In Reply to: I can’t believe it’s come to this. posted by Enlightened on December 13, 2024 at 01:48:47
share those feelings. Have long preferred college ball - primarily MY school - to pro sports for those reasons and more.
But really, people choose their colleges for a bunch of different reasons and preparing oneself for one's career and life after school is certainly high among them. Athletes hope to go pro in their sport, hoping their talents can result in a good and lucrative career. But so do medical practitioners, attorneys, mathematicians, scientists and on and on. Also those wishing to become expert in agriculture, wildlife care and protection.
I did always think that getting a paid for education was compensation. But I did feel, with all the extra hours required, that partidcipation in athletics ought to be treated as any other on-campus job. I had several while at UCLA - working at the faculty club, at the transportation center. Plus others I picked up independently of the university.
As to the $4 million QBs, that is really just turning the light onto what's long been going on under the table. Parents who barter their kid to a school for compensation (Reggie Bush still wants his trophy back although his mother and stepfather living well above their means while he was at SC was cheating all the way and his family got caught at it).
I do get the current what amounts to free agency as the courts have created it but to me that's what is killing the sport as a sport. Kids sell their services to a different school every year to cash in while they can.
You are dead right - it has indeed come to this But I still root for the ones in the UCLA outfits - always will. Change is constant - just got to ride the wave