Couch Pirate Radio

With all the recent kerfuffle over Johnny Manziel and the pending NCAA investigation concerning his alleged paid work for sports brokers, there has been no small amount of animosity targeted at Manziel, Texas A&M, the Manziel family, and the NCAA. While everyone else prostrated, posed, and propheliticized from their bully pulpits, I decided to solve the problem of player pay in college sports, once and for all. You’re welcome.

As an aside, Manziel knew what he was doing was against the rules and he needs to be punished accordingly or the NCAA is even further proved a farce. And for that matter, there is no reasonable view of the really, real world that can excuse Texas A&M from knowing what was going on in this athlete’s life. Personally, I love Kevin Sumlin but they all have to be punished.

Pay for play, amateurs getting money for playing sports at institutes of higher learning; no matter how it is framed, some people will have problems with it. I say those people turn in their internet cards, avoid my vaccinated children, and join the other technophobic, future haters on compounds in Montana. It’s going to happen. It needs to happen. This is a labor issue. This is a class issue. And most of the time that means that a bunch of uber-wealthy white guys are making billions, with a ‘b’, off the work of unpaid, usually underprivileged workers.

The solution is so simple that the only reasons it hasn’t been implemented are laziness, corruption, and apathy. Many of the pragmatic concerns about player pay revolve around questions of who pays them, who gets paid, and how much. How can we possibly solve all of these problems? I am glad you asked; I know how to do the maths.

Statistical facts time: the NCAA made $871.6 million in revenue in 2012, there were 453,347 NCAA athletes total in 2012, and NCAA sports generated $5.6 billion in ticket sales. Wow, those are some big numbers there. Who gets paid? Every NCAA athlete in good legal standing and on a confirmed graduation track, both verified by their university. Who pays them? The NCAA pays them: it’s the only way to take university, program, and booster interests out of the system. What do they get paid? The athletes get paid a percentage of the previous year’s NCAA revenue every semester and/or a percentage of the total NCAA ticket sales generated. The NCAA revenue is almost $2,000 an athlete. The ticket sales generated is over $12,000 an athlete.

So, the NCAA and college sports could easily provide athletes a $1,000 a semester living expense at the low cost of 17% of NCAA ticket sales. That’s every athlete in the country, every program, every university. Damn, math is fun and informative. Thanks, Ms. Coll at Jenks High School.

Why do we leave this up to the NCAA? Mostly, this allows the payment to be handled by a somewhat impartial entity; another topic for another time. But also, there is no problem with a university making money off of their athletics program. Many universities use the money from their programs to make improvements all over the academic side of the campus. However, there is a problem with the NCAA suits swimming through vats of money they did nothing to earn. So,if the athletes need to get paid, make it the easiest, most justified solution.

Now, the drooling, vaccinaphobic skeptic asks, what about Alabama, Oklahoma, USC, Texas, Ohio State, Notre Dame, and such? They make so much of the NCAA money, why do they all get the same amount? Simple answer: easy button or that’s the simplest way to do it without getting into a bunch of never-ending, red-herring arguments.

However, I am a reasonable person, the more popular players and the more popular schools should have a little bit of an edge in making the cash. Good thing that the NCAA Living Expense Budget is just the first prong of the two pronged NCAA Player Work Reimbursement Program. The second prong is the NCAA Fan and Player Interaction Initiative.

Under the NCAA FPII, every university in the country has the obligation to organize autograph and memorabilia signing sessions four times a year for every athletic program at their university. Any athlete in good legal standing and on the university verified graduation plan can chose to participate in any of their sport’s sessions and the university charges $20 per autograph: $8 goes to a charity of the athlete’s choice, $6 goes to the university and $6 goes to the athlete.

The athletes cannot charge for autographs at any other session, no matter what, and the university cannot charge for any other event where athletes will be signing autographs in an organized capacity. Any athlete not meeting any of the NCAA or university eligibility requirements is eliminated from participating in either prong of the program. Any athlete with violent criminal charges, any major drug charges or any other felony charges is eliminated from participating in either prong of the program.

Done, finished, the debate is over that freaking easy; someone just had to do the simple equations, put some thought behind it and quit whining for half a minute. The numbers can be tweaked some but they all seem fairly reasonable as they were presented. Hey NCAA, flesh out the remaining details and get the issue solved, otherwise I am sure all those popular and money making universities can find another office full of people to make 800 million for collecting money they did nothing to actually earn.

http://www.ncaa.org/wps/wcm/connect/public/NCAA/Resources/Latest+News/2012/September/NCAA+student-athlete+participation+hits+450000

http://www.ncaa.org/wps/wcm/connect/public/NCAA/Finances/Revenue

http://www.statisticbrain.com/ncaa-college-athletics-statistics/

Twitter: @couchpiratejake

Facebook: Couch-Pirate Jake

Email: Jake@CouchPirates.com