It's Saturday, thus it is poll day!
With the NCAA march madness tournament starting soon, collegiate athletics will be getting a lot of mainstream attention. In 2021 the NCAA lifted a ban on athletes profiting off their name, image or likeness from outside parties. This past December the NCAA proposed new rules that would allow athletes to also be compensated by schools directly for their name, images and likeness.
Do you think college athletes should be paid?
Yes- By schools and outside parties50.0%
Yes- By outside parties only25.0%
No- They already get free tuition25.0%
8 votes \ poll ended
My attitude about this has swung all over the place. I've landed on "Just abolish government university funding and let the rest shake itself out."
I used to think athletics should be excised from college, but now I'm more inclined towards turning basketball, football, etc. into college majors. Sports is a big industry after all and these athletes are putting in a lot of legitimate professional training. They blow off their "real" classes because they're not actually important to them. It's not like most of the existing majors are substantially more academic than sports, either.
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Well that escalated quickly. Haha.
The colleges are profiting big time off sports but by the same token these kids essentially get a free ride and a free diploma so essentially they are already being paid in a way, it's just a credit towards education instead of a salary. I definitely think they should be able to earn money from outside sources. What's the difference between a regular student going to work at the local coffee shop part time and a student athlete going to do a radio ad for the local coffee shop. If EA is using their likeness in college sports games then there should be a share for the school and the athletes. I am not sure about direct payment from schools though. Maybe if they are getting paid to play they should pay tuition like everyone else and they can earn money from outside sources to cover that tuition.
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I just don't see an ethical dimension to this question anymore, beyond the spending of tax dollars. I don't think they were being exploited when they couldn't get paid and I don't think it's unfair for them to get tons of perks.
If it's privately raised money, who cares? Let them get paid their marginal value product like every other worker. If they're just majoring in their sport, then beyond general ed requirements, they probably aren't even taking the classes that tuition would go towards.
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Do you ever look at the leaderboard and try to guess all the hiding stackers in the top ten? Pretty confident I know who they all are but unsure of the order.
I was going to do a post about it but I already kicked the hornets nest once this week with the territory rent post.
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Other than being sure that siggy's one of them, I haven't given much thought to who the other cowards are.
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Who do you think the other top four are?
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Haha I thought you weren't giving a second thought to the cowards.
3 of them are not eligible. That would be k00b, KR and ek. The other is davidw and of course siggy. I know it's david because last week he wasn't hiding and I commented about him rising to the top 3 or 4 and then the next day he was hidden so I imagine he is still there.
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Yeah, I remember davidw being up there, but I hadn't noticed that he went into hiding.
As for the others, I assumed they weren't on the leader board at all. That's why I had no idea who it was: they were the only people who came to mind.
So abolish gov funding it is. I can dig it.
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