Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Wild Hoss]

That sentiment certainly resonates with me ..... but, it's not where things are trending.

The cat's out of the bag. Big time programs and even some of the smaller one's that have latched on to the media gravy train are getting rich. While the players, who are busting their asses for glory, their coaches and administrators buy million dollar homes and with interest free loans form their employers and bank huge sums of money securing their work free futures.

That situation is totally wrong on so many levels. It is no longer defensible and this notion of satisfying athletes with $2500 annual stipends is laughable.

Market forces intertwined with labor economics and the courts are going to force a reasonable outcome. It's just going to take a while.

I would think conferences would be much better off and shorten the process by quitting the NCAA, dumping the anachronistic concept of amateurism in college sports and forming some other national level association to provide guidance. The NCAA is a huge albatross just getting in the way. The Presidents have the power. Someone or some group of them just needs to step up to the plate.

I would point to Hannibal's reply here. Just because they aren't getting paid in term of direct dollars doesn't mean they are not compensated, and well compensated. The tuition, books, housing, food, and clothing adds up to a substantial sum...which most of us paid for ourselves. And the costs of which are ever-increasing.

Now, the schools are making ridiculous money, I agree. Does that merit the players being paid though? Should a janitor at Apple for instance, make substantially more than a janitor at a local pizza joint for doing to same job, just because Apple makes more revenue? Should the pizza joint janitor have his wages doubled if the pizza joint's revenue doubles?

Yes, the organization makes insane money off their efforts...welcome to reality. :shrugs:

That money comes people who root for the name on the front of the jersey, not the back.

[hack]

Correct. But can we do this without the slavery/plantation rhetoric please?

Not talking about the players. I meant the price tag of a college degree compared with its actual value.

[hack]

Now, the schools are making ridiculous money, I agree. Does that merit the players being paid though? Should a janitor at Apple for instance, make substantially more than a janitor at a local pizza joint for doing to same job, just because Apple makes more revenue? Should the pizza joint janitor have his wages doubled if the pizza joint's revenue doubles?

That's simply how our society generally tends to pay people -- according to their ability to generate cash flow, unless it's possible to take away their leverage at the negotiating table. Student athletics is one of those areas where leverage has been stripped from one side.

[Wild Hoss]

They have leverage...every single one of them is free to quit playing football anytime they so chose. If they are unhappy with their situation they can make a go of it in life without a college degree, or find the money to attend on their own.

As for pay...its really got nothing to do with society; its a market issue. A janitor at Apple makes a similar wage to the guy at the pizza joint because its the same work, and the market has found equilibrium at that wage. The earnings of the respective employer are immaterial.

[hack]

The earnings of the respective employer are immaterial.

Agreed, in the sense that bankers at money-losing banks are paid roughly in line with bankers at profitable ones. Couldn't agree less re leverage. There's not even a negotiation, on paper, much less any leverage.

[Jeff Buchanan]

..... its a market issue. A janitor at Apple makes a similar wage to the guy at the pizza joint because its the same work, and the market has found equilibrium at that wage. The earnings of the respective employer are immaterial.

I hesitate but here goes .....

Economists will argue this point but at the macro level, unrestrained capital markets do not find the kind of equilibrium I think you are referring to in a micro sense. But I get your point.

Labor is at a disadvantage in unrestrained capital markets. For example, real world, why would Apple pay US wages to assemble the iPhone when they can do it in Chinese "factories" (that, BTW, work 24/7/365) for a tenth of those wages? They wouldn't and they don't.

There has to be some degree of regulation at some level to make Capitalism work in an equitable way.... if you define working as some level of fairness between the distribution of earned income between labor and the capitalists (the term widely applied here).

Fundamentally, the rights of the players .... IF and ONLY IF .... they are deemed employees (workers) by the courts are in the forefront of this discussion. Its murky territory, I acknowledge this. But I also believe, in the modern age of these college sports and when it comes to College Basketball and Football, the student athletes, the players, are the ones responsible for the enormous amounts of money being earned by the upper tier participants in College Sports.

In your position that getting an education IS, IN FACT, adequate compensation, I would simply ask, would you go to work for Apple for nothing if they told you we (Apple) are going to provide you a job with an opportunity to expand your knowledge about the Apple iOS?

[Ghengis Jon]

Your very last statement about Apple is inadequate, but not unfair. You neglect that part of the 'non-compensation' is room (housing most of the world would gladly accept), board, (food in both quality and quantity that most humans do not receive), health care (U-M healthcare system hardly being substandard), exposure required to have opportunity to make vastly more than what you would at Apple (the NFL) and that irrevocable thing called an education where you could say eff Apple, I want to be a brain surgeon.

All my usual silliness aside, if you want all the poison removed from college athletics, you have to remove the money. But because sports has become such a sacred cow people declare you can not do that and so no one tries. Its much easier to wring one's hands than do something about it. Compensation is putting a band aid on one little toe when gangrene has set in on both legs.

[Tony G]

All my usual silliness aside, if you want all the poison removed from college athletics, you have to remove the money. But because sports has become such a sacred cow people declare you can not do that and so no one tries. Its much easier to wring one's hands than do something about it. Compensation is putting a band aid on one little toe when gangrene has set in on both legs.

"Removing the money" is an impossibilty because it is there from the top down. The only way to remove the money would be to have less eyeballs tuned in to CFB broadcasts, scale down the stadiums and ban sale of the gear from the teams.

This forbes article shows the money involved for the 2013 preseason top 25 alone

http://www.forbes.com/sites/aliciajessop/2013/08/31/the-economics-of-college-football-a-look-at-the-top-25-teams-revenues-and-expenses/#./?&_suid=139816446741502243738665494957

The top 25 had revenues of $1.2B and profits of $675M. U-M was second in profits at 61M behind Texas at 77M.

You can no more take the money out of CFB than you can disarm all the nuclear weapons in the world, remove all handguns from the US, or restore virginity.

[Ghengis Jon]

A Herculean task indeed, but my offered "PBS solution" would change the landscape. Not something to be discussed but instituted. Money is a lot like power, once grasped, most cling on to it with a deathgrip. A real solution (of any sort) would be resisted with psychotic intensity and hyperbola. Athletic competition was not instituted on a collegiate level with revenue generation in mind. A return to its original intent is simply a beancounter/power monger's worst nightmare. Its actual merit would be vilified and distorted.

[Tony G]

You would need a catclysmic event to facilitate such radical behavior change. Something along the line of the Jerry Sandusky case in magnitude but on a widespread national level. Until there are sufficient persons harmed by the current system, it will not change.
(Note: this is the same mentality that drives aviation safety. Regs change AFTER a major accident, not before it.)

[entropy]

I'd like to see the equality debate between the cost and value of a NW educations vs ole miss.

[entropy]

I hesitate but here goes .....

Economists will argue this point but at the macro level, unrestrained capital markets do not find the kind of equilibrium I think you are referring to in a micro sense. But I get your point.

Labor is at a disadvantage in unrestrained capital markets. For example, real world, why would Apple pay US wages to assemble the iPhone when they can do it in Chinese "factories" (that, BTW, work 24/7/365) for a tenth of those wages? They wouldn't and they don't.

There has to be some degree of regulation at some level to make Capitalism work in an equitable way.... if you define working as some level of fairness between the distribution of earned income between labor and the capitalists (the term widely applied here).

Fundamentally, the rights of the players .... IF and ONLY IF .... they are deemed employees (workers) by the courts are in the forefront of this discussion. Its murky territory, I acknowledge this. But I also believe, in the modern age of these college sports and when it comes to College Basketball and Football, the student athletes, the players, are the ones responsible for the enormous amounts of money being earned by the upper tier participants in College Sports.

In your position that getting an education IS, IN FACT, adequate compensation, I would simply ask, would you go to work for Apple for nothing if they told you we (Apple) are going to provide you a job with an opportunity to expand your knowledge about the Apple iOS?

And yet in capital markets there does exist training or velocity programs. Even in unions, wages for new workers are different than season reflecting a learning curve. Education is an investment. So what is the fair value of compensating an investment like this?

[hack]

Yeah but nobody pays fair value. Tuition rises against inflation faster than almost anything else you can buy at a non-negotiable price in this country. The ratio of tuition paid to salary expectations is far smaller. The reasonable expectation of getting taught by tenured faculty is falling too. Odds are larger you're getting taught by an adjunct that isn't paid a living wage, or that more of your education is in the hands of grad student.

It seems silly to speak of fair value, as if it could be set based on any set of measurables. Not a free enough market. The consumer of this education has no leverage in order to influence prices in a way that promotes quality.

[Wild Hoss]

I hesitate but here goes .....

LOL. I hear ya...few people like these discussions Jeff.

Economists will argue this point but at the macro level, unrestrained capital markets do not find the kind of equilibrium I think you are referring to in a micro sense. But I get your point.

Labor is at a disadvantage in unrestrained capital markets. For example, real world, why would Apple pay US wages to assemble the iPhone when they can do it in Chinese "factories" (that, BTW, work 24/7/365) for a tenth of those wages? They wouldn't and they don't.

There has to be some degree of regulation at some level to make Capitalism work in an equitable way.... if you define working as some level of fairness between the distribution of earned income between labor and the capitalists (the term widely applied here).

Fundamentally, the rights of the players .... IF and ONLY IF .... they are deemed employees (workers) by the courts are in the forefront of this discussion. Its murky territory, I acknowledge this. But I also believe, in the modern age of these college sports and when it comes to College Basketball and Football, the student athletes, the players, are the ones responsible for the enormous amounts of money being earned by the upper tier participants in College Sports.

In your position that getting an education IS, IN FACT, adequate compensation, I would simply ask, would you go to work for Apple for nothing if they told you we (Apple) are going to provide you a job with an opportunity to expand your knowledge about the Apple iOS?

I don?t think your outsourcing example works here, within the janitorial metric, simply because the jobs have to stay here....if that makes sense. You cannot outsource the sweeping of the floors of your office in Oregon to somebody in Taipei, if you get what I mean. In that sense, an equilibrium has been reached...what one company in California pays for that service will be close to what others in California will pay. What their respective revenues are doesn?t come into play.

Secondly, I don?t really buy the argument that the players ?earn? the money. The players play...but people buy tickets to see the uniform. That?s why places like NU and Michigan sell out year after year, despite the fact player turnover is 100% every five years. As much as I dislike the comparison...players are just widgets.

Lastly...I don?t think the second Apple comparison works either, because in that example others would be paying- handsome sums- for the same opportunity. If you or I could get that opportunity for free, then it would be compensation. JMO.

[Ghengis Jon]

Upholding the Criminoles' reputation:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/30/us/florida-winston-shoplifting-allegation/index.html?hpt=hp_t2