2 comments Don't Worry Anymore, Jay Mariotti Has Figured Out How to Pay College Athletes

Jay Mariotti is full of bad ideas. Today is no different. Many people think that college athletes should be paid, other people don't think college athletes should be paid and then really smart people think the NCAA should adopt the Olympic model (hey, that's me!) for how college athletes can pursue endorsements if they choose to. Well, Jay Mariotti has a completely different idea that also manages to completely miss the point and also not seem effective at the same time. It's not often an idea misses the point and is ineffective at the same time, so this is a truly special day. See, Jay thinks instead of paying athletes to compensate them for what income they bring in to universities the NCAA should pay the athlete's insurance and pay for their education as well. I'm pretty sure colleges already pay for a student's education as it is and colleges also have athletic insurance, but stop short of actually paying for the medical care of athletes once they are out of college. I think this is a pretty shitty idea.

If I hear another conveniently clueless person say that college basketball and football players should be compensated,

I don't understand. What does "conveniently clueless" mean in this case? Why would someone be "conveniently" clueless? I feel like Jay is throwing a random adverb in front of clueless without actually thinking about what's he writing.

I’m going to lock that person in a room with Dick Vitale, Lee Corso and Lee Corso’s mascot heads and see who gets hurt first.

It's better than grabbing someone's hair when they are acting up. See ladies, Jay isn't a violent person at all. He was framed. Now get in that closet.

Don’t these people understand? Players ARE being compensated.

In my opinion, this is like saying a person earning minimum wage while working at Microsoft is justly compensated. Just because this person is compensated doesn't mean he/she doesn't deserve a raise. There is a difference in being compensated and being fairly compensated.

In exchange for their time, they receive a free education worth upwards of $300,000 if they care about staying all four years. They also receive a regularly televised resume of their talents, something the science major and English major never will have.

While I do understand the gist of this argument, compensating college athletes is more about attempting to achieve some sort of equability in regard to how much money the NCAA makes off college sports, as well due to the fact the NCAA continues to use an athlete's image without his/her consent after he/she has left college. 

They also meet influential alumni and business leaders who can help them later in life, a schmooze perk unavailable to other students. They also live in comfortable-to-luxurious residence villages and train in state-of-the-art facilities. They are accorded the gift of all-expenses-paid travel, often to dreamy destinations for bowl games and holiday tournaments, and experience the world in ways other students cannot. Don’t tell me athletes aren’t being compensated.

This is pretty vague and generic. I'm not entirely sure exactly what Jay is getting at here without specific examples, but there are other students who live in nice housing and meet influential alumni through student organizations they work with. Student-athletes aren't the only ones get this benefit.

I personally favor the Olympic model of athlete compensation in college. I would have no issue if a college athlete used his name or sold his autograph to make a profit. I feel like this Olympic model (I had not ever called it that prior to hearing Jay Bilas use the term, but favored the idea) would work best for the NCAA because it would mean the athletes aren't being directly compensated by the university, but they still have a chance to earn some extra money to buy food for those luxurious residence villages they live in.

Do they qualify as actual employees, by pure definition of federal law? If an activist named Ramogi Huma wants to pursue that triumph so he can lead the charge to unionize college athletes, go for it, dude. In partnership with football players at Northwestern University, Huma won what could be remembered as a landmark ruling Wednesday by the National Labor Relations Board, which said scholarship football players at Northwestern should be considered employees and are allowed to form a union.

I feel like stating college athletes are part of a union brings up some interesting questions that I as a college athlete probably wouldn't want to sort through. For example, would college athletes strike and run the risk of not having a season at all? If so, how would this affect their scholarships? Plus, if they are employees of the university does that mean the university could have even more control over the things they say and post on social networks and does it mean they could be "fired" mid-season for poor performance? The Olympic model does bring it's own questions of course, but I think the less the NCAA gets involved with compensating athletes the better.

Ohr based his opinion on how Northwestern players are restricted and supposedly mistreated by requirements of the football program: They can’t miss practices and games to study, have to eat what they’re told, can’t buy a car, can’t live off campus and must dedicate 50 or 60 hours a week to football. 

He’s right. What he doesn’t acknowledge is that they’re being compensated for their commitment via a very valuable athletic scholarship and other unique advantages.

The scholarship is compensation but it's also a way that a school knows a certain player will be coming to their university. When Duke signs Jabari Parker they give him a scholarship, but they are glad to give him a scholarship because he could easily have gone to Michigan State and gotten a scholarship there. Duke knows if Parker chooses them and signs a letter of intent then he is committed to the university and they will pay for his school so that he will be a member of the basketball team. This is compensation, no doubt. The type of compensation I believe college athletes should receive is compensation above that to reflect the amount of money schools make off these athletes and how schools will use the image of these athletes to sell tickets or other merchandise. That's why I think allowing a guy like Parker make money through endorsements is a reasonable solution. What is not a reasonable solution is to the problem is simply stating athletes get a scholarship and allowing the NCAA to continue to profit off the image of athletes even after they have graduated from college.

And that those workweek hours set up many of them for lucrative professional careers. In college, I spent at least 50 hours a week at the campus newspaper. I wasn’t paid, but my dedication prepared me for internships, which led to a job at a big-market newspaper immediately out of school.

In college most students spend time doing work that leads them to the job they will eventually take in the real world. The difference is that if Jay Mariotti was offered $200,000 to work for a newspaper while he was a junior in college would he have stayed in school? Actually, that's a completely different part of amateur college athletics that Jay is wrong about.

I understand Jay worked hard and used his job at the school newspaper to get a better job out of college, but the university he chose to attend (which I assume is the University of Satan's Minions- Hell) wasn't making millions of dollars off of his writing while he was in college. The University of SM-H didn't sell his work to "Time" for $3,000 nor did the university use a picture of him in order to make money for the school, while not allowing Jay an opportunity to make money writing for another newspaper or magazine.

Of course, I wasn’t being used by a multi-billion-dollar machine that makes hideous sums for universities, the NCAA and TV networks — and doesn’t pay athletes a penny from that pot of gold.

And that's the point for why I think athletes should get a chance to make some money on the side off their name and fame. What's most frustrating is Jay seems to understand that universities make money off the backs of these students but he's simply not in favor of adjusting the method of compensation to something that makes sense.

Should they receive something from that pot when the NCAA brings in more than $900 million per year from tournament-related TV and ticket revenues while ESPN just pumped about $8 billion into the new (Naming Rights Available Here) College Football Playoff? Yes, they should. Should they receive more than the $2,000-per-athlete stipend proposed by NCAA president Mark Emmert? Yes, they should. Employees, student-mercenaries, whatever you wish to call them — they deserve more compensation when Louisville’s basketball program generated $39.5 million in 2012-13 and five others (Kansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, Indiana, Arizona) generated between $38 million and $25 million.

And here comes Jay's solution to this issue. It's convoluted AND doesn't really take care of the problem at hand.

I have the solution.

Jay has the solution. It's the solution that doesn't involve handing out a stipend to take care of any extraneous expenses nor does it attempt to fairly compensate an athlete for his image being used to make money for the school he/she attends.

Pay their medical expenses for injuries connected to their college careers, as long as necessary.
And continue to pay for their education — bachelor’s, master’s, doctorate degrees — as long as they prefer.

I feel like this is unnecessarily convoluted. There are quite a couple of issues that go along with paying the medical expenses for ex-athletes:

- How will it be determined an athlete suffered an injury during his/her college career? An athlete who played football or women's soccer in college, how do we know the later medical expenses are related to an injury suffered during college? If an athlete has dementia or ALS, how can it be proven this disease can be attributed to his/her athletic career? Don't think the NCAA isn't going to fight a ruling that an NFL quarterback suffered an injury during his collegiate career as opposed to suffering this injury during his NFL career. It's going to be very difficult to pinpoint exactly when an athlete suffered an injury or even if that injury was related to playing a sport during college.

-The NCAA will pay the medical expenses for injuries connected to an ex-athlete's college career, but what if the insurance the ex-athlete has will pay for a specialized or more aggressive treatment, but the NCAA will refuse to pay for this? Is the ex-athlete expected to choose between the treatment he/she wants and the treatment the NCAA is willing to pay for? This is a question many "normal" Americans face as well, but if paying for medical expenses is a benefit, then the ex-athlete should be able to choose the benefit he/she wishes, right? Otherwise, there could be issues where the NCAA says they aren't willing to pay for a treatment that the ex-athlete's doctor recommends and the ex-athlete's insurance will pay for. This would make Jay's solution feel pretty convoluted and difficult in a situation where it's supposed to be a benefit and easy.

I think it's a good idea for the NCAA to pay for the rest of an athlete's education. There are issues that would arise with this as well, but not nearly as many issues related to paying for an ex-athlete's medical expenses "as long as necessary." I'm not sure the NCAA should be in the medical insurance business though.

Then, everyone will pipe down about compensation.

Not at all. Few will pipe down because it doesn't take care of the immediate issue that some athletes need a stipend or some other fund that will allow them to spend money on food and other necessities. Also, the idea where the NCAA pays for medical expenses seems fairly convoluted to me in terms of determining the exact cause of an illness, whether it was in college sports or an illness simply caused by bad luck or genetics. This isn't the type of compensation for the immediate time, but compensation in the future, which isn't necessarily something that provides the benefit that student-athletes need.

Jay is missing the point. The point isn't that athletes want their medical expenses paid for, no matter what the attempts to unionize may claim, the athletes want fair compensation for the income they bring into the school.

If it takes a union to win these major concessions, fine. In theory, a unionized shop in college sports can’t work. What are the players going to do if they’re mad, pull a wildcat strike before a Duke-North Carolina basketball game?

This is a valid point, but I also think Jay's solution to the problem at hand won't work either. Pinpointing the exact cause of an illness can be difficult, much less pinpointing the exact time in which that illness or injury occurred. If I'm an ex-college athlete who ran track in college and I now need two knee replacement surgeries, was it my time in college that caused the injury or was it the fact I ran four times a week for 23 years after college? Jay's solution simply isn't viable.

Don’t they realize they’ll be weeded out of the program immediately the first time Mike Krzyzewski or Roy Williams smell a hint of activism?

While I tend to agree, I would be more worried about the university or athletic director not liking a certain hint of activism more than an individual coach wouldn't like it. Even now, athletes generally aren't activists, so I think this worry is overblown. Yes, Marcus Paige could be kicked off the team for supporting communists causes (not that he does support them...it's an example) as an employee of the school, but he could currently be asked to quiet down about the causes he supports now even as a non-employee.

The players need the built-in mechanism more than the mechanism needs them. There’s always another talented player for big programs to insert into the lineup, another shiny recruit to woo from a nearby major city.

Right, but if Roy Williams "fires" Marcus Paige nothing prevents him from joining Duke as their starting point guard. What Jay fails to recognize is these students are assets and are treated that way. There's always another recruit, but losing Marcus Paige is a big detriment to the UNC basketball team and "firing" him wouldn't be done lightly. Because they are treated like assets, these student-athletes aren't always as replaceable as Jay indicates they are, and this irrreplaceability (not sure that's a word, but it is now) is part of how colleges make income off that student-athlete.

Northwestern’s lawyers will appeal, naturally, and any realistic timeframe for a settlement remains far off. But never have the NCAA and its partners in crime been more vulnerable to the leverage of, ahem, student-athletes.

And of course the best way to use this leverage is to create a convoluted solution that doesn't immediately take care of the present financial issue that student-athletes face, which is cash flow during college and compensation for the use of their image. I don't believe the NCAA saying, "Don't worry, we'll pay for all of your injuries caused by playing the sport, just as long as you can prove they are injuries caused by the sport, at any point during your life. Also, you can go to grad school on us!" is sufficient compensation nor fixes the current problem of cash flow that student-athletes face.

Protect their futures. That’s all they want. That’s what they deserve.

Great idea, except if Jay has ever worked with an insurance company then he would know "protecting the future" of these student-athletes could result in bickering down the road resulting from a disagreement on whether an ex-athlete's injury was caused by playing collegiate sports and the proper method to be used to correct or treat the injury/illness. I have a hard time believing the NCAA will just blindly dish out cash to treat injuries or illnesses ex-athletes have suffered. An ex-athlete may end up bickering with the NCAA over the issues related to the payment of medical expenses.

And, yeah, the perks are cool, too.

One of the perks being a full scholarship which allows the athlete to attend school for free, but also serves as a way for a specific university to entice an athlete to that school. It works well until you start discussing more high-profile athletes who will be offered this scholarship no matter which college they choose to attend and then the university begins to market this athlete and receive income from the presence of the athlete at the school, while the athlete struggles to pay rent or can't afford to eat out at a restaurant. These types of things happen and paying for that athlete's medical care in the future or paying for grad school isn't going to correct this immediate problem. 

8 comments Let's Welcome Gregg Easterbrook Back by Convincing Him to Stop Writing Forever

There is 1 more spot open in the BotB Fantasy Football League. The league ID is 265989 and the password is "eckstein" if anyone else cares to join. We need one more person to join the league so we can have an even number of teams. Email me if you have questions. 

Gregg Easterbrook is back and he is talking about the NCAA and Johnny Manziel. Since there are no NFL games being played and Gregg can't ignorantly second-guess the decision of NFL head coaches and further show his lack of basic defensive or offensive principles he decides to talk about the NCAA, takes on the lack of realism on "Blue Bloods," and of course talks about naked men. It's hard to cover TMQ after taking a three month break. I should be able to ease into Gregg's own particular brand of idiocy. I can't wait for his NFL preview columns that don't really involve predictions or insight about the coming season of any sort, but mainly consists of Gregg wrapping up and summarizing how well that NFL team did the season before.

Who looks worse right now, Johnny Football or the NCAA?

I think the NCAA looks much worse right now since the NCAA can't blame their issues on being a 20 year old college student.

Johnny Manziel stands accused of breaking NCAA rules by selling his autograph; the accusation follows a series of temper tantrums by the Heisman winner, who is barely even pretending to be a college student.

To be fair, the NCAA and Texas A&M don't treat Manziel like a college student. They treat him like a cash cow.

The big conferences and powerhouse programs look bad, drowning in cash generated by unpaid players -- $81 million in football revenue and $44 million in football profit last season at BCS champion Alabama, according to Department of Education figures.

Gregg needs to be more fair about this. He is intentionally making it seem like every NCAA Division I college football program clears $81 million in revenue and $44 million in profit when Alabama is at the very top of the pyramid when it comes to revenue and profit off of football. Some schools lose money on their football program. Quite a few NCAA football programs are making money, though not many are making the type of money that Alabama is making.

Three cheers for Jay Bilas, who shamed the NCAA into dropped its direct sales of jerseys and other player "merch," happening even though the NCAA suspended A.J. Green, when he was at Georgia, for selling a jersey that was his own property.

See, the argument from the NCAA is that the jersey isn't A.J. Green's property. So Gregg's contention Green sold a jersey that was his property is seen very differently by the NCAA. 

Wouldn't all this nonsense end if the players were paid? Or perhaps allowed to charge fees for autographs and public appearances, and to do so openly.

I don't think college athletes should be paid. For me, this brings up questions about Title IX fairness and how these players would end up getting paid compared to each other. If it is an equitable pay based on each player getting a set amount, then this wouldn't accurately reflect the revenue a certain individual athlete brings into the school. You can't treat A.J. McCarron and the backup fullback for Alabama the same by paying them the same amount of money. I am absolutely open to a college athlete charging a fee for his autograph or for making a public appearance. I don't believe an athlete should get paid, but I don't have as much of an issue when it comes to the athlete making money in the free market on his accomplishments.

In a free-market situation, Manziel would be raking in fees, as would Jadeveon Clowney, Teddy Bridgewater and a few others. The current rules clearly penalize them. But they are stars -- the ones likely to become wealthy from sports in any case.

Yes, but these stars are the players that the NCAA and the school is making the most money off of. The entire purpose of switching to a free-market situation is to allow the market to decide who gets paid for autographs and who doesn't. It's not about fairness. A system of "fairness" would not be fair. If each college athlete got paid $1000 for playing football, it's not fair for the 3rd string QB to get paid as much as the starter. That's not fair either.

A small number of collegiate stars would roll in money from age 19 on, while the overwhelming majority of collegiate players would receive pocket change or nothing at all.

The conversation about paying athletes isn't about the backup safety on the Texas A&M football team. No one wants his autograph and he isn't bringing that much money into the school. The conversation is about Johnny Manziel and other stars who help to bring money into the athletic department of a school. So if the majority of players don't receive money, that's too bad. That's the nature of the free market system.

Germain Ifedi, Nehemiah Hicks, De'Vante Harris -- how much would they be paid if NCAA amateurism rules ended? All might start for Texas A&M this fall; only stars such as Manziel would be pulling down appearance fees.

If these guys ended up starting for A&M and making an impact, I'm sure they could find a way to make a few bucks off it. Gregg's complaints about the free market system would essentially ruin the entire purpose of the free market system. A free-market system isn't considered with fairness. Besides, there's no fair way to pay college athletes, so I would suggest if a system to compensate college athletes were set up it should be done in a way to compensate the players who are bringing in the revenue and profits to the school. For Texas A&M, that's not Nehemiah Hicks. That's Johnny Manziel.

Under a deregulated free-market system, perhaps 95 percent of college football players would not attract any payments, nor have any bargaining power, since they are so easily replaced.

Under a regulated system 5% of the football players would not receive compensation relative to the amount of income they bring in to the university.

Making the stars of college football wealthy could backfire by causing the sport to become less popular, with the revenue used for scholarships going into decline.

Boosters who don't like the idea of the players making money off their name and likeness could very well decide they are going to contribute less money to the program. I would think that Gregg would like the idea of revenue used for scholarships going into decline since he is always talking about how professors and academic departments at colleges are underpaid compared to college coaches. So I would think Gregg would back anything that allowed academic departments to potentially receive more funding.

the always-enterprising Allie Grasgreen reports that SEC football coaches earn eight times what SEC classroom instructors earn -- while subsidies flow from tuition to sports, harming typical students.

So not only would a free market system make it more likely that academic departments get more funding from angry boosters (all hypothetically of course), but the college athletes who are the ones making the money for the university will also be able to profit from their name. Sounds like a great idea to me.

But if college athletes could sell themselves while in school and live like kings, a small number of stars would benefit tremendously while declining public interest in college sports might harm all other NCAA athletes.

I fail to see how Chris Webber making money off his likeness in college could hurt other NCAA athletes anymore than they are currently getting hurt. At the worst, a college athlete doesn't make money for playing college sports, which is the exact situation that same player would be in today.

That's true -- but most Michigan athletes generate little, if any, income for the university. Should Webber have been paid a lot while other Michigan athletes lost their scholarships?

The other Michigan players would not lose their scholarships. They would still get scholarships, but they just could not/would not make money by signing autographs or wouldn't make as much money as Chris Webber would have made of their name. It's not like Webber is going to sign autographs at the opening of a club in the Detroit area (assuming he were still in college) and this meant Dugan Fife would lose his scholarship to play basketball at Michigan. I don't believe it would work that way. The NCAA athletes would still get scholarships, but they could make money off their name. I don't see it as a zero-sum game where if Chris Webber makes $10,000 then that is $10,000 Dugan Fife could not have made.

If college athletes get paid or don't get paid, it doesn't matter to me. I will watch college sports either way. I think the best way to compensate college athletes would be to allow them to use their likeness or name to sign autographs or make money in some fashion. I don't see it as unfair that a high-profile athlete makes money off his name compared to a lower-profile athlete that wouldn't make as much money. Most likely, the high-profile athlete is the one bringing more money into the university since he seems to the athlete whose autograph (or whatever) is in demand.

But if paid football players ended the charm of collegiate sports, the scholarship system might falter.

Gregg sort of throws this idea out there without explanation of how exactly he believes the scholarship system might falter, but I shouldn't expect anything different. Sure, the scholarship system could falter or it may not falter. But why would it falter? Gregg doesn't explain.

Colleges are still going to want to attract highly talented athletes to play sports for their school, so I would imagine a scholarship is one very good way to attract these highly talented athletes to the school. I don't see the scholarship system faltering because schools are still going to want to give full rides to athletes that are considering attending that school, as a sort of incentive to choose to attend that school. If Player X has to choose between Alabama and Florida, don't you think the fact Florida is offering a full scholarship could play into his decision?

A diploma is their reward. Nowhere near enough football players graduate, but that is a separate issue. Too much attention is bestowed on stars like Manziel, for whom wealth awaits; average players should be the focus of concern.

Actually, average players should not be the focus of concern. I don't agree with this point. Yet again, Gregg doesn't explain this comment at all. What does he mean the average player should be the focus of concern? Does he mean average players should get a full scholarship? Often, these average players do have a full scholarship under the current scholarship system. Is Gregg saying average players should get paid? If so, why should average players get paid? Simply because they don't have a pro career ahead of them? If the point is to compensate athletes for the money they bring into a university then guys like Johnny Manziel are the ones who should receive this money. Manziel's backup isn't the guy whose jersey is getting sold at Texas A&M bookstores and under the current system Manziel's backup will be receiving the same "reward" in the form of a diploma that Gregg argues is the true reason this person should attend college.

Gregg's point of view seems to be only average players should get paid because they don't have a professional future in football ahead of them, while the college athletes who actually make the most money for the university don't get any money because they are bound to play in the NFL. I guess that's Gregg's point of view. He doesn't really describe it all that well and just sort of throws a sentence out on what he believes and then doesn't elaborate.

But it is fair for the NCAA to say to Manziel and others like him, "If you want to use our system to become famous, you must follow our rules." Screwed up as the system is, it does confer most of its benefits on average athletes.

Right, but here is the issue, Johnny Manziel is not the average athlete. So telling Manziel, "Well the average athlete is helped by the system" doesn't help Manziel feel better when he sees his jersey hanging in the A&M bookstore and he is being investigated for charging for autographs. Manziel is not the average college athlete, so using this reasoning to explain the system to him is stupid and pointless.

The system does confer benefits on the athletes, but that's not the point. The point that many who want to see college athletes get paid are making is that everyone is profiting from Manziel except for Manziel. He gets a free ride to college, which does have value, but this is the same benefit any full ride scholarship athlete will receive. I don't see how college athletes making money off their autograph would cause the scholarship system to falter, but Gregg apparently doesn't either since he just throws this idea out there and never sufficiently elaborates.

As for Tuesday Morning Quarterback -- I'm back and I'm bad!

I agree. You are awful.

The offseason saw the fifth Hollywood treatment of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby." Each one-ups the previous by portraying Gatsby as even richer than before. In the novel, Gatsby lives in an ostentatious home with a circular drive and a pool, but not in a palace. In the new Leonardo DiCaprio iteration, Gatsby seems to own the entire extent of Long Island, occupying a mansion the size of a city block.

So Gatsby would have needed around $5 million in the money of the time to buy a stunning home plus afford servants and the very best in clothes, cars and parties. At the time, bootleg spirits were $2 or so a bottle. If Gatsby received 10 percent of the take -- a lot for a front man -- gangster Meyer Wolfsheim, his boss, would have needed to sell 25 million bottles of moonshine in a short period. Did bootleggers really move this kind of weight during Prohibition?

I don't know, let me check...yep, "The Great Gatsby" is a fictional movie based on a fictional book so it doesn't matter at all.

"Congratulations on Your Prestigious Award, You're Fired!" Nuggets coach George Karl won NBA Coach of the Year, then was let go. Denver management was mad because the team performed well during the regular season but exited the playoffs in the first round. This problem will be corrected next season if the Nuggets don't make the playoffs.

As usual, Gregg attempts to mislead his readers as to the real reason behind something Gregg is mentioning. The Nuggets fired Karl because he was going into the last season of his contract and wanted a contract extension, which isn't something the Nuggets were willing to do, so they went ahead and let him go rather than make him a lame duck coach.

Now there's another publicity-stunt lawsuit against the NCAA, filed in the offseason by the Paterno family and a few others. The suit claims a tort based on the NCAA's enforcement of its own rules and also claims the NCAA defamed Joe Paterno. This seems another One L mistake -- generally, the dead cannot be defamed. A few states allow slander litigation regarding the deceased; Pennsylvania is not one.

At any rate Paterno was an "all-purpose public figure" under state law and thus nearly impossible to defame.

I didn't realize Gregg was an attorney. Isn't it possible that part of the reason the Paterno family filed the lawsuit is because they want to argue Paterno isn't an all-purpose public figure? There's no need for that when you have Gregg Easterbrook, who apparently can determine this without the need for the case to go to court. It must be nice to know everything, or at least believe you do.

Even if they can be proved false, NCAA claims are backed by a report supervised by a former federal judge, rendering it close to inconceivable Paterno's estate could prove the claims were calculated malice or knowing falsehood.

It's probably a frivolous lawsuit, but it's not like the Paterno family has dealt very well with Joe Paterno's death and the accusations that he helped to ignore Jerry Sandusky's crimes. They feel Joe Paterno was wronged so they file a lawsuit hoping that a judge (who isn't Gregg Easterbrook) doesn't see Joe Paterno as an "all-purpose public figure."

Last month researchers led by Stefan Duma of Virginia Tech, whom TMQ has been praising for years,

The article that Gregg links is from July 2011. I guess that means "for years" since "years" is plural. I don't know, that's like me saying the Green Bay Packers haven't won a Super Bowl in years. I feel like it is overstating the case a little. Gregg has been talking about concussions for a while, that's for sure, but the link to support his "for years" contention leads to an article only two years old.

A popular football highlight is the Jadeveon Clowney hit in the 2013 Outback Bowl. The hit is dramatic because Michigan running back Vincent Smith's helmet flies off. Whenever a helmet flies off during action, that means either the helmet was improperly fitted or the chin straps weren't fastened -- both are concussion risk factors. TMQ has seen this hit replayed on numerous sports shows and never heard a sportscaster note that what's depicted is lack of helmet safety.

This could be because sports shows don't have sportscasters but have sports anchors whose job is not to lecture the audience on helmet safety, but show highlights.

I Am Positive This Item Is Right! A study showed that pundits who act confident and speak loudly are more likely to be believed than pundits who admit they don't know everything.

You mean sort of like when a person who isn't an attorney or a judge confidently states something like the following:

At any rate Paterno was an "all-purpose public figure" under state law and thus nearly impossible to defame. 

It seems to me Gregg Easterbrook is speaking (writing) confidently about this and is more likely to be believed than someone who might state whether Paterno is an "all-purpose public figure" is for the court to decide.

TMQ liked the low-budget summer flick "The Way, Way Back." But what year was being depicted? In a movie set at a beach town, male characters wore knee-length shorts and girls wore triangle tops, contemporary fashion cues; the 1970 Buick woodie station wagon driven by Steve Carell is referred to as a valuable classic. But cell phones, laptops and tablets seemed absent, despite numerous teen and tween characters, and everyone wanted to play the Pac-Man machine at the tavern. What year was being depicted?

Absent the men wearing knee-length shorts, wouldn't a movie set where there are no laptops, tablets, cell phones and Pac-Man is huge take place in the 1980's? Throw in the 1970 Buick as being a classic and it seems quite obvious the movie was set in the 1980's.

Offseason Supreme Court decisions made it likely gay marriage will be recognized by most if not all states -- though legislatures, not courts, should decide.

Is this Gregg Easterbrook writing confidently in an attempt to make himself more believed? After all, whether the Supreme Court or the state legislatures should decide if gay marriage will be recognized seems like a matter of opinion to me.

Then Gregg starts talking about gay marriage using such wonderful insights as:

Once interracial marriage was taboo, and now is widely accepted. Gay marriage is making the same transition.

When people of different races wed, they become a walking advertisement for the teaching that love hopes all things and endures all things. It's the same when people of like genders wed.

Either same-sex attraction is God-given or is one of the many natural aspects of human sexuality -- a topic nobody really understands and which, in the long run, maybe we are better off not understanding.

For example, why is it that Gregg considers himself to be heterosexual, but he still loves seeing a picture of a shirtless man? Why is this?

The larger issue is that same-gender unions always will be rare.

Oh ok, I didn't know Gregg Easterbrook, Esq. was also a sociologist who knew exactly how many same-sex marriages there would be over the next 10-15 years. Same-gender unions are going to be rare because same-sex couple hate marriage. Gregg knows this as a fact. He's so good at everything!

There is a far more significant group society should be concerned with -- the not-wed.

Yeah, everyone should HAVE to get married!

The number of American adults who are not married always will be much larger than the best-case outcome for gay marriage. How do the not-wed feel as the married of any sexual orientation congratulate themselves on the front page? There's an aspect of self-flattery to the wedded boasting of their status.

Marriage is an important institution, especially for the raising of children. But postwar Western Europe has shown that marriage is hardly the only way to order a responsible, successful life. The financial, emotional and social concerns of those who either couldn't or didn't wish to join the ranks of the wedded should matter.

Perhaps I am just not smart enough, but I don't get what Gregg is getting at here. He's saying that people who get married are self-flattering themselves by announcing their marriage and marriage isn't necessary to have a successful life, but then says it's an important institution at the same time. So marriage is great and important, but just don't announce you are getting married?

I'm also not sure who is trying to take away the financial, emotional and social concerns of those who aren't married and I'm not sure what Gregg is suggesting in saying these people should "matter." Is he suggesting the non-married get the same benefits as those who are married?

I feel like Gregg is full of half-formed thoughts and vague insinuations in this week's TMQ. It's sort of hard for me to write about.

Goofy NBA Trades of the Offseason: Not only did the Nets trade their 2018 first-round draft choice to the Celtics as part of the Kevin Garnett deal -- no one in Nets top management will be around when that debt comes due -- Boston assented only when Brooklyn agreed that the Celtics could add Jason Terry to the trade package they were sending.

Anyone who knows anything about the NBA understands this is how NBA trades work. The Celtics wanted Jason Terry off their payroll and onto Brooklyn's payroll. The Celtics are looking to clear money off their ledger. Therefore Jason Terry's contract was added to the trade.

That is, Boston wanted to give more than Brooklyn wanted to receive. The Celtics' goal was to get rid of Terry's contract.

So doesn't this make this not a goofy trade? The trade clearly had a purpose, to clear Jason Terry's contract off the Celtics' books. It seems counter-intuitive to want to give up more than the team you are trading with wants in return, but there is a clear purpose for getting Terry's contract off the Celtics' books.

TMQ noted around this time last year that the mainstream media keep asserting "hooking up" is a shocking trend among the college-aged -- though can't seem to explain how it differs from "meeting someone at a party." Your columnist pointed out statistics showing young women and teen girls have become somewhat less sexually active during the very period the MSM says orgiastic "hooking up" is turning college females into sex maniacs.

Basically people have been more open in talking about their sexuality and their sexual exploits with others in recent years. Talking about "hooking up" wasn't done 40 years ago to the extent it is now. Also, I don't understand why Gregg cares so much about whether young women and teen girls have become less sexually active. Maybe all this reporting on young women and teen girls being sexually active is ruining Gregg's game at the local high schools and universities. 

TMQ repeats his claim from last year: Mainstream media types are wringing their hands over contemporary collegiate sexuality because "they feel mad that they missed the party," having already had their campus years.

I love how Gregg talks about "mainstream media types." Isn't he talking about people just like himself who are middle-aged and comment on sociological trends for magazines like "The Atlantic" and websites like ESPN.com? How is Gregg not a mainstream media type?

Best line from the Times piece: "It is by now pretty well understood that traditional dating in college has mostly gone the way of the landline."

I'm glad the Times is around to tell us what's going on in the world of "the kids." Without the Times how would we ever keep up with the changing state of "the kids"?

Annual Swimsuit Issue Count: This year's Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue offered (counting editorial content only) 136 pictures of gorgeous women in bikinis, 35 photographs of topless models with hands or other items strategically placed (the best was a see-through inner tube), 16 pictures of women in only body paint and nine photographs of naked women, including cover model Kate Upton naked outdoors in Antarctica.

Not that Gregg is a creepy old man who is counting each swimsuit picture and then categorizing it by how much clothing that model is wearing of course. I would not be shocked to see a spreadsheet on Gregg's computer where he categorizes each swimsuit picture by several categories in order to maximize his creepiness. I imagine this spreadsheet has the following categories:

Model Name
Bathing Suit Present?
Color of Bathing Suit
Bikini or One Piece?
Body Part over Model's Breasts
Percentage of Breast Area Covered
Percentage of Nipple Visible
Percentage of Sexual Excitement Level
Is the Picture Better than a Picture of a Shirtless Man?

There were also eight pictures of women in traditional one-piece suits. 

(Checks spreadsheet) Yep, and it seems these one-piece suits only got a 46% Sexual Excitement Level for Gregg and only three of these pictures were better than a picture of a shirtless man.

Advertising was highlighted by a Las Vegas tourism foldout offering 34 women in bikinis, and a seven-page advertisement of a tiny Dodge Ram driving across the body of a gorgeous woman in a string bikini. Issue grand total: 245 cheesecake pictures.

(Checks spreadsheet)

Yes, and the average Percentage Area of Breast Covered for these 245 pictures was 57.45% and the percentage of Sexual Excitement Level over these 245 pictures was 77.12%. Not quite was good as last year's 79.32%, but not that far off either.

Over at ESPN The Magazine (Published on Earth The Planet), the annual Body Issue went for quality rather than quantity, but didn't mince around -- all subjects were naked. Make that nude, which sounds more artistic. Colin Kaepernick graced one of the covers nude, one leg strategically placed, in a pose that must have required hidden guy-wires. (Guy-wires, get it?) 

Yes Gregg, we get it. Let's talk some more about Colin Kaepernick's penis. This is a column about the NFL after all.

The Mag's Body Issue looks like what's next -- beefcake to appeal to the female audience, which increasingly commands economic power.

Women can read too now! Look for women to start making an impact on society with their newfound ability to be literate. Pretty soon, they will be voting too.

Reader Steve Sayre of Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, reports, "GMC began advertising a 'summer closeout' sale on June 19th, one day before the start of summer in the Northern Hemisphere.

These "creep" sections always annoy me. To accuse GMC of "creep" is to fundamentally misunderstand the intent of advertising. GMC wants to create urgency so that a person will come to the dealership and purchase a car. Usually purchasing a car takes longer than a day and can take up to a month if a person does enough research, so GMC understands this and decides to have a "Summer Closeout" sale before summer ends.

Five Star, which makes classroom supplies such as binders, began advertising "back-to-school savings" on July 6.

Here's a news flash: School supplies don't expire or go bad, so a parent can buy school supplies for their child early when they are cheap and won't have to worry about beating the crowd a week before school begins. Again, the intent is to create urgency and sell products. Back-to-school sales begin early so a company can tell parents that great deals are happening and create the urgency to buy the school supplies now. See, companies want to make money and by having sales prior to the day before school begins, this helps them make money. Anyone with an IQ above 35 should be able to understand this.

"Big Ten athletic directors discussed moving to a 10-game conference schedule, but it ultimately proved too difficult because many league teams need to play at least seven home games a year to meet their budgets."

Big Ten and other football-factory colleges that want gimmick schedules to ensure revenue don't need the money for players: the money goes to high living by coaches and administrators.

This is probably true, but as usual, Gregg leaves out other important information. This money also goes to support other sports at the school that aren't revenue-generating sports. Football supports other sports at schools that don't make money, so some of the revenue from these home games goes to ensure a school doesn't have to cut other sports. Again, why would Gregg point this out when he can get back on his soapbox about how college head coaches and administrators are overpaid?

In 2012, Illinois spent more on coaches' salaries than on all scholarship aid for all athletes in all sports.

Yes, coaches are paid well, but this revenue also goes to help other sports at the school survive by providing revenue to these non-revenue generating sports.

For their offseason departures, Greg Jennings took out a full-page ad in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and Ed Reed took out a full-page ad in the Baltimore Sun, to thank local fans for cheering for them. They join Drew Bledsoe (when leaving New England), Phil Hansen (when leaving Buffalo) and other NFL stars to make this classy gesture. Why is it we don't type the terms "classy" and "NFL" in the same sentence more often?

Because writers like you are too focused on talking about how the NFL isn't being responsive enough to concussions caused by hits and other negative aspects of the NFL to focus on something players leaving a team might do as a farewell gesture.

Donnie Wahlberg, who plays an NYPD detective on the CBS police show "Blue Bloods," acquired his fourth hot-babe partner in three seasons. Wahlberg's partners have been played by actresses Jennifer Esposito, Megan Ketch, Megan Boone and Marisa Ramirez, all unusually attractive. Is this in Wahlberg's contract?

It's pretty much in the contract of any actor or actress that he/she must co-star with attractive individuals. It's television. No one wants to see Donnie Wahlberg date a woman who is ugly. This is how television works. Attractive people interact only with other attractive people.

"Blue Bloods" is the thoughtful member of the genre: Characters debate law-enforcement ethics. But as on all procedurals, incidence of gunplay is exaggerated: Wahlberg's character has shot and killed more bad guys than, most likely, all current actual NYPD detectives combined.

Gregg always talks about how television overplay how much action and gunplay is involved in a policeman's life. Television is supposed to be entertaining and no one wants to watch 42 minutes of the characters debating law-enforcement ethics, followed by these same characters then cruising around in their car stopping speeders. As soon as Gregg can understand that television is entertainment and not intended to accurately reflect real life I can't help but think he will stop bitching about television shows and their lack of realism.

In the "Blue Bloods" season finale, the mayor of New York is gunned down while touring a housing project. The impression was given that shooting at public officials is a routine event in New York City -- though William Gaynor, 103 years ago, was the sole New York mayor ever shot at.

The impression being given by the show is that one mayor got shot, not that the mayor gets shot at every time he goes to an event.

Detectives rapidly gather evidence against the gang members responsible, and find witnesses who will identify them. In the concluding scene, an NYPD army invades the housing project, snags exactly the right suspects on the first try and drags the bad guys away as law-abiding residents clap. In other words, the season finale was science fiction. Even the best detectives would need weeks to build a case against an entire gang.

Gregg Easterbrook: Attorney, sociologist, detective. There is no topic that Gregg doesn't believe himself to be an expert on.

Playing under the finale's scene depicting the NYPD as perfect guardians of justice was the Rolling Stones song usually called "Heartbreaker," though the title is "Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo." The lyrics begin with the words "The po-lice in New York City," which seems why the music was used -- but the song goes on to describe incompetent cops killing the wrong person. Didn't any of the producers listen to the lyrics?

It's like a person who would write a column called "Tuesday Morning Quarterback" and then post the column around 11:30am or noon, thereby making the column not a "morning" column, but more of a mid-day column.

They Might Have Recused Themselves: Adam Schefter reported that at an owners meeting, the vote to toss out the tuck rule was 29-1-2, with the Redskins and Patriots abstaining. Abstaining?

The Patriots abstained because the most famous implementation of the tuck rule involved a playoff game between the Raiders and the Patriots. So the Patriots felt they shouldn't vote.

The Basketball Gods Chortled: Liberty University made the March Madness men's basketball tournament while defending champion University of Kentucky did not.

This is an incredibly misleading statement that endeavors to prove something, but only goes to prove that Gregg Easterbrook still lies to deceive his audience. Liberty University won the Big South tournament, thereby getting an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. Had Kentucky played in the Big South I venture to guess they would have gotten the automatic bid by winning the conference tournament. So it isn't like the selection committee chose Liberty University over Kentucky, but Liberty got an automatic bid by winning a mid-major tournament while Kentucky plays in a major conference and didn't win the SEC Tournament. Gregg is trying an apples-to-apples comparison between these two teams and that's misleading.

Note No. 2: Beginning this fall, UNC Charlotte will field a football team in Division I-AA, planning to move up to Division I in 2015. If the past is any guide, adding football to its campus will bring UNC Charlotte lots of media attention, plus cause cutbacks in the school's academic budget. Of the roughly 250 colleges and universities playing top-division football, all but 23 lost money on athletics. Sis boom bah!

And this is why schools need as many home football games as possible in order to generate income and support the other sports at the school. These home games helps to ensure the entire athletic department doesn't end up losing money. Thanks for helping to prove my point that refuted your point, Gregg.

Makeup Team?: At the red carpet at the Oscars, Charlize Theron thanked "my hair team and my makeup team." Hair team?

The Oscars took place back in late February, so six months later Gregg Easterbrook has a comment about them. Also, actors/actresses don't go to Great Clips to get their hair done. This seems so incredibly obvious, yet Gregg acts like an actress having a "team" who does her hair is a foreign notion to him.

At Least He Wasn't Promoted: After the media spotlight on the GSA scandal faded, the executive to blame, whom Barack Obama said was "fired," quietly got his job back.

If you read the very short article, which is apparently something Gregg didn't do, Obama was correct in saying the executive was fired. The board ordered the executive to be reinstated. So Obama wasn't lying, he just seems to have gotten overruled.

Dennis Erickson is now the "co-offensive coordinator" -- that's sure to work out -- at the University of Utah.

Quite a few college football programs have co-offensive coordinators and it works out well. Wisconsin had co-defensive coordinators a few years ago and I believe Texas (or was it Oklahoma?) also had co-offensive coordinators at one point.

Next Week: TMQ's AFC preview.

Again, it's not really a preview in that Gregg doesn't predict very much that will happen so that he isn't held to anything he says and can criticize others' predictions without actually making too many himself. These "previews" are usually just reviews of the previous season for each NFL team. I'm going to force myself to read it, unfortunately. 

9 comments Paying Players Will Not Clean Up College Athletics

LZ Granderson seems to believe paying college players will help to clean up the college game by reducing the amount of cheating and lessen the effect outside influences have on the student-athletes. It's a complicated issue because many people don't want to pay players. I am not sure if I believe players should get paid, but I also believe a college athlete should be able to make money off their name in college. For me, I'm not sure a student-athlete should be paid for playing a sport, but I don't mind a student-athlete making money off of his fame from playing that sport. How athletes would go about being paid is a completely different topic as well. Do you pay women's volleyball players as much as you pay men's basketball players? If not, doesn't this violate Title IX? I think it does, LZ Granderson says this reasoning is a cop out and then never explains why this is a cop out. Modern sports journalism at its best.

There are a lot of issues present in this discussion. I simply don't think paying players will drastically lessen a player's incentive to cheat or take money from a booster. Professionals in high paying jobs in "the real world" will take bribes and cheat, despite the fact they earn a good salary. The need for more money is part of human nature and I don't believe a stipend paid to college athletes will change this. I think if a college athlete gets paid, he still wouldn't mind taking $100,000 to go to one college over another. LZ Granderson seems to also believe runners and boosters are a product of the system and would decrease in influence if players got paid. I can't help but disagree.

My feelings are simple: There is so much money involved with big-time college sports, it's unethical that they're not better compensated.

I don't know if "unethical" is the right word. Maybe it is. College athletes should probably be compensated in some way for the revenue they bring into the school, but I read many articles on why players should get paid, but don't read much about how exactly this would work logistically. It seems like there are many who want student-athletes to get paid, but provide no hint on how this would work exactly. A good idea with no ideas on how to implement the idea successfully is simply useless.

That's why I'm not too disgusted with third-party runners -- such as relatives or AAU coaches -- who shake down schools for cash in exchange for highly sought after recruits.

So it is perfectly fine for third-party runners and relatives to shake down schools $100,000 as long as the players are getting paid, but if a player got paid a $1000/month stipend it all of a sudden becomes morally wrong to shake down a school for $100,000? I don't understand this point of view. What's the difference? The runner or AAU coach isn't looking out for the player's well-being in either situation. In both situations, he is selling the player's services to a university and LZ can't be naive enough to think this money is going to pay for food and books.

Not to mention, if every Division-I college team pays their football players $1000/month, these runners and coaches will still sell the services of players to schools. An even playing field is an even playing field. Runners and outside influences aren't going to magically disappear once student-athletes get paid. They are still going to want money and the stipend isn't going to be enough for some highly recruited athletes.

There is a quote from a Nas song (that of course I can't find) where he says if it were up to him everyone would be a millionaire. Because I'm a loser, I analyze rap songs. If everyone in the world is a millionaire then the price of goods would increase and being a millionaire would no longer mean anything. It's a severe form of inflation.

In the 1980's wealthy people had a cell phone, but now in 2012 nearly everyone has a cell phone. In 2012 it is a matter of who has the better cell phone with more features, while in the 1980's only those who could afford a cell hone had one. If Nas had wished in the 1980's that everyone could have a cell phone, well it came true, but it doesn't mean everyone is wealthy because having a cell phone is no longer a sign of wealth. The same thing would happen in college football. If every Division-I football player got paid, it wouldn't stop cheating or the buying of highly recruited players by colleges, because every Division-I player gets paid. What would matter is how much one school is willing to offer an AAU coach to sell a player to that school. The price each school was willing to pay for a highly recruited player would still very much matter. Paying players wouldn't get rid of dirty tactics at all because the playing field is still level when every Division-I player gets a stipend.

I understand how moving cash underneath the table is cheating, but it's hard for me to characterize the schools or their coaches as cheated.

The question when it comes to boosters isn't who is getting cheated, but whether the act itself is cheating or illegal in some fashion. The cheating isn't classified by who gets hurt when coaches cheat, but is classified by the fact cheating by coaches is against NCAA rules. Me buying a pound of marijuana from someone isn't cheating or hurting anyone, but it still is against the law.

the University of Central Florida received the first major NCAA sanctions since Penn State. The school is banned from postseason play in football and men's basketball for one year; is hit with a reduction in scholarships; and is on probation after the NCAA committee on infractions ruled that runners and cash were involved in attracting a high level of talent to UCF. The runners in question were a pair of men with ties to a sports agency.

Can LZ Granderson honestly say he thinks this type of thing will go away if these UCF players were getting paid? I really doubt it would stop. Why or how would runners or boosters stop trying to attract top talent to UCF if the players were getting paid? The runner or booster still needs to sell the talent to a school. Why would the athlete getting paid $1000/month affect this in any way?

Now I'm not saying what they did was right, but it's not hard to see why UCF felt it needed to cheat.

To make money and win.

Since joining Conference USA in 2005, the school's athletic program has exploded in terms of infrastructure -- an athletic village was built, an indoor football practice facility was constructed and in 2007-08 it the school opened a stadium and arena.
If you're gonna do all of that, you gotta win big. And in order to do that, you need big talent.
So explain to me how the hell UCF will no longer need to pay for this talent if the football players are now getting a stipend? How would a stipend help UCF attract better talent than they attracted when the football players didn't get a stipend? Every Division-I football student-athlete would be getting paid, so UCF would still have to attract top talent in some way. Even if the stipend is handed out based on football revenue, UCF would still have trouble attracting talent. I completely fail to see how a stipend fixes any issues the NCAA has with runners.

Not only are there no guarantees an athlete is going to see much of the money being exchanged but they can also become indebted to the runner in a way that isn't healthy or equitable.

Well, right. The players aren't seeing a lot of that money. I think that much we can all agree on. What kind of booster or runner won't pay a player or sell a player to a school under the line of thinking, "Well I don't need to sell Player X for $100,000 to the University of Nebraska because he gets paid $2000/mo anyway."

It's naive to think there is a link between players getting paid and AAU coaches selling players to schools. Players aren't going to be paid any amount of stipend amount (at least without schools going bankrupt) that will prevent AAU coaches from selling players to certain schools. How in the hell can a stipend of even $5000/month prevent an AAU coach from selling a player to UCF for $200,000?

But what about the moral erosion caused by the system perpetuated by the NCAA and its members that gave birth to these runners in the first place?

The NCAA is dirty. We all know that. The system that perpetuated these runners in the first place isn't going to go away once college athletes start getting paid. Human nature gave birth to these runners in the first place. Human nature to make as much money as possible and use a valuable asset you have (in this case, the talent of a college athlete) to make this money.

Think about it: Millions of construction dollars flew out of the door in a handful of years at UCF, but the young men expected to create the cash flow of tickets, memorabilia, TV appearances and postseason games couldn't take an equitable sip from the stream.

Fine, say we pay the players. They are paid. Explain to me how this will stop vultures from preying on these athletes and directing players to certain colleges in return for cash rewards? How will this prevent highly recruited players from wanting cash payments to choose between schools? Either way, he gets paid for playing football, so what would stop him from wanting a little extra to sign with one college over another? The answer? It won't.

LZ Granderson is mixing up his messages here. He is getting paying players as a fairness issue mixed up with paying players as a way to rid college athletes of the dirty underbelly.

You wanna know how these runners gain so much influence in the lives of highly recruited athletes? They show them how much a jersey costs in a bookstore.

You wanna know how these runners will continue to gain so much influence in the lives of highly recruited athletes? These runners will tell highly recruited players the backup quarterback for a 6-6 team earns $1500/month in a stipend, shouldn't he as a highly recruited player earn more than that for leading his team to a 10-2 record? Of course he deserves more money, that's why the runner is working hard to get $100,000 from LSU to secure the player's commitment.

There will always be a message and a way to sell kids. Always. This won't change even when money starts changing hands from the university to the players. That jersey in the window becomes a different example used once the stipends to college athletes start flowing. That jersey becomes a nicer car, money for choosing Oklahoma State over Oklahoma, or some other form of receiving an illegal benefit. The example used for why that highly recruited athlete deserves more will change, but the need for wanting more won't change.

Student-athletes are not slaves, but given the amount of money associated with big time college sports, it's not a stretch to view them as the NCAA's version of indentured servants.

Except for the fact they don't have to play football and could choose to pursue a college education without playing sports. Other than their ability to freely choose whether they play sports or not in college, these players are indentured servants. Once you pretend a person doesn't have free-will, any person can be seen as an indentured servant. I realize not all high school athletes could qualify academically to their college of choice, but not all high school students can qualify academically to their college of choice either. I find it hard to view people who make a choice to play sports as indentured servants.

Ohio State got in trouble last season because eight players exchanged their rings and jerseys for tats and cash totaling $14,000, roughly $1,750 a player. The football program made a net profit of $35 million.

I have no problem with college athletes selling their jersey or rings for cash. I think this is something college athletes should possibly be able to do, as opposed to being paid a stipend. Let the free market rule. If someone wants to pay $2000 for a signed Terrelle Pryor jersey, that's his business and Pryor's play on the field made the jersey worth that amount.

And while it is true much of that money is used to fund other departments, the notion that a school like OSU can't afford to pay players seems disingenuous. The argument that Title IX complicates the discussion is a cop out.

I don't believe the argument that Title IX complicates the discussion is a cop out. LZ won't tell us here exactly how or why using Title IX as an argument is a cop out, so I'm guessing we will probably never hear exactly why it is a cop out. He just writes "it's a cop out" and leaves it at that. I don't see how you can pay male athletes and not female athletes. I think Title IX makes it clear under the 10 guidelines the Department of Education uses. The fourth guideline specifically states:

Travel and per diem allowance;

This must be equal for men and women's sports.

The three prong test used in determining the ways Title IX can be achieved says the following,

"male and female athletes should receive equivalent treatment, benefits, and opportunities" regarding facilities.as well as,

"the athletic interests and abilities of male and female students must be equally effectively accommodated."

I think this makes is fairly clear it would be hard to pay male athletes in any disproportionate amount compared to female athletes. So I think saying using Title IX as a reason not to pay college athletes is a cop out is a cop out in itself. Just don't say "it's a cop out" and not explain. I think Title IX makes it very difficult for men and women athletes to receive different amounts of compensation based on the different amount of revenue each gender's sport would bring in. Frankly, it isn't fair for the swimming team to be compensated with a stipend when revenues from the football are helping to support the swimming team.

Runners may be sleazy, but they are only the byproduct of a system that feels worse.

I'm not sure of a way to change the system to get rid of runners. Paying college athletes won't achieve this goal. This much I feel pretty sure.

So the NCAA has every right to turn its focus on the UCFs of the world, but until its members start paying student-athletes, it's not going to generate much sympathy from me.

I'm not sure the NCAA wants sympathy, they want to keep up the appearance of no impropriety in college athletics.

For as long as the student-athletes responsible for generating millions are living in poverty, runners have a better chance of being viewed as Robin Hoods than the NCAA as victims.

Every college students lives in some form of poverty. Of course some college athletes generate enormous amounts of revenue for their school, so perhaps these athletes should be compensated for this. Runners and AAU coaches aren't selling players to schools in order to benefit the player, but to benefit and line their own pockets. They aren't Robin Hoods and no one is viewing the NCAA as a victim. Either way, AAU coaches, boosters, and runners who give players money to play for certain programs are in the wrong whether student-athletes get paid or not. I don't see how this point of view changes depending on whether student-athletes are getting paid or not.

The idea paying college athletes could lessen the incentive to sell players to a school is very naive. This just isn't realistic. Even if college athletes get paid, there will still be plenty of incentive to sell a player to a certain program. Runners and AAU coaches aren't using the money they receive from schools as a sort of pledge drive to buy food for a highly recruited player, they are using this money to line their own pockets. If college athletes got paid, there would still be an even playing field and there would still be plenty of incentive to shake down a college for a recruit. Does LZ Granderson really think a stipend is going to stop the flow of cash under the table for players? That's pretty naive.

8 comments Mike Wilbon May Be 50% Correct, But He's Still 50% Wrong

I follow Jay Bilas on Twitter, like many other people do. As anyone who follows Jay Bilas knows, if you read anything he Tweets about it will either deal with how crazy Bill Raftery is or with the subject of paying college athletes. Jay Bilas is all about paying college athletes. I am all about the paying of athletes in theory, but in practice I'm having difficulty figuring out how it won't create further problems where some schools can afford to pay some athletes more money or some college athletes don't get paid. Mike Wilbon sees these "further problems" and tries to reason through them. I still find holes in his argument that I'm not sure can be fixed, though I am becoming more convinced paying NCAA athletes is the way it will go in the future.

Of course the title of this column is "College athletes deserve to be paid." I feel like "deserve" is the wrong term to use when talking about college athletes getting paid.

I used to argue vehemently against paying college athletes. Tuition, room, board and books were compensation enough. And even if, increasingly, it wasn't enough and virtually every kid who accepted a scholarship was in the red before Christmas of his freshman year,

Every kid who accepts a scholarship or goes to college is in the red before Christmas of his freshman year. This is why I don’t find this argument that some advocates of paying college athletes as persuasive. The argument “college athletes don’t have much money to spend” goes for NEARLY EVERY SINGLE COLLEGE STUDENT, so it isn’t exclusive to the college athletes. Pleading the “we’re so poor” rationale fails in that it isn’t exclusive to just college athletes. Under that rationale, all college students should get paid for the money they bring into the college in the course of being a student.

the notion of pay-for-play was at best a logistical nightmare. Where exactly would the money come from? How could you pay college football players but not baseball players or members of the women's field hockey team? And how in the world would you pay men in a way that wouldn't violate Title IX?

I don’t think we have a solution to this problem. There’s no way to pay “major” sports at a school and not violate Title IX. Even if a women’s sport has players who get paid, I still think it would violate Title IX in some fashion if all women’s sports don’t receive some monetary benefit.

So you know what caused me to do a 180 on the issue? That $11 billion deal -- OK, it's $10.8 billion to be exact -- between the NCAA and CBS/Turner Sports for March Madness between 2011 and 2024. We're talking $11 billion for three weekends of television per year. On top of that, there's a new four-year deal with ESPN that pays the BCS $500 million.

Apparently this was Mike Wilbon’s first realization college sports are big business. Was he just not paying attention over the last two decades? College sports have been big business for quite a few years now and this deal was the straw that broke the camel's back for Mike Wilbon. It seems a little naive to notice these large deals and say, "What a minute, you mean the NCAA is making money off showing athletic events these amateur athletes participate in? If you had told me that, I would have completely changed my mind on the idea of paying these athletes!"

I respect Mike Wilbon a lot, but it seems like he changed his mind because that's what a lot of other sportswriters have done as well. The reasons he uses aren't especially new, but I do guess a person has a right to change their mind.

So, if those two deals were worth, say, a combined $10 billion instead of $11.3 billion, would the games not be televised?

No, that is the market value of the two deals. The games are televised at the fair market value of how much these games are worth. Television deals for BCS games and NCAA Tournament games are worth a lot of money. I would think if the deals were for $2 million per year, wouldn't the same principle of paying athletes for participating stand? If athletes bring money into the school, perhaps they should get paid for it, no matter the amount of money be very large or very small? I'm just throwing this out there. Or is there some threshold for how much the NCAA and schools get paid for television rights before the student-athletes get a share?

What if people in the business of money took $1.3 billion off the top, invested it, sheltered it and made it available to provide a stipend to college athletes, how could anybody stand on principal and argue against paying the people who make the events possible in the first place?

Other than the fact amateur players aren’t supposed to be paid, it seems those who play in the events should be compensated. It does make sense, outside of the fact this isn't supposed to happen. What if part of the money from ESPN’s broadcast rights to women’s softball went to softball players? That’s not a problem is it? Or does women's softball not bring enough money into ESPN to justify the women's softball players get paid?

The problem, as I see it, lies in what happens to women’s and men’s swimming programs, as well as other sports like these? They don’t get money for broadcast rights because their events aren’t televised? The problem as many see it, what about these other programs, especially women's sports, that don’t get compensated? Isn’t this a violation of Title IX?

How about the kids who participate in the Spelling Bee that ABC/ESPN televises? Should they get compensated for the broadcast rights? I’m not trying to be cutesy, but where does this line of thinking about paying participants in broadcasting events end?

Let me declare up front I wouldn't be the slightest bit interested in distributing the funds equitably or even paying every college athlete. I'm interested in seeing the people who produce the revenue share a teeny, tiny slice of it.

There are two obvious problems with this declaration that makes this idea not realistic:

1. Paying certain college athletes and not others will never fly. For reasons, at least in my opinion, which go beyond Title IX. The idea of distributing the wealth for college sports among those who make the money makes a hell of a lot of sense to me on its face. In practice, outside of Title IX, if you are saying NCAA football players need money because they have expenses at school they can’t afford…well, this goes for the men’s swimming team as well. Yes, the football team makes the school money, but paying some college athletes and not others then becomes less of an issue of paying college athletes to help them have a stipend to live on, but more rewarding those who bring in money to the schools. You know, and maybe that's the entire point. I just can’t see the NCAA doing that. That’s what irritates me about some of the pro-paying college athletes crowd. They try to couch it in terms of college athletes being broke, when it is really about which athletes bring in revenue. I’m sort of glad Mike Wilbon skips this nonsense.

2. It won’t fly because of Title IX. Women's sports are going to need to be treated equally with men's sports, unless Title IX is overturned.

That's right, football and men's basketball players get paid; lacrosse, field hockey, softball, baseball, soccer players get nothing. You know what that's called? Capitalism.

It is called capitalism and I do love the idea of capitalism. Even in the United States, where we have capitalism, there is a form of limited capitalism though. We just don’t throw people who don’t make enough money to live on the streets (or don't generally do that). There are benefits available to these people, which essentially is government spending money on people who may not bring that exact amount of money in. So in the realm of this limited capitalism, even those sports that don’t bring some form of money into a school should get some form of compensation.

Not everything is equal, not everything is fair.

So I don't want to hear that it's "unfair" to pay the quarterback of Alabama more than all the sociology students in the undergraduate college.

I won’t argue that it is unfair. I will argue the idea the quarterback of Alabama has expenses or debts he has to pay while in college, while ignoring that normal sociology students or the 3^rd string quarterback have those exact same expenses isn't exactly fair.

Here's another question. We aren’t paying the 3^rd string quarterback of Alabama as much, right? He doesn’t even play! Capitalism would say we don’t pay him because he doesn’t bring in any value to the school. Which brings me to the point of whether each individual player would get paid differently on the same team? Mike Wilbon wants capitalism, so let’s go there. The walk-on freshman 3^rd string linebacker wouldn’t get paid as much as the starting quarterback, so how do we determine his value? I’m not saying it can’t be done, but paying different players at the same position has a different effect if a coach promotes the 3^rd string quarterback to starter at midseason. Would the 3^rd string guy get a bump in pay because he is now winning games for his team rather than sitting? Can you imagine if that 3^rd string guy starts the next year and the original starter has to sit the bench and take a pay cut? So the original starter is now actually losing money out of his pocket to pay for school expenses because the coach didn’t choose him as starter and he isn't bringing as much money into the school now.

I’m getting a headache thinking of all this and going down so many rabbit holes.

Using the inability to distribute the funds equally as an impediment is an excuse, a rather intellectually lazy one at that. Nothing about the way hundreds of millions of dollars is distributed is equitable or even fair.

And as true as that may be, the amount of funds distributed to individual college athletes is currently distributed equally. Simply because certain conferences get more money based on the BCS, this doesn’t mean individual NCAA college athletes should make inequal amounts of money. I think it is somewhat intellectually lazy to merely state because the BCS doesn’t divide money equally among conferences, then that is a reason for the NCAA to not divide money evenly among college athletes.

At its heart, I have no problem with a non-equitable distribution of funds, but I believe it will be difficult to convince the NCAA this is a viable option in terms of paying players. To act as if this is a viable solution in ignoring the realities of Title IX and the reality the NCAA sees itself, perhaps in a deluded fashion, as an organization that looks out for the student-athletes isn't paying attention to reality.

Of the $174 million distributed from five bowl games, 83.4 percent went to six conferences in 2011. In question right now is whether the BCS even conducts its business dealings in a manner consistent with principles expressed in federal anti-trust laws.

So, the equitable-application excuse for not paying athletes doesn't hold water; at the very least there's a level of hypocrisy here that ought to make the opponents of paying athletes uncomfortable.

Well of course there is hypocrisy. This is the NCAA we are talking about. Hypocrisy is a lot of what they do. I still don’t completely buy the argument the equitable-application argument in regard to the BCS distributing money among schools, it doesn’t hold water for me. Paying conferences for money received in bowl games is very different from paying NCAA athletes, who currently receive $0, a stipend based on how much money they bring into the school. We are talking the BCS v. NCAA and crossing over business dealings for both. They aren’t the same entity.

Wilbon’s argument is, “If the NCAA is going to be hypocrites, why not go all the way” and I don’t know if I buy that. If you argue the NCAA needs to have equitable-application of bowl money (which is an argument that holds water), then inequitable distribution of stipends would no longer make sense under this “hypocrisy theory” of Wilbon’s. So what would Wilbon’s argument be for inequitable distribution of stipends if the BCS changed around their bowl distribution method?

Don't get me wrong, paying players out of individual athletic department budgets is beyond impractical; it's probably not feasible. Because so many athletic departments run at a deficit, it's difficult to make the case that schools should pay regular salaries to athletes, even football players who produce more income than anybody.

So schools shouldn’t pay players, the NCAA should pay players? This seems kind odd to me since the individual player is bringing money and attention, which can lead to more money, to a specific school. I would think if college athletes got paid, then individual colleges should do the paying. What do I know though? I am just a lowly blogger living in his mom's attic.

Why can't hundreds of millions of dollars be directed into those, and in turn make money much more accessible to athletes for the kinds of regular day-to-day expenses regular college students pay by working jobs that are off-limits to intercollegiate athletes?

This argument sort of irritates me as well. Poor intercollegiate athletes! They are too busy playing sports, which is how they got a free ride to college by the way, to work a job. I didn’t know it was impossible for a football player to work a job from January-May while in school. I guess you learn something new every day. I know the players still have some responsibility to their sport in the offseason, but the way Wilbon is phrasing this is as if regular college students are privileged to have the opportunity to work and pay for the expenses he wants the student-athletes to be handed to them.

Somehow a sociology major finds the time to go to school and work to pay for his expenses while in school. He may not be responsible for bringing a bunch of money into the school, but athletes certainly have eligibility for Stafford Loans to pay for their expenses. College students who don’t have time to work pay for their personal expenses with Stafford Loans all the time. Part of me thinks if an athlete wants to pay his living costs, that is what loans are intended for.

In the meantime, if they cannot be paid outright, surely the scholarship athletes should be able to engage in entrepreneurial pursuits that currently leads to costly NCAA investigations that have proven to be mostly a waste of time since, one, such activities historically haven't been checked and, two, the kids who commit the "infractions" aren't effectively punished. Their revelations, short of Heisman Trophy winners having to return their statues, wind up penalizing only the kids and coaches who remain on the team and in the vast majority of cases have done nothing to merit a penalty themselves.

I do agree in part with this statement, but if the program is worth a crap (or the coach doesn't run before sanction are handed down...um, Pete Carroll) then the coaching staff, the Athletic Director and others who were a part of the infraction are getting punished. Yes, an unfortunate side effect is the current players are penalized for doing absolutely nothing wrong in many cases, but when a team has a player de-commit and go to another school because he doesn't want to go to a school that has been sanctioned then the sanctions have done their intended effect. I do get what Wilbon is saying, but you can't punish the school and coach without punishing the players. Unless you fine the the coach/athletic director money or do something in a way not affiliated with the team (Steal their car? Rob their house? Sleep with their significant other?).

If somebody is willing to give A.J. Green $750 or $1,000 or even $2,500 for his Georgia Bulldogs jersey, fine, good. If one of his teammates, a tackle, can fetch only $50 for his jersey, then it'll be a good marketing lesson for both of them.

I do agree with this. The A.J. Green jersey incident was an infraction, just like the infractions where Ohio State players were selling signed memorabilia for tattoos. Still, idiots like Rick Reilly (in his latest column) called this "cheating." How is it that players selling signed memorabilia is cheating? How does the fact Pryor and other Buckeyes sold this stuff negatively affect the Wisconsin Badgers football team? Does Purdue have less of a chance of beating the Buckeyes this year because players paid for tattoos with memorabilia? Yes, this was against the rules. Don't call it "cheating" though, because it really isn't cheating.

The question from the opponents of paying college athletes inevitably comes back, "What would stop a star player from agreeing to shake hands at a local car dealership for $50,000?"

Well, that is completely true. I do think this is completely separate from getting a stipend or getting money from the NCAA for playing sports at a college. If an athlete can make money at a car dealership I don't see how this is too different from another college student using his ability or knowledge to make money. Sure there are differences, like the fact an athlete would make more money probably based on his fame compared to a regular college student, but I would favor this more than I would favor a school paying a player for being a student-athlete in a money-making sport.

In fairness to him, Mike Wilbon brought up this same point in the sentence after this.

The student-musician is no less a college student because he struck a lucrative deal. Neither is the student-journalist who spends his nights writing freelance stories and picking up as much money along the way as he can.

I'm not suggesting players should be able to go whore themselves out to make cash in college, but in my opinion, an athlete getting a free tattoo for signed memorabilia is much more preferable to that same athlete getting a stipend for living expenses because there are costs he can't afford to pay for while in college. Again, this goes for nearly all college students. So if a student-athlete should profit from the money he brings into his school, I would rather he do it in the private market and not because the NCAA is sending him monthly checks. My opinion on this has slowly evolved and it may very well evolve again, but this is how I feel right now.

The best college athletes in the two revenue-producing sports have always been worth much more than tuition, room, board and books.

This may be absolutely true. Many students who get full rides to a college are worth more than tuition, room, board and books when it comes time to donate money back to the school as well. Colleges recruit athletes that will make their school look good. The same goes for students who go to a school as well. College recruit students that will make their school look good. Granted, a full ride business major probably won't bring more revenue into a school than a college football player will.

The best football and basketball players in the Big Ten have produced to the degree that a television network has become the model for every conference in America, a network worth at least tens of millions of dollars to the member institutions. Yet, no player can benefit from that work.

To an extent, I see where this rationale is coming from. The problem, yet again, lies in the idea schools can't pay certain college athletes and not other college athletes. Schools CAN do this, but I would imagine lawsuits would occur. If college athletes want to profit from their ability in a sport, I am not sure I care too much about that, but I would prefer the NCAA and the college not be the one doing the compensating which leads to the profit. I say this simply because I don't see how all college athletes can get paid, so that would mean only certain college athletes get paid. Since (I would estimate) 95% of college athletes are part of a program that either (a) doesn't bring money into the school or (b) the athlete doesn't personally bring money into the school, I can see where the issue would lie.

If athletes want to make money on their own by selling memorabilia or appearing at a Burger King shaking hands and signing autographs, then I very well could have less of a problem with this.

The players have become employees of the universities and conferences as much as students -- employees with no compensation, which not only violates common decency but perhaps even the law.

So Wilbon's final statement is to essentially call student-athletes at the college level "slaves." I wouldn't say an athlete who is getting college completely paid for it as getting no compensation, though it is better to leave out small details that may contradict what you are trying to say when trying to prove a point I guess. This is backwards thinking to say an athlete who gets college completely paid for is an employee of the university while a student who has to pay his way through college, working jobs an athlete isn't fortunate enough to get the ability/time to work, has no ties to the university. A "normal" student has to pay tuition and other expenses for the privilege of being affiliated with the school.

This where part of the "pay college athletes" argument falls apart. So if those players who get a full ride are being exploited, what about those college athletes who don't get an athletic scholarship and have to pay their way through school? These "normal" students are paying to go to school and get the same education an athlete at that school is receiving for free, and then a few years later the alumni association calls these "normal" students up to donate money to the school to support the very programs and scholarships the athlete is using for his free education. So who is really being exploited in this situation?

At least the athlete is being compensated, even in a small way, for the money he brings into the school. Still, I think there is a really good argument for paying players in some fashion for bringing money into a school through participating in athletics. I'm still looking forward to reading it.