<p>If you raise admission tests for football players you get screams of racism and how the SAT is bias etc etc. It’s all garbage but it stopped any attempt to enable true scholar athletes from dominating big college football.</p>
<p>I would like to salary caps for coaches and revenue sharing for football players. They are employees who should get bonuses for their performances.</p>
<p>The marginal cost for Toyota to crank out one additional car is pretty small, but that isn’t the price they charge me, or the value I receive. </p>
<p>So I don’t think looking at the marginal cost is right. If the scholarship athletes were paying, they wouldn’t be paying the marginal cost.</p>
<p>There are plenty of scholar-athletes who actually do take advantage of the free education.</p>
<p>A few years ago a big time football school (can’t remember which) had a freshman football player who was an honor student in pre-med. Sounds like a coach’s dream, right? PR windfall, right? Well, no. Kid was told his studies were detracting from football, and that he had to make a choice between his pre-med program, and football.</p>
<p>These guys can be so dumb they need to be protected from themselves.</p>
<p>While there are scholar-athletes and some are really good*, the system is rife with exploitation, particularly of minority kids. Many of them come from schools which didn’t prepare them for college - especially since these kids were star athletes and got away with a lot. </p>
<p>I don’t see much chance for reform. I don’t think paying the players makes a real difference because then the system will demand more athletics, less study and that will affect those who are actually student-athletes. I would hope for a few things, that players not be bound by letter of intent contracts so they could transfer easily and that coaches be paid less. I’d also love to see a rule that you can’t put up a statue of your football coach - especially if he’s still coaching - at least until you’ve erected 2 statues of professors. </p>
<p>*I sometimes had to see a former Michigan star player who became an orthopedist specializing in sports injuries.</p>
<p>According to the NCAA, football and basketball players’ graduation rate is over 70%:
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<p>And student-athlete graduation rates are higher than the student body as a whole:
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<p>And it’s white males who are doing the worst:
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<p>[DI</a> men’s basketball, FBS football graduation rates highest ever - NCAA.com](<a href=“http://www.ncaa.com/news/ncaa/article/2012-10-25/di-mens-basketball-fbs-football-graduation-rates-highest-ever]DI”>http://www.ncaa.com/news/ncaa/article/2012-10-25/di-mens-basketball-fbs-football-graduation-rates-highest-ever)</p>
<p>MADad, you may not be thinking of who I am thinking of but Robert Smith who attended Ohio State made the claim years ago that he was told to pick football or pre med studies. I think he said he was thinking of quitting the football team. </p>
<p>Since Robert Smith then left Ohio State to go to the NFL after 3 years and now is a tv commentator, I am very skeptical of his claims. Also I am of similar age as Robert Smith and know of football players at Ohio State who were engineering majors, it seemed to me that the football team did not limit the majors of its players.</p>
<p>I am not encouraged by higher graduation rates; rather, I think the standards for graduation and the mind-boggling way some of these colleges coddle and “support” the athletes by funneling the majority of them, in the higher revenue sports (football, basketball) into easy-peasy classes and majors is embarrassing. Sure there are some success stories, there always are, but they are diamonds in the rough. Div 1 collegiate athletics is a mess. </p>
<p>Why can’t a high-achieving athlete work his/her sports schedule around pre-med classes & labs rather than the other way around (or rather, having it be a pretty remarkable task -the exception rather than the rule) - to finish a pre-med curriculum in 4 years while playing a high level D-1 sport? </p>
<p>Why are clearly academically deficient students not only admitted to colleges, but courted, given a free ride, being as un-challenged as humanly possible, when they CLEARLY aren’t there for the education but to play sports that benefit the college and maybe, but maybe not (probably not, given the statistics) the athlete himself down the road at a professional level? (Again, I know I am painting with a broad stroke and there are plenty of smart, well-rounded, star athletes, but lets not kid ourselves about the rest of them).</p>
<p>So why is it status quo? In a perfect college-is-for-academics world (wow, what a concept), teams would be comprised of athletes who were admitted to the school on academics, try out for the team, make the roster, and face comparable competition. Would their fellow students and alumni really stop supporting the teams and attending games? The level of competition and play would drop that drastically? Yeah, maybe it would, I get that, and maybe that would result in a pretty watered-down feeder system to the professional leagues, but hey, we could also just keep things the way they are and be happy with what the colleges are doing to prepare student-athletes for the pros, all the while raking in millions off those athletes’ backs.</p>
<p>Instead of paying college athletes to play (and, I get it, derive some benefit from the millions the colleges make on their feats) ON TOP OF the college education that most of us/our students are paying through the nose for but that many scholarship football & basketball players (yup, I’m picking on those two sports, the worst violations), why not figure SOME academics & maturity standards into recruiting, limit coach’s salaries, make the college sports game LESS like a professional league instead of MORE like one?</p>
<p>It ISN’T professional sports, it’s collegiate sports. And if anyone thinks the purpose of introducing sports into college environments way back when was to evolve into what it has become today, that’s just crazy-talk.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, it’s being reported (WSJ) that Hernandez scored a “1” out of “10” on a social maturity exam that was administered prior to being drafted by the Patriots. My, oh my.</p>
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<p>At some colleges, athletes get priority registration so that they can choose sections of their courses that do not conflict with their sports training (which may be more constrained for team sports since the entire team may need to be present). Under these conditions, it is perfectly reasonable for an academically motivated student-athlete to take pre-med courses while participating in the sport.</p>
<p>For football players, quarter system schools tend to be advantageous in this respect, since football season only overlaps with a third of the academic year, rather than half of the academic year at semester system schools.</p>
<p>Of course, whether student-athletes are academically motivated can be another question entirely.</p>
<p>I used to work in the same office as an attorney who had been captain of an Ivy team that made it to the NCAA championships. His nephew went to another academically stellar school that’s not an Ivy and had highly competitive sports teams. His coach had to approve his schedule and refused to approve the required courses for pre-med. He was told he could be pre-med if he wanted, but would be dropped from the team and lose his scholarship if he did.</p>
<p>We have two family friends who played college hockey at an Ivy years ago. One of them was the only one on the team who was allowed to take school books on their road trips. He was the star of the team and went on to a great NHL career. The other friend left the school for another where he was then allowed to actually balance sport with academics. Both of them ended up in law school.</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2010-09-17/sports/os-florida-gators-arrests-list-20100915_1_frankie-hammond-second-degree-misdemeanor-charge-misdemeanor-possession]Here[/url”>http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2010-09-17/sports/os-florida-gators-arrests-list-20100915_1_frankie-hammond-second-degree-misdemeanor-charge-misdemeanor-possession]Here[/url</a>] is an article that lists 31 Florida players arrested during Urban Meyer’s time there. The reason I note this - got the link from profootballtalk - is that it dispels the notion that Hernandez was somehow a bad apple at Florida, a guy whose record should have made him stand out as a bad guy. He was more typical than we’d like to believe. </p>
<p>And here from the same site is a comment by St. Louis Rams cornerback Janoris Jenkins: </p>
<p>When Meyer left and new Florida coach Will Muschamp kicked Jenkins off the team after two marijuana arrests, Jenkins said, “No doubt, if Coach Meyer were still coaching, I’d still be playing for the Gators. Coach Meyer knows what it takes to win.”</p>
<p>As for graduation rates, considering the number of known scandals, meaning those exposed, where grades were changed or submitted sometimes without any work or even attendance by the athlete, what do they mean? And I’m talking actual schools like Georgia, not Podunk. The NCAA got a lot of bad attention from low graduation rates so the schools have pumped up those rates. They seem to be manipulating the information, which is to be expected. </p>
<p>As for Ivies, I knew tons of players. Our soccer captain is now an extremely wealthy venture capitalist/philanthropist. One guy played pro football for nearly a decade. I’m not sure I’d put the hockey players on the same academic plane - at least then (and we only won many years after I left) - but my experience is impacted by knowing a few, including my drug dealing neighbor and a couple of total alcoholics. But on the whole, the athletes were solid students, often high achievers. Yale is not typical.</p>
<p>^^ And Urban Meyer’s wife and daughter take to Twitter to defend their man from criticism that he is even a little responsible for Hernandez’s issues at Florida. </p>
<p>(Also got to love Tyler Seguin’s mom blasting Boston media for “mis-characterizing” and “exaggerating” her recently-traded 21-yr old hockey star son’s nightlife behavior while playing for the Bruins.)</p>
<p>All this new-fangled technology has given helicoptering a whole new meaning.</p>
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<p>It is true for many D-2 and D-3 schools, and I would bet for most Ivy’s, and certainly depending on the sport (as you note), that a student can work with coach to miss or reschedule a practice or training session that conflicts with a science lab (most of which are held afternoons or evenings). Lots of schools also make sure that all sports hold practices after most labs are done for the day. </p>
<p>But for a highly visible, revenue-generating sport at a big [insert football or basketball college/league here] school, and even for many D-1 colleges with less “important” or not as “visible” sports, it is not just frowned upon, but prohibited for the student to take a class with lab that conflicts with team practice. Miss a practice, for any reason, and your stock drops considerably with the coach. That doesn’t even address the resentment from teammates or team camaraderie that might suffer, ostracizing the lab-taking student, or making him/her feel like s/he is letting the team down. It happens all the time, at all levels; it’s a very tough compromise. </p>
<p>It can be done, but I think that a Florida Gator football player, for example, would need a lot more than 4 years to fulfill pre-med requirements. Luckily, Hernandez apparently decided that med school wasn’t for him awhile ago. {wink}</p>
<p>The Bruins had to trade Seguin because Horton left. That’s a $5M hole and they didn’t have the cap room to fill it. They essentially had 2 lines with 2 players each: Krejci and Lucic, Bergeron and Marchand. So they traded Seguin for a 1st line right wing and cleared almost $3M in cap room. Now Seguin can play his natural position. But the motivations were salary cap and Horton leaving creating a need.</p>
<p>But this being Boston, there is a need to rag on the people who leave/get traded. It’s usually the Sox who dump on people but the Celtics and Bruins do it too. There has to be a moral failing.</p>
<p>The Bruins have signed Jarome Iginla for one year for $6 mil if he hits all his incentives.</p>
<p>Seguin makes only $900,000, Peverly $3 mil, but Erickson makes $4.6 mil.</p>
<p>Horton cleared $5.5 mil, Jagr will clear $4.5 mil. They didn’t need to dump Seguin’s paltry pay for cap reasons, I don’t think.</p>
<p>Chiarelli started dumping on Seguin the second the Stanley Cup Finals were over. He came right out and said it’s not an on-ice issue.</p>
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<p>The point of priority registration for athletes is so that the student-athletes can schedule labs and such during times that do not conflict with team practices. At a large university, there should be enough choices of lab times that the student-athletes can find labs that do not conflict with their team practices.</p>
<p>While uncommon, it is not unheard of for NCAA Division I FBS football players to major in engineering, which certainly has lab courses: [Uncommon</a> in every way: Engineers in intercollegiate sports ? UC Berkeley College of Engineering](<a href=“http://innovations.coe.berkeley.edu/vol4-issue10-dec10/athletes]Uncommon”>http://innovations.coe.berkeley.edu/vol4-issue10-dec10/athletes)</p>
<p>Tyler Seguin’s cap number on the Bruins was $5.75M, making him the 2nd highest paid forward after Lucic. You should check your sources. He signed a 6 year, $34 million contract extension that runs through the 2018-19 season and he’s now listed on the Stars roster at that number. He’s their highest paid forward. The source I use is CapGeek.com, which is the one Peter Chiarelli references. </p>
<p>Ericksson is $4.25M on the cap. The Bruins moved a lot of salary. Counting Peverley’s $3.25M, that’s $9M.</p>
<p>A fascinating, detailed article about the crime and Hernandez’ background in this week’s Rolling Stone: [Aaron</a> Hernandez: Patriots Tight End Violent Evolution | Rolling Stone](<a href=“http://www.rollingstone.com/feature/the-gangster-in-the-huddle]Aaron”>Aaron Hernandez: Former Patriots Star Accused of Murder – Rolling Stone)</p>
<p>I am not a football fan but have been following this story because I grew up in Bristol and knew Aaron’s dad and uncle. (The reporter paints a more positive picture of the town than I would.) The article presents numerous instances of preferential treatment for criminal acts and simple bad behavior, which led to Aaron apparently never having been held accountable for his actions.</p>
<p>Thanks for the link. It’s an interesting and incredibly sad saga.</p>