Buckeyes & Gators Players Want to Be Paid

[ponyplayer]

why do we have to define it as paying the players?, regardless of gender.......all I am saying is increase the stipend check so that they can have a little extra to go to a movie..regular students can get a job and I know some that have to do two jobs to make it by ....little different if you are a student-athlete......................coach will make $4 mill a year but a student-athlete has to scrap up change for a KFC chicken bite.....something wrong with that picture and it has nothing to do with the real world....the real world is what you make it to be..........................not an argument,just being real.....sure this will bring on more thespians..........

[jtstang]

And I love how nobody ever brings up the women. Do you think you can pay the football players without paying the basketball players? Do you think you can pay the men's basketball players without paying the women's basketball players? You don't think that is a lawsuit waiting to happen? Do you think that isn't going to go on down the line until the women's crew team is demanding to get paid?

If SMU instituted a sliding scale based upon each sport's overall effect on the budget, I suspect the women's crew team would have to pay the university back the least amount of money. So they got that going for them. No football player could afford to come here.

[mrydel]

I agree the stipends are ridiculous. I got $10.00/month when I was there. And at that time, for a while anyway we could sell our tickets for face value that gave us another $16.00 or so a home game. But the fact is, no matter what the increase would be and whomever you agreed to pay, there will always be a booster lurking to up the ante and leave a school open for investigation. I have advocated for years that the athletes be allowed to be paid under contract whatever private boosters will pay. Let the school provide the education and the boosters can openly recruit and sign to contracts (binding ones) players to come and play in any sport. I think we have deep enough pockets to compete and after a few years of boosters getting burned by paying out big bucks and their team not winning (see George Steinbrenner and the Yankees), the pay scale will settle at a fair level. No transferring is allowed. In the mean time you strickly enforce education standards and moral standards that will, if violated nullify the contract and exclude the player from any further participation in college athletics. There are a lot a things to be tweaked, but that is what I would call a level playing field.

[leopold]

Welcome to the real world. My budget is pretty tight but I don't expect to get a raise any time soon. Actaully, that isn't true. But I digress.

Paying players is a short-sighted argument and as well as ill-informed and ill-conceived. Slocum undressed a guy on the radio a couple of years ago for bringing it up. It was fun to listen to.

You can't actually identify the athlete that sits in his dorm all weekend because he has no money, because that player doesn't actually exist. If the kid was that poor, he qualifies for grants. Every school in america knows how to arrange that for the kid.

Also, what college kid isn't practically broke? Yeah I had friends with more money than they could spend (it was SMU after all), but most of my buddies were in a perpetual state of looking for quarters in the couch trying to scrape together $5 for the Gatti's pizza buffet on Sundays during football season.

The fact is a lot of schools lose money on football and even more lose money on athletics as a whole. The SMU athletic department loses on about $4.5 million per year. That is real money, not scholarship money.

And I love how nobody ever brings up the women. Do you think you can pay the football players without paying the basketball players? Do you think you can pay the men's basketball players without paying the women's basketball players? You don't think that is a lawsuit waiting to happen? Do you think that isn't going to go on down the line until the women's crew team is demanding to get paid?

Thank you.
Paying players is not going to happen because over half of the schools in Division 1-A don't even break even, much less make money. The bottom line is that the money is not there for the VAST majority of schools. I quote Bobby Bowden, somebody who actually knows what goes on - "I am for it but I think we're about the only ones who can do it." Even schools like Michigan, who has fired multiple athletic directors over this, can't break even, even with all the money they have coming in.

sure this will bring on more thespians..........

Forget the thespians. Ask the accountants.

[Water Pony]

Profits? From USA Today, here is an analysis, which shows OSU, Texas, Florida and Michigan athletic budgets. Note the bottom line results at UT, which pockets more and supports much fewer teams than OSU, ND, Stanford, etc.

STRETCHING IT OUT

Comparing Ohio State's 2005-06 athletics balance sheet with those of the nation's second- and third-biggest spenders, Texas and Florida, and Big Ten rival Michigan (dollars in millions):

Ohio State Texas Florida Michigan

Football

Revenue $60.8 $60.9 $48.2 $50.4

Expenses $32.3* $18.4 $15.8 $12.8

Profit $28.5 $42.5 $32.4 $37.6

All sports

Teams 36 20 20 25

Revenue $104.7 $97.8 $82.4 $85.5

Expenses $101.8 $83.6 $78.2 $67.9

Profit $2.9 $14.2 $4.2 $17.6

* Includes $16.7 million toward facilities debt service, operations and maintenance

Sources: Ohio State's financial report to the NCAA and all schools' Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act filings with the federal government