NYS Bill Proposed to share 15% with athletes and get paid for likenesses

With many public universities that are funded by the state, just who do you think will subsidize the cost of running athletic departments should athletes be paid? Yup, taxpayers and ticket holders.

The solution appears to be much easier with a movement underway. College athletes with pro potential are beginning to bypass college to play professionally elsewhere for a year or two.

Idiotic bill. You will give an athlete who plays a non-revenue producing sport who basically competes in front of zero fans the same cut as Zion Williamson, who produced millions of dollars of TV, tournament, apparel and souvenirs, and positive publicity for Duke. The athletes in non-revenue producing sports don't generate enough revenue to pay for their socks, nor do the bench warmers in major revenue producing sports.

https://247sports.com/Article/Baske...ball-instead-of-college-RJ-Hampton-135498496/
 
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Maybe partially well intentioned (outside of political motivations) but this proposal is idiotic...

As Beast notes, so many sports bleed money. Syracuse would be the desired recruiting destination for HS students in all other sports to get some $. Especially when other sports may only offer partial scholarships.
 
Pay the D1 athletes a stipend equal to what someone would make working 20 hours at a fast food restaurant.

The stipend would provide the athlete with walking around money and compensate them for their inability to have a part time job.

A student on academic scholarship which pays all of most of their tuition, room & board can have a part-time job during the academic year.

A student receiving financial assistance which pays all of most of their tuition, room & board can have a part-time job during the academic year.

Students playing D1 athletics, (many of which do not receive a scholarship for full tuition, room & board) and who in some cases help generate millions of dollars for their college and who practice and train for 40+/- hours each week for their sport cannot have a part-time job during the academic year.

Many D1 athletes come from poor families. There is more than enough money floating through the bloated NCAA to let the athlete have walking around money.




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The real issue with all of these proposals/bills is that they were designed with mainly two sports in mind (football and basketball), but if/when they would ever be implemented, they would have to be a blanket policy that covers all sports, and that is not realistic.

As bad as the current system is, it may be the best, most efficient system possible. The only other solution would be to, as someone previously suggested, maybe offer a stipend to the athletes. But then you would have to have a flat rate, where every athlete regardless of gender or sport would all be getting the same amount. So Zion Williamson would be getting the same amount as the men's lacrosse backup goalie. Now is that really logical?

And many people believe that the students should be able to profit off of their likeness, endorsements, etc. Basically making their own money on their own time. But if you thought their was corruption in college athletics before, what do you think would happen once all of it would be made legal? Donors and boosters would eat that right up. I can see the conversation between a booster and Zion now...."Hey Zion, I think you should go to Duke. If you do, and if you just happen to have any free time while you are there, I'm looking for someone to walk my dog while I am away on business. The job pays $500K/semester." How would they be able to stop anything like that from happening? Easy. They can't.
 
These bills are wrong and impossible to pull off. The benefit of free tuition and in exorbitant education and degrees is huge compensation as is. I agree with a small stipend as was mentioned but paying based on revenue and likeness is impossible. The schools with higher revenues and state dollars would have a huge advantage, and as stated, it would open up massive legal corruption if the kids could market themselves in college.

College is an internship essentially, with free education. If the kids don’t want to go to college, they don’t have to. They can go try to be pros. I don’t like the likening to indentured serventry, which it is not. It is a choice to play ballnin college and an agreement for compensation in the form of free education. Student loan debt in America is a crisis at a tipping point. I don’t believe that the free education is of little value because most of us are struggling to make ends meet paying off our educations.

A stipend is fine, but all of the bills are pigeon-holing this concept and not accounting for all the sports that would have to be treated the same. Nobody is forcing these kids to go to college. Go try to be a pro if you don’t like it. A full scholarship to play a D1 sport is a privilege with a lot of benefits.
 
A bill like this, if passed, will probably cause the demise of some less profitable sports.
 
Leave it to California to start this. A bankrupt state where almost 50% of the USA’s homeless live and they’re concerned about paying male athletes in 2 sports.
 
My concern is and has always been: compensate for likenesses and names, totally fine. That can directly lead to College Hoops 2k video games coming back. I used to play as Marist in 2k8 lol...tough times to say the least. However, paying athletes outright to play will likely sink us for good. You really think we would have any chance at providing similar compensation for a recruit when we are up against Ohio State or Michigan or some other big state U? If it turns into a legal bidding war, it's over.
 
[quote="Mike Zaun" post=358081]My concern is and has always been: compensate for likenesses and names, totally fine. That can directly lead to College Hoops 2k video games coming back. I used to play as Marist in 2k8 lol...tough times to say the least. However, paying athletes outright to play will likely sink us for good. You really think we would have any chance at providing similar compensation for a recruit when we are up against Ohio State or Michigan or some other big state U? If it turns into a legal bidding war, it's over.[/quote]

I agree that allowing athletes to use their image would be good and I don't understand the opposition to it.

As for paying athletes outright, yeah things could get ugly. Ultimately it would be tax payers paying for the public schools, though. Would tax payers in Ohio be cool with paying millions of dollars for a student athlete? And then with Title X (is that the one?), does that also mean that women would be paid the male equivalent? Football would make things even trickier. Would things end with a female track runner getting paid $1 million to offset a quarterback's salary?

It's all a scary thought because I don't know if St. John's hoops could survive in that type of environment. I don't think college athletics in general would survive, besides maybe a handful of elite football schools.

On the other hand, the Big East is strong with the #1 attended conference tournament and great overall results on the court. We have done this with only a handful of 5 star players. Even our recent national champions Nova and UConn rarely get 5 star players. We get a LOT of players in the 50-150 range and that has worked really well for us since they tend to stay longer. Our recruiting classes for the past several years have ranked around #3-#4 which puts us right in the middle of the power conferences. These big state schools are already paying hundreds of thousands for the 5 star players, so I wonder if that much would change if things were made public. Big East schools cheat too and they seem to be doing just fine (look at Seton Hall).
 
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On its face this seems like such a simple issue. A kid should get paid for generating money.

But it just isn’t that easy. Think of all the questions. Different sports need different rules. Yeah, big time basketball and football schools might print money. What about money losers like lacrosse or baseball just examples? Why in the world would they get paid? What about schools who have basketball or football that DON’T make money. With expenses probably more schools than we think. Do they just fold and say no to athletics? Also, once (if) they started getting paid isn’t this just the minor leagues? I also wonder how 15% is calculated? Is that after expenses of the athletic department? Scholarship?

We could think of hundreds of more questions and I sure don’t know the answers. I do think the death of some, if not all of college sports at the mid and small conference level is closer than ever. No way will these level schools pay athletes if they are losing money.
 
A baseball player, even an MLB prospect, generates no revenue for the university. As such most baseball scholarships are partial athletic scholarships.

Most if not all athletes not playing football or basketball cost their universities money. Even if not receiving an athletic scholarship, the cost of putting that team on the field, outfitting them, hiring coaching staffs, travel, is exorbitant. These sports produce very little..

Except for a select number of D1 women's basketball teams, even good teams playing in good conferences play before a few hundred fans, and produce a net operating loss.

Revenue producing sports help to support all other non revenue producing teams, and even then successful schools requiring significant donations to fund the athletic department.

Yes, marquis college basketball and football players generate a ton of revenue for their schools. Duke playing North Carolina or Kentucky generate more national interest and large tv audiences than many NBA matchups. Remove those marquis athletes and play the second string in all those games, and the interest would not only dissipate, but evaporate.

The only guys who are getting shortchanged are the guys that help pack arenas, will never reap NBA or NFL megabucks, and get little else besides an education they don't want or won't complete, and a stage to audition for the next level. Everyone else is already on the plus side of the equation, where an offset to tuition costs more than they are making for their schools.
 
[quote="Adam" post=358089][quote="Mike Zaun" post=358081]My concern is and has always been: compensate for likenesses and names, totally fine. That can directly lead to College Hoops 2k video games coming back. I used to play as Marist in 2k8 lol...tough times to say the least. However, paying athletes outright to play will likely sink us for good. You really think we would have any chance at providing similar compensation for a recruit when we are up against Ohio State or Michigan or some other big state U? If it turns into a legal bidding war, it's over.[/quote]

I agree that allowing athletes to use their image would be good and I don't understand the opposition to it.

As for paying athletes outright, yeah things could get ugly. Ultimately it would be tax payers paying for the public schools, though. Would tax payers in Ohio be cool with paying millions of dollars for a student athlete? And then with Title X (is that the one?), does that also mean that women would be paid the male equivalent? Football would make things even trickier. Would things end with a female track runner getting paid $1 million to offset a quarterback's salary?

It's all a scary thought because I don't know if St. John's hoops could survive in that type of environment. I don't think college athletics in general would survive, besides maybe a handful of elite football schools.

On the other hand, the Big East is strong with the #1 attended conference tournament and great overall results on the court. We have done this with only a handful of 5 star players. Even our recent national champions Nova and UConn rarely get 5 star players. We get a LOT of players in the 50-150 range and that has worked really well for us since they tend to stay longer. Our recruiting classes for the past several years have ranked around #3-#4 which puts us right in the middle of the power conferences. These big state schools are already paying hundreds of thousands for the 5 star players, so I wonder if that much would change if things were made public. Big East schools cheat too and they seem to be doing just fine (look at Seton Hall).[/quote]

Here's the issue with it. What will prevent a booster from contacting a highly regarded recruit, and telling that recruit that if they sign with their particular school, they (the booster) will use their image in some form of an advertisement, and the student athlete will be compensated handsomely for it?
 
[quote="Eric Williamson" post=358131][quote="Adam" post=358089][quote="Mike Zaun" post=358081]My concern is and has always been: compensate for likenesses and names, totally fine. That can directly lead to College Hoops 2k video games coming back. I used to play as Marist in 2k8 lol...tough times to say the least. However, paying athletes outright to play will likely sink us for good. You really think we would have any chance at providing similar compensation for a recruit when we are up against Ohio State or Michigan or some other big state U? If it turns into a legal bidding war, it's over.[/quote]

I agree that allowing athletes to use their image would be good and I don't understand the opposition to it.

As for paying athletes outright, yeah things could get ugly. Ultimately it would be tax payers paying for the public schools, though. Would tax payers in Ohio be cool with paying millions of dollars for a student athlete? And then with Title X (is that the one?), does that also mean that women would be paid the male equivalent? Football would make things even trickier. Would things end with a female track runner getting paid $1 million to offset a quarterback's salary?

It's all a scary thought because I don't know if St. John's hoops could survive in that type of environment. I don't think college athletics in general would survive, besides maybe a handful of elite football schools.

On the other hand, the Big East is strong with the #1 attended conference tournament and great overall results on the court. We have done this with only a handful of 5 star players. Even our recent national champions Nova and UConn rarely get 5 star players. We get a LOT of players in the 50-150 range and that has worked really well for us since they tend to stay longer. Our recruiting classes for the past several years have ranked around #3-#4 which puts us right in the middle of the power conferences. These big state schools are already paying hundreds of thousands for the 5 star players, so I wonder if that much would change if things were made public. Big East schools cheat too and they seem to be doing just fine (look at Seton Hall).[/quote]

Here's the issue with it. What will prevent a booster from contacting a highly regarded recruit, and telling that recruit that if they sign with their particular school, they (the booster) will use their image in some form of an advertisement, and the student athlete will be compensated handsomely for it?[/quote]

Got it, that makes sense. So it's essentially paying players then. I still think that's much better than requiring schools to pay, but I understand the concern and how this could be exploited.
 
[quote="sjc88" post=358090]On its face this seems like such a simple issue. A kid should get paid for generating money.

But it just isn’t that easy. Think of all the questions. Different sports need different rules. Yeah, big time basketball and football schools might print money. What about money losers like lacrosse or baseball just examples? Why in the world would they get paid? What about schools who have basketball or football that DON’T make money. With expenses probably more schools than we think. Do they just fold and say no to athletics? Also, once (if) they started getting paid isn’t this just the minor leagues? I also wonder how 15% is calculated? Is that after expenses of the athletic department? Scholarship?

We could think of hundreds of more questions and I sure don’t know the answers. I do think the death of some, if not all of college sports at the mid and small conference level is closer than ever. No way will these level schools pay athletes if they are losing money.[/quote]

This proposal is just asinine on so many levels. NOTHING the government touches turns out to be anything but a “$hit show” so what makes anyone think this will be different? MCNPA absolutely nailed this in his posts, California is reviving medieval diseases with their homelessness and environmental policies that defy understanding and this is what they are worried about?
 
Is there any reason the NCAA can't approve a system that allows schools to share profits with the athletes in sports that generate profits?

Title IX shouldn't be an issue if the same rule applies to men's and women's athletics, right?

How about something like this:

- If the sport generates a profit for the school, then 5% of the profits are set aside for athletes.
- Half of those profits get split up evenly among the scholarship players on the team generating the profits.
- The other half is allocated to a pool for scholarship athletes on sports that lose money or break even.
- All additional revenue from advertising (use of likenesses, autographs, etc) for all athletes goes into a 3rd pool to be evenly distributed among all scholarship athletes.

Is there any reason they couldn't do something like this?
 
[quote="SJUFAN2" post=358165]Is there any reason the NCAA can't approve a system that allows schools to share profits with the athletes in sports that generate profits?

Title IX shouldn't be an issue if the same rule applies to men's and women's athletics, right?

How about something like this:

- If the sport generates a profit for the school, then 5% of the profits are set aside for athletes.
- Half of those profits get split up evenly among the scholarship players on the team generating the profits.
- The other half is allocated to a pool for scholarship athletes on sports that lose money or break even.
- All additional revenue from advertising (use of likenesses, autographs, etc) for all athletes goes into a 3rd pool to be evenly distributed among all scholarship athletes.

Is there any reason they couldn't do something like this?[/quote]

Kids will still favor more profitable schools which will cement inequality in competition though. UK’s 5% is gonna be a lot more than Seton Hall’s 5%. Schools will just be pitching how much more they will make at their school vs everybody else. How do you fix that?

The solution must be found where every school is on an even playing field with regards to any type of compensation system. It can’t favor huge state schools with unlimited dollars and massive profits over others.
 
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