[cmccuist]

What with the NFL draft coming up (the combine has already started) and the endless daily mock drafts of Mel Kyper/Todd Mcshay which are right about 1/3 of the time, there will be lots of discussions about how agents are ruining college athletics. OMG! They’re corrupting the “scholar athletes”!!! It’s BS, but let’s look at a few numbers.

There are 32 teams in the NFL. Realistically, there are 7 rounds of drafting. So roughly 225-250 players get drafted. I don’t know how many of those make an NFL roster, but let’s just say half. There are about 120 schools that field big-time NCAA football teams.

There are about 200 schools that have NCAA Division 1 basketball teams. There are 30 NBA teams. There is essentially 1 round of drafting because nobody that gets drafted in the second round sticks on an NBA roster. Whereas everyone drafted in the first round makes the team because the contracts are guaranteed. So you have 30 kids make it every year to the NBA. More people make it to the summit of Mount Everest every year (100-200 depending on the weather) than make it in the NBA!

With those long odds of ever becoming a professional athlete, you can see that the competition is brutal. The agents, coaches, boosters, parents are all trying to cash that lottery ticket.

My solution - Why not give every school a pass for say one basketball player, and two football players who can basically do whatever the hell they want! I’m talking about players who just practice and play in the games – no classes! They can have their own agents, sell t-shirts, drive Hummers, hammer coeds, basically do what they’re doing now, but without the NCAA hypocrites ripping their hair out in their ivory tower. The NCAA is a minor league for those select few anyway. Why hold on to this nonsense about educating these freaks?

And no one is offering that second string center, or the long snapper, or the wedge guys on special teams shoe contracts, so forget about them. They get a free education and that should be enough. A four year education could run into the hundreds of thousands if you’re at a private school.

The athletes would agree to stick around for a specified period – say two years for basketball and three years for football. They would split revenue from merchandising with their school. They could do basically what they’re doing now, except without all the under the table envelopes full of cash and fake jobs from the boosters.

This would also let a lot more teams into the chase for the national title. If USC has already used up their two picks for the year, the 5 star recruit may take a look at Oregon, or Washington, or Fresno State. Duke and North Carolina wouldn’t be a lock for the final four every year, because that ridiculous point guard with mad skills could be making a ton of money at NC State, or Butler, or UMass. You could even make the academics optional (they’re already exempt from attending any classes). Meaning if the guy had a yearning for higher learning, he could get that degree.

Forget about hockey and baseball. They don’t need fixing. In the major leagues, counting all the players, managers, and trainers there are less than 30 college degrees – baseball players are not educated! I don’t know anything about hockey except that they have phenomenal youth programs and minor leagues already.

That’s my solution. Legitimize the select few who are only using the NCAA as a stepping stone to the bigs and let the kids (and the Universities) make some money as well!