[JK37]

Stories have been cited by the National College Players Association as reasons the NCAA, a non-profit membership organization that governs collegiate sports, should allow universities to better compensate players.

As the collegiate sporting world focuses on March Madness, perhaps the NCAA's highest profile competition, a bill making its way through California's Legislature is calling for just that. It's also creating concerns that the proposed legislation could affect the NCAA eligibility of state universities.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/03/30/530387 ... rylink=cpy

[olldflame]

The 5 year schollie guarantee might fly, and there are those who think the current one year at a time is unfair to the athlete. I disagree. As far as a stipend is concerned, if CA legislates that as a requirement, all of the schools that comply will instantly be ineligible to compete in the NCAA. I just don´t see that happening.

[lynchburgwildcats]

Also, I guarantee that the NCAA would create a rule where no one in California could host NCAA Tournament games since athletes are getting paid. That rule by the NCAA would be illogical, but we're also talking about the same organization that would rather host it's tournament games where single game gambling is organized crime. So we're talking about a lot of income at stake here as well.

But my question is, if the law is passed in regards to five years, would the scholarship commitment be released when the player leaves in four or less years, or is the school still hamstrung to the five years even if the dude has gone pro or graduated and moved on? I know some have argued that it should be a concrete 4/5 years rather the player leaves before then or not, seemingly because it's such a gigantic sin to leave college early to make millions or hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Of course, these same people don't know what it's like to be exploited for their work and have the only compensation being tuition which amounts to a small fraction of the value of their work. I'd like to see their opinion after they do real projects for real organizations for graduate school like I did that has an open market value of nearly $1 million and not even get one cent out of it. Many of these guys are sitting in their offices making tons of money and thinking just because they had to go for four or more years of college to get where they have to be that everyone else should have to do the same thing. You can bet your behind that many of these same people would have bolted early if they had a job offer on the table of millions or several hundreds of thousands of dollars. But they didn't, so they think everyone else has to live the same type of life they did.

[roadkingjim]

I didn't read the article in full but I would like to comment on the general premise of a guaranteed 4/5 year scholarship. As many may or may not know when a prospective student athlete is being "courted" from high school to college to play sports, generally, most recruiting coaches will inform the player and parents that it is a "one year" renewable scholarship. Many people who are not acquainted with this think that a scholarship is automatically 4 years and have never heard of a one-year renewable since that was the way it was prior to the early 80's, maybe the late 70's.

Back then a student had a guaranteed 4 year ride (pending academics, policy, etc...); however many student/athletes were not "giving their all" because they had that 4 year guarantee; hence the birth of one-year renewable scholarships. If a Coach felt that a student/athlete wasn't giving their all, or not attending practices, etc... now they can threaten and/or initiate not renewing the scholarship. This worked well for many years; however Coaches today have taken that situation and added a few more "under the radar" caveats to it. Some of those caveats is "finding better talent". If an athlete just isn't as good as the coaches thought he/she would be there are many instances where they will not renew because they (the Coaches) have found someone better. This I believe is unfair IF the athlete is doing everything they can and are being told. To continue IMO if the athlete is doing everything that is told to him/her, and is academically passing all classes and keeps their noses clean then the college/University has to honor the entire 4/5 year scholarship. IF the athlete does poorly in class, breaks team policy, doesn't show up for practice then yes, that person doesn't deserve to keep a scholarship and the school should give it to a more deserving individual. This is also true when a Coach "singles out" a weaker player and make it so miserable and embarrassing that an athlete will quit the team. I have NEVER heard of this at LU but there are several articles stating that this happens all the time. Sonny Vaccaro, some know him as working at Nike, has had several lawsuit pending over this exact situation with the NCAA along with paying athlete stipends. There is a lot of Internet material out there on him and the lawsuit.

Lastly, regarding stipends I do believe that players should be compensated extra for their athletic talents. Regardless of sport a student athletes schedule completely revolves around school and their perspective sport. Rarely, especially at the D1 level does an athlete have a lot of "free time". Additionally practices, much of the time, will interfere with cafeteria hours, etc... forcing an athlete to use their own money to pay for meals, extra gasoline if living off-campus, etc... These are just couple of examples of why I feel an athlete should get a "small" stipend.

Sorry for rambling; but just my .02 worth for those looking for an opinion (lol)...

[Purple Haize]

I have a difficult time justifying a stipend for a student who has their Room, Board, Tuition etc paid for while sitting in class next to them you have a student who has to take out loans and got off work at 1 AM to help pay bills

[lynchburgwildcats]

I have a difficult time justifying a stipend for a student who has their Room, Board, Tuition etc paid for while sitting in class next to them you have a student who has to take out loans and got off work at 1 AM to help pay bills

I have a hard time not justifying a stipend for a student whose services provide millions of dollars in income to the university meanwhile their services have been valued to be worth well more than the cost of an education. There are many DI athletes that are poor beyond poor, that during the summer can't afford to eat, can't afford to buy a winter jacket, live in a car etc. that aren't getting anywhere close to fair compensation for what they are worth to their school. These regular ole joe schome math majors that don't participate in athletics bring in $0 or next to $0 income to the university yet they get scholarship and grant money too, some even the full cost of education.

Face it, you people who don't know what it's like to get exploited for your work don't have any clue how it feels to know that what you do is worth hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in the open market, yet you are getting nothing or only a very small fraction of compensation while all these other people who don't provide the product are making off like high class art thieves off your work all under the name of academics or amateur athletics.

I used to be of the same opinion as you. That all changed the day when my graduate school professors told me all the projects I did for these organizations would have been worth nearly $1 million had I been contracted to do them. Never again will I try to propagate the agenda that is the fraud of high level DI amateur athletics.

[JK37]

The CA bill does stipulate that only certain schools making above a certain amount in certain types of athletic revenue would be required to pay out the stipend. According the article, the stipend area of the bill would only apply to UCLA and Cal-Berkeley at this point.

[Purple Haize]

The CA bill does stipulate that only certain schools making above a certain amount in certain types of athletic revenue would be required to pay out the stipend. According the article, the stipend area of the bill would only apply to UCLA and Cal-Berkeley at this point.

Which makes the bill that much more stupider.

[olldflame]

Won´t that be nice. All of those fine student athletes at Cal Berkely and UCLA will have 5 year free rides with stipends. Who are they going to play?

[JK37]

I am against the 5-year guarantees, but the stipends are coming, and I don't mind them.

[NotAJerry]

I wouldn't go with a stipend, but I would allow scholarship athletes to work side jobs just like every other college student with a scholarship.

[Purple Haize]

I wouldn't go with a stipend, but I would allow scholarship athletes to work side jobs just like every other college student with a scholarship.

They already are.

[NotAJerry]

I wouldn't go with a stipend, but I would allow scholarship athletes to work side jobs just like every other college student with a scholarship.

They already are.

A lot of them aren't. There's also limits on what they can earn at their jobs, currently $2,000 per year, that don't apply outside of athletics.

[SumItUp]

I wouldn't go with a stipend, but I would allow scholarship athletes to work side jobs just like every other college student with a scholarship.

They already are.

A lot of them aren't. There's also limits on what they can earn at their jobs, currently $2,000 per year, that don't apply outside of athletics.

If they qualify for a Pell grant, they can also receive up to $5,000.00 in federal aid above and beyond their scholarship.

[Purple Haize]

Don't forget they can get Student Loans. You know, like most students

[lynchburgwildcats]

I wouldn't go with a stipend, but I would allow scholarship athletes to work side jobs just like every other college student with a scholarship.

They already are.

A lot of them aren't. There's also limits on what they can earn at their jobs, currently $2,000 per year, that don't apply outside of athletics.

And a lot of them aren't because they don' have the time between academics and athletics.

[lynchburgwildcats]

Putting the humor aside since it's from the Daily Show, this is a great example of why the NCAA is a sham. Minnesota wrestler on a 10% scholarship makes a rap song, puts it on iTunes for sale under his own name, ruled ineligible because he is using his own name to try to make money. Any other Minnesota student on any level scholarship wouldn't be punished or banned from participating in an extracurricular activity for doing this.

http://network.yardbarker.com/all_sport ... e_13381789