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I remember the other Jon doing a story about this a few years ago and being shocked by it then. Sad to see so little has changed that they can basically still tell it the exact same way now. This was a pretty consistent episode across the board, none of the usual clunkers for me, even if it didn't hit a high of outrage.
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Mar 16, 2015 23:52
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Viginti posted:I remember the other Jon doing a story about this a few years ago and being shocked by it then. Sad to see so little has changed that they can basically still tell it the exact same way now. This was a pretty consistent episode across the board, none of the usual clunkers for me, even if it didn't hit a high of outrage. It was certainly one of the funnier episodes this season, made me think of the POMeranian letter: "We laughed hard."
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Mar 17, 2015 00:06
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spronk posted:Man i don't follow sports much at all and have heard about the NCAA stuff in the past but jesus that is some hosed up poo poo there. How do hardcore college sports fans even justify what seems to be indentured servitude. The 2% conversion rate from college to pro is just insane. Nobody I know justifies it at all. They all think it's bullshit. But on the other hand what are they going to do about it? Dude who didn't go to Florida but is a Gators fan who watches them on TV isn't really going to get Florida to change their ways.
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Mar 17, 2015 00:06
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Gyges posted:Nobody I know justifies it at all. They all think it's bullshit. But on the other hand what are they going to do about it? Dude who didn't go to Florida but is a Gators fan who watches them on TV isn't really going to get Florida to change their ways.
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Mar 17, 2015 00:16
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Echo Chamber posted:Wait so Bernie Goldberg actually still does reporting beyond complaining how the liberal media is obsessed with race? he still is on HBO Real Sports and keeps his stories grumpy but apolitical. I always laugh when I see him ranting on Fox News clips.
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Mar 17, 2015 00:24
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I know this is very much a case of "easier said than done," but implementing a revenue sharing system like they have in baseball and pro football would do wonders for the NCAA should they come across the good sense to pay their players. Alabama's hot tub money can easily go towards helping schools who don't have the means to pay their players. It's not like this kind of budgeting is unprecedented in today's NCAA- I remember hearing that a small part of the billion dollars March Madness generates is used to pay for the costs of the Division III football tournament. It's just not going to the students. get that OUT of my face fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Mar 17, 2015 |
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Mar 17, 2015 00:28
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Y-Hat posted:I know this is very much a case of "easier said than done," but implementing a revenue sharing system like they have in baseball and pro football would do wonders for the NCAA should they come across the good sense to pay their players. Alabama's hot tub money can easily go towards helping schools who don't have the means to pay their players. In reality though, yeah that's a reasonable idea, but one that won't happen for a ton of reasons.
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Mar 17, 2015 00:30
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The thing that got me was when they said that paying them would mean that they aren't students anymore, which might be true if we are talking about huge salaries and bigger schools poaching better players. But, at the very least, paying them a minimum wage equivalent would make them no less a student than the people who work selling concessions in most stadiums, running the desk at the gym, etc. Universities pay students all the time, not a lot, and i'm not saying that this would be fair recompense, but that excuse strains all credulity for me.
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Mar 17, 2015 00:37
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It amazes me that people have become so used to the idea that schools give full ride scholarships to —and bend admission requirements for— athletes that Oliver can say "athletes don't get paid a cent" and nobody calls him out on it. Seriously, do you think those are offered because schools just love sports? Comparing some girl making 10 bucks an hour in the bookstore to student athletes is a crock of poo poo, since only one of those two is shouldering soul crushing amounts of student debt.
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Mar 17, 2015 00:42
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JohnSherman posted:It amazes me that people have become so used to the idea that schools give full ride scholarships to —and bend admission requirements for— athletes that Oliver can say "athletes don't get paid a cent" and nobody calls him out on it. Seriously, do you think those are offered because schools just love sports?
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Mar 17, 2015 00:45
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I think the issue is more that the school is profiting off of the players. If there was no money involved, then sure the players should be happy with the scholarship, but their hard work, their names and their images are being used by others to make money that they don't see a cent of. Is it the world's greatest tragedy? No. It is pretty lovely though. Especially since that education is often worth about as much as the players pay for it. If the university had students, lets say scholarship students, spending the equivalent amount of time making textbooks for the bookshop to sell at outrageous prices and didn't compensate them for that, simply saying that it was part of 'their education' we wouldn't be ok with that. What work you do at school is your own property (as far as i'm aware), you retain the IP and so if you write something that sells later, you receive the rewards. That's all the players seem to want, ownership of their time and efforts.
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Mar 17, 2015 00:52
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JohnSherman posted:It amazes me that people have become so used to the idea that schools give full ride scholarships to —and bend admission requirements for— athletes that Oliver can say "athletes don't get paid a cent" and nobody calls him out on it. Seriously, do you think those are offered because schools just love sports? Don't know if you're trying to Irish Joe it up here or whatever, but Oliver addressed that very argument in depth in his segment.
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Mar 17, 2015 00:54
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I don't think John is being a Joe, he does sort of have a point in that there is some payment involved. I just think that most people believe that it's not the correct payment and that its immorally contracted: they're being paid in Disney dollars and paid only at the employers discretion, not to any sort of concrete rate.
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Mar 17, 2015 01:03
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JohnSherman posted:It amazes me that people have become so used to the idea that schools give full ride scholarships to —and bend admission requirements for— athletes that Oliver can say "athletes don't get paid a cent" and nobody calls him out on it. Seriously, do you think those are offered because schools just love sports? She's also going to end up with an actual degree, a lack of traumatic injury, a work history, and avoid 4 years of stress from worrying about losing everything because your acl exploded. Aside from getting minimum wage for the hundreds of dollars she made the school. As opposed to the thousands\millions the athlete made the school. If the scholarship is to be worth its sticker value then the school's going to have to make sure the athletes can actually take advantage of it by cutting down on the more than full time hours the sport requires.
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Mar 17, 2015 01:16
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JohnSherman posted:It amazes me that people have become so used to the idea that schools give full ride scholarships to —and bend admission requirements for— athletes that Oliver can say "athletes don't get paid a cent" and nobody calls him out on it. Seriously, do you think those are offered because schools just love sports? They also don't get kicked out of school, because they tore their ACL's doing an activity that makes the school millions. Like if you want to say the scholarship is enough remuneration then fine whatever(I don't agree, but fine), but that doesn't deny the fact that they are providing labor for the these universities and should be eligible for workers comp.
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Mar 17, 2015 01:21
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What are the usual terms of athletic scholarships? If they stop playing sports (due to injury or personal choice) do they continue their education or is the scholarship over? Does the scholarship include books/food/dorm/clothes/etc? What about summer months? The episode pulled some punches too on the education they get, on the one hand it mentioned that athletes went to summer "paper classes" that basically were "everyone gets an A" classes, but Richard Sherman's bits suggested the normal year schedule were regular classes, with some padding like Swahili. Do most student athletes pass with a roster of completely useless classes they don't learn anything from, or do a lot get actual useful degrees? What percentage of athletes even graduate? I also remember an NPR piece a few weeks ago about a guy who "fixed" tests for college athletes, by taking them himself. He did it for a decade for hundreds and hundreds of students, pretty interesting article http://chronicle.com/article/Confessions-of-a-Fixer/150891 The entire system seems pretty busted up but too many people who are making crazy money who will fight reform at every step.
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Mar 17, 2015 01:23
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Viginti posted:I don't think John is being a Joe, he does sort of have a point in that there is some payment involved. I just think that most people believe that it's not the correct payment and that its immorally contracted: they're being paid in Disney dollars and paid only at the employers discretion, not to any sort of concrete rate. Yeah, I mean, the degrees these players get may be worthless, but universities print tons of worthless liberal arts degrees that people happily pay them for*, but that's all the cash the university is going to make on that student, other than like parking or whatever fees. The issue is that these guys bust their asses, often literally, and, far more importantly, are are doing so only to line the pockets of a bunch of already rich assholes with dumptrucks of money for a ~2% gamble that they could go pro. * I have one in English, before you jump down my throat.
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Mar 17, 2015 01:24
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Keep in mind that just because you are getting a "free education" you're not really getting an education. Many of these students are ordered to take easy courses/majors, get free passes on assignments and classes, and I remember a report from a couple years ago saying some of these basketball/football athletes graduated college illiterate; they want them to spend more time on sports and less time in the classroom. Honestly, if you aren't going pro your best bet is to study hard and concentrate on school and have a better shot in the real world and have debt than to get a free ride, learn nothing, and basically gain nothing for four years. Some pro athletes said they majored in communications because it was easy, but they found it to be pretty worthless should they have not made it pro.
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Mar 17, 2015 01:34
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Zythrst posted:They also don't get kicked out of school, because they tore their ACL's doing an activity that makes the school millions. Like if you want to say the scholarship is enough remuneration then fine whatever(I don't agree, but fine), but that doesn't deny the fact that they are providing labor for the these universities and should be eligible for workers comp. I don't disagree. Players losing their scholarships for injuries is a completely indefensible practice, but that's completely separate from the issue of outright paying players. Baronash fucked around with this message at 01:59 on Mar 17, 2015 |
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Mar 17, 2015 01:37
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The NCAA might be worse than FIFA.
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Mar 17, 2015 01:57
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TurboFlamingChicken posted:Keep in mind that just because you are getting a "free education" you're not really getting an education. Many of these students are ordered to take easy courses/majors, get free passes on assignments and classes, and I remember a report from a couple years ago saying some of these basketball/football athletes graduated college illiterate; they want them to spend more time on sports and less time in the classroom. Honestly, if you aren't going pro your best bet is to study hard and concentrate on school and have a better shot in the real world and have debt than to get a free ride, learn nothing, and basically gain nothing for four years. Some pro athletes said they majored in communications because it was easy, but they found it to be pretty worthless should they have not made it pro. Gyges posted:She's also going to end up with an actual degree, a lack of traumatic injury, a work history, and avoid 4 years of stress from worrying about losing everything because your acl exploded. Aside from getting minimum wage for the hundreds of dollars she made the school. As opposed to the thousands\millions the athlete made the school. If the scholarship is to be worth its sticker value then the school's going to have to make sure the athletes can actually take advantage of it by cutting down on the more than full time hours the sport requires. I think universities need to provide health benefits to players, guaranteed scholarships in the case of injuries, and provide them with the time and support necessary to pass their classes (though, if you graduate illiterate, that is saying a lot more about your grade school than about your college). I agree with Oliver on all those points, I just don't think any of those issues is solved by paying the players.
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Mar 17, 2015 02:01
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JohnSherman posted:It amazes me that people have become so used to the idea that schools give full ride scholarships to —and bend admission requirements for— athletes that Oliver can say "athletes don't get paid a cent" and nobody calls him out on it. Seriously, do you think those are offered because schools just love sports? The girl making 10 bucks an hours isn't generating millions for the school. I don't think college athletes should be paid by the university but they should be allowed to get a job, obtain gifts and make their own money by selling autographs.
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Mar 17, 2015 02:18
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Forever Zero posted:The girl making 10 bucks an hours isn't generating millions for the school. I don't think college athletes should be paid by the university but they should be allowed to get a job, obtain gifts and make their own money by selling autographs. I don't see why they shouldn't get their fair share of what they bring into the school, their horseshit degrees accounted for I'm sure. How do you even begin to determine what that fair share is? I don't know, but unionizing sounds like a good start, and has precedent now.
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Mar 17, 2015 02:41
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I liked that he mentioned that if the NCAA is really all about the spirit of amateurism, the coaches shouldn't be paid dick, let alone be the highest paid state employees.
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Mar 17, 2015 03:03
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Y-Hat posted:The NCAA might be worse than FIFA. Don't say things you can't take back. The NCAA is a way better organization the FIFA.
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Mar 17, 2015 03:04
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sbaldrick posted:Don't say things you can't take back. The NCAA is a way better organization the FIFA. Yeah FIFA's literal slaves don't even get worthless degrees.
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Mar 17, 2015 03:48
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JohnSherman posted:I think universities need to provide health benefits to players, guaranteed scholarships in the case of injuries, and provide them with the time and support necessary to pass their classes (though, if you graduate illiterate, that is saying a lot more about your grade school than about your college). I agree with Oliver on all those points, I just don't think any of those issues is solved by paying the players. The problem is that the reason college football and basketball are so popular with both the players and the viewers is because they're a sort of semi-pro feeder league, and the insane dedication to the sport to the exclusion of most anything else is why that's so successful on both ends. Very few players actually make it to the pros, but it's still the route that offers the best chance to get into the pros. It's why that "student-athlete" term is so insidious. It envisions that these athletes are there at colleges as students first, who just happen to take part in this extracurricular activity, when the reality is that they're at that university to be athletes first, and the "student" part is somewhere between a perk and just being there for window-dressing. The players themselves don't much want reform in the way of making the actual life experience of a "student-athlete" more like the term suggests it should be, they'd just rather be fairly compensated for their role in the system as it's already set up. I mean, look at how much smaller college baseball and hockey are than football and basketball. And, yes, part of that has to do with the relative popularity of the underlying sports, but baseball and hockey are also systems where the colleges aren't just feeders for the professional leagues. Those leagues have their own minor-league systems, and even have provisions that allow teams to draft a player and let him continue playing at the college level for a while. Those sports aren't feeder systems so much as they are alternative systems, and their popularity matches that.
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Mar 17, 2015 04:46
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thefncrow posted:The problem is that the reason college football and basketball are so popular with both the players and the viewers is because they're a sort of semi-pro feeder league, and the insane dedication to the sport to the exclusion of most anything else is why that's so successful on both ends. Very few players actually make it to the pros, but it's still the route that offers the best chance to get into the pros. It's why that "student-athlete" term is so insidious. It envisions that these athletes are there at colleges as students first, who just happen to take part in this extracurricular activity, when the reality is that they're at that university to be athletes first, and the "student" part is somewhere between a perk and just being there for window-dressing. The players themselves don't much want reform in the way of making the actual life experience of a "student-athlete" more like the term suggests it should be, they'd just rather be fairly compensated for their role in the system as it's already set up. I feel like this isn't entirely true. I think the college aspect has something to do with it, I mean people don't watch the AAA baseball or the D-League or Canadian Football, they watch College sports. I mean even in your own examples, I guarantee millions of more people watch the college world series, then minor league baseball playoffs, and the level of play is multitudes better there. For whatever psychological reasons people want to cheer for the Alma Mater and its what allows college sports to be big business.
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Mar 17, 2015 05:02
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It'll never happen, but it would be so glorious if all the players from one or both teams agreed to not play a major game until student athletes received at least a basic wage or worker's comp. Imagine how fast the NCAA would cave if the college basketball final four flat out refused to play any games. All you need is two teams refusing to play one another at all to completely mess with people's brackets too, which is the next best thing to a vanished final four. Basketball is the only possible sport I could even imagine it happening in though, no way you can get a whole football team on board, but a few teams of around 15-20 players each? It's at least hypothetically possible. As is often the case the people getting screwed have the power to effect change that lasts for decades, if not forever, but they have to be willing to greatly harm their own lives to do it. All I can realistically hope for is that a team that's poorly seeded in the March Madness tournament refuses to play in protest of NCAA regulations. Even getting that is going to take a magical alignment of politically active players who all have at least middle-class families to support them and a Coach who either supports them or who they all hate enough to rebel against.
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Mar 17, 2015 06:28
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Is the whole college/university sports thing a uniquely North American phenomenon? You don't get the kind of blanket coverage that you do over there in other countries. No commercialisation at all, maybe a little bit of sponsorship to cover costs. Hell, if you're playing a fixture against another university and more than 100 people show up you're loving lucky. The only collegiate event that gets any amount of coverage here in the UK is the loving Boat Race (and that's just an advertisement for toffs).
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Mar 17, 2015 11:23
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thehustler posted:Is the whole college/university sports thing a uniquely North American phenomenon? You don't get the kind of blanket coverage that you do over there in other countries. No commercialisation at all, maybe a little bit of sponsorship to cover costs. Hell, if you're playing a fixture against another university and more than 100 people show up you're loving lucky. The varsity rugby match also gets on TV (sky sports 3 or something) and generally gets around 30 thousand spectators. tentish klown fucked around with this message at 11:42 on Mar 17, 2015 |
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Mar 17, 2015 11:39
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thehustler posted:Is the whole college/university sports thing a uniquely North American phenomenon? You don't get the kind of blanket coverage that you do over there in other countries. No commercialisation at all, maybe a little bit of sponsorship to cover costs. Hell, if you're playing a fixture against another university and more than 100 people show up you're loving lucky. Soccer is a massive phenomenon in Europe and many other countries, but from what I can tell many countries treat is as a lifetime employment track rather then a charnel house of bodies to make billions from ad deals. One of the big things about German soccer was after their awful losses in the 90s after the re-unification they established tons of youth clubs and really promoted the sport across all generations without exploiting the gently caress out of the potential athletes. The US is only second to China in terms of horrific exploitation of athletes, and that's because China basically "abducts" 1000s of kids to train them in brutal conditions to win gold medals and the small fraction that last are disposed of the very second they can no longer compete at world-class level. Something like 99% of Chinese Olympic athletes end up selling their medals and living in abject poverty because they have no other skills.
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Mar 17, 2015 12:01
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JohnSherman posted:I think universities need to provide health benefits to players, guaranteed scholarships in the case of injuries, and provide them with the time and support necessary to pass their classes (though, if you graduate illiterate, that is saying a lot more about your grade school than about your college). I agree with Oliver on all those points, I just don't think any of those issues is solved by paying the players. If the athletes got an actual education and didn't have to worry about losing their scholarship due to injury we would indeed be part way there. The other issue though is the wink wink nudge nudge amateur athlete aspect. Why shouldn't athletes be able to make money off their own likeness or get money for signatures? The issue isn't just that the athletes are making the NCAA billions through their efforts, the NCAA is also preventing the athletes from making untold money on their own while further taking their likenesses for games and NCAA advertisement without compensation. The University Tailback got a free tattoo? Why this is outrageous and an affront to all that is decent about amateur sport! Says the billion dollar "non profit" CEO to the millionaire coach sitting in his office located in a 3 hundred million dollar cathedral to football. So the Tailback with no money or skills outside football gets punished.
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Mar 17, 2015 12:43
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The amateurism rules are actually even crazier than they sound, because they have been used to punish athletes for being good in other aspects. Jeremy Bloom was a University of Colorado football player who was also a talented skier. He was hit with an amateurism violation because he accepted a skiing related endorsement deal to give him money he needed to prepare for the 2006 Olympics. That stripped him of his scholarship and made him ineligible to play college football because the NCAA rules allowed him to be a professional skier and accept prize money while still being an amateur at football, but no endorsements of any kind were allowed.
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Mar 17, 2015 15:17
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Of course, sports organizations can get away with all this poo poo because the sports fans have undying allegiance to them, and whenever they're threatened, the fans take it personally. Like that time when there were riots at Penn State after the coach was fired for covering up how Sandusky was molesting children.
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Mar 17, 2015 16:11
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I just remembered that in America you get loving televised high school sports. High schools. It's mad.
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Mar 19, 2015 09:02
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We're proud of our kids. Sorry your country sucks.
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Mar 19, 2015 10:47
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thehustler posted:I just remembered that in America you get loving televised high school sports. High schools. It's mad. The original Friday Night Lights started from a reporter decided to cover Texas HS football and absolutely shocked at what he saw and a quick profile turned into a full year story. Basically, every week the team didn't win people would call in to local radio stations and complain that the players spent too much time in classes learnin' and no enough time footballin'. quote:In the 5A playoff semifinals, Permian meets Dallas Carter, a predominately black team. Carter's system is even more corrupt than Permian's, and in a hard fought game in the rain, the Panthers are defeated. Carter goes on to win the state championship, but faces severe penalties the next year for their grade tampering, giving the state championship to Judson High School. quote:A week later, Dallas Carter won the 1988 Texas state championship. For the players, the sense of entitlement and the feeling that they could do whatever they wanted to reached an all-time high. Gary Edwards got a full scholarship to the University of Houston. However in May 1989, Edwards and several other players committed an armed robbery in Dallas. They were arrested and they were tried in September. It was then discovered they had committed as many as ten robberies prior. Edwards, who initially thought he would just get probation, was sentenced to 16 years in prison. After some review it was decided that because of grade changing on the player's[who?] action, Dallas Carter was stripped of their state championship. The US school sports system is horrifically corrupt and every time anyone gets caught all the rest just try to pretend like they aren't doing the exact same thing and get off scot-free until someone dies or commits a serious crime.
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Mar 19, 2015 10:55
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Irish Joe posted:We're proud of our kids. Sorry your country sucks. We enjoy literally replicating the Hunger Games model, sorry you're such knuckle-draggers. 
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Mar 19, 2015 11:09
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pentyne posted:The US school sports system is horrifically corrupt and every time anyone gets caught all the rest just try to pretend like they aren't doing the exact same thing and get off scot-free until someone dies or commits a serious crime. So it's like every other part of US society? 
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