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Northwestern players are trying to get a union started

This thing is a long way from becoming "law." I've seen a lot of athletes interviewed, including Jeremy Bloom. Jeremy has a pretty good handle on this but a lot of these guys are really naive.

First of all, scholarship athletes do get a stipend for food and housing. They are complaining that it isn't enough. This ruling will put pressure on the NCAA to come up with a "payment" system. But how will that work? How much "spending money" will athletes get? Which athletes get it? Who pays for it?

If the school is required to pay, in my opinion, schools will start dropping programs. Especially men's non revenue sports.

I added up what I think CU's scholly numbers are. I come up with 157.5 or, say, 160. Assume $500 per athlete per month for 9 months. That's about $750,000. Maybe the big programs and conferences can afford that. But a lot of smaller schools can't.

What if the NCAA administers it? There are 10,000 D1 football players on scholarship. That alone amounts to $45 million per year. There are 420,000 NCAA scholarship athletes. Using the $500 per month model, we're talking $1.9 billion dollars.
 
I've got to imagine it will be less than $500 a month. Maybe they'll arrive at a stipend of $500 a semester.
 
J.R. Ewing said:
I've got to imagine it will be less than $500 a month. Maybe they'll arrive at a stipend of $500 a semester.
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$30 a week? That'll go over well. At any rate, I used that number as a point of reference. One pro athlete I heard was all happy and threw out a number "like $30,000 a year" for college football players. :rofl2:
 
The original NCAA proposal was an increase of $2,000 in the stipend. It isn't clear (to me at least) whether that is $2,000 PER YEAR or $2,000 PER SEMESTER or $2,000 PER MONTH.

Apparently the "stipend" players already receive varies from place to place. Players at Colorado probably receive a higher stipend than players at Kansas State - simply because the cost of living in Boulder is higher than the cost of living in Manhattan, Kansas.
 
Lt.Col.FrankSlade said:
The original NCAA proposal was an increase of $2,000 in the stipend. It isn't clear (to me at least) whether that is $2,000 PER YEAR or $2,000 PER SEMESTER or $2,000 PER MONTH.

Apparently the "stipend" players already receive varies from place to place. Players at Colorado probably receive a higher stipend than players at Kansas State - simply because the cost of living in Boulder is higher than the cost of living in Manhattan, Kansas.
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There's another complexity. Cost of living. How do they deal with the cost of living differences from place to place?
 
DOOOOOM

This isn't a bad thing.....yet. Maybe it blows up and maybe it doesn't. The end of sports? Lol. What people think of this falls down political lines right now. I take it that a lot of schools do a lot of Hollywood accounting to declare a loss. Not all or even most, but definitely some. It's all speculation given that most people here don't know much about the law or how to interpret it. Some are making out like bandits, especially with the fat tv contracts and I imagine with the new playoff system. **** those bowl execs those guys are the real charleston a in all of this ****.

Maybe it'll get rid of the notion of "student" athletes. That's been a fraud at a lot of schools for a long time. Look at the grad rates in a lot of major programs.
 
How many NCAA schools are making a profit on their athletic departments? Most subsidize the athletic programs, some fairly heavily.

The ruling at the moment only applies to Northwestern and by extension to private schools. The logical follow would be that a decent legal team would then ask where is the legislation that makes public schools different and get it extended to the public schools.

If this ruling stands, and in the long run I'm guessing it doesn't then we are going to see another huge discussion. Does the ruling somehow release the schools from Title IX requirements. If it does we can say goodbye to thousands of scholarships in the non-revenue sports. If it doesn't we then the question is where does the money come from to meet the Title IX requirements for all other sports.

We all know that courts can be all over the place based on the judges on them, what is the leaning of this regional board and how likely are they to be supported by the national board and/or the courts.

Extend this thing to it's potential limits and you are going to see a lot of schools forced to change how they deal with athletics. We could see as mentioned earlier schools going to club sports, schools going to different divisions, we could potentially see a whole new organization formed with different rules than the NCAA to take over college athletics.

On the other hand we could simply see an amendment added to a labor bill or education bill that says that the NLRB ruling doesn't matter since college sports gets an exemption. I don't think that ammendment would be hard to get passed with the threat this poses to the favorite passtime of much of the country.
 
Jay Bilas and some other guy were on Sportscenter this morning to talk about the ruling some more.

Bilas wants a free market system. Seems like ESPN is taking that stance as well since they went to the trouble of bringing the other guy on to agree with everything Bilas said.

http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=10693869
 
TDbuff said:
Jay Bilas and some other guy were on Sportscenter this morning to talk about the ruling some more.

Bilas wants a free market system. Seems like ESPN is taking that stance as well since they went to the trouble of bringing the other guy on to agree with everything Bilas said.

http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=10693869
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What does ESPN have to gain from taking that stance? They should've had more diversity, but I don't think that's "their" stance.
 
cubuffs85 said:
What does ESPN have to gain from taking that stance? They should've had more diversity, but I don't think that's "their" stance.
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I don't think it is either, or who knows, I was just pointing out the silliness of bringing the other guy on to basically parrot what Bilas said.
 
TDbuff said:
I don't think it is either, or who knows, I was just pointing out the silliness of bringing the other guy on to basically parrot what Bilas said.
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I'm just sick of hearing Bilas as the "talking head" on this one, we all know his position.
 
MtnBuff said:
How many NCAA schools are making a profit on their athletic departments?
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23 of 200 something division 1 athletic departments were in the black. Of those 23, 16 took a school subsidy. This obviously includes millions in private donations.

The NCAA will have to amend the minimum number of sports which I believe is 14. So the net result is cutting opportunities for scholarship athletes. Just one the many unintended consequences that will present.

System is far from perfect, but this is one of at least three lawsuits that could potentially ruin college sports.

We shall see, but conferences and the NCAA better get out in front to and figure this out fast.

From phone
 
SD Buff said:
23 of 200 something division 1 athletic departments were in the black. Of those 23, 16 took a school subsidy. This obviously includes millions in private donations.

The NCAA will have to amend the minimum number of sports which I believe is 14. So the net result is cutting opportunities for scholarship athletes. Just one the many unintended consequences that will present.

System is far from perfect, but this is one of at least three lawsuits that could potentially ruin college sports.

We shall see, but conferences and the NCAA better get out in front to and figure this out fast.

From phone
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Isn't it a little bit of cooking the books to say that they're not making a profit, though?

The fact that the athletic department pays other schools within the university the cost of the scholarships awarded is only moving profits from one department to another. It's an internal bookkeeping transaction, not a real "cost". CU, for example, really inflates that number to reduce AD profitability and pushes the athletic department into the red through this.

A more honest accounting would be that there is no scholarship "cost" to athletic departments and then whatever profits were realized each year would be donated back to the university's operating budget.
 
I was thinking about this "stipend" thing today. This really pisses me off a bit. We paid over $100 grand to put our kids through school. We're still paying. We gave 'em money from time to time as well. Parents of kids on scholarship hit the ****ing jackpot. Are you telling me most of them can't spare $200 or $300 a month so there kids can buy beer? Yeah, a lot of them come from poor backgrounds but I'd bet a majority of parents could spare a little. Not only do these guys get a free education, they get a housing and food allowance.
 
Why? Academic scholarships aren't free. I was always under the impression they were separate entities and actually paid those scholarships. Just like if you donate to CU, that money doesn't go to the CU AD and vice versa.

If its nothing more than moving numbers why was Bohn trying to get In-State tuition for scholarships?

And if they are just cooking the books, that would be some serious BS the CU AD is paying interest on the massive loans we have had to take out over the past decade while CU still runs at a defecit.
 
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SD Buff said:
Why? Academic scholarships aren't free. I was always under the impression they were separate entities and actually paid those scholarships. Just like if you donate to CU, that money doesn't go to the CU AD and vice versa.

If its nothing more than moving numbers why was Bohn trying to get In-State tuition for scholarships?

And if they are just cooking the books, that would be some serious BS the CU AD is paying interest on the massive loans we have had to take out over the past decade while CU still runs at a defecit.
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It's the system. And that system is that the AD pays tuition to the university for all the athletic merit scholarships that the university awards through the athletic department. That's why Bohn was fighting for cost reductions. It's the system he was working within.

I'm saying to step outside and think about this as if you didn't know anything. Coming in cold, you would likely assume (as most people do) that an athletic scholarship is not something that athletic departments are paying the university for at the regular tuition rates. It seems silly. The university is paying itself.

Put it in terms of a multi business-unit organization. Let's say I am managing "ABC Company". ABC Company sells products through ABC Marketing. ABC Company also has a business unit that manufactures products called ABC Manufacturing. If, as CEO of ABC Company, I require ABC Marketing to purchase its finished goods from ABC Manufacturing at a profit to ABC Manufacturing, the profitability of ABC Company stays the same. All it does is change the profitability of ABC Marketing and ABC Manufacturing by moving money internally from one unit to another. It's a bookkeeping game.
 
Buffnik said:
It's the system. And that system is that the AD pays tuition to the university for all the athletic merit scholarships that the university awards through the athletic department. That's why Bohn was fighting for cost reductions. It's the system he was working within.

I'm saying to step outside and think about this as if you didn't know anything. Coming in cold, you would likely assume (as most people do) that an athletic scholarship is not something that athletic departments are paying the university for at the regular tuition rates. It seems silly. The university is paying itself.

Put it in terms of a multi business-unit organization. Let's say I am managing "ABC Company". ABC Company sells products through ABC Marketing. ABC Company also has a business unit that manufactures products called ABC Manufacturing. If, as CEO of ABC Company, I require ABC Marketing to purchase its finished goods from ABC Manufacturing at a profit to ABC Manufacturing, the profitability of ABC Company stays the same. All it does is change the profitability of ABC Marketing and ABC Manufacturing by moving money internally from one unit to another. It's a bookkeeping game.
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I wonder how the big boys, the 'Bama's of the world, do this? I mean, theoretically, couldn't the university kind of foot the bill?
 
DBT said:
I was thinking about this "stipend" thing today. This really pisses me off a bit. We paid over $100 grand to put our kids through school. We're still paying. We gave 'em money from time to time as well. Parents of kids on scholarship hit the ****ing jackpot. Are you telling me most of them can't spare $200 or $300 a month so there kids can buy beer? Yeah, a lot of them come from poor backgrounds but I'd bet a majority of parents could spare a little. Not only do these guys get a free education, they get a housing and food allowance.
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I agree. In my mind, if this sticks, the NCAA eliminates scholarships and thereby that eliminates the income part of the argument that allows unionization. After that its a club level sport, nationwide. Then it starts to get sticky as to who gets in state tuition and who doesn't. Some kids won't go to school at all because they are poor. The NFL might, at that point, start a farm system.
 
When it comes to the housing and food allowance, it should be based on the cost of room and board (21 meals per week - training table) for on campus housing. If you can live cheaper off campus, great, if not stay on campus. Pell grants and student loans are still available to scholarship athletes to help with incidentals. One of the problems I see is that most of the athletes have poor financial skills or aren't being educated by counselors about the need based aid that is available.
 
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