[chadash]

In the current system, schools need to have an equivalent number of sports teams (and slots) for men and women, with the same number of scholarships (the law governing this is called Title IX). Generally speaking, women's sports don't bring in money for schools, whereas football at a competitive school will bring in money in the form of TV deals and even donations from alumni. So essentially, the football and basketball teams subsidize the rest of the athletic department. If you had to pay the athletes in these sports, then there'd be less money to go around for other teams that don't generate revenue. But at a minimum, you'd still need a few women's teams because of Title IX.

EDIT: to clarify, I personally think it's ridiculous that star college athletes don't get paid given how much time those athletes put in and how much money they bring in for schools, but I also think that at least at the schools with huge athletic programs it'll have some effect on other sports.

[slg]

>If you had to pay the athletes in these sports, then there'd be less money to go around for other teams that don't generate revenue.

This relies on the assumption that sports are somehow separate from a school's educational mission and therefore must be funded by the profit from other sports. There are a maximum of only 2 or 3 dozen athletic departments that are self sufficient in the manner you suggest. The rest fund sports the same way they fund any other extracurricular activity.

I'm not sure we should require sports to fund themselves when we don't have that requirement on something like a drama or music departments. The understudy in a school play is probably no more likely to make a career out of acting than the backup QB is to make a career out of football, so why do we pretend one is a worthwhile academic pursuit and one isn't?

[Loughla]

Your math doesn't work out here. I can't major in football, I absolutely can major in drama and/or music. From my experience, club sports and clubs such as the theater club are funded via student fees, whereas departmental projects such as drama and music are funded via tuition.

In theory, the major areas are self-funding because of the tuition costs.

[slg]

>Your math doesn't work out here. I can't major in football

Literally, no you can't major in football. From a practical standpoint many of the athletes who go to a school like Alabama to play football do end up majoring in it. Maybe their actual degree will say something sports specific like kinesiology or sports management, maybe their academic advisers will point them to general education classes specifically targeted for athletes and they will end up with a super generic business or communications degree, but either way football is the primary focus for many of them.

>From my experience, club sports and clubs such as the theater club are funded via student fees, whereas departmental projects such as drama and music are funded via tuition.

The point is who funds a play or a concert at universities? Do they all need to be financially self-sufficient or do we accept that these pursuits have value outside of the number of people who will pay to watch them?

>In theory, the major areas are self-funding because of the tuition costs.

This isn't true. The costs to teach different subjects varies wildly and departmental budgets are therefore not always inline with the number of students in each specific program. For example, tuition from an English department would likely go to help subsidize a more expensive Physics department.

[danvasquez29]

you kinda can in a lot of universities with big programs. There's a lot of "sports marketing" and "sports science" majors now that get a little loose with requirements and rigor. when done right, they can be good tools to prep athletes for life after playing (agents, marketing, phys ed instructors and coaches, etc.) but they also run the risk of being places for the football team to sleep through class and get an A for working out and attending video.

[nradov]

Maybe students should be able to major in football? There are music and theater arts performance majors. Is football less important?

There are already football adjacent majors already like sports administration and sports broadcasting.

[chadash]

> There are a maximum of only 2 or 3 dozen athletic departments that are self sufficient in the manner you suggest

By the same token, there's only a few dozen athletic programs with athletes who would probably be paid if not for NCAA rules banning pay.

[slg]

No, that is a poor conclusion. Athletes are not distributed in the nature you are suggesting. There are profitable players who exist on unprofitable teams and there are profitable teams that exist in unprofitable athletic departments. The reverse is also true.

Honestly the biggest stumbling block for me to be in support of paying college athletes are all these details on deciding who gets paid and how much since they don't all provide uniform value. There are situations in which one person might be worth millions and their teammate might be worth absolutely nothing. That is one of the reasons why I think allowing players to profit of their name, image and likeness (NIL) rights seems like the first step. That allows the free market to better assess their value and reward them for it. Roughly half the states have already passed, are currently debating, or have recently debated laws allowing college players to profit of their NIL rights.

[chadash]

> No, that is a poor conclusion. Athletes are not distributed in the nature you are suggesting. There are profitable players who exist on unprofitable teams and there are profitable teams that exist in unprofitable athletic departments. The reverse is also true.

Fair, but a few schools would be disproportionately affected by paid athletes. Ohio State and Alabama would probably pony up a lot, just as they spend tons on their athletic departments right now. Northwestern probably wouldn't, except maybe in rare cases.

> That is one of the reasons why I think allowing players to profit of their name, image and likeness (NIL) rights seems like the first step.

Agree this sounds like a good first step. It's utterly ridiculous that they can't.

> That allows the free market to better assess their value and reward them for it.

Why is this better than schools bidding on player contracts? Would you argue that when Patrick Mahomes got a $150 million contract, that wasn't the free market making an assessment of his value?

[slg]

>Why is this better than schools bidding on player contracts? Would you argue that when Patrick Mahomes got a $150 million contract, that wasn't the free market making an assessment of his value?

I think completely open bidding on players will cause more problems. Like I said, you can have teammates in which one is worth millions and the other is worth nothing. They would both be putting in the same amount of work and ostensibly be doing the same job, but one is just drastically better than the other. That might be worse for public perception than them all getting nothing.

I imagine any system of paying players would probably come with both a floor and ceiling for how much a school can compensate a player.

Also this isn't really the point of your comment, but like many athletes Mahomes has never and potentially will never sign a true free market contract with a team. He was drafted by the Chiefs so they had exclusive rights to negotiate with him. His huge extension was negotiated with the Chiefs during his initial contract which means he couldn't field offers from other teams. If he was a true free agent, he would have received even more money. He was willing to take a discount on that value for the added security of signing the contract now and guaranteeing some portion of that money. It is endorsements where someone like Mahomes can see his true free market rate because he can have the Nikes, Adidas, Gatorades, etc of the world competing against each other. Giving college players NIL rights gives them the opportunity to cash in on those free market endorsement deals.

[Zimahl]

Just to add, the NFL is even more closed-market in that each team has a salary cap. So giving Mahomes more means someone else on the team gets less.

[triceratops]

Alternatively, universities would spin off their money-making teams into professional organizations in return for licensing fees.