Nick, I appreciate you and your writing so much. With virtually every piece you write, I think to myself, "Nick is expressing almost precisely what I would say... if I did the proper research, understood the various institutional systems as well as he does, and had the necessary sports analytics chops..."
And it's all further seasoned with the ethos of a long-suffering true Golden Bear die-hard, which is the part that resonates most deeply. Profound hope leavened with hard pragmatism and the occasional bouts of despair. Yours is a labor of love, in which the love shines through every time.
Anyway, great column, and thank you for all those that preceded (and will follow) it.
I just have to wonder for the portion of players (substantial portion of male FB and BB starters?) who will receive effectively a salary that is higher than the average salary of someone graduating from Cal, not to mention from other top 105 or whatever FB teams, exactly how much attention will be paid to classes? If you are paid (and 100% taxed) as an employee for these teams, why do you actually have to be a student at all? If someone is making $250k, for example, is that someone you want to be stuck with as a lab partner or member preparing a group analysis or paper? Isn't the other aspect of this line of thinking that revenue gained from these athletes should not be used at all to subsidize sports that cannot pay for themselves?
I'd be pretty stoked if say JKS was my lab partner! There's no doubt it will disincentivize academics for some kids, but I think we tend to underestimate these student-athletes. A lot of them -- particularly the types we recruit -- take a lot of pride in being successful as students. And there are a lot of non-athletes who come from money and still do well in school. And though the type of money is in some cases unusual for a student, in the vast majority of cases it's not the type of dough that's gonna change the course of their financial future after their sports careers end. Of course, young people don't always see the long view.
Great points. And I'll add that having some of those students enrolled in your courses raises all sort of issues with fair evaluation. Age old problem, but amplified now.
I was good with "NIL" but NIL became a mechanism for paying kids sketchy, inflated salaries to come play... The power dynamic here is way imbalanced in the wrong direction.
A Republican NLRB won’t push for employee status and unionization, but I’m not sure it would be the roadblock suggested here if the impetus for a union came from elsewhere.
Side note: Ott left as a graduate transfer; he wouldn’t have played for Cal in the good old days either.
MLB has a farm team system that seems to work quite well. IMHO, the NFL and the NBA have used college football and basketball as their farm teams without needing to pay for it. They should be kicking in some money, especially for drafting players before they graduate.
Thanks Nick...excellent. One question though...under the first scenario, why do you say the athletes would need to form a Union? Does the structure somehow require collective bargaining?
I could see Congressional action actually happening on this issue, because every state gets two Senators and in a lot of those states there is a public interest in not seeing their state colleges' athletic teams get screwed by the 10 biggest ones.
I favor athletes having more ability to change schools and make money than they used to, but also it's not healthy for a sport to have every player on effectively a one-year contract every year. Some guardrails are needed.
Nick: Fantastic article! All we can hope for is that Cal Athletics (especially football) can return to some resemblance of stability and competitiveness. Major media outlets are already writing us off. The Athletic puts us at UNDER 5.5 wins this season and continues to reinforce the perception that Cal Football and Basketball are a mess and that Berkeley is a difficult place to win. FUCLA athletics may be a bigger mess financially but at least they are in a stable conference with guaranteed eyeballs and national exposure.
Cal's exposure is fine in the ACC. We got a whole bunch of national ESPN games last year. GameDay came to Berkeley. ACC Network is available on pretty much every cable/satellite/streaming TV service.
Nick, I appreciate you and your writing so much. With virtually every piece you write, I think to myself, "Nick is expressing almost precisely what I would say... if I did the proper research, understood the various institutional systems as well as he does, and had the necessary sports analytics chops..."
And it's all further seasoned with the ethos of a long-suffering true Golden Bear die-hard, which is the part that resonates most deeply. Profound hope leavened with hard pragmatism and the occasional bouts of despair. Yours is a labor of love, in which the love shines through every time.
Anyway, great column, and thank you for all those that preceded (and will follow) it.
I just have to wonder for the portion of players (substantial portion of male FB and BB starters?) who will receive effectively a salary that is higher than the average salary of someone graduating from Cal, not to mention from other top 105 or whatever FB teams, exactly how much attention will be paid to classes? If you are paid (and 100% taxed) as an employee for these teams, why do you actually have to be a student at all? If someone is making $250k, for example, is that someone you want to be stuck with as a lab partner or member preparing a group analysis or paper? Isn't the other aspect of this line of thinking that revenue gained from these athletes should not be used at all to subsidize sports that cannot pay for themselves?
I'd be pretty stoked if say JKS was my lab partner! There's no doubt it will disincentivize academics for some kids, but I think we tend to underestimate these student-athletes. A lot of them -- particularly the types we recruit -- take a lot of pride in being successful as students. And there are a lot of non-athletes who come from money and still do well in school. And though the type of money is in some cases unusual for a student, in the vast majority of cases it's not the type of dough that's gonna change the course of their financial future after their sports careers end. Of course, young people don't always see the long view.
Great points. And I'll add that having some of those students enrolled in your courses raises all sort of issues with fair evaluation. Age old problem, but amplified now.
I was good with "NIL" but NIL became a mechanism for paying kids sketchy, inflated salaries to come play... The power dynamic here is way imbalanced in the wrong direction.
A Republican NLRB won’t push for employee status and unionization, but I’m not sure it would be the roadblock suggested here if the impetus for a union came from elsewhere.
Side note: Ott left as a graduate transfer; he wouldn’t have played for Cal in the good old days either.
Ott got his degree in 3. He still would have qualified as a senior in the old days regardless of whether he got his diploma.
Awesome work my friend. Thank you.
MLB has a farm team system that seems to work quite well. IMHO, the NFL and the NBA have used college football and basketball as their farm teams without needing to pay for it. They should be kicking in some money, especially for drafting players before they graduate.
Thanks Nick...excellent. One question though...under the first scenario, why do you say the athletes would need to form a Union? Does the structure somehow require collective bargaining?
In other words, could they be employees without collective bargaining?
I could see Congressional action actually happening on this issue, because every state gets two Senators and in a lot of those states there is a public interest in not seeing their state colleges' athletic teams get screwed by the 10 biggest ones.
I favor athletes having more ability to change schools and make money than they used to, but also it's not healthy for a sport to have every player on effectively a one-year contract every year. Some guardrails are needed.
Nick: Fantastic article! All we can hope for is that Cal Athletics (especially football) can return to some resemblance of stability and competitiveness. Major media outlets are already writing us off. The Athletic puts us at UNDER 5.5 wins this season and continues to reinforce the perception that Cal Football and Basketball are a mess and that Berkeley is a difficult place to win. FUCLA athletics may be a bigger mess financially but at least they are in a stable conference with guaranteed eyeballs and national exposure.
Cal's exposure is fine in the ACC. We got a whole bunch of national ESPN games last year. GameDay came to Berkeley. ACC Network is available on pretty much every cable/satellite/streaming TV service.
The impediment to Cal's success is Cal.
Fair point.