In the interest of full disclosure, I have only skimmed the majority of this specific thread, but every time this subject comes up, the discussion always veers into the matter of "choice" when they are talking about employees vs student athletes etc. This situation and the way the NCAA and NFL have set up their rules presents an illusion of choice IMO. It's a little naive to believe that the two organizations are making their rules in vacuums not taking each other into account. So, yes, when I have a gun to my head I still have a "choice" to do what the gunman is saying or not (technically) but it's not really a choice at all in a practical sense.
If this conversation hasn't gotten to that point, I apologize. We're 5 pages in and I just assumed we'd been down that path already.
The NFL's interest in this is age and playing time and pretty much nothing else. There is no effect on the NFL if a kid eats 7 servings of pasta at an awards ceremony unless it makes him too fat for the combine. But Oklahoma football had to fine several players for having an extra helping of pasta at a graduation banquet to ensure that the extra food wasn't considered a full meal instead of a snack. Because a full meal at a graduation banquet obviously makes the education of these students so impossible to maintain the very fabric of education in higher institutions in this country.
There is no effect on the NFL if an assistant coach accidentally butt dials a football player at the Univeristy of Oklahoma the day after that same coach received a permissible text (which is a phrase not used nearly enough in jokes) from that same player. Of course, to ensure that this awful butt dialing incident that rivals the conspiracy of Watergate doesn't destroy the fabric of education in higher institutions in this country the school enforced a four week ban on any official from the school speaking to this kid and the kid was declared ineligible pending a hearing. A hearing. Because of a butt dial. Mark Sanchez is lucky that he just had to suffere internet meme's for a few weeks. Although I'm sure Roger Goodell would hold a million dollar investigation on a butt-fumble if he could. I'm getting off topic.
Or how about a recruit staying in a hotel on an official meeting (you know to pick the college where she is going to enjoy her education primarly because everything else really isn't that important) being decalred ineligible because during the stay she used the hotel wifi and the school paid for it. OMG! A college student using the wifi paid for by the school! The horror. There is no way that any student in a school can possibly be expected to use the internet while in college. Those laptops you see kids use in class? They are fake. Just propaganda by the big schools to make them look cool. And of course, the NFL is very concerned with students using the internet because if they do that then they might get a twitter account. And if they get a twitter account they might tweet. And if they tweet well then the NFL will cease to exist and be in asheap of history along with the education system in this country. If you give a moose a muffin and all that.
How about the University of Oregon being forced to self report a baseball team permissible dinner that included a night of mini golf and........ laser tag. Yup, laser tag is too far. MLB wants no part of that happening. And the NFL can't have it either. If baseball players get to play laser tag, then football players will want to as well. And no one can ever study for a final if they played laser tag in the previous 18 months. It's in the bible.
And I'm sure the NFL and the NBA and MLB, and for the heck of it the NHL, UEFA, Disney, AT&T, the Vatican and the Dalhi Lama were all just horrified when Geno Auriema called MoNe Davis to congratualte her on the little league world series. So much so that the NCAA fined him for making that phone call. Because obviously that girl will never be able to enjoy an education now that she has been on network and cable TV, in a national sporting event, gotten phone calls from Presidents, been on talk shows and is considered a hero to other little girls who want to play baseball. All of that makes it impossible to get an education and what Geno did should bar his team from being able to compete fairly with the other women's college basketball teams...... wait.
The NFL was ready to get Congress involved when Mississippi was fined for having an extra table in a locker room. The NFL hates tables. You can put deflated footballs on them.
Or even better, the NFL is going to simply stop the draft because Mississippi players weren't charged by Barnes and Noble a late fee for returning their cap and gown from graduation on time and instead did it a day late. That would surely destroy education in this country.
When South Carolina players were eating cookies with too much icing, the NFL went ballistic. Too much icing adds .00005 seconds to your 40. Can't do that.
Using the NFL as an example for any reason in this process is ridiculous. And it doesn't matter. The argument about the stupidity of the rules of the NCAA have almost nothing to do with the NFL. Yes, the NFL wants certain rules in place. But not how much pasta a kid can eat. I mean, c'mon. The whole system is a joke. None of this has anything to do with education. Nothing. Not a single shred of any of these policies has anything to do with education at all. It has nothing to do with fairness to the other students at the univerity. It doesn't even have anything to do with Title IX. It's the NCAA putting place a system to ensure that they have the maximum amount of control over their money making commodities as long as possible without interference from any other source to maximimize their profits. And god bless them for it. That is what a business does. But let's not even think about arguing for one second that it is anything more than that. The NCAA was created to protect players from literally dying on the field. They were created to ensure player safety. Nothing more. They have morphed into this ridiculous nonsensical power structure that measures icing on cookies and goes to war over butt dials.
They don't care about the kids at all. They care about their ability to help the next TV deal and nothing more. They don't care about competative balance, they care about the illusion of control. They don't care about education, they care about money. And that's fine. But let's give up trying to justify their existence at this point becuase they can't even do it. And still, to this day, in the past decade or more since this topic has been getting more and more play there is not a single logical or reasonble argument based in sound theory or policy that argue that a kid shouldn't be allowed to have an extra plate of pasta, a full time job outside of school, a family friend but his mother a house, or a mentor in the field that he or she wants to pursue after graduation take them out and pay for the meal and entertainment. There just isn't.
Yes they get a great deal with a free education. Yes they get to use state of the art training facilities. Yes they get enhanced medical care. Yes they get to leave school with no debt if they are smart. Yes they get access to things that other students would love to have for their chosen profession. Yes they get all of that. But when these kids start being punished because of a meal, a butt dial, a wifi bill, or the fact that a mentor in their field wants to take an interest in them and buys them a bagel at a diner we've lose the ability to even look at the NCAA as an institution worthy of anything more than scorn or ridicule.
And I'm sure that Dr. Mark Emmert has never gotten a free ticket for anything. Ever. And pays for every single one of his meals, in full, without discount. And he never butt dials. He probably has a work study student who comes from a low income family who works full time while not in class at two or three jobs just to make ends meet for himself and his family answer his phones in the office and teach him how to use all this new fangled technology that the kids are talking about these days. The $2.0 million salary doesn't hurt either. Because it takes that much money to make sure he runs a system where a kid that gets three extra dollars in pasta must be punished by not allowing him to play collegiate sports until there is a full investigation. (I really hope every example above is from the onion. But they probably aren't.)
