national championships (in the various men's and women's sports). So, approximately $1 million per sport per gender, which works out to approximately $2,283 per school per sport for the 438 DIII programs. That adds up if your school has a lot of sports, but it hardly would be enough for DIII schools to cut many sports, especially since the top DIIIs are pretty wealthy prestigious academic schools and the average DIIIs and below use sports as de facto admissions recruiters for tuition-paying students. If you took that small subsidy away, you could probably replace it easily enough in a variety of ways (increased school fees to NCAA (which could be financed by the schools through increased student activity fees), sponsorships, donations, or player pay) or if it was really problematic you could even go back to only playing for league championships.

 

[Grace T.]

I'm curious why you think paying athletes wages instead of scholarships would end D3 sports. Those colleges have the strongest argument that their athletes aren't employees since they don't pay them scholarships, they don't make any money off them, and they generally don't even cover their costs with what little money they get from tickets and commercial rights. The NCAA does provide a very small subsidy to D3, which largely comes from what it gets from big-time D1 football and basketball and therefore could go away if those schools need to retain all of the money to pay their players. It's not that large though. The NCAA claims that $35.1 million of its budget in 2021-22 was allocated to DIII sports, but most of that was to help fund 36 national championships (in the various men's and women's sports). So, approximately $1 million per sport per gender, which works out to approximately $2,283 per school per sport for the 438 DIII programs. That adds up if your school has a lot of sports, but it hardly would be enough for DIII schools to cut many sports, especially since the top DIIIs are pretty wealthy prestigious academic schools and the average DIIIs and below use sports as de facto admissions recruiters for tuition-paying students. If you took that small subsidy away, you could probably replace it easily enough in a variety of ways (increased school fees to NCAA (which could be financed by the schools through increased student activity fees), sponsorships, donations, or player pay) or if it was really problematic you could even go back to only playing for league championships.

The original proposal was pay college athletes a wage and to do away with the amateur/professional distinction. Now, if the proposal is you can either pay them a wage (in which case they are a professional), or nothing (in which case it's an amateur), and you can't scholarship them, it's a different kettle of fish. I note however the work around is how many colleges already get around the title Ix and cap restrictions: you give an academic scholarship and you just call it a sports scholarship...you'd have to ban the academic scholarships too....or in the alternate limit the wages to D1 schools which probably kick a few of them (like the Ivies) out. It still probably also kills a few D1 sports.

 

[Grace T.]

The original proposal was pay college athletes a wage and to do away with the amateur/professional distinction. Now, if the proposal is you can either pay them a wage (in which case they are a professional), or nothing (in which case it's an amateur), and you can't scholarship them, it's a different kettle of fish. I note however the work around is how many colleges already get around the title Ix and cap restrictions: you give an academic scholarship and you just call it a sports scholarship...you'd have to ban the academic scholarships too....or in the alternate limit the wages to D1 schools which probably kick a few of them (like the Ivies) out. It still probably also kills a few D1 sports.

p.s. from a market perspective, you could also fix the system by paying for those sports for which there is an actual revenue value: but that's D1 men's football and basketball. As the women's pro leagues have shown, there just isn't a viable market for it, so unless you rely on title ix, the women are out of luck or limited to just a handful of the d1 schools in soccer, basketball and cheer. If you do want to rely on title ix, there's an argument that it no longer applies since the two men's sports are now professional, and not education.

 

[Dargle]

The original proposal was pay college athletes a wage and to do away with the amateur/professional distinction. Now, if the proposal is you can either pay them a wage (in which case they are a professional), or nothing (in which case it's an amateur), and you can't scholarship them, it's a different kettle of fish. I note however the work around is how many colleges already get around the title Ix and cap restrictions: you give an academic scholarship and you just call it a sports scholarship...you'd have to ban the academic scholarships too....or in the alternate limit the wages to D1 schools which probably kick a few of them (like the Ivies) out. It still probably also kills a few D1 sports.

Ahh. I see. You were simply talking about the original poster's vague proposal. All of the serious recent discussion of treating college athletes as university employees derives from Alston, which was specifically about whether the NCAA could limit the benefits it provides to scholarship athletes, and a NLRB General Counsel's memo that came out last fall, which was very clear that it was referring to scholarship athletes (because receiving consideration, such as a scholarship, is on evidence of employer-employee relationship under the common law).

My sense is that in a world in which colleges started paying their athletes in football and basketball, the D3 model (no athletic scholarships and less coach control over the players outside of the season) would become THE model for all other college sports outside of a few necessary to balance football out for Title IX. Many schools, like D3 schools have done in some places already, would cut football anyway if they were outside the top conferences. The D3 model would help provide a defense against the requirement to treat them as employees and pay them wages.

 

[timbuck]

I'm curious why you think paying athletes wages instead of scholarships would end D3 sports. Those colleges have the strongest argument that their athletes aren't employees since they don't pay them scholarships, they don't make any money off them, and they generally don't even cover their costs with what little money they get from tickets and commercial rights. The NCAA does provide a very small subsidy to D3, which largely comes from what it gets from big-time D1 football and basketball and therefore could go away if those schools need to retain all of the money to pay their players. It's not that large though. The NCAA claims that $35.1 million of its budget in 2021-22 was allocated to DIII sports, but most of that was to help fund 36 national championships (in the various men's and women's sports). So, approximately $1 million per sport per gender, which works out to approximately $2,283 per school per sport for the 438 DIII programs. That adds up if your school has a lot of sports, but it hardly would be enough for DIII schools to cut many sports, especially since the top DIIIs are pretty wealthy prestigious academic schools and the average DIIIs and below use sports as de facto admissions recruiters for tuition-paying students. If you took that small subsidy away, you could probably replace it easily enough in a variety of ways (increased school fees to NCAA (which could be financed by the schools through increased student activity fees), sponsorships, donations, or player pay) or if it was really problematic you could even go back to only playing for league championships.

If the "Athletic" scholarship went away for all of the truly elite athletes - Then the next tier of athletes (that are already admitted to that school) would wind up at the D1 type of programs. These athletes were likely playing at the d2 or d3 level.
I think that a lot of young adults don't want to stop playing a sport they've loved since they were little. So they go to a smaller school that allows them to keep playing for 4-5 more years. Maybe some of them love the thought of a small college with 3,000-5,000 students- But I bet if you asked, the majority of them would prefer a "Big School Experience."
Heck- I loved HS football and I was super bummed when it ended. Some of my teammates went to small schools so they could continue playing. I could have done the same- But I wanted the big school and the school pride that comes with cheering for your sports teams on TV 20+ years later.

What % of kids at a small college (IE Whittier or Cal Baptist) are not playing a sport there?

 

[Grace T.]

Ahh. I see. You were simply talking about the original poster's vague proposal. All of the serious recent discussion of treating college athletes as university employees derives from Alston, which was specifically about whether the NCAA could limit the benefits it provides to scholarship athletes, and a NLRB General Counsel's memo that came out last fall, which was very clear that it was referring to scholarship athletes (because receiving consideration, such as a scholarship, is on evidence of employer-employee relationship under the common law).

My sense is that in a world in which colleges started paying their athletes in football and basketball, the D3 model (no athletic scholarships and less coach control over the players outside of the season) would become THE model for all other college sports outside of a few necessary to balance football out for Title IX. Many schools, like D3 schools have done in some places already, would cut football anyway if they were outside the top conferences. The D3 model would help provide a defense against the requirement to treat them as employees and pay them wages.

Agree but you still have a few problems to work through:

1. the use of academic scholarships to get around the athletic restrictions
2. the sports which aren't caught in the d1 umbrella: you'll have a lot of mixed use some some sports salaried and some not
3. title ix is arguably inapplicable.

 

[espola]

p.s. from a market perspective, you could also fix the system by paying for those sports for which there is an actual revenue value: but that's D1 men's football and basketball. As the women's pro leagues have shown, there just isn't a viable market for it, so unless you rely on title ix, the women are out of luck or limited to just a handful of the d1 schools in soccer, basketball and cheer. If you do want to rely on title ix, there's an argument that it no longer applies since the two men's sports are now professional, and not education.

Cheer?

 

[Grace T.]

Cheer?

Didn't you see the netflix show?

Laker girls probably make closer to an MLS contract player than the Laker players, but particularly if you are looking to make title ix numbers (assuming arguendo title ix applies), I can see a business developing around it which could recover some costs. At least the market has shown you can pay them even if title ix does not apply. You'd also have to build out a bigger tournament season than just Daytona and get an audience around it (revisiting the glory days of ESPN cheer), but it has a built in fan base for it with lots of girls attending cheer and gym camps (unlike say girl's lacrosse, equestrian or even swimming) and it can chew up a lot of athletes to make the numbers (bigger than tennis or golf). At least a big of a shot as women's soccer (which would be monetable for only a handful of D1 schools).