There's No Money For The Players: 69 Million In Buyouts This Year

of what every power 5 football player is already getting from their school, even the ones who contribute little or nothing to the success of their team.  And the ones who sign with the NFL get a lot more out of the deal.

This house of cards is close to coming down.

Yeah but like 60 of that 69 million is going to Charlie Weis from ND. Oh wait; looks like they're paid up now. 

D2 is under the NCAA you going to pay all D2 athletes too? how abou D3,NAIA, Eastern Michigan pays as much as Michigan? If not doesnt that just funnel kids to school that can afford to pay then instead of the power 5 conf. We will have the power 5. A softball player travels and practices as much as a football player do they get the same amount? Or do schools cut sports to pay basketball and football players to remain competitive with the Big boys? So now less student athletes have  opportunities , seems fair

So coaches are making money we get it it's out of control, but guess where else it's out of control? The corporate world and workers aren't getting a cut of that while the CEOs salaries rise. Bottom line is college athletics is giving an opportunity to kids who might not otherwise have one. It also gives some kids a chance at a better life and memories and friendships without debt. 

and it always misses the point. We all know the money is there in *some* places. Texas A&M could and likely would pay NFL salaries to its players and other major powers - especially but not only in the South - wouldn't be far away. Payments would quickly snowball as those schools try to outdo each other, the majority of schools would drop out of that level. It would narrow down to the top 30-40 schools and even within that group there'd be huge disparities between the top dozen or so schools and the rest. Any attempt to regulate payments would be hopeless once that box has been opened (teams would cheat as much as they do now and the same arguments used to argue for any payments would be used to justify the removal of payment restrictions).

And there'd be schools that *don't* really have the money but still spend it in order to keep up. It doesn't make sense for that type of thing to be associated with an educational institution. Pro sports team fail all the time, many run into financial difficulties and go bust, but they're not funded by tuition fees or donations normally. It's only logical for these teams - that are run as businesses - to be organizationally divorced from the universities and to remove any academic component from it.

So you'd quite quickly have a developmental pro league for young players. I'm sure some people would watch it, but minor league sports overall aren't exactly a success story in comparison to college sports. College sports' enduring appeal has been tied to the shared college experience, local pride and a sense of collective ownership. College fans are more fanatical than pro fans and college teams mean more to their communities. The Crimson Tide are Alabama in a way a movable, money-making business like a NFL franchise could never be..the Rams were in St.Louis, now they're in L.A. because of  real estate development schemes. It's all just a transaction and the 'fan' is just defined as the income they generate. Even David Brandon couldn't take Michigan football out of Ann Arbor - even though he consciously chose to imitate pro sports.

Player payments would definitely lead college sports teams aggressively toward that same disconnect between the communities and the sports. It'd be thus the end of college sports. People arguing for it may think they act out of a sense of 'fairness' and they may have some arguments in their favor on that, but they should have no illusions - they are arguing for the destruction of something cherished by themselves and millions of other people.

but most buyouts (and coaches contracts) are largely paid for by boosters clubs or private donations we never hear about.

Maybe 10 to 20 years ago schools (ie tax payers) footed the bill, but that really isn't true anymore.

I'd be 100% for paying players in the form of trusts to be paid out after aquiring a degree.  Like say a player wearing #7 gets a small cut of every jersey sold in his 4 years at a school, but that money is put away unitl he earns a degree and reaches an age like 25 or 30.  Something like that.

At Michigan football players are undercompensated while non-revenue are overcompensated.  Simple as that.

Why does everyone keep saying, "but title ix would stop it".

We're already talking about changing rules to enable paying players. It's just another rule that would need to be changed.

Furthermore, the original text of title ix is

"No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."

This has literally NOTHING to do with paying players. And while, to my knowledge, never seeing a supreme court, it has been ruled acceptable to pay coaches of male teams more since it has nothing to do with federal funding and everything to do with the revenue those individuals generate.

Forbes did an article a couple years ago about this mostly being a red herring argument.

Am I missing something about this or are the people that keep claiming "title ix" just talking out their asses?