Do you realize how many student athletes get full rides, excluding football and basketball. The NCAA doens't owe these guys anything other than a free education. Over half the players on the LSU football team couldn't get into the school if it wasn't for football. What they do get is free tuition, housing, meals, etc. Just because this moron went and ran up a few grand on his VISA is no reason to start paying people. I realize football and basketball generate money for the school, but what about gymnastics, soccer, track, field hockey, and the 20 or so other sports that we lose money on. Should we pay these guys to or should be not pay them and tell them that they aren't as important as the football players. It's a pretty simple decision for these kids. Either play college football, baseball, basketball, etc and get a free education while getting national exposure, or go out into the real world and get a job. There is no way they should be paid.
Only in football and basketball do these athletes generate money for their schools (in LSU's case baseball as well). Almost every other sport loses money. Do you want to be the one to tell all these athletes in "unimportant" sports that they won't get paid but football and bball players will? I don't. They may not care about the education. That's fine, not everyone values it. But they are getting a whole lot of national exposure. In the end that may be worth more for many of them. They don't need a salary to go along with this. We also forget how expensive an education is outside of LSU. Tuition in Baton Rouge is only about $5,000 per year. In many schools up North (not just the private ones) tuition is closer to $20,000 or $30,000. If anything, many of these athletes are getting more than they deserve.
Yeah. USC plays in front of a lot of empty seats. I mean, I know their stadium is larger than most (in terms of where the seats are in relation to the field) but there's still no reason why they shouldn't pack 90,000+ every week.
No wonder Skip wants to raise ticket prices again. As a fan I am very unhappy finishing the season ranked #5, there is no reason we shouldn't be #1 every year. Surely Skip will see this and raise ticket prices some more.:yelwink2: :yelwink2: :yelwink2:
Beat me to it Twisted... and about this lawsuit... I'd like to see the credit card record of what he bought.. I'm sure he was living it up with nice clothes and shoes to match... I spend my college years wearing worn out blue jeans and free t-shirts... Some people just dont get that you are supposed to be poor in college...
Pay the players... OK.... but guess who will pay for it. The fans. Student tickets will jump to the price of regular admission and the normal seats will triple and quadruple in price. If any of you think that schools and the NCAA will settle with making less money than they already are, you are crazy. Then it gets to, how much do you pay them? They are already getting upwards of 200,000 depending on where they go to school when you include tuition, room, and board, not to mention the travel expenses (which I have seen the expenses that the band has on trips, and we take cheap charter buses and less expensive hotels). There is a good argument for each side, and honestly I don't know which I support.
I have mixed feelings. Sure, they are getting better scholarships than the academic scholars do, but they have to do a whole lot more in return, including risking severe injury. Plus other scholarship holders on campus are allowed to take jobs to bring in the extra cash that a student needs to get by. The athletes are not. I pay the undergraduates who work in my lab from 6 to 10 dollars an hour. The graduate assistants get from $10,000 to $15,000 a year for part-time work. But I can't hire athletes. What not just pay the athletes what any other student gets for working for the university over and above their academic coursework? Pay them 6 to 10 dollars an hour depending on their age/class for the hours they put in on the practice field and on game day. It wouldn't amount to much, just a few hundred dollars a semester, but it would give them a little pocket money to buy a Coke, take a girl out on a date, or ride the bus home to see Mama a couple of times a semester. Then they wouldn't have to borrow money from Visa, OR WORSE . . . take $100 handshakes from alumni and get the school on probation. These kids bring in $40 million a year to LSU and a few hundred bucks a semester seems only fair. The NCAA needs to change the rules.