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I don't see a way for a team to do this, at least not directly. Only avenue I see is maybe finding a way to use antitrust laws to pressure the NFL to make a change, and a member of the trust isn't really in a position to do that.
Maybe they're not getting an education, but they are getting a degree - which will benefit them should they not be able to make an NFL roster.
Protect the franchises? The two best players in the NBA over the last decade didn't go to college.
It worked for Kobe, Lebron, Garnett and some others. But there are many more Korleone Young, Jonathan Bender, Leon smith, Kwame Brown, Eddy Curry, DeSagana Diop, Darius Miles, Ousmane Cisse, Ndubi Ebi, James Lang, and others.
So how is that different from any other draft pick?
Didn't say it was different. I don't think Lebron and Kobe's success should be the reason to break down barriers to eliminate the 1 and done or allow NFL players to declare whenever they want. There are plenty of other reasons though.
The barrier to break down in the NBA has only been around for about 6 years. International players are not subject to the same rules either so it's really not about their age. The NBA and NFL just want a free development league, nothing more nothing less.
It's just an observation. If Clowney would be the consensus #1 overall pick in a draft many consider to be "weak" at the top then I'd be doing everything in my power as a franchise to make him eligible to be chosen without actually requesting the NFL "change the rule."
In other words, it would be like major league baseball, where the teams fund development of players, rather than handing it off to colleges who have nothing in their mission about developing people to play sports.Sounds good to me.
You mean everyone who enters the NBA doesn't succeed? Shocking.
Bender- 30millK. Brown- 58millDiop- 39millMiles- 61millCurry- 70millEbie- 2.7mill
The average salary in the last NFL development league (NFL Europe) was reportedly in the $15k-$18k range. How does that compare to the total compensation that players receive today in college (room, board, tuition)?Let's say they limit the dev league to 750 players (enough to populate 3 years of NFL draft classes). The vast majority won't be elite NFL players and quite a few of them will have short stays in the NFL at best. Will their positioning be better off for the rest of their lives for having played in a dev league versus having played in current college football? Take into account how America supports minor leagues compared to current college football. Take into account that those players who don't make the NFL cut won't have local fame to fall back on and become an insurance agent, for example... because instead of being the top 10% out of 10,625 players on 125 teams, many of them will now be the worst players out of our 750 players on about 10 teams.And now consider those extra 9,875 players who currently receive scholarships. Plus for programs whose football program earns more money than costs, the number of general students who have financial available aid available via the football profits that wouldn't be there otherwise. If the NCAA continues on as it is and that doesn't change, then no loss there. If however the public enthusiasm for the NCAA drops off merely enough to affect profits, then we may see fewer teams, scholarship reductions for all teams, and less financial aid available to general students.The only single thing I see that seems "good" about this idea is that those few players who are capable of making the jump to the NFL earlier, they would see more career earnings. And that is probably less than 1% of the current pool of college football players. Everything else about the plan seems like it would be worse, including for the players who end up in the developmental league for the same amount of time they'd have been in college.'CalBear said:
The NCAA football and basketball systems are a perversion of the idea of college. If those sports worked more like NCAA baseball (which still has scholarships, but isn't a de facto development league for MLB), colleges would be better off. Even at Cal the idea of student-athletes in football is largely a farce; the football factory schools have basically dropped any pretense of education for their players.If a player wants to go to the NFL or the NBA right out of high school, we don't want him.
And in any event, why the heck do we want to protect the franchises? I understand why THEY want to protect themselves from their own mistakes, because why not? But morally speaking, it's pretty awful that we're cool with a bunch of super-rich people colluding to keep a group of kids from getting paid what they're worth (and potentially losing out on millions if they get hurt or something else happens) just to protect themselves from their own bad decisions.'CalBear said:
You act like this is all hypothetical and we don't know what would happen if we sacrificed a little revenue from athletics. We have literally hundreds of schools that don't give athletic scholarships at all- including most of the best academic institutions in the country. They all seem to do just fine with just regular old students playing football on Saturdays. You might even say they do better.
If the best players stop playing NCAA, and public interest drops, and college football program profits drop... then that is that much less money each school has to work with out of its budget for all things. Many don't make a profit, it's just a cost but one that partially pays for itself.Either way it's less money. Less money means less something... financial aid, buildings, professors. Something.
Give me a break. The education is there if the kids want it.
It's lame to suggest otherwise. The kids all have a choice in how much participation the take in the educational opportunities.
It's not less money for anything academic. It's less money for athletic departments. Football and basketball generally pay for all those non-revenue sports that just hemmorhage money.
One of the biggest advertisements for a university (especially big state school) is its athletic program. It has been found that donations and student applications for all departments increase with athletic success. this does not count the number of students don't make the connection between huge state school always on TV and their desire to go to huge state school. Academic study which looks at this from multiple angles.http://www.montana.edu/econ/seminar/Archive/siegfriedcollegesports%20052010.pdf
Right, and the one-and-done guys know they're only biding their time until they're cleared to go to the NBA. If there were no restrictions, no one would be forced to go to a college they don't care about to waste everyone's time for a year before making the choice they actually wanted to make in the first place. (Or for three years in the case of football players). If Kobe had wanted to go to college for four years and get a degree, no one would have stopped him.
It mostly means less money going back into the football program. Which, as I said, doesn't seem to be a bad thing. The schools that don't bother with big-time football in the first place seem to do just fine in other facets. Better than the ones that have big-time football, even.Not that it matters. I don't think losing a small handful of players every season would affect the popularity of college football one bit. Quality of play is WAY down the list of things that draw people to the game, and in any event there's no chance it would be noticeably affected by losing a couple elite guys a year.
No one is forcing anyone to go to college for a year.
then hire better scouts
A full ride and national exposure in college ball is far better than the other options currently available to top high school athletes in football and basketball, whether they're interested in getting a degree or not.If the NFL and NBA had real minor leagues as MLB does, that wouldn't be true.
What dollar amount do you think a football player's 3-4 years in college are worth to him... including his future options at employment that are available due to his college education or career?How much do you think an NFL minor league would realistically pay, given what salaries we know NFL Europe paid and what UDFAs are paid in camp?
And imagine all the college girls. How great it would be to be a top athlete on a major campus? Almost worth the risk of injury for another nine months of that experience.
The argument isn't that there should or shouldn't be a minor league. The argument is that because people who choose to pursue playing football as a career have little to no choices other than playing for free (or the value of a scholarship if you prefer) in the current marketplace, we shouldn't limit their ability to pursue a professional career as soon as someone in the NFL is willing to pay them to play. It's bad, morally speaking. At least in my opinion.
As I said earlier in the thread, I would probably applaud the courts overturning the NFL's rule because a big part of me agrees if someone can do some work the best they should have the opportunity to compete for the job.But like I also said earlier, I'm conflicted, and no one has changed that. No one has shown things would be better for any but a tiny amount of players, and I haven't seen legitimate arguments that things wouldn't be worse for pretty much everyone else involved including NFL, NCAA, and many, many more players than it helps.I have yet to see anyone explain how this is any different than a company having the right to require a college degree for a job even when law doesn't require it (so not talking about an MD, etc). Which is something I support. The closest we've seen is the argument that "a company can make exceptions to the rule if they want", but since the NFL and NFLPA can also make exceptions to their rule if they want, that isn't a valid argument against the NFL's rule.
The problem is that this is the wrong analogy. A team is the proper analogy to a company, and a team cannot make an exception. The league is analogous to an entire industry, or at least a dominant share of it.The correct analogy would be if every relevant player in a particular industry got together and decided that even though some young people are 100% qualified to work in their field, they're gonna ban them across the board until, say age 30 (a reasonable analogy since football careers are so short as compared to most fields). And that no company would be permitted to make an exception. And the reason for the ban is not for reasons of public safety or to protect employees, but for some other reason that they don't bother to tell you (or they come up with a thinly veiled excuse). You wouldn't find that industry's collusion to lock out eligible young people wrong?
The dollar value of three years of basket weaving classes is zero. It is certainly possible for a football player to get valuable education while playing football, but this is the exception rather than the rule. It would also be possible for football players to get valuable education while playing college football if the NFL accepted players right out of high school, and that would be the player's choice, as it is in baseball.
What does that have to do with your initial comment that the schools have dropped the pretense of an education for the players?Right, and the one-and-done guys know they're only biding their time until they're cleared to go to the NBA. If there were no restrictions, no one would be forced to go to a college they don't care about to waste everyone's time for a year before making the choice they actually wanted to make in the first place. (Or for three years in the case of football players). If Kobe had wanted to go to college for four years and get a degree, no one would have stopped him.
I think you are dead wrong on the first issue. The NFL and NBA rules are in place to protect the NFL and NBA. Any benefit NCAA schools receive is just a by-product. If the pros decided it was in their interest to change the rules to get players like Clowney earlier, they'd change it in a heartbeat.
That is not a correct analogy either. The teams in the NFL are clearly bound with each other in many ways that are key to their business that you're completely ignoring. Including financially (revenue sharing), contractually (CBA, TV deals, etc), and even surrendering their own autonomy (owners council has to agree sales, can impose penalties like were done on the Redskins and Cowboys right or wrongly, etc) in ways that are directly contrary to the type of businesses you equate them with.There is no perfect analogy that I know of besides other sports leagues. The one I can think of that is closer than either of us got would be a restaurant/store/etc that sells franchises. There is some degree of autonomy and there is some degree of having to conform with the needs of the other franchises even when sometimes it is not in your best immediate interest.
Cal I hope you know I love you as a poster here, you bring a lot of great stuff. But you're making unsupported generalizations with statements like "three years of basket weaving classes".We've already had links to studies with numbers for graduation rates and such. 69% of football players graduated from FBS schools. The graduation rate amongst FBS football players was actually higher than the graduate rate amongst non-athlete male students. As it has been said before, just having a college degree regardless of major gives people opportunities they seldom have. The difference between a college degree and not was said to be $600,000 in one of the studies.You're treating it like most people leave college football after three years. They don't. This year 72 underclassmen declared for the draft. If the past ratio stays similar, 70% of them, or about 50 will be drafted out of 255 draft picks. That means the vast majority - 80% - of the drafted players finished 4 years in college before trying to make the jump to the NFL.
Well, of all the hundreds of sports leagues in all the hundreds of countries of the world, there are exactly two which try to use colleges as minor leagues. They do that for historical reasons, not because it's a good idea.
Do you think that would significantly change if Jadevon Clowney (and other NFL-ready players) were able to leave after 1 year instead of 3?
The vast majority of NCAA players are not NFL prospects, and would still be playing in college and getting degrees if the NFL took players directly out of high school.
What's the graduation rate among players drafted by the NFL? I guarantee it's way lower than the graduation rate for NCAA football players as a whole. They may be in school for four years, that doesn't mean they have a degree.
After all that I think we mostly agree. I don't think it's necessarily in the league's best interests either, nor do I think the NFL owes it to anyone. It's about the value you put on the league being open to everyone vs. the NFL protecting its own interests. I'm just not a fan of sports leagues setting up limitations that have a negative effect on any players just to protect them from themselves. If you can't properly evaluate talent and readiness to play, that's on you. It's similar to how I feel about max deals in the NBA. Caps and similar rules are fine for competitive balance and fairness between large and small markets and whatnot, but that's not an issue here, so I don't see why we should side with management over employees and the free market.'Greg Russell said:
Industries with collectively bargained contracts (like steamfitters and the like) typically have union seniority rules that were collectively negotiated. As in the NFL's case, those rules are exempt from antitrust scrutiny by the non-statutory labor exemption. Otherwise, I imagine many companies would want to replace more expensive "senior" steamfitters with cheaper junior steamfitters. Which is why the steamfitters negotiate for those rules.
I think he would go #1 THIS year.
