OT: Here comes UCLA, representing the PAC 10...I mean PAC 12 -- wait, I've just been handed a bulletin

by Titov on Sep 20, 2011 1:35 PM EDT

Yeah, *that* PAC 10, the one with thr $3 B TV deal last year. Gonna be 16, looks like. There are plusses and minuses, of course, but you have to admire the chutzpah of some of the critics, as in, "There are worries over the size of the league, the academic reputation of Texas Tech, Oklahoma State and Oklahoma, and a philosophical concern over why the league needs to grow more in the wake of the blockbuster television contract signed this year."

The "academic reputation" issue didn't exactly stop the conf in its tracks on the way to picking up Zona and ASU -- whose national reputation as party schools is *extremely* well deserved. Y'know, major in Desert Studies, start self-irrigating after your last class Wed. It's enough to make you pine for the PAC 8. Which I do.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/sports/ncaafootball/19pac12.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

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Meanwhile, to put this in better context, consider the cut that college players should get -- theoretically

The average FB player’s $121 K sounds about right. The idea of paying Duke basketball players ANYTHING is appalling, but there is a certain logic to their per capita $1 million share.

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/schooled_in_sports/2011/09/report_top_ncaa_athletes_worth_100000_or_more.html

If you've been away, we still suck. And yes, we willl step outside and say that.

by Titov on Sep 20, 2011 6:59 PM EDT reply actions

Taylor Branch makes a good case -- and he didn't start off thinking this -- that paying the players makes sense on all levels

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/10/the-shame-of-college-sports/8643/

And the two objections to this voiced today by D. Brooks, both of which have often been heard in the past, of course — that paying college athletes is a practical problem and a “moral and cultural” one — are hard to square with the reality surrounding us today:(1) we already pay these players, in the forms of scholarships, special housing, subsidized on-campus employment, etc. — it’s just way too little by any pay scale that references the revenue their services produce; and (2) wait, we’re going to get less moral than Cam’s dad shopping his kid to the highest college bidder?!? What kind of “cultural” restraint does Brooks think still exists, even in theoretical form, in SEC recruiting (OK, and other NCAA confs and venues of intense rivalry/high revenue)?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/23/opinion/the-amateur-ideal.html?ref=todayspaper

If you've been away, we still suck. And yes, we willl step outside and say that.

by Titov on Sep 23, 2011 10:14 AM EDT reply actions