re: APU - where do you stand?

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Yep, so they better recruit college students since that is allegedly the business they are in....

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The are recruiting college students. They are recruiting college students who are being offered a free ride in exchange for meeting conditions regarding playing football. When those conditions aren't met, the free ride is over.

I think next time I'll just try to reply in one post. This will get out of hand quickly if there's one post per point.

My motivation for supporting the current system of not paying players (leaving them as amateurs) is based on feelings, sure, but I can justify it with facts and principles that go beyond how I feel about it.

Main point is this: college athletes are students first while they are in college. Whether they take advantage of that status or not is up to them. They get many benefits as student-athletes that regular students don't get, and these benefits are based on their hard work on the field.

If this is somehow unfair (it isn't), then it can be "fixed" by starting a semi-pro or minor league system outside of the college arena, giving players the chance to compete for money in a different avenue, leaving college sports as college sports, not the NFL-lite.

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many of the kids have no business being admitted

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So what?

The same can be said about non CFB students at schools ALL over the country.Schools are taking kids they know
have NO CHANCE of ever graduating because students
loans are availible to just about anybody.And some
of these schools just need a warm body and tuition check that clears.

CFB players also graduate any higher rate than non athletes (I know some of their degrees aren't accounting
or engineering) but its a degree regardless and a helluva
lot better then not having one.

quote:

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Because the tickets are a bonus to ensure that the players' friends and family could watch them play football. The tickets aren't meant to be a money-making scheme for the players.

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Point is, the students already get tickets, so it is not a bottom line issue. It is a free market issue. You are for restricting the free market for these students* to sell tickets that they earn. You must be like Communist or Socialist or something....

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The schools who are taking kids who can get loans are not radically changing admission standards

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Maybe not radically but they KNOW these kids will never see a sheepskin, so it's pretty much the same concept.Accepting kids for the reason of increasing revenues.

Like I said before the CFB players at the
AP 2012 top 25 graduated at a higher rate
than the overall student bodyat the same
schools.(you can look up if you don't believe
hate posting links)

Yea,I know,you're gonna tell me they're BS
degrees...blah,blah. The fact is these
schools are doing a much better job
of educating and tutoring kids and
have a helluva lot better infrastructure
and support for these kids compared
to these other schools accepting just
about anyone for the sake of increased
enrollment and increased govt funds.

to.










l
student body.
So at least

Google NCAA Graduation Rates Improving...AP
article on ESPN website dated Oct 25, 2012

Tried to post link twice with droid...not gonna do it again
You think I'm pulling this shite out of my arse for the sake
of a message board argument?

LINK /

That article links the NCAA site with the stats I think you were looking for...

The FMV of players is really immaterial to the discussion about collegiate athletes, IMO. Why? Because they are students. If they are more valuable than what they are getting in benefits, then they can/should go elsewhere (outside of college) to realize that full value, if they can. On the other hand, staying in school can potentially increase their value, as it usually does for most students.

The NFL is a business, or rather, a conglomeration of businesses, and those businesses can pay whatever they feel the athletes are worth to get and retain their services, just like in the real world of business. Universities may act similarly in some ways, but they aren't for-profit businesses, and can't work the same way as the NFL. Most athletic programs (including football and basketball) aren't profitable. I recall seeing UGA on the shortlist of schools that actually were in the black last year.

Student-athletes are not called that just because they put their own studies first (which, as you and other say, most don't). It is a term based on how the university sees them, or rather their status in regards to the university. They are only athletes playing for the school because they are enrolled as students and are required to continue to pass their classes or else they can't continue to play. We've seen quite a few football players ruled academically ineligible, both before officially coming to the school and after they've made it here.

If we should do away with the term "student-athlete" because the athletes don't spend the majority of their time in class or studying, then we should probably change the designation for many people attending college from "students" to "drunken party animals who also sometimes attend classes". I'll admit that I spent more time doing other things than studying or going to class when I was in school. I was still officially a "student", though.

You mention how they have no business being admitted, but that's not always true. There are minimum academic requirements for the athletes to achieve to make it on to campus. Universities look at an entire resume, though, for both athletes and non-athletes, which is why so many non-athlete high school kids try to get involved in extracurricular activities to convince a university to accept them in additional to their academic standing.