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This latest basketball scandal might finally be the nail in the coffin of the Big Ten. For years, the pundits at ESPN and elsewhere have been begging for the NCAA to pay the players, and this time they just might finally get their wish.
I’m hoping that this FBI investigation will be the tipping point that finally forces the NCAA to compensate players. Either they’ll have a bunch of ineligible athletes and fired coaches, or they’ll finally do what’s right.
— Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) February 24, 2018
While this might seem good in theory and might even be the right thing to do, there is one big giant problem.
Follow this logic with me for a minute. I know it can be a complex and complicated and a little beyond the grasp of some, but if you start paying college kids, they become professional athletes. History has proven fans don’t watch shitty professional athletes.
Currently, after dad screams at the TV, “Idiot, how did he drop that?”
Mom chimes in, “Honey be nice, he is just a college kid.”
Start paying the athletes, and mom will reply, “Holy fuck, that dirtbag gets paid how much to catch a stupid ball? And he can’t even do that right? I hope he chokes to death and dies!!!” Mom can be quite savage once Benjamins are on the table.
We all know these kids get tons of extra benefits. Outright paying them is a game changer.
Some of you might think the students will still attend games and then follow their Alma Mater. You would think wrong. This next generation of kid is already fed up with people lording over them and telling them they are inferior. They don’t like people getting things they can’t procure for themselves.
The NCAA has already proven they don’t care about these athletes going to class. Give them buckets of cash and they wont bother to even be on campus. There will be no kindred spirit feeling from the average student. They wont see them as fellow students, they will see them as just another group of rich assholes that have something they can’t get.
There is already an NBA and an NFL. People don’t flock in droves to watch the minor leagues, which paying college athletes will turn the NCAA into.
Of course paying players wont kill college sports overnight. The death march will probably take a long while, but eventually it will happen. College football will probably hang on the longest, because of the tradition. Basketball might be dead in a decade.
I personally believe college athletes should receive more compensation, given the numbers generated at the larger named schools. Of course there is a giant can of worms that gets opened at the schools that already have to tack on fees to the average student’s tuition just to keep the football program alive.
But hey, maybe I am wrong and just throwing money at college kids is a fantastic solution. I mean what could go wrong?
Poll
Should the NCAA Allow College Athletes To Be Paid?
This poll is closed
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62%
Hell no, I was a third string safety on my middle school team, and I never got a dime.
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27%
I am ok with them being paid, but not more than I make in a year.
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10%
Hell yes, I own a night club in a college town and could use the increased customer count!