re: What Georgia player is this?

quote:

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They are not employees, just treated like they are employees. And they bring in a lot of money. Any intern that was directly responsible for that much revenue would be compensated significantly more or wouldnt be an intern very long....

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Super Stars aside, one would argue that the team (coaches included) brings in the money. Sorry but when I go to games, I don't go to see Aaron Murray, AJ Green, or Todd Gurley. I go to watch the team play and (hopefully) win. If I had tickets to a game and saw that Gurley would be sidelined due to injury, I would still go to the game.

With that said, you're right in that they are not employees. That's the point that people like me are trying to get across to people like you. The rules are not the same, and neither are the expectations. Even though they aren't employees, they are still compensated for their work and performance.

But the key issue for you seems to be "fairness" of players not getting a cut of the profits that they help to bring in each year. Going back to my initial response, most athletic departments actually lose money, because they have to support a ton of different sports (for men and women) that don't bring any money, and they have to rely on football and basketball (primarily) to fill their coffers enough to pay for everything else. Most most schools, the proceeds from football and basketball don't cover the tab for the rest of the sports.

So why should players get paid, again? Is it because they work hard? Well so do the athletes in non-major sports programs. Should those athletes get paid, too? Or, is it not just the work, but the money they bring in? Well, what if the program doesn't actually make a profit? Should the players get hosed? And when the program does make a profit, who should get the cut? Yeah, the football team brings in the most money, but the other programs bring in some money, so should all programs (and the athletes) be excluded except for the cash cow football team, or should all contributors get a cut? Should the players get paid based on revenue or profit? If revenue, then I'd imagine most programs would be bankrupted. If based on profit, I'd imagine most athletes won't actually get paid.

The issue as I see it is that if this was an employer/employee relationship, the employer has no obligation to give the employees money based on the success of the "company". They set the compensation rates and the employees agree to them or go somewhere else (or do something else with their lives). But this isn't a company. These aren't employees. The profits that the few universities actually make are re-invested back into the universities.

If the players feel "exploited", they can quit and do something else (wind up on the streets, for a lot of them). They can forfeit their free education, their meal plans, their housing, their training, their networking opportunities, and all the other perks that come with being a student athlete (including popularity and sex with coeds) and try to hone their skills on their own for a few years and then try to impress NFL scouts on their own.