Fisking The Internet On CAPA

we're going to have a picture of Kain Colter at this press conference from ALL THE ANGLES

BiSB's terrific post earlier today covers much of the ground I wanted to, except from a lawyer who actually knows what he's talking about. I did want to put my two cents in, because approximately 74% of the comments I've read in the aftermath of the NLRB's decision make me want to find the person and shake them, shouting something along the lines of "HAVE YOU EVER MADE A COHERENT ARGUMENT IN YOUR GODDAMNED LIFE?!?"

So let's address these things. These are actual MGoBlog user comments. I'd say I'm sorry if I picked yours, but I'm not.

THIS IS THE END

I could definitely see Northwestern arguging that football athletes shouldn't get special treatment over all the other sports, etc and just dropping it the way Chicago did.

So… your theory is that Northwestern will drop football, get kicked out of the Big Ten, lose about 99% of their athletics revenue, and pay for its nonrevenue sports out of its own pocket because the football players have the right to collectively bargain. The people making this decision will be throwing away countless hours of free marketing, making their school less attractive to prospective students, and essentially firing themselves.

Seems likely.

Wow. Stupid. So long college sports as we know it.

"So long the Olympics as we know it." –this guy, 1992

No way is the third string back-up tackle as valuable as Jake Ryan or Devin Gardner. Why should a guy who contributes little to victory receive the same level of pay that a Gardner does?

Also, this will basically destroy the MAC  and other small schools. They don't have the budget to negotiate anything. I foresee schools dropping football or going to non-scholarship.

This is an argument that the future system might be unfair because it treats all athletes the same when some of them are worth more than others. I'm sure if we think about this very hard for a very long time I can come up with a flaw in that.

The MAC may not be able to provide the same sort of financial support that bigger schools can. This will undoubtedly crater their recruiting, which features many head-to-head wins against the Big Ten.

Won't this cripple many athletic departments and force them to drop sports? Perhaps not Michigan, but schools of lesser stature?

Maryland recently dropped several sports.

There are broad swathes of schools playing NCAA sports, and most of them are going to be completely unaffected by this decision. To be an employee you have to be involved in economic activity, and most NCAA schools are spending, not making money. The top and vast bottom are going to be fine. There is a middle tier of schools that face a choice between narrowing their focus to keep up with the Joneses and abandoning their dreams of being Louisville.

The problem is: they already face that choice. They run with a D-I minimum of sports and throw their resources at the revenue generators. This won't "cripple" them any more than their already short resources do.

Maryland dropped several sports because it was run by an idiot, a problem orthogonal to this discussion.

if this decision stands they will have just walked tens of thousands of student athletes right out of college sports.  title IX will be effectively gutted.   your daughter that wanted to row/field hockey/basketball, etc, kiss that good bye.  your son who wanted to play a sport that really doesn't generate revenue, say gymnastics, wrestling, and track,   well that's all done too.  nice job [insert expletives here].

There are 311 Division II institutions that make zero money on sports. There are 449 D III institutions. There are hundreds—thousands—of D-II and D-III field hockey, rowing, basketball, gymnastics, wrestling, and track programs. The chance that a high revenue program that has to deal with a player union is forced to drop sports is very low, and the overall number of opportunities to participate in intercollegiate athletics is not likely to change in any significant way.

And even if it did, I don't think there's any compelling reason to privilege generally wealthy nonrevenue athletes over the general student population and especially the relatively poor and underprivileged revenue athletes.

IT'S ALREADY FAIR

The athletes do not draw in the money. The name does. Michigan Football brings in the revenue. I didn't watch Denard any more closely than Sheridan. I don't watch Derrick Walton more often than Darius Morris. Have you ever said you were going to stop tuning in because a player left? Probably not, so it's not the players drawing in the money. The coaches play a big role, because they determine which players get recruited and how well the team performs (more fans watched Beilein than Amaker, for example).

Lots of players come and go every year, and the amount of revenue is not affected.

The hell you say. Traffic patterns during the last two football seasons here certainly indicate a correlation between success and engagement, and while football teams have a pile of goodwill built up all you have to do is look at ticket availability at Minnesota versus Wisconsin, or Northwestern, or Purdue, or Indiana to get an idea that the players make the name over a long period of time. If Michigan had a string of 3-9 seasons over the last 30 years, Michigan Stadium would be a decaying half-full wreck.

Meanwhile, I note you compared Derrick Walton to… uh… Darius Morris. I will expect a full report on the details of Gavin Groninger's career by Tuesday, in exacting detail.

So a 4 year full ride scholarship is not getting paid? This concept is a mockery of the system.

It may or may not be a 4 year full ride, and that full ride is not like getting an engineering degree (most of the time—I see you, Jordan Morgan). Many of the kids coming in are under-prepared to get a meaningful degree and have to spend 50 hours a week year round on their chosen sport. For many the value of their degree is approximately zero, both in terms of vocational knowledge gained and their ability to apply that to a real world job.

This is not because they did not "take advantage of their opportunity." It is because the opportunity was to play football and the rest of it was window dressing.

Here's a UNC athlete paper from one of those bogus classes, via @BryanAGraham. This got an A-. Sad stuff. pic.twitter.com/LBMnUUaoSP

— Robert Klemko (@RobertKlemko) March 26, 2014

Also, CAPA was arguing that the scholarship is payment. The issue is that these players are compensated, making them employees, and the NCAA illegally colludes to cap compensation at a certain amount. That is not legal.

And the system is a mockery of you, man.

It's not free labor, they pay them in the form of education, meals, $1,200 month stipend, etc. Nobody is telling these kids that they can't go to college unless they play football, they can take the normal route and get student loans and be a normal student. That's what grinds my gears about the whole thing.

They are telling them that this is the deal, take it or leave it, if you want to get to the NFL. And oh by the way as you're embarking on your probably-failed quest to have an NFL career that's going to be about 3 years long even if you do make it, we are going to make millions of dollars off your single outstanding skill.

It is ludicrous that everyone in college is all about getting theirs and we bristle at the idea of the players doing the same. Any moral high ground the NCAA had—and they did try to cap assistant pay back in the day—is 20 years gone.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE DETAILS

IRS

I wonder what cut the IRS will get from these Unionized employees

lets say 50000 a year for tuition, food, room, board, books and everything else

thats 50000 x .25 since thats 25 percent tax bracket = 12500 taxes

12500 x 4 = 50000 taxes owed

good luck kid

This was capably addressed by BiSB: the NLRB has nothing to do with the IRS and vice versa, and even if it did the way the law is currently written athletic scholarships should already be taxable. If anything, negotiating a provision that the scholarship still applies even if the player leaves the team puts the non-taxability of scholarship on more solid footing. Meanwhile, room and board money is already taxed.

What happens when needs aren't met? Strike? What happens then?

What prevents players from sitting down now? 

If the medical benefits, etc. that these players want really comes to fruition, what is that going to do to ticket prices?  The schools are going to try to come up with some sort of calculations as to what these new benefits to the players is going to cost and almost certainly try to figure out where the money is going to come from to fund the new player benefits.  Odds are it's going to be the consumer (ie - fans) that are going to be asked to help fund the new player benefits.

If ticket prices had any relationship to the cost of supporting the athletic department they would not have quadrupled in real dollars since 2000. If NCAA athletic departments were not trying to wring out every last dime they can already, Rutgers and Maryland would not be joining the Big Ten next year to the outrage of 90% of current Big Ten fans. If athletic departments could not afford to shift some of their money towards the athletes under their care, coaching salaries would not have gone up 70% since 2006.

Does this mean that Northwestern can fire all of their underperforming players and replace them with better ones now?

THEY CAN ALREADY DO THIS. HAVE YOU EVER READ THIS BLOG?