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pentyne posted: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'. I remember that there was a kid in that who was injured and lost all his perks as a "student-athlete" and that included someone doing his homework for him and grading easier on tests. He was quickly failing all his classes.
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Mar 19, 2015 16:29
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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 don't know if you can say they are popular because they are feeder systems. The NCAA is basically a pro sports league in a lot of places that don't have their own pro-teams (due to population size) to the point that Pro-Leagues fear attempting to enter the area (Columbus is basically consider a no go zone due to OSU)
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Mar 19, 2015 17:03
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bobkatt013 posted:I remember that there was a kid in that who was injured and lost all his perks as a "student-athlete" and that included someone doing his homework for him and grading easier on tests. He was quickly failing all his classes. It's a horrific system that leads to maybe 1/30-40 being able to go to college on a academic scholarship, and of those maybe 1/50 will play pro, and the vast majority of get a few years at best before they get cut. Not to mention that their "education" qualifies them to do little else but work at car dealerships or coach. For the rest of them, winning a state championship just means for the next 30 years they wear that H.S ring and all the locals regard them as heroes. It's literally as exploitative as anything you could concoct for a nightmare dystopia outside of injured and prep team players having their organs harvested to give to the star players for that extra edge.
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Mar 19, 2015 20:50
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thehustler posted:I just remembered that in America you get loving televised high school sports. High schools. It's mad. Only in like west buttfuck texas will you see that.
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Mar 19, 2015 21:11
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I'd kill for high school football. My local NBC affiliate airs high school Quiz Bowl.
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Mar 19, 2015 21:16
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IRQ posted:Only in like west buttfuck texas will you see that. Anywhere in Texas really. In Houston I can watch 3 whole channels of high school football on Friday nights.
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Mar 19, 2015 21:18
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pentyne posted:It's literally as exploitative as anything you could concoct for a nightmare dystopia outside of injured and prep team players having their organs harvested to give to the star players for that extra edge. Do not give them ideas!
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Mar 19, 2015 21:25
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Really the only viable solution is to knock the system back a few pegs and limit the commercialization (or the incentives to commercialize.) Keeping the system the way it is and paying players is only masking the situation and making is slightly less exploitative to the players. The primary purpose of college athletics should be to enhance the utility of college form a student's perspective. Athletics do help train for leadership and teamwork which, along with a good education, can lead to a more successful life down the road. If we want a semi-pro league, then we should create semi-pro leagues and do away with the pretense of school. Here are a few things that could be done to help the situation. Limit coach salaries and bring them in line with other educators at an institution. Investment into athletic facilities should be capped at a percentage of the revenue pulled in by the program. The rest should be used to improve facilities for all students with a significant chunk used for need based tuition aid for students both inside (in the event a scholarship doesn't cover all expenses) and outside the athletic program. Strict limits should be placed on training time per day to ensure the student athlete has enough time to do schoolwork. Zero tolerance for paper courses. Under no circumstances should any money directly derived from the program be used to pay any administration of the school or any coaching staff. Personnel budgeting should remain a wholly separate process based on normal revenue streams for the institution. Commercial sponsorship should be limited to providing equipment and any ads placed in an arena for a televised game should be capped at local rates without a television audience taken into account. In the end, people would still get to root for their favorite teams. They could still have televised games. They could still even make a decent chunk of money. However, that money would be used to making student life better as a whole and enhancing the education. The money would also be off limits to anyone involved with running the program so we could be sure those people are in the job for the right reasons. This is all a pipe dream however as the people involved in the rule making process are the ones that benefit most from the current situation.
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Mar 19, 2015 21:25
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Unfortunately, there's a lot of people who want colleges to be ran solely as a for-profit business. (Hi, Scott Walker!) And mega schools having mega stadiums is a huge part of that dream.
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Mar 21, 2015 01:05
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I am a college professor and at one point in my career I taught at a university with a relatively big, but not huge, football program (i.e., a school that will frequently compete for the division, sometimes the conference, but never for the national title). One semester I taught a M-W-F class that met for 50 or 55 minutes per session. One of my students was a football player (freshman, back up, absolutely no shot at the pros), and I got a notice from the athletic department that the student would be 15 minutes late for all my classes, and that I should excuse him because he had team meetings to attend. Did I mention this was the spring semester?
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Mar 21, 2015 02:18
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sbaldrick posted:I don't know if you can say they are popular because they are feeder systems. The NCAA is basically a pro sports league in a lot of places that don't have their own pro-teams (due to population size) to the point that Pro-Leagues fear attempting to enter the area (Columbus is basically consider a no go zone due to OSU) Which is why the Blue Jackets play there. ZIIIING!
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Mar 21, 2015 06:31
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Yeah it's unfortunate that we'll never get a real professional football team here in Ohio.
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Mar 21, 2015 08:36
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joepinetree posted:I am a college professor and at one point in my career I taught at a university with a relatively big, but not huge, football program (i.e., a school that will frequently compete for the division, sometimes the conference, but never for the national title). One semester I taught a M-W-F class that met for 50 or 55 minutes per session. One of my students was a football player (freshman, back up, absolutely no shot at the pros), and I got a notice from the athletic department that the student would be 15 minutes late for all my classes, and that I should excuse him because he had team meetings to attend. Did I mention this was the spring semester? Yeah this is why the NCAA saying "oh the kids are paid in their ~*education and opportunities*~" is bullshit. I remember reading a story during the NW football unionization story about how if you wanted to be say, a chemist, and play football at the same time it was literally impossible. The degrees these players get are absolutely worthless. I know back when I was a kid my dad would watch Penn State games and I always noticed the players had the same completely worthless majors. But "the kids get a degree" so people who aren't aware of how bullshit it all is don't see anything wrong. Calling the education most of the big time basketball/football athletes get a college degree is a god damned joke.
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Mar 22, 2015 02:10
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axeil posted:But "the kids get a degree" so people who aren't aware of how bullshit it all is don't see anything wrong. Calling the education most of the big time basketball/football athletes get a college degree is a god damned joke. Yeah but that's the worst kept secret there is in all of this. Everyone knows they're getting degrees, if they get them, that are worth less than nothing. It's why all the former college athletes that get interviewed are selling cars or some bullshit like that. Everyone knows, just nobody cares. It's part of why the conceit that they aren't just university employees for farm teams is ridiculous.
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Mar 22, 2015 03:27
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IRQ posted:Everyone knows they're getting degrees, if they get them, that are worth less than nothing. So what does that say about the people who are actually paying for them?
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Mar 22, 2015 03:47
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Irish Joe posted:So what does that say about the people who are actually paying for them? Today even with great college degrees its a highly competitive job market and you need a good gpa and some work experience to get a leg up on all the others. Athletes getting communication degrees with an exact 2.0 gpa (NCAA player requirements) is much different from a non-athlete doing the same and getting a 3.5. Obviously there's the assumption that the athlete was given easy A paper classes so they lack basic skills like grammar or any measure of critical thinking. The only truly "worthless" degrees are the ones people get by doing the bare minimum and skating through college and/or going to top tier ivy league schools and getting art/sports marketing degrees. Anyone dedicated to working hard and doing what is necessary to succeed could take any "worthless" degree and still land a good job.
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Mar 22, 2015 10:08
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TurboFlamingChicken posted:Which is why the Blue Jackets play there. ZIIIING! I remember when the Blue Jackets first showed up and everyone thought that the NHL was crazy.
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Mar 22, 2015 14:58
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sbaldrick posted:I remember when the Blue Jackets first showed up and everyone thought that the NHL was crazy.
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Mar 22, 2015 16:53
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Irish Joe posted:So what does that say about the people who are actually paying for them? If you wanted a worthless degree without having gotten any real education from it, you can get one for way cheaper without the risk of injury from a degree mill.
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Mar 22, 2015 16:57
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So, uh, was there a new episode tonight?
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Mar 23, 2015 05:44
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Apoplexy posted:So, uh, was there a new episode tonight? Yes, it was preempted by 15 minutes because of the 'Girls' season finale.
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Mar 23, 2015 05:51
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BIG HEADLINE posted:Yes, it was preempted by 15 minutes because of the 'Girls' season finale. 
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Mar 23, 2015 06:27
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The best part about that Red Tail Hawk bit was how genuinely nervous John Oliver was by being right next to an actual hawk.
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Mar 23, 2015 08:12
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Hit on a lot of good topics tonight. Sad how much material he has to work with.
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Mar 23, 2015 08:15
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Does passing a law recognizing a red tailed hawk as a state something actually cause anything bad to happen except that lawmakers might have come together to make some children happy? would they had to have suddenly spent money on red tailed hawk preservation or recognized red tailed hawk abortion and gay marriage? i don't understand why that happened the way it did.
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Mar 23, 2015 08:36
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The long monologue is up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UjpmT5noto
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Mar 23, 2015 09:33
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If you get a communications degree, the value in it lies with the people you meet and the effort you put into internships and the like. A college athlete is going to be so disengaged from the process they'll only generally get the barest minimum of benefit from having a degree. This means department manager at wal-mart or something.
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Mar 23, 2015 11:06
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override367 posted:If you get a communications degree, the value in it lies with the people you meet and the effort you put into internships and the like. A college athlete is going to be so disengaged from the process they'll only generally get the barest minimum of benefit from having a degree. This means department manager at wal-mart or something. I think you're vastly underestimating the number of doors having something like "Penn State: Nittany Lions 2011-13" will get you through in the right communities, especially when you're talking about entry level positions where there's no difference in experience between the nerds who hung around on campus 24/7 and the football players they're jealous of.
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Mar 23, 2015 13:18
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That 4th grade class couldn't have had a better lesson on how government works. drat right your dumb bill is going to get torn up and twisted to be used as some ridiculous talking point, you're just some kids, you don't have lobbyists or public opinion working for you. It's no real secret that local governments use police fines to jack up government income without (gasp) raising taxes, Ferguson just was caught doing it. And nobody is going to step out and say that the government shouldn't punish people who break laws, so everything slants towards being overly harsh. It's sort of a cross between the forces working behind civil forfeiture and those working behind the US's problem with incarceration. People who are unlucky enough to break the law subsidize the lack of tax increases for the wealthy. It is about being soft on crime, because being as hard on it as we are destroys lives.
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Mar 23, 2015 17:22
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Mar 23, 2015 17:25
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Eh, Radley Balko was one of the first journalists to really make the argument that Ferguson's primarily problem was this ridiculous fine-and-tax-and-jail system put in place for several years. And although communities across the country do it, I remember Missouri being particularly egregious and over the top.
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Mar 23, 2015 17:44
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override367 posted:If you get a communications degree, the value in it lies with the people you meet and the effort you put into internships and the like. A college athlete is going to be so disengaged from the process they'll only generally get the barest minimum of benefit from having a degree. This means department manager at wal-mart or something. Speaking as someone who did 4 years of a thankless (aka non-revenue generating) sport in college, this is not necessarily the case. In addition to having two practices a day (20-30 hrs/wk), we had to dedicate around 30 days a year to competition and had a season that spanned almost the entirety of our fall, winter and spring semesters. I still had time to maintain a respectable GPA, two service industry jobs and an internship. However, this was incredibly difficult and demanded all of my attention all of the time. I would leave my apartment around 6:00am and often wouldn't return until 9:00 or even 10:00pm. Contrary to what you're saying, this level of dedication, when done right, is actually an objectively marketable asset to prospective employers. If before I went to college, the NCAA passed revolutionary policy changes that allowed amateur student-athletes to be paid using the revenue they generated, I would have still made nothing. Even taking all of this into account, if you're at the center of a multi-billion dollar revenue generating operation, you should absolutely be entitled to some of it.
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Mar 23, 2015 18:23
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speshl guy posted:Contrary to what you're saying, this level of dedication, when done right, is actually an objectively marketable asset to prospective employers. When done right is the key. You obviously were doing it right. I too was a DIII NCAA athlete during college (swimming) and had a similar workload in both practice schedule and meets. I managed to get a Computer Science degree and have a work study job while doing all that. The key there is though that the swimming was the first thing on the chopping block if time came down to a crunch. If I had a lab to finish up, I was going to be 30 minutes late to practice, not the other way around. That doesn't happen in DI athletics, especially not ones that are very profitable.
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Mar 23, 2015 18:58
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bull3964 posted:When done right is the key. You obviously were doing it right. I too was a DIII NCAA athlete during college (swimming) and had a similar workload in both practice schedule and meets. I managed to get a Computer Science degree and have a work study job while doing all that. The key there is though that the swimming was the first thing on the chopping block if time came down to a crunch. If I had a lab to finish up, I was going to be 30 minutes late to practice, not the other way around. That doesn't happen in DI athletics, especially not ones that are very profitable. I was also a swimmer and my coach really didn't give us that much wiggle room. We were given athlete's privilege in that you were allowed to pick and choose your classes a few weeks before the rest of the school so if a class you needed conflicted with practice time, you just have to wait until it's offered during the summer or you're poo poo out of luck. And when our coach would receive any push back regarding this or going to work or whatever his answer was always "well maybe you just don't have what it takes to compete at this level/maybe you shouldn't be swimming" and really, that's a hard point to argue against. Our hierarchy of responsibility as student-athletes after all was said and done, according to him, was 1. School 2. Swimming 3. Everything Else And god dammit we had the highest GPA out of any sport there and dominated our conference so there was a method to his madness. That's why there's so many grey areas to this discussion because, while some schools have a really hosed up way stacking the deck by giving paper classes and poo poo, an athlete really should ask him or herself whether they actually have what it takes to continue if they really find it impossible to keep a GPA above a 2.0 and go to practice. But that also brings irresponsible recruiting tactics and such into the discussion so who the gently caress knows. Edit: Failed to mention our coach wasn't a complete sociopath and that if someone had a practicum or field work that was absolutely essential and conflicted with a few practices a week, he would make accommodations for us. Abuse it however and don't expect to have a position on the team for very long. speshl guy fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Mar 23, 2015 |
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Mar 23, 2015 21:14
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That parking fine stuff made me sad as hell. The USA is one broken as hell country.
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Mar 23, 2015 23:35
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SlothfulCobra posted:That 4th grade class couldn't have had a better lesson on how government works. drat right your dumb bill is going to get torn up and twisted to be used as some ridiculous talking point, you're just some kids, you don't have lobbyists or public opinion working for you. My question is how did a story about a bunch of politicians being an assholes to a group of 4th graders not make it as a national story till now?
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Mar 24, 2015 01:17
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sbaldrick posted:My question is how did a story about a bunch of politicians being an assholes to a group of 4th graders not make it as a national story till now? Business as usual isn't generally news.
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Mar 24, 2015 01:29
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xcore posted:That parking fine stuff made me sad as hell. The USA is one broken as hell country. Yea the long bit this week was incredibly depressing. I've heard about this sort of thing for the last few years but I hadn't realized how bad it's gotten. This has to be the worst first world country to be poor in. The entire system is built to gently caress them.
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Mar 24, 2015 02:29
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That hawk bit kinda smelled a little foul to me. Mainly because last season, John had a long segment about how those exact people who shot down the kids bill were being constantly flooded with pointless bills, and couldn't focus on the actual important issues. And one of the examples he gave in the segment was specifically about state animals, and other bills that had no affect on anything just sucking up time. Just seems a bit like trying to play both angles.
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Mar 24, 2015 02:36
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The fact that the bill takes up time isn't news. The totally inappropriate Planned Parenthood crack was.
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Mar 24, 2015 03:03
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