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I wrote an economics paper in college based on my experiences first as a guy who lost a scholarship to injury and then as a tutor to the football and basketball teams at the university.
I agree with what has been written above, with perhaps the exception of NIL.
A few things:
- Scholarships are year to year and can be pulled at any time.
- The NCAA is a toothless hag that adheres to rules of zero merit or influence
- The dollars, even when I wrote the paper in 1981, associated with college football are ginormous. They are X Ginormous today.
- NIL and the transfer portal need guardrails but are central to breaking the lock schools had on their scholarship athletes. Coaches came and went as they saw fit, why not the players?
So, here, from memory, were the central tenets of the paper, again, 1981:
- Once awarded, a scholarship is for five years. The only exception is a criminal offense on the part of the player or failure to attain a 2.5 GPA or non attendance in class. A played cannot lose a scholarship to injury.
- For contact sports, minimal classes during the season and the player accrues an additional semester for each season he plays a contact sport. A college football game is a car crash.
- If a player does not make it to the pros, and the numbers are harsh, the player can then finish his degree using his accrued semesters, free of charge. The player must maintain a 3.0 GPA or higher however for these bonus semesters. Failure to do so means probation and one more "free" semester to turn it around.
- I mentioned a small stipend for each player.
Like others here, a saw the abuse up close and personal.
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1996 FJ80.
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