All of this shit with Avenatti exposed that Nike and Adidas have been giving serious money to the family of college recruits to the schools they have contracts with. Everyone is talking about the attorney that supposedly tried to extort money from Nike. But there isn't much buzz about Nike and Adidas's practices. Do you think it should be legal for big money companies to offer financial incentives to college recruits? The young kids are the ones taking risk of injury. It only takes one bad one to blow their chances in the pros. What is the down side with making financial incentive legal?

A few years back, I had this discussion with a few friends. I'd be interested in hearing opposing views. I'm not steadfast in mine. While I love to watch college football, (Go Bucks!) I don't have a lot of knowledge of the inner workings. My knee jerk reaction has always been that the universities are making a ton of money off of college football players. As you said, they are young men who are risking career changing injury. I see no harm in them being compensated beyond a free education. There must be a lot of money being made off their backs if large companies are sliding the families of recruits six figures.

Not disagreeing with your point.. only answering the quoted question:

You turn college sports into a semi-pro arms race. This is regardless of whether we are talking about Nike/Adidas funneling kids to Nike/Adidas schools through these financial incentives when it was against the rules to do so or what is about to happen (or is already happening) with NIL.

The players should be able to get whatever they can from the universities and corporations. College football and basketball coaches are the highest paid state employee in most states. TV contracts are multi million dollars. The NBA and NFL benefit from free farm teams. So yes there should be no limits on what the players can get from whoever.

The real question shouldn't be whether college athletes should get paid... Its the throughly American idea that educational institutions should even be in the business of sports.

If you look at Baseball in the US, Hockey in North America or Soccer around the world, you see a much different (and more rational) way that the sports formed into their current incarnations than Football & Basketball. Historically, you can see the development of those two sports & why it is the way it is now (and how the NCAA has spread it beyond those two sports)... but it really makes no sense.

These other sports all have college counterparts but nobody screaming about how those college athletes are getting screwed by the system. That's because those sports have professional minor leagues or development systems that are not tied to the originating idea of "club sports" (i.e. you have to be a part of a non-sports institution to be eligible to play for a team).

How about this for a question instead... Why is the ability for an athlete to play a college sport generally limited/tied to the normal 4 years of undergrad studies?

If you are representing the institution that you must be a part of, then why do you only have 4 years of "eligibility"? Why does it matter that you spend 4 years for your Bachelors and 2 years getting your Masters so you are now in your 7th year on the Football team (scholarship or not... Nike paying you or not)?

If you do a bunch of AP work in high school, "red shirt" your 1st year in college (making you a Junior academically before you even step on a field) & get a medical "red shirt" in another year you can actually be on athletic scholarship as a Doctoral candidate, so the limitation is not based on academic progress. So, if you are a student why shouldn't you be eligible to participate and represent the college you attend?

What about transfer rules?

Should an athlete pick Miami because every player there gets $100k per year to start with, but after becoming a star as a Freshman WR be able to transfer to Texas based on their boosters paying their stars $500k per year?

Does this mean that athletes will need to be signed to 2-3-4 year contracts by the boosters of a school to insure they don't transfer? Will they have buy-outs that allow them to go pro or will the NFL have to pay a fee (like you see in Soccer) for a player to leave a club (Alabama) in one professional league (the SEC) to move to the Baltimore Ravens of the NFL?

What about agents? If you are bringing this kind of money into college sports, shouldn't the athletes be allowed to have professional representation to look after their interests in negotiating these deals?

My point is that its easy to make the statement you did about there basically being no rules but when you look at the implications, it gets really complicated really fast.

The originating concept of sports in the 19th century was club teams. Meaning you had to be a member of a club, an organization (like a workplace) or a college to be eligible to play for that team. Of course, human nature being what it is these club teams immediately started bringing in "ringers" specifically to try to win (thus circumventing the spirit of the eligibility rules).

In North America, sports such as Baseball & Hockey just dropped the idea of club teams & went to the more honest professional route where the best players went to whoever paid them the most. Football, however, stayed with the club model with colleges being the highest level (its hard to comprehend but it wasn't until TV & the late 1950s that the NFL was even a big deal... and that was because of the NCAA f'n themselves in regards to TV until the 1980s). Basketball, which was basically invented as a college sport followed Football's path.

College sports boosters have always tried to cheat to give their teams an advantage & all the rules we are talking about were put in place as a reaction to the shit boosters pulled. Why are players not allowed to have outside jobs? Southwest Conference (Texas, SMU, Oklahoma, etc ..) cheating in the 1970s where athletes were promised "jobs" and salaries by team boosters that they didn't have to show up to.

Why were there rules against what Nike/Adidas did? Because if you take money from Nike, you damn well better go to a Nike school (Ex: Oregon/Clemson/Alabama/Duke/North Carolina) vs Adidas (Ex: Kansas/Louisville/Miami/Nebraska) or Under Armour (Ex: Notre Dame/Wisconsin/UCLA).

It all comes down to the same concept... The NCAA rules were not actually about preventing athletes from making money, they were about keeping the colleges (and their supporters) honest in order to try to maintain a level playing field. Massive TV and merchandising deals by the colleges which translated into an arms race in relation to sports facilities & coaches have completely undercut all of that & made the entire ruleset for college athletes not getting paid based in the dollars they generate hypocritical.

The question becomes whether you throw open the doors and make it the wild west (Professional leagues in North America are so against this that they prevent it by drafting the rights to players) or you set up rules to govern it... And if you go the rules route, what are they & who represents the players interests in those negotiations?

Saying "pay them" is as simplistic as saying "drugs should be legal" or "the police shouldn't shoot people"... But it gets extremely complicated when you get into details of what those simplistic statements mean.

The devil is in the details and beyond me but these college athletes are making a bunch of money for a lot of people and not themselves and the idea that they are being provided an education is largely a joke. They should be able to make what they can. It’s obviously complicated but there’s so much money involved but yes I’d say sign them to contracts. They are basically unpaid professionals.

I've read the posts here. I agree that nothing should prohibit college athletes from being compensated. It is curious that big money corps like Nike skated when publicly outed for breaking current laws. Avenatti got a little to big for his britches. But that doesn't make Nike any less responsible for their role.