Bringing Changes To Collegiate Athletics: Part 2 of 3

Wonder what these folks want to see happen in college sports?

O.K. I’m back for Round Two of three and guess what? I brought friends with me. Well, fans anyway. This segment is where we look at what you folks, the fans, have offered up for your ideas about what is going on with Collegiate athletics as a whole. I got several responses, both comments and e-mails, so let’s look at these one by one and see where they might lead us.

First: This one is from an anonymous poster, so I cannot give credit to a name, but here is the comment in it’s entirety.

“If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying” has been the way it is since before you and I were born. In any major competition. Let’s stop the pretenses and have a college draft, pay the players, don’t require that they attend any classes and be done with it.

While I believe that there is some merit behind this post, because in a way, I want the hypocrisy of it all stopped as well, I cannot believe that not attending classes is a good idea. I want to see the players compensated as well, but I also want them getting educated. Or at least as educated as they can get while they are in school.

Second: This one makes for a good start, and brings to light something I have been screaming about for the last five years. Also from an anonymous poster:

First, college sports has to find a way to pay the payers … even as little as $300 a game like Spurrier said.
Secondly, the NCAA needs to spend some of their profits and hire enough people to enforce it’s regulations. I’m tired of hearing they are “understaffed”

The NCAA has to stop kidding themselves about a couple of things. First, their compliance department is a joke, and it still manages to catch schools cheating every now and then. Imagine how many cases would be brought every year if they properly staffed their compliance office? Secondly, the NCAA has to acknowledge that it is not 1910 anymore. Their allowable monies figures are either non-existent, or in need of serious upgrading as well.

And as much as I am loathe to agree with Spurrier about anything, I think the players should share in the revenues that the school and NCAA receive from games.

Third: This one even offers up penalties for players who are not in compliance with the NCAA or their prospective schools.

Along with the paying of players should be a very strict attending class and no arrest clause. If you have bad grades or get arrested, no pay.

I think that one should be taken to an even higher limit. Require attendance to classes and at least a C+/B- average. You want kids to get an education, make them really attend and pass classes to get through. Require their professors to do weekly progress reports. Have coaches randomly show up in a players’ classes and make sure they are attending. Make arrests zero tolerance.

This one came from an e-mail sent to me by a young man who is not only a fan, but an NCAA Student Athlete:

While I think that most of your readers attitudes concerning Student-Athletes not being exploited are admirable, the truth is that most of us who come for an education do not feel exploited, we just simply wish that we could be allowed to be “normal” people. I can’t let anyone buy anything for me. I can’t even let someone who would like to help me in making sure I have adequate resources while I am at school help me out. No sticking a $100 bill in my pocket like a lot of kids have friends or family friends do for them while they are at school. I have to watch out for everything I do.

I have to say that one stuck with me the most. An actual athlete saying something like that gives me pause.It should not be a hardship for a kid to attend school on a scholarship. While I am saving my thoughts for the end of this piece, this is the single biggest sticking point for me as a fan about the NCAA and their “rules”.

So, answers were varied and all encompassing weren’t they? Not one response I got back was in the negative concerning allowing the student athlete to have some sort of compensation though.

Check back in on Thursday for the final installment in this series. I will follow up with sportswriters and coaches and their comments concerning these issues.

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