Maryland: Make frosh ineligible in football, basketball

Poll

Should freshmen be eligible to play varsity sports?

Only registered users are allowed to vote for this poll.
31 votes were received.

Yes, same as now, all sports, all conferences	17		55%
Yes most sports, not in football and basketball	4		13%
Mixed opinions. I never thought big schools would back off	4		13%
No freshmen eligible in any sport at least at D1 level	6		19%

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Maryland now that it's in the Big Ten (or B1G where the G is sort of a zero, too) wants the conference and eventually the NCAA to make freshmen recruited for football and basketball be students only their first year. This from the Maryland student paper.

[www.diamondbackonline.com]

John Calipari, do you think you can keep your recruits eligible for 3-1/2 semesters not 1-1/2?

They are just trying to make basketball Calipari proof, Big 10 doesn't care about their "students athletes" especially with Jim Delaney in charge who testified at that OBannon case

phillysportsfan
They are just trying to make basketball Calipari proof, Big 10 doesn't care about their "students athletes" especially with Jim Delaney in charge who testified at that OBannon case

It is also a joint project with the NBA. Force a year on the bench AND a year of college and voila the NBA is closer to a minimum age of 20.

ugarte

phillysportsfan
They are just trying to make basketball Calipari proof, Big 10 doesn't care about their "students athletes" especially with Jim Delaney in charge who testified at that OBannon case

It is also a joint project with the NBA. Force a year on the bench AND a year of college and voila the NBA is closer to a minimum age of 20.

If the NCAA forces a freshman year, the would-be student athletes would do a year in Europe to meet the graduation year plus one year for NBA eligibility. Unless every player has a handler who sits on him 7x24, what happens to America's reputation when one or two of these lads wind up in bar fights, police court, paternity suits, car crashes, DUIs?

Or does the NCAA allow D-III to play freshmen?

Or, they could just drop all the pretense, forget the academic part, and pay them to play for their school.
That way they avoid all of the "student-athlete" hypocrisy.

You could even create different leagues/divisions; schools that expect the athletes to be students and those that don't.
Any nary the twain should meet.

Or, would the potential of lost revenue be too much to ignore in not having a world class football/basketball program?

Johnny 5
Or, they could just drop all the pretense, forget the academic part, and pay them to play for their school.
That way they avoid all of the "student-athlete" hypocrisy.

So lets say the NC$$ dropped the pretense and allowed schools to pay football players and to forget the student athlete business. What possible justification could there be for a university to hava adjunct professional sports team?

KeithK
So lets say the NC$$ dropped the pretense and allowed schools to pay football players and to forget the student athlete business. What possible justification could there be for a university to hava adjunct professional sports team?

"It raises money for the kids."

(sniff)

"FOR THE KIDS!!!!!!!!"

Can't you just see Mike Krzyzewski drooling into an ESPN mic about the tremendous humanitarian services that professional college basketball performs? My God, what those schools are giving to the community.

Easiest sales job ever.

You don't hate kids, do you? And veterans --- isn't it about time we gave them something back? (Cut to amputee vet holding grandchild with beaming KU point guard looking on, smiling.)

Trotsky

KeithK
So lets say the NC$$ dropped the pretense and allowed schools to pay football players and to forget the student athlete business. What possible justification could there be for a university to hava adjunct professional sports team?

"It raises money for the kids."

(sniff)

"FOR THE KIDS!!!!!!!!"

Can't you just see Mike Krzyzewski drooling into an ESPN mic about the tremendous humanitarian services that professional college basketball performs? My God, what those schools are giving to the community.

Easiest sales job ever.

You don't hate kids, do you? And veterans --- isn't it about time we gave them something back? (Cut to amputee vet holding grandchild with beaming KU point guard looking on, smiling.)

Boy, did you hit that nail on the head!!!

KeithK

Johnny 5
Or, they could just drop all the pretense, forget the academic part, and pay them to play for their school.
That way they avoid all of the "student-athlete" hypocrisy.

So lets say the NC$$ dropped the pretense and allowed schools to pay football players and to forget the student athlete business. What possible justification could there be for a university to hava adjunct professional sports team?

This reasoning is ass-backwards as a justification for not paying athletes. College sports exists because it is generally accepted (if also scoffed at) that participating in sports provides valuable life lessons about teamwork and perseverance and all that crap and that having college sports teams promotes camaraderie and loyalty to alma mater in the student body as a whole. Neither of these missions are undermined by also paying the players in sports that make money.

The students are still students. College sports in addition to being part of the whole mind/body-enriching experience that justifies their place on campus are also - in some circumstances - an incredibly lucrative business. The schools compete for players in all sorts of ways and but for a cartel setting rules to restrict the payment for labor, would be competing to directly pay players as well. Because they don't, the money that would be spent on attracting the best athletes (who are also students) instead goes to insanely high coaches' salaries, luxury locker rooms and all sorts of in-kind amenities. What about college swimmers? Fencers? Irrelevant. They barely get money now, though that is in part also because of cartel rules. Most athletes in non-revenue sports receive, at best, partial scholarships and in only rare cases would be sufficiently desired to be paid above their scholarships on the open market.

There is only one thing that is "ass-backwards" here. That is the idea that schools that expect their athletes to be also be students need to compete against institutions that don't.
It has nothing to do with the value of athletics. No one is suggesting that team sport is a bad thing.
It also has nothing to do with which sports are money makers and which are not. Intercollegiate sports are a huge potential cash cow. So, perhaps it was inevitable that schools would find them a great way to supplement their coffers.
What didn't have to be inevitable is that schools, in an attempt to field the best teams, would resort to recruiting students that aren't. Or rather, be allowed to do so.
Pay some, pay all? Or, pay none? I don't care. Ask the folks at ILR.
Just don't continue the absurd practice of calling them students when they are held to no academic standard.

Johnny 5
There is only one thing that is "ass-backwards" here. That is the idea that schools that expect their athletes to be also be students need to compete against institutions that don't.
It has nothing to do with the value of athletics. No one is suggesting that team sport is a bad thing.
It also has nothing to do with which sports are money makers and which are not. Intercollegiate sports are a huge potential cash cow. So, perhaps it was inevitable that schools would find them a great way to supplement their coffers.
What didn't have to be inevitable is that schools, in an attempt to field the best teams, would resort to recruiting students that aren't. Or rather, be allowed to do so.
Pay some, pay all? Or, pay none? I don't care. Ask the folks at ILR.
Just don't continue the absurd practice of calling them students when they are held to no academic standard.

Except that the last time I looked, (which I'll admit was a few years ago) most big time athletic schools still lose money in their athletic department. They have to take money from their general fund to pay the athletic department.

No, the financial winners, from the school, are the coaches and athletic administration.

That may very well be the case,....making it all the more unfortunate.

Johnny 5
What didn't have to be inevitable is that schools, in an attempt to field the best teams, would resort to recruiting students that aren't. Or rather, be allowed to do so.
Pay some, pay all? Or, pay none? I don't care. Ask the folks at ILR.
Just don't continue the absurd practice of calling them students when they are held to no academic standard.

Not necessarily the Dukes of this world, but at many lower-tier institutions the name of the game is putting butts in classroom seats, and this means recruiting "students" that aren't. The athletes are not that different from the rest of the student body.

Also, true.
Ergo the chant, "That's alright, that's O.K., you'll be working for us someday"?
Or, how the "team that shall not be named" has a local CC feeder/farm team?

I've often had kids who've asked me to write a recommendation letter for them question why there were so many foreign students on campus?
I had to explain that they were there for an education. Something increasingly less common of late at far too many schools.
(Wait! What?? Cornell isn't the #1 party school?? Damn.)

I've wondered for quite a while how/why so many kids still understand that education is important?
Especially when our society clearly signals that it isn't. Or,at least not as important as being a professional athlete, actor or rock star.

Dunno. Can anybody spell Rome?? And, no fair using spell-check.

The fact that an overall athletic department "loses money" (according to the highly-paid university accountants) in no way detracts from the truth that big-time athletic departments are, in fact, cash cows. They generate tens of millions in income, revenue, AND, yes, cash flow. The only sad part is that schools exclusively choose to plow that cash right back into coaches' and administrators' salaries, trainers, facilities, etc - on the false pretense that they're investing for even greater future revenues that will THEN bring benefits to the student body. The whole thing is a scam designed to enrich the professional leeches who feed off the naievety of 18-year-old idealists who labor for the love of Team, God, and Country.

Jim Hyla
Except that the last time I looked, (which I'll admit was a few years ago) most big time athletic schools still lose money in their athletic department. They have to take money from their general fund to pay the athletic department.

Be skeptical of this accounting and what spending got the department in the red. NFPs *can't* show a "profit" so the ledger of an athletic department would make a Hollywood studio blush.

Not to be a nudje, but........