An interesting article. What do you think?

[ukrainik]

I was just looking for some collage news and stumbled across this article:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f ... OUHLI1.DTL

Any thoughts?

[maes]

The article complains about obvious problems and doesn't provide any solutions. "Just pay them," it's not that simple...as if that was NEVER thought of before in the history of sports.

Paying athletes would cause all the prominent athletes to collect to the big ticket schools like OSU & Michigan. You'd see perennial powerhouses, and the best schools get better and everyone else get worse every year.

There's also the issue that there are more sports than just basketball & football. Do you pay the track athletes? Do you pay the target shooters? The curling team? If not, why not? Do athletes get paid by how much money the sport generates? Than you'd see every high school kid drop what sport they love, such as swimming, and go into the money sports for college.

You'd also further alienate the athletes from the student body...they'd be paid mercenaries not students. They'll be driving around in new cars and new clothes and any remnant of athletes going to class would be gone once they got paid in college.

It's also a misconception that colleges generate sports income because of X student, they go because it's Illinois, or Michigan, or NC. I spend money on Illinois basketball gear because i went there, and it doesn't matter if the team has Kenny Battle, Kendall Gill, Deron Williams, or John Q Public...it's Illinois.

Players might like to think that if they went to Truman Community College they'd generate just as much sports income as University of Illinois, but sadly that's obviously a delusion. The school generates the income, not the players.

[BigKaboom2]

That would also keep a lot of college students from competing in the Olympics as amateurs. Bad idea.