The NCAA still holds a tight grip on the student athlete, through complex rules and regulations as to what is required of the Student Athlete in order to maintain their eligibility to play. The NCAA actually legislates and monitors how much money a student athlete can earn at a part time job during the academic year. Players are not allowed to hold a job when their sport is in season, which for football, stretches from August to early January. The argument is that the scholarship is the compensation. However, a recent study showed that the average athlete comes up $2,500 dollars short a year. That's money that comes out of either his pocket, or his family's. In the light of Heisman Trophy winner Reggie Bush's recent improper benefits investigation, it's obvious that that money isn't always there. The NCAA would have you believe that football players are amateurs. In reality, they are professionals. Football is their job. The average player faces a one hour conditioning program in the morning, a two hour practice each weekday, and at least an hour of meetings and film study. Not to mention ten hours spent for each home game, and a whole weekend lost to each away game. All this, and they are expected to have a full time class schedule, and maintain certain GPA requirements.
That is where things go wrong. Here is how to fix it. Allow athletes to carry a reduced class load during the fall quarter to compensate for the time consumed by football, but require them to be full time the other quarters, and make up the shortfall, either through additional classes in winter and spring, or through summer courses. Also, a stipend to be paid by a fund established from the profits the NCAA gets from television and merchandising. each team carries about 80 players, 120 teams, and a $2,500 shortfall for each player. $24 million should cover it. Not too tall of an order given that the 4 year contract with Fox to show just the four BCS bowls is worth $80 million a year, and the 10 year contract with ABC to show the bulk of the games is worth $600 million.
These changes will ease the strain of being a college football player. It will also help keep them away from some of the ticky tack violations. A little spare change goes a long way for the NCAA.
4 comments:
my only real problem with this is you can't tell football players that they can take less classes and make basketball players take more. And basketball players couldn't take a reduced load in one semester because it spans both fall and spring semesters.
Well, the key part of this whole setup is I'm trying planning to fix college football, and college football alone. These changes would apply to just college football. I'm going to outline some major changes in later posts, that if they were applied to all athletics, it would be completely unfeasible. So everything in these posts are for football players only, people in other sports, well, someone else needs to come up with the solution for them.
fair enough.
Of the few posts I've read, you should run for president:)
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