I think the colleges should be free to give athletes less than a full scholarship, no scholarship and more than a scholarship. And the athletes should be free to bargain.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I don't think college athletes are given enough time to really take advantage of the free education that they're given, and it's frustrating because a lot of people get upset with student-athletes and say, 'They're not focused on school and they're not taking advantage of the opportunity they're given.'
But I would much prefer students going to college to learn and be prepared for the rigors of the new economic order, rather than dumping fees on them to subsidize football programs that, far from enhancing the academic mission instead make a mockery of it.
Athletes are still exploited. If they blow out their knee, if they somehow don't meet the mandates of a coach, they lose their scholarship. They don't get their degree.
I have long been one of those tedious people who rails against the coronation of 'student-athletes.' I have heard the argument that big-time athletics bring in loads of money to universities. I don't believe the money goes anywhere other than back into the sports teams, but that's another story.
No one should be denied the opportunity to get an education and increase their earning potential based solely on their inability to pay for a college education.
The institutions of college athletics exist primarily as unreality fueled by deceit. The unreality is that universities should be in the business of providing large spectacles of mass entertainment. The fundamental absurdity of that notion requires the promulgation of the various deceits necessary to carry it out.
If you offer athletes stipends, then you're into pay-for-play, and that's the ballgame. People should realize that, and they should realize that amateurism never has been a sustainable model for a sports-entertainment industry. It wasn't in tennis. It wasn't in the Olympics. And it's not in big-time college sports.
We need to align the incentives so that colleges have an incentive to keep down their costs... to graduate students on time with degrees in areas where they're going to be able to get jobs and going to be able to pay back those loans.
It is time for everyone to sit down - the NCAA, the NBA, the players union and the coaching fraternity - and come up with suitable solutions to these problems.
I do not think athletes should get a free pass. I don't think we should train our children and future athletes to believe that they are above the law and morality.