Monday 6 June 2011

Big 10 Paying Players? Well, not exactly. . . . . .

I got a message from a good friend the other day asking me what I thought of the Big 10 plan to pay players. I had not even heard of such a plan so I went to scour sports websites to see what is up. Well, turns out they do not plan to "pay" players per say. It is simply a plan by the Big 10 to add an extra $3,000 per year to each athletic scholarship to cover basic living expenses. Predictably the SEC came out and said they are considering the same thing. There is no way the SEC is going to play second fiddle to anyone.

If I am an NCAA football coach in the Big 10 (or SEC) I love this. It certainly will not eliminate players taking improper money. Nor will it eliminate those who like to give that money. What it will eliminate is the justification for that money. You hear from those who both take and give that money that players have a hard time making ends meet. Their "free" time is taken up by team commitments and are thus not able to get a job to help.

10 comments:

  1. I agree, it definitely won't eliminate players taking bribes or so.

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  2. i never got that rule. players always get something paid for that violates the rules but most the time it goes ignored. unless it's big news and pretty blatant like the reggie bush incident, they dont do anything about it.

    i like the idea of them making it easier for players but they should enforce the rules even stricter with it.Like you said this would make it harder to justify the money, so maybe they will be able to enforce it better!

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  3. It all makes perfect sense, good stuff.

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  4. The whole NCAA system of making money off sports without compensating the players doesn't seem right to me.

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  5. they are student athletes. student comes first. additionally it's hard to say that it's not fair to not pay the players when they represent the school because the schools dont profit from football like they do in the NFL. There are only a handful of programs that make money every year and they only reason those select few do profit is because they have a huge donation base. Oregon is one of those teams because of their sponsorship with Nike.

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  6. i love the blog more than Zander :|
    keep it up!

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  7. Sounds like a plan but I don't think it will change anything.

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  8. Yeah it probably won't change anything. Personally I wouldn't fire the players but i'd probably just penalize them

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