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Employees vs. Student-Athletes

kella

Low IQ fat ass with depression and anxiety
Staff member
Administrator
Operations
I mean that's fine that they do that, even if you are to imagine a world in which the basic wi-fi at a hotel isn't free at this point, why the fuck is that worth tweeting about? I hate them so much.
 

Southpaw

Fuckface
Utopia Moderator
lol i got paid by the NCAA and EA for being in those video games



swagg
giphy.gif
 

kella

Low IQ fat ass with depression and anxiety
Staff member
Administrator
Operations
https://www.washingtonpost.com/spor...bdbbca-12c9-11e6-93ae-50921721165d_story.html

How is anyone supposed to teach a young player what trust and honesty should look like in the current dishonest, hypocritical system? No reform can be meaningful as long as it’s built on top of these underground transactions. The only way to real reform is an above-board free market. Let players earn what they can earn, from their own likenesses, and from those who would pay them to play for a university. Let the next Laremy Tunsil say to schools that recruit him, “What kind of terms are you offering?”
 

kella

Low IQ fat ass with depression and anxiety
Staff member
Administrator
Operations
The thing that I really don't understand is this stupid amateur label they insist on. To me, it's nothing short of dog whistle politicking. It's code for "we don't want these young black guys we're afraid of in the streets to make more money than us playing football." (you can apply this equally to yuppie douchebags like Manziel whose parents are already rich - he "doesn't need more money")

What in the fuck could possibly be wrong with letting them get paid through external contracts WHILE still requiring even the most flimsy of academic requirements? It's not like they aren't already cheating (academically). If the next Johnny Football wants to get a 75k marketing contract and then party away his CFB career and get kicked off the team and/or out of school, who really gives a shit? NEXT. There will always be more players. The fuck do I care if Underarmour pissed away some marketing money?
 

CJ_24

Well-Known Member
The Supreme Court denied cert in the O'Bannon v. NCAA case. That leaves in place the Ninth Circuit's rulings. According to my cursory review, the Ninth Circuit ruled the NCAA's ban on paying players violates federal anti-trust laws, but the court also struck down the trial court's ruling that would have allowed schools to give players $5000 a year in addition to their scholarships. I'll leave it to those who are more intelligent than I am to figure out what the future holds.
 

Dr. Shats Basoon

Closed mouths don't get fed
I think the players should just be happy with the free tuition, housing, clothing, food and status (puss) that they get through playing football. After all, they are supposed to be playing for the name on the front of the jersey not the name on the back. IF they prove themselves then they can go on and make millions in the league. If they don't, then they can join the rest of us slack-jaw normies shuffling papers behind a desk in all respects similar to a barnyard animal for the next 40 years.

I WOULD HAVE PLAYED FOR FREE YAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW take state
 

goblue96

Disney and Curling Expert
480,000 student-athletes are going pro in something than sports but heaven forbid you get a head start of those who aren't making videos to get their name out there.
 

GuyIncognito

pressure cooker full of skittles
I guess I'm not entirely sure what the complaint is here. Do they mean that their teams literally barred them from pursuing certain majors? Or do they mean it was practically impossible to do certain degrees while playing football?

Like, anecdote time: we had guys at Miami who were pre-med or engineering, and sometimes they had to be late to a practice or something, and obviously the workload was immense, but AFAIK nobody was told they *couldn't* do it.

I wasn't able to take Arabic until I stopped playing football because there was one Arabic class in the university and it was like at 2pm, three days a week. So that would have been a problem if I needed that class to do a certain degree, but that seemed like a pretty rare issue where there is only one available class time.

I mean, Myron Rolle took a year off from FSU to do a Rhodes Scholarship.
 

CJ_24

Well-Known Member
It seems some schools made the scholarship contingent on picking (or not picking) certain majors. That sounds like barring students from pursuing certain majors.
 

NML

Well-Known Member
No, that’s not what it says. Below is the most common responses to an exit interview (i.e. after the fact comments)

DE8Vs-3UAAE38rm


It’s a bit of a stretch to interpret that as “I was told I couldn’t be an engineer major.” To me to me it sounds like student-athletes who tried to take hard classes and found balancing that, sports, and social life difficult (and wish someone would’ve warned them)

To echo Guy, the only classes I or teammates ever had trouble with were rarely offered courses that were only availability in the late afternoon. I had to take Greek and Roman Myth in my spring semester of senior year for that reason (as an aside, this class sounds way cooler than it actually is).

I will say I knew a lot of people who asked their student-athlete advisor freshman year what the easiest major was and now there are a ton of WVU psychology grads who are doing literally anything else.
 

OU11

Pleighboi
Utopia Moderator
I will say I knew a lot of people who asked their student-athlete advisor freshman year what the easiest major was and now there are a ton of WVU psychology majors who are doing literally anything else.


This is why I have two degrees. Decided marketing sounded fun because all my teammates would be in my classes
 

Yankee151

Hot Girl Summer
No, that’s not what it says. Below is the most common responses to an exit interview (i.e. after the fact comments)

It’s a bit of a stretch to interpret that as “I was told I couldn’t be an engineer major.” To me to me it sounds like student-athletes who tried to take hard classes and found balancing that, sports, and social life difficult (and wish someone would’ve warned them)

To echo Guy, the only classes I or teammates ever had trouble with were rarely offered courses that were only availability in the late afternoon. I had to take Greek and Roman Myth in my spring semester of senior year for that reason (as an aside, this class sounds way cooler than it actually is).

I will say I knew a lot of people who asked their student-athlete advisor freshman year what the easiest major was and now there are a ton of WVU psychology grads who are doing literally anything else.

Lol yeah I took Greco-Roman Myth at FSU and it was also pretty lame
 
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goblue96

Disney and Curling Expert
No, that’s not what it says. Below is the most common responses to an exit interview (i.e. after the fact comments)

DE8Vs-3UAAE38rm


It’s a bit of a stretch to interpret that as “I was told I couldn’t be an engineer major.” To me to me it sounds like student-athletes who tried to take hard classes and found balancing that, sports, and social life difficult (and wish someone would’ve warned them)

To echo Guy, the only classes I or teammates ever had trouble with were rarely offered courses that were only availability in the late afternoon. I had to take Greek and Roman Myth in my spring semester of senior year for that reason (as an aside, this class sounds way cooler than it actually is).

I will say I knew a lot of people who asked their student-athlete advisor freshman year what the easiest major was and now there are a ton of WVU psychology grads who are doing literally anything else.

I took Sports and Life in Anicent Rome with just about the entire Michigan Men's and Women's Swim team because it was one of a handful classes that could fit into their schedule.

In the late 80's/early 90's, almost every Duke basketball player was a Sociology major.
 

NML

Well-Known Member
Somewhat interesting, is all the foreign mongs I know were smart enough to realize that going home with a fucking meaningless degree wouldn’t do them any good.

Every. Single. One. Majored in business. It’s generic in its own right but they knew they’d at least have the upper hand on 90% of their friends back home doing almost anything
 

CJ_24

Well-Known Member
No, that’s not what it says. Below is the most common responses to an exit interview (i.e. after the fact comments)

DE8Vs-3UAAE38rm

"had to make a decision to either play sports for a scholarship or to change major."
". . . they will not be able to play a sport if they go into [certain majors]."
 

GuyIncognito

pressure cooker full of skittles
I don't mean to denigrate what they're saying, I just don't fully understand what it is from those excerpts.

Don't get me wrong. This whole thing is a total racket and I hate everything about the NCAA. These kids are worked to death for peanuts, most of them are in an academic environment they haven't remotely been prepared for and they have a 60-hour-a-week athletic schedule on top of their academics.

And I absolutely believe that academic support staff, especially, tries to push kids into the easiest majors and the easiest professors because it's just less of a headache for them. There is a lot of resentment of major sport athletes on college campuses, and at least anecdotally it's more pronounced in certain degree programs. The academic support staff know which teachers will give athletes trouble and which won't. Plus you don't want a team full of players that are distracted by their organic chemistry mid-terms.

So believe me, I'm sympathetic to any complaint from players. I'm just saying this dude is not providing enough information for me to understand what's actually happening here.

If the school or the football staff is literally forbidding players from doing certain majors, then that's totally unacceptable and, as far as I know, pretty unique.

If, on the other hand, the players are complaining that their commitment to football makes it practically difficult or impossible for them to pursue the major they want, and the staff isn't being helpful in that regard, well, I still think that's a problem but it is a systemic one.
 

DeadMan

aka spiker or DeadMong
I'd bet it varies a lot from school to school. Michigan has had football and basketball (scholarship) players do engineering degrees. Walks on do tough degrees pretty frequently. They have a starting receiver who wants to go to med school: I think his dad is a doctor. I'm guessing the players aren't exactly encouraged to that - you would have basically no free time being a football player and doing an engineering degree - but they're not prevented from it, either. I would guess a total football factory school like, dunno, Bama, would make sure players aren't getting those degrees.

I'd also bet that it's highly dependent on the player, too. A majority, at least, of football players are not there for school. They don't care that much about the major, so they'll just do whatever. And some that do care may not know how to advocate for themselves or how to come up with a solution if there's a must-take class during practice or something. You're responsible for your own education in college, and a big part of college is simply figuring out the byzantine college bureaucracy. You take people who may not be entirely prepared for college and then they have to go the extra mile to get a strong college education. Of course most of them will end up as psychology/communications/sports management majors.

Side note - how many of us would do things differently in college if we went back? I should have gotten a minor or double major, but instead I coasted to an easy, for me, political science degree. I should have taken an American history class. I should have had a minor in math or history, and possibly a double major with one of those. And I'm basically a model college student, and even I feel like I should have gotten more out of college. So yeah, it's hard to expect athletes to do the same.

The other thing: playing a sport should count for academic credit. It's asinine that athletes are expected to essentially work a full time job on top of school and get no credit for it. The purpose of college sports is to produce well rounded people, supposedly, but then these athletes get exactly nothing academically from dedicating a good portion of their lives to the school. This doesn't really solve the problem of athletes not getting an education, but we should acknowledge reality. Plus, I think athletes who are required to balance a 40+ hour a week job while getting a degree is super impressive, even if that degree is communications.
 

goblue96

Disney and Curling Expert
I'd bet it varies a lot from school to school. Michigan has had football and basketball (scholarship) players do engineering degrees. Walks on do tough degrees pretty frequently. They have a starting receiver who wants to go to med school: I think his dad is a doctor. I'm guessing the players aren't exactly encouraged to that - you would have basically no free time being a football player and doing an engineering degree - but they're not prevented from it, either. I would guess a total football factory school like, dunno, Bama, would make sure players aren't getting those degrees.

I'd also bet that it's highly dependent on the player, too. A majority, at least, of football players are not there for school. They don't care that much about the major, so they'll just do whatever. And some that do care may not know how to advocate for themselves or how to come up with a solution if there's a must-take class during practice or something. You're responsible for your own education in college, and a big part of college is simply figuring out the byzantine college bureaucracy. You take people who may not be entirely prepared for college and then they have to go the extra mile to get a strong college education. Of course most of them will end up as psychology/communications/sports management majors.

Side note - how many of us would do things differently in college if we went back? I should have gotten a minor or double major, but instead I coasted to an easy, for me, political science degree. I should have taken an American history class. I should have had a minor in math or history, and possibly a double major with one of those. And I'm basically a model college student, and even I feel like I should have gotten more out of college. So yeah, it's hard to expect athletes to do the same.

The other thing: playing a sport should count for academic credit. It's asinine that athletes are expected to essentially work a full time job on top of school and get no credit for it. The purpose of college sports is to produce well rounded people, supposedly, but then these athletes get exactly nothing academically from dedicating a good portion of their lives to the school. This doesn't really solve the problem of athletes not getting an education, but we should acknowledge reality. Plus, I think athletes who are required to balance a 40+ hour a week job while getting a degree is super impressive, even if that degree is communications.

Another Michigan political science major.

njWtAqA.gif


And like the athletes most of my non-major classes were among the easiest I could find:

Sports and Life in Ancient Rome
Alexander the Great
The Vietnam War - 5 in-class pop quizzes (10 questions) drop the lowest score, 1 5-7 page paper, 1 final exam (given the 9 potential essay questions at the last lecture - professor chose 3 or the 9, TA chose a 4th, you chose 3 of those 4)
Biology for Non-Scientists
Astronomy 101 as a pass/fail class my last semester senior year - class met MWF 12-1 and was only class on Friday. Professor put the lecture notes on this new "internet" thing. As a student with an awesome 9600 baud internet connection, Friday class was now completely optional.
 

DeadMan

aka spiker or DeadMong
Most athletes I had in a class was the one credit, half semester, geology class called Dinosaurs and Other Failures. :laughing:

I also took Astronomy and Psychology 101 as a senior. No football players in those (the astronomy class was actually somewhat difficult, to be fair. Emphasis on somewhat)
 

goblue96

Disney and Curling Expert
Most athletes I had in a class was the one credit, half semester, geology class called Dinosaurs and Other Failures. :laughing:

I also took Astronomy and Psychology 101 as a senior. No football players in those (the astronomy class was actually somewhat difficult, to be fair. Emphasis on somewhat)

If you thought Astromony 101 was somewhat difficult, you did it wrong which probably meant you chose the night-time observation instead of "lab" in the planetarium. That was crazy easy. Just sit in the same seat because they never changed the star orientation so you just memorized the pattern. :laughing:
 

DeadMan

aka spiker or DeadMong
I have a psychology degree. :(

And look where it got you ...

(seriously, though, it was one of the easier degrees at Michigan, which doesn't mean it's a bad degree)

If you thought Astromony 101 was somewhat difficult, you did it wrong which probably meant you chose the night-time observation instead of "lab" in the planetarium. That was crazy easy. Just sit in the same seat because they never changed the star orientation so you just memorized the pattern. :laughing:

It wasn't technically Astronomy 101. It was an intro Astronomy course called the Big Bang Theory or something like that. Let's just say there was some math involved.
 

goblue96

Disney and Curling Expert
It wasn't technically Astronomy 101. It was an intro Astronomy course called the Big Bang Theory or something like that. Let's just say there was some math involved.

Sounds like my half semester one credit course titled “What Einstein Never Knew.” There were reasons why he didn’t know it mostly math reasons.
 

Skeeter

Uber felon
And look where it got you ...

(seriously, though, it was one of the easier degrees at Michigan, which doesn't mean it's a bad degree)



It wasn't technically Astronomy 101. It was an intro Astronomy course called the Big Bang Theory or something like that. Let's just say there was some math involved.
It was easy here too which is why I ended up with it. I was pretty directionless in college. Worked out ok doe.

I was much more selective with my masters degree
 
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