I voted for choice #2: “Allow athletes to reap any compensation they want, such as from autographs, merchandise, endorsements, or YouTube videos, but NOT direct payment from the colleges”, but I could be persuaded to also allow some type of direct compensation as well.
Colleges make hundreds of millions of dollars and coaches are often the highest paid employees in the state as a direct result of the talents and labors of their student athletes. Time to allow compensation for services rendered.
Brian B
4 years ago
Keep the current ban in place. Like it, or not, athletes are ambassadors for their schools. Endorsements and merchandising may reflect negatively on the values and mission of the schools they represent. Their focus should be on their athletic talents, not self-promotion for monetary gain.
Arnie
4 years ago
The meat and potatoes poll this week is the one on the Constitution’s Article 5. This one on the NCAA must be the bread and circuses poll.
The Freezing Senior
4 years ago
AND NOW TO THE TRUTH OF THIS MATTER . . . .
Since the money garnered by these athletes will be considered as EARNED INCOME it will be TAXED as such.
Perhaps some of you will understand that this is nothing more than another tax scheme
instigated by the government to enrich it’s coffers by deception of doing the right thing in
the name of “fairness”. Got it now ?
GBA/KAG #TRUMP2020 – Deus Vult !
Cynthia L Barrie
4 years ago
A scholarship is not adequate compensation for carrying a full load of classes and then taking on what amounts to a full time job. That is an added burden, so compensation is only fair. There are socio-ecomic groups that have athletic talent, but cannot afford college without the scholarship. Scholarships prevent you from taking money and the opportunity to work is too much to ask when you are in class or at practice/games a good portion of every day. Allow them the opportunity to earn a financial shot in the arm IF they are good enough to be desired as a “face” for a brand or an autograph. You DO realize that will be the minority of the athletes, right?
BobA
4 years ago
If this is approved, which I don’t agree with, athletes should have other requirements like maintaining a certain scholastic grade. Too many jocks play sports but do not achieve what college should be about. Learning!!
Yahulia
4 years ago
With the high cost of a college education, amy student should have the freedom to make money to offset cost. Even a music student who writes a movie score.
Dave Maltby
4 years ago
Let them keep the money and pay for their tuition and fees. If they are making money they don’t need a scholarship, they can pay for their education.
Maurice D
4 years ago
Why should fruits of taxpayer’s labors subsidize students attending (public) institutions and entities – without just restitution – in this way?
Marie M
4 years ago
I’m not in favor of compensating college athletes, at their young age are they able to be financially responsible. On the other hand I know that many of them come from poor families and that would help them. I think paying them is going to create problems as to how much to pay them, the smaller colleges can’t compete with the larger ones, will they pay the students that play other sports, baseball, basketball etc.
Don warner
4 years ago
I think they should be allowed to get a real job ! One that’s not dangerous !!
Rick Marlowe
4 years ago
I am okay with athletes capitalizing on their talents, but this will quickly be used as an unfair advantage for schools in California, New York and other locations that have media companies near by. The NCAA is opening a Pandora’s Box of financial violations. Restrict the number of people able to access these opportunities at each school, that may reduce the amount of cheating.
Gary
4 years ago
What part “Amateur ” don’t people understand? No pay for ” students ” !
Willyjon
4 years ago
Want to get paid? Then, no scholarship! Pay for their education AND no graduation until student debt is clear. Personally, keep the way it is. They’re not professionals.
John K
4 years ago
Consider this- It would then be in the best interest of corporate sponsors that “their” athlete is successful. How far would they go to ensure that? When you start talking big money, the abuses will come.
Yvonne Viscosi
4 years ago
So that person who is actually smart and studies, gets no reward. But play football/basketball even if you’re stupid, we should pay. That’s pathetic.
Lynn r johnson
4 years ago
With out ruining college sports and compensation should only be in the form of a stipend such as 500 600 hundred a month
Bob L.
4 years ago
Today, too much emphasis is placed on going to college. IF there is a shortage of trade and crafts workers in America, it is because (common core) schools stress high tech employment as most desirable. Mostly gone from schools today are shop and home economics classes as well as State school system trade schools where skills like machine shop, welding, drafting, electrician, diesel and auto mechanics were taught. Yes, there are now businesses that teach those skills, but they cost nearly as much as going to college which means taking on debt. College during the 1950’s didn’t bury students in the kind of debt it does today, I knew a couple of doctors who worked while paying their way through college and their wives worked when they reached the stage in school that they couldn’t work outside jobs while interning. I had an Uncle who had a newspaper route to help pay his way to a geologist degree. None of them had big student loan debt, if any at all.
Another big problem I have with colleges is the size and importance placed on athletics today. Athletics have a place in college, but as sports programs only, not as minor league farms for professional sports. I question the value of any degree “earned” by sports majors.
LauraC
4 years ago
College is for learning. Sports are extra activities that should take a back seat to learning. Maybe scholarships can be improved to cover more costs. Universities paying supposed students to come in to play a sport is not conducive to learning, but more to commerce. If the student is that talented, let them go pro if money is what they’re after. Too many student athletes are passed through college without accomplishing the real goal of being smarter at the end…but then, so are many non athlete students.
Jeanne
4 years ago
It IS a tricky business to start allowing players to “play for pay.” However, with so many scholarships offered to eventual “one and dones,” doesn’t that make their first year of playing college ball essentially a means of getting into the NBA? And doing so “for free”? Team cohesiveness suffers for ALL – players, coaches, students, alums – when foundations are ripped apart by one and done departures. What happens to the remaining team members, left wondering if/maybe I’m just not good enough, after all, there’ll be a new class of one and dones next year to compete with/against? Unfortunately, ones and dones are here to stay and I don’t see the NCAA allowing the re-writing of scholarships w/the caveat that players with full rides MUST stay for the full four-year term AND earn a viable degree. Dangling mega-bucks in front of “kids” who just got their driver’s license is simply too tempting to pass up.
Melinda
4 years ago
When I went to college, I worked part time to earn my way and supplement scholarships. I think this is what’s happening, and should be allowed as long as it’s treated like income, and taxed as such. No connection to the college should be needed for this “employment”. A scholarship is already a payment from the college.
JustMe
4 years ago
Maybe colleges should just focus on learning and bans sports altogether.
K Square
4 years ago
Oops! You forgot the fifth option: “I don’t care.“
Higher Education in the US provides very little higher education. With public institutions offering degrees in gender studies and underwater basket weaving, it doesn’t surprise me that kids want to get paid for playing sports. I don’t care. I am concentrating my support on technical and trade education. That’s where the real needs are.
Richard
4 years ago
Eliminate all college “sports.” Let these athletes form clubs that pay their own way. College “athletics” is and always has been a breeding ground for corruption, fraud, and crime. Needs to be completely divorced from higher education (which has enough of its own fraud).
Mberry
4 years ago
Allow them to make money and reinburse colleges for educational costs.
Linda Bethel
4 years ago
If this should go through it would mean colleges are no longer a place of academia higher learning. It becomes a company of employees.
Jones
4 years ago
As soon as this policy is put in place then someone has to police how much each athlete is receiving and from who. At that time it all becomes about the money not sports or education. How about the chess club? Are we going to check up on them also?
G shears
4 years ago
I’ve all but stopped watching professional football because the professional athletes and their unions have ruined the sport. Now they want to do the same with college football, I guess I’ll move to high school or maybe quit watching all together. ( TRUMP WINS IN A LANDSLIDE 2020 )
Chuck L
4 years ago
Make em earn a grade. Ive been in classes w/ jocks that didnt learn a thing and got B++ or A.. If they had to study they wouldnt have time for jocking. Making it profitable w/ all kinds of payoffs would complicate the situation several times over.
On the other hand Congress gets all kinds of tax free payoffs and bribes and it is liked by all(congress). What is good for the goose….!!
Joe
4 years ago
College is about education, not sports!
Art
4 years ago
This issue has many facets that have to reconciled. I was a “full ride” player many years ago. Another “full ride” and myself came to the conclusion that our university was making big bucks off of the performances and appearances of our team. We almost wrote a book about it. Fast forward to today and you may come to find that there is no clear cut answer and that a one size fits all sure isn’t any answer. There was much ado about the football national championship playoffs. Some how it was worked out. Cool smart heads will prevail on this also.
Dr James Meeks
4 years ago
If you start this they will eventually be leaving High School early like they now leave College early and really ruin the game!
Dawn
4 years ago
If athletes (football for example) are paid, how would that affect the price of game tickets? Some of the smaller schools have difficulty filling the stands as it is.
Additionally, agree with those who have suggested the smaller schools would be at a major disadvantage if paying athletes prevails.
Leave things as they are!
Ron ' Bing '
4 years ago
Terrible financial move for college athletes. Just a question?? Is it just football- – or all sports ; women etc . Now ! Congressman ( congressindividual { PC } ) proposing taxing royalties – – next accountant, mkt. director , Manager.
john mcinerny
4 years ago
The colleges and universities in the D1 level conferences are actually those who have changed or perhaps corrupted what college education and college sports experience “should be about” or was at its conception. These universities are heaping ridiculous amounts of money towards the sports programs and are putting too much emphasis into winning at all costs for their “image”.
The money they receive from TV contracts, sporting equipment companies, etc., and that which they pay for the coaches for major sports programs is amazing and certainly not commensurate with what the coaches actually do. It is the talent of the student athletes that have more role in the outcome of a winning sports program. Yet, the universities, coaches, and the NCAA are making loads of money off the talent and output of the players/athletes. If we truly want to see the student athlete focus on the studies and the “what college sports is about”, then we need to first expect the colleges and universities themselves (administration in charge) and the NCAA, and the television networks re-focus their attention on the college student-athlete experience, rather than chasing and making loads of money from the college games. But, as it is now, most of the universities, administrations, NCAA, and TV, etc., are all full of their righteous bologne with their priority of chasing the almighty big buck off the talent of the “stabled” athletes. The college sports experience and that of the college student-athlete needs to first change at the administration and NCAA level.
Ron ' Bing '
4 years ago
Terrible financial move for college athletes. Just a question? Is it just for football or all sports- – women, etc. Now ! Congressman ( CongressIndividual { PC }. proposing taxing royalties – – next accountant, mkt. director, Manager.
Bryan
4 years ago
I don’t really care. So, I voted no opinion. Sports in this country have become too politicized.
I enjoy self challenging sports like clays, targets and hunting. Keeps me from getting fat on the weekends. Life’s not a fantasy played out on TV or in the stands at the arena unless your a participant.
Get out and enjoy doing something with yourself and your family. That’s what counts and makes you a better individual.
D's
4 years ago
Who sells autographs and merchandise? Are college students going to have to pay more for tickets for games? I smell a RAT!!!
Les Jones
4 years ago
It’s a sham. College sports already pervert the reason they exist. They have simply become nurseries for the NFL etc while seldom producing athletes with a real college education. Much of the money earned by their sports enterprises is channeled back into huge sports staff salaries and ever larger facilities.
It’s about the education stupid!
Hadababy Itsaboy
4 years ago
Paying bail money would be enough for many of them….
Ellen J
4 years ago
The biggest problem I see with this new rule is that many of these athletes are very immature and have too many ‘connections’ to bad influences(just look at how many NFL and NBA players have found themselves in legal proceedings)–now throw in some money for them to flash around, I am sure there is going to be a huge leap in arrests of these student athletes.
Smosss
4 years ago
I believe that removing restrictions would result in more corruption and under table payments. The whole point of college is to get an education.
Howard in Naples
4 years ago
The cost of supporting an athlete, in college, is extracted from the gross receipts realized by charging the non-athletes a premium for their desire to sit in a classroom. The college also has a monetary charge for sitting in a stadium to watch the athletes exchange their labors for some fleeting recognition. Alumni and corporate donors collectively add multi-thousands of dollars to athletic departments at colleges. So, what is the real cost, to the college, to have a student athlete sit in a classroom? To say that an athlete is only a student and is not entitled to seek adequate compensation for using/demonstrating his/her skills, in an arena where harm and injury are a real possibility, is wrong-headed and immoral.
George Phillips
4 years ago
All the college athletes work very hard to achieve their personal goals – some should not be rewarded/compensated while others not. Doesn’t receiving compensation classifying these “receiving” students as professional?
Cookie
4 years ago
If this is put into place, why not just skip college and go directly into professional sports? Too many already leave college with no degree to become professionals. And look what most of the professional athletes have become—thugs! We as a nation are focusing on the wrong thing—sports, and not education! And public education is already pathetic enough, based on the news about Common Core yielding the least educated group in decades!
rKf
4 years ago
It’s not a free market if money is extorted from citizens by government to underwrite state-run institutions.
Arnie
4 years ago
There is a much more important poll from AMAC this week that AMAC forgot to mention in their update email.
Click on the VIEW ALL POLLS button to see it.
It’s’ about redoing the Constitution.
American Believer
4 years ago
Let them reap the monies and tax them, AND their scholarships just like ordinary income.
Dean
4 years ago
Increasing the scholarships to include room and board along with the books and tuition would solve the problems that athletes are complaining about.
William Barton
4 years ago
I know I am of the minority opinion. College sports are great and should be continued. The term amateur athlete has become a farce. Players should be able to negotiate the best deal they can get, just like any other segment of our capitalist society. Coaches and schools are making a fortune on the backs of these players who risk everything. If they get seriously hurt they are done. Why are tax payer funded schools paying coaches and athletic directors millions of dollars for their services but the players who make them possible get very little. Sorry but they are taking advantage of these players who have no representation.
Hey NCAA, welcome to the 21st century.
I voted for choice #2: “Allow athletes to reap any compensation they want, such as from autographs, merchandise, endorsements, or YouTube videos, but NOT direct payment from the colleges”, but I could be persuaded to also allow some type of direct compensation as well.
Colleges make hundreds of millions of dollars and coaches are often the highest paid employees in the state as a direct result of the talents and labors of their student athletes. Time to allow compensation for services rendered.
Keep the current ban in place. Like it, or not, athletes are ambassadors for their schools. Endorsements and merchandising may reflect negatively on the values and mission of the schools they represent. Their focus should be on their athletic talents, not self-promotion for monetary gain.
The meat and potatoes poll this week is the one on the Constitution’s Article 5. This one on the NCAA must be the bread and circuses poll.
AND NOW TO THE TRUTH OF THIS MATTER . . . .
Since the money garnered by these athletes will be considered as EARNED INCOME it will be TAXED as such.
Perhaps some of you will understand that this is nothing more than another tax scheme
instigated by the government to enrich it’s coffers by deception of doing the right thing in
the name of “fairness”. Got it now ?
GBA/KAG #TRUMP2020 – Deus Vult !
A scholarship is not adequate compensation for carrying a full load of classes and then taking on what amounts to a full time job. That is an added burden, so compensation is only fair. There are socio-ecomic groups that have athletic talent, but cannot afford college without the scholarship. Scholarships prevent you from taking money and the opportunity to work is too much to ask when you are in class or at practice/games a good portion of every day. Allow them the opportunity to earn a financial shot in the arm IF they are good enough to be desired as a “face” for a brand or an autograph. You DO realize that will be the minority of the athletes, right?
If this is approved, which I don’t agree with, athletes should have other requirements like maintaining a certain scholastic grade. Too many jocks play sports but do not achieve what college should be about. Learning!!
With the high cost of a college education, amy student should have the freedom to make money to offset cost. Even a music student who writes a movie score.
Let them keep the money and pay for their tuition and fees. If they are making money they don’t need a scholarship, they can pay for their education.
Why should fruits of taxpayer’s labors subsidize students attending (public) institutions and entities – without just restitution – in this way?
I’m not in favor of compensating college athletes, at their young age are they able to be financially responsible. On the other hand I know that many of them come from poor families and that would help them. I think paying them is going to create problems as to how much to pay them, the smaller colleges can’t compete with the larger ones, will they pay the students that play other sports, baseball, basketball etc.
I think they should be allowed to get a real job ! One that’s not dangerous !!
I am okay with athletes capitalizing on their talents, but this will quickly be used as an unfair advantage for schools in California, New York and other locations that have media companies near by. The NCAA is opening a Pandora’s Box of financial violations. Restrict the number of people able to access these opportunities at each school, that may reduce the amount of cheating.
What part “Amateur ” don’t people understand? No pay for ” students ” !
Want to get paid? Then, no scholarship! Pay for their education AND no graduation until student debt is clear. Personally, keep the way it is. They’re not professionals.
Consider this- It would then be in the best interest of corporate sponsors that “their” athlete is successful. How far would they go to ensure that? When you start talking big money, the abuses will come.
So that person who is actually smart and studies, gets no reward. But play football/basketball even if you’re stupid, we should pay. That’s pathetic.
With out ruining college sports and compensation should only be in the form of a stipend such as 500 600 hundred a month
Today, too much emphasis is placed on going to college. IF there is a shortage of trade and crafts workers in America, it is because (common core) schools stress high tech employment as most desirable. Mostly gone from schools today are shop and home economics classes as well as State school system trade schools where skills like machine shop, welding, drafting, electrician, diesel and auto mechanics were taught. Yes, there are now businesses that teach those skills, but they cost nearly as much as going to college which means taking on debt. College during the 1950’s didn’t bury students in the kind of debt it does today, I knew a couple of doctors who worked while paying their way through college and their wives worked when they reached the stage in school that they couldn’t work outside jobs while interning. I had an Uncle who had a newspaper route to help pay his way to a geologist degree. None of them had big student loan debt, if any at all.
Another big problem I have with colleges is the size and importance placed on athletics today. Athletics have a place in college, but as sports programs only, not as minor league farms for professional sports. I question the value of any degree “earned” by sports majors.
College is for learning. Sports are extra activities that should take a back seat to learning. Maybe scholarships can be improved to cover more costs. Universities paying supposed students to come in to play a sport is not conducive to learning, but more to commerce. If the student is that talented, let them go pro if money is what they’re after. Too many student athletes are passed through college without accomplishing the real goal of being smarter at the end…but then, so are many non athlete students.
It IS a tricky business to start allowing players to “play for pay.” However, with so many scholarships offered to eventual “one and dones,” doesn’t that make their first year of playing college ball essentially a means of getting into the NBA? And doing so “for free”? Team cohesiveness suffers for ALL – players, coaches, students, alums – when foundations are ripped apart by one and done departures. What happens to the remaining team members, left wondering if/maybe I’m just not good enough, after all, there’ll be a new class of one and dones next year to compete with/against? Unfortunately, ones and dones are here to stay and I don’t see the NCAA allowing the re-writing of scholarships w/the caveat that players with full rides MUST stay for the full four-year term AND earn a viable degree. Dangling mega-bucks in front of “kids” who just got their driver’s license is simply too tempting to pass up.
When I went to college, I worked part time to earn my way and supplement scholarships. I think this is what’s happening, and should be allowed as long as it’s treated like income, and taxed as such. No connection to the college should be needed for this “employment”. A scholarship is already a payment from the college.
Maybe colleges should just focus on learning and bans sports altogether.
Oops! You forgot the fifth option: “I don’t care.“
Higher Education in the US provides very little higher education. With public institutions offering degrees in gender studies and underwater basket weaving, it doesn’t surprise me that kids want to get paid for playing sports. I don’t care. I am concentrating my support on technical and trade education. That’s where the real needs are.
Eliminate all college “sports.” Let these athletes form clubs that pay their own way. College “athletics” is and always has been a breeding ground for corruption, fraud, and crime. Needs to be completely divorced from higher education (which has enough of its own fraud).
Allow them to make money and reinburse colleges for educational costs.
If this should go through it would mean colleges are no longer a place of academia higher learning. It becomes a company of employees.
As soon as this policy is put in place then someone has to police how much each athlete is receiving and from who. At that time it all becomes about the money not sports or education. How about the chess club? Are we going to check up on them also?
I’ve all but stopped watching professional football because the professional athletes and their unions have ruined the sport. Now they want to do the same with college football, I guess I’ll move to high school or maybe quit watching all together. ( TRUMP WINS IN A LANDSLIDE 2020 )
Make em earn a grade. Ive been in classes w/ jocks that didnt learn a thing and got B++ or A.. If they had to study they wouldnt have time for jocking. Making it profitable w/ all kinds of payoffs would complicate the situation several times over.
On the other hand Congress gets all kinds of tax free payoffs and bribes and it is liked by all(congress). What is good for the goose….!!
College is about education, not sports!
This issue has many facets that have to reconciled. I was a “full ride” player many years ago. Another “full ride” and myself came to the conclusion that our university was making big bucks off of the performances and appearances of our team. We almost wrote a book about it. Fast forward to today and you may come to find that there is no clear cut answer and that a one size fits all sure isn’t any answer. There was much ado about the football national championship playoffs. Some how it was worked out. Cool smart heads will prevail on this also.
If you start this they will eventually be leaving High School early like they now leave College early and really ruin the game!
If athletes (football for example) are paid, how would that affect the price of game tickets? Some of the smaller schools have difficulty filling the stands as it is.
Additionally, agree with those who have suggested the smaller schools would be at a major disadvantage if paying athletes prevails.
Leave things as they are!
Terrible financial move for college athletes. Just a question?? Is it just football- – or all sports ; women etc . Now ! Congressman ( congressindividual { PC } ) proposing taxing royalties – – next accountant, mkt. director , Manager.
The colleges and universities in the D1 level conferences are actually those who have changed or perhaps corrupted what college education and college sports experience “should be about” or was at its conception. These universities are heaping ridiculous amounts of money towards the sports programs and are putting too much emphasis into winning at all costs for their “image”.
The money they receive from TV contracts, sporting equipment companies, etc., and that which they pay for the coaches for major sports programs is amazing and certainly not commensurate with what the coaches actually do. It is the talent of the student athletes that have more role in the outcome of a winning sports program. Yet, the universities, coaches, and the NCAA are making loads of money off the talent and output of the players/athletes. If we truly want to see the student athlete focus on the studies and the “what college sports is about”, then we need to first expect the colleges and universities themselves (administration in charge) and the NCAA, and the television networks re-focus their attention on the college student-athlete experience, rather than chasing and making loads of money from the college games. But, as it is now, most of the universities, administrations, NCAA, and TV, etc., are all full of their righteous bologne with their priority of chasing the almighty big buck off the talent of the “stabled” athletes. The college sports experience and that of the college student-athlete needs to first change at the administration and NCAA level.
Terrible financial move for college athletes. Just a question? Is it just for football or all sports- – women, etc. Now ! Congressman ( CongressIndividual { PC }. proposing taxing royalties – – next accountant, mkt. director, Manager.
I don’t really care. So, I voted no opinion. Sports in this country have become too politicized.
I enjoy self challenging sports like clays, targets and hunting. Keeps me from getting fat on the weekends. Life’s not a fantasy played out on TV or in the stands at the arena unless your a participant.
Get out and enjoy doing something with yourself and your family. That’s what counts and makes you a better individual.
Who sells autographs and merchandise? Are college students going to have to pay more for tickets for games? I smell a RAT!!!
It’s a sham. College sports already pervert the reason they exist. They have simply become nurseries for the NFL etc while seldom producing athletes with a real college education. Much of the money earned by their sports enterprises is channeled back into huge sports staff salaries and ever larger facilities.
It’s about the education stupid!
Paying bail money would be enough for many of them….
The biggest problem I see with this new rule is that many of these athletes are very immature and have too many ‘connections’ to bad influences(just look at how many NFL and NBA players have found themselves in legal proceedings)–now throw in some money for them to flash around, I am sure there is going to be a huge leap in arrests of these student athletes.
I believe that removing restrictions would result in more corruption and under table payments. The whole point of college is to get an education.
The cost of supporting an athlete, in college, is extracted from the gross receipts realized by charging the non-athletes a premium for their desire to sit in a classroom. The college also has a monetary charge for sitting in a stadium to watch the athletes exchange their labors for some fleeting recognition. Alumni and corporate donors collectively add multi-thousands of dollars to athletic departments at colleges. So, what is the real cost, to the college, to have a student athlete sit in a classroom? To say that an athlete is only a student and is not entitled to seek adequate compensation for using/demonstrating his/her skills, in an arena where harm and injury are a real possibility, is wrong-headed and immoral.
All the college athletes work very hard to achieve their personal goals – some should not be rewarded/compensated while others not. Doesn’t receiving compensation classifying these “receiving” students as professional?
If this is put into place, why not just skip college and go directly into professional sports? Too many already leave college with no degree to become professionals. And look what most of the professional athletes have become—thugs! We as a nation are focusing on the wrong thing—sports, and not education! And public education is already pathetic enough, based on the news about Common Core yielding the least educated group in decades!
It’s not a free market if money is extorted from citizens by government to underwrite state-run institutions.
There is a much more important poll from AMAC this week that AMAC forgot to mention in their update email.
Click on the VIEW ALL POLLS button to see it.
It’s’ about redoing the Constitution.
Let them reap the monies and tax them, AND their scholarships just like ordinary income.
Increasing the scholarships to include room and board along with the books and tuition would solve the problems that athletes are complaining about.
I know I am of the minority opinion. College sports are great and should be continued. The term amateur athlete has become a farce. Players should be able to negotiate the best deal they can get, just like any other segment of our capitalist society. Coaches and schools are making a fortune on the backs of these players who risk everything. If they get seriously hurt they are done. Why are tax payer funded schools paying coaches and athletic directors millions of dollars for their services but the players who make them possible get very little. Sorry but they are taking advantage of these players who have no representation.