Cite?

Huh? How could anyone cite that?

Let me just interject briefly and note that Bolshevik Bud Selig hates America and does disrepute to the good name of used car salesmen the world over.

If they were paid, the revenues would probably go way down, because it would be seen as low-level professional football rather than high-level college football.

I highly, highly doubt it, as long as the university continues to put their name behind the team. Most college football and basketball fans don't care about the "student" part of student athletics.

This is possibly true, but if it is, it certainly makes all those mawkish "student-athlete" PR ads the universities give us at halftime among the more pointless, not to mention cynical, expenditures in their entire budget.

And I'm not sure that it's true, anyway. I think you have to distinguish between the generic football junkies, both among the alumni and in general, and the slightly more highminded alumni and students themselves, who I think would raise an enormous stink about paying athletes, UNLESS---POSSIBLY---the payments were (a) given out to all athletes, and not just those in the "revenue producing" sports; and / or (b) similar payment were also awarded to non-athletes who might bring money to the university.

Because believe it or not, there are plenty of students and alumni who don't see athletes as "professionals," and who would object to treating them as such. Because (again) believe it or not, there are plenty of alumni and students who, while they recognize the double standard and preferential treatment that athletes routinely get in campus life, and have learned to live with it if not love it, might not appreciate getting their noses further rubbed in it by cash payments to athletes.

The reality is that many athletes in the "revenue producing" sports at big time universites would never be admitted by normal admission standards. We all know that, whether we think it's good or bad. And they're all getting free educations through scholarship money that could easily be given to far more academically qualified low income students. Again, this is a simple fact, not necessarily a value judgment. There are certainly societal benefits that come out of this, and it's a truism that well led lives don't necessarily correlate to the best high school GPAs or SATs.

And so we have in effect another one of society's great unspoken Grand Bargains. We look the other way when it comes to admissions standards, and we also look the other way when we reflect upon the (sometimes) extraordinary profits (beyond the cash value of a scholarship) that a handful of athletes bring to the university's bottom line, in the form of receipts, licensing and most importantly, alumni contributions. So it works both ways, and people on both sides learn to live with it. If there were really some sort of a pure and perfect moral (or even "aesthetic") resolution to all this, I suspect we would have arrived at it long ago.

No; are you? Nobody thinks the pastor is an amateur, so how is any of that relevant to the discussion that the adults in this room are trying to have? Do you really not understand the difference between not-for-profit and amateur?

Do you understand that the presence of money does not make an activity primarily commercial?

Hint: "commercial" is not the opposite of "amateur." "Professional" is. And the pastor is certainly a professional, not an amateur. You don't seem to understand what amateur even means.

Plenty of them do. Get out of your own little circles and you'll understand. No serious person understands a scholarship at an institution to vitiate amateur status. Tiger Woods participated in the U.S. Amateur while on scholarship at Stanford.

"Amateur status" is a buzzword with a legalistic definition, not used as an ordinary phrase in a lay sense. Everyone understands that we pretend that college sports are amateur so we say that college athletes have 'amateur status,' but everyone intelligent also understand that this is not the same thing as actually being amateur.

Ordinary people understand that when someone gets paid, he is no longer an amateur. Intelligent people understand that a college scholarship is payment. (In fact, whenever someone argues that college athletes should get paid a salary because otherwise they're being exploited, hypocrites such as yourself will say, "They are getting paid -- a scholarship.")

First, cash is actually irrelevant. There's nothing magical about cash; it's just a means of exchange to make the economy run more smoothly than it would if we lived in a barter society. They are being compensated, which means that it's already not amateurism.

Then demonstrate that a scholarship for a school activity is properly denominated an "exchange" in other than the most literal and inane sense.

Words have meaning. In what sense is it not an exchange? Metaphorically?

It certainly is not an exchange for primarily commercial purposes. Until that's shown, I wouldn't even concede that the term is properly applied.

First, of course it's for primarily commercial purposes. College sports are big business. Second, as I point about above, you don't even seem to grasp what amateurism is. "Commercial purposes" is not the opposite of amateurism.

If this is the case, then in a free market, the college wouldn't offer anything more than an education.

There's nothing to prevent anyone from starting teams of 18 to 22 year olds and paying them. Nobody does that because there is no market for that level of football without the student/athlete brand. Bad football is a free market.

There's nothing to prevent anyone from starting teams of 18 to 22 year olds and paying them. Nobody does that because there is no market for that level of football without the student/athlete brand. Bad football is a free market.

Again, this isn't an argument against a free market for college athletes. If there's no market for college student/athletes if you have to offer them actual money, then colleges won't freely offer anything more than the education in a free market.

People on scholarship for things other than sports can go out get a job in their field and still keep their scholarship and participate in school activities involving their field, right?

A person on a athletic scholarship can't get a job playing their particular sport still keep their scholarship and continue playing their sport, right? So why shouldn't they be paid?

*Edited to make more sense.

And the pastor is certainly a professional, not an amateur.

I don't know how you can say that before you've heard the sermon.

There's nothing to prevent anyone from starting teams of 18 to 22 year olds and paying them. Nobody does that because there is no market for that level of football without the student/athlete brand. Bad football is a free market.

Well, one thing to prevent anyone from doing that, as I mentioned earlier, is that one would have to compete with a vast establishment of government-subsidized competitors.

Yes, but a lot of the fan interest comes from the fact that the teams represent their respective state universities.

Holy crap, a thread where both Nieporent and JC make sense.

Even more amazing.

Kevin had a cogent thought in #116.

Speaking of endemic corruption, my experience with corporations in the U.S. is that nearly all of them have institutionalized the practice of theft. It was impossible for me to try to buy a pair of sneakers at Foot Locker and like chains without their attempting bait and switch tactics. I've never been to a U-Haul that didn't try to scame on the gas. Every Jiffy Lube I've ever visiting tried to overcharge or sell me parts I didn't need. I've had four landlords, rock-ribbed Republicans all, and each tried to help himself to my security deposit when I moved... I doubt there were ever "good old days", but was it always quite this pervasive?