College athletics have had an eternity to find a reasonable approach. That has led to Head Coaches making $5+ million a year - multi-year million dollar contracts to assistant coaches. Millions spent in buyout/failure money. ADs cashing huge checks soliciting donations from corporations and millionaires and schools grabbing oodles of TV money.
This mess is totally on the schools, not the players.
Paying coaches exhorbinant amounts of money and paying out all these buyouts seems rather unreasonable too, Is it really the best idea for players to be sent down the same slippery slope that the current coaching situation has begun to head down? It’s kind of like we are all saying, “Instead of correcting course with the ship to point it in the right direction, let’s just set it even farther off course.”
I am not against D1 players all getting some extra money and players proving to be special getting a little more, but let’s also not forget these are non- professional athletes we are talking about who are already getting a $200k-300k education for free. That’s equivalent to $45k to $75k a year (when you include tuition, housing, meals, books) Not too shabby.
If every player received an additional $1-2k stipend per month, it would seem pretty fair, right? Like I suggested in my last post, the athletes who then shine the most in games could get paid a bit extra from the university.
The coaches are professionals and understandably are more important than the players. Still, I have no issues with having something in place for all D1 schools that pays a little extra to those talented who help fill the seats. Maybe give players a portion of the sale of their jerseys and a fee if they are used in school ads to promote the team /sell tickets and even pay them extra money if they are selected as part of an all-conference team or all- American team. This would allow teams to stay intact and allow players to get a little extra based on what extra value they contribute to the university.
The idea of finding a simpler reasonable way to try to be be fair to these non professional athletes as opposed to allowing an “almost anything goes” scenario where we are starting to see shady characters get involved and players moving back and forth between schools which messes up rosters and turns fans off and and possible even sets certain players up for what will be a crash and burn situation in their lives… well that can’t be a bad thing.