How is it?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/09/AR2010090906372.html?nav=rss_email/components

How is it the NCAA can get away with this?

I realize the specifics regarding this case are vague, but that's precisely what's leaving this player in limbo. I realize the main purpose of college is to provide education.

However, it is clear that in this case, the player will do little else immediately after graduation besides try to play professional football. His jersey wasn't sold for terribly more than it would be worth anyway (ebay that jersey, and it would probably get over a grand). And the NCAA sells his jersey anyway, and keeps all the money from it.

The fact of the matter is the major sports (football and basketball, usually men's but sometimes women's) make a shitton of money for the NCAA and their respective schools. The players, those who produce this money, see little of it.

Assume that a semester at a public university costs $20,000, including everything. That makes a full ride worth $40,000 plus a few field trips. Let's say it's a private university, and everything costs twice as much, that makes it $80,000 the university is giving them.

The NFL rookie minimum salary in 2007 was $285,000, and it has probably risen slightly since then.

Athletics is a field in which there is not much time to make your money. These players are forgoing prime (or developmental depending on the person/position, either way important) years of their life on what amounts to a 4 year internship.

Switching gears, the NFL has also recently stated the season will soon go to 18 games, replacing two of the four preseason games with regular season ones. This kills rookies and fringe players chances of making the team and understanding the game. The NFL would do well to create some sort of minor league to facilitate this development and retainment that they are otherwise sorely losing. The NHL has the AHL, and MLB has the minor league system, hell even the NBA has some semblance of a minor league system in the d-league. The NFL has none of that. They have other leagues that don't pay as much, and often play with very different rules and formats -- The CFL has 12 on 12 football with 3 downs to get 10 yards, the Arena Football League encourages iron-man style play with it's archaic substitution system, and the UFL eschews popular NFL rules such as the tuck rule and a different form of intentional grounding.

The NFL risks collapsing under its own weight if it doesn't make some sort of change regarding this. This has nothing to do with my personal squabbles and boycott of the NFL. If the NFL doesn't amend itself in this way, it can very well lose the relevance it so enjoys -- maybe even people will discover the variety of non-NFL football during a lockout, which could damage its brand (think people discovering faster-paced European hockey with NHL level athletes during its lockout year).

Something's gotta give

-- Knuttel