Spurrier’s pay petition meaningless but concept has merits
Steve Spurrier and Nick Saban are among SEC coaches who believe it's time to pay players.
Steve Spurrier must have seemed like a seven-year-0ld on a sugar rush at the SEC meetings in Destin as he scrambled to get other coaches to sign up for his pay-the-players plan. But there’s a way to go about this, and a meaningless piece of paper isn’t it.
There are valid arguments on both sides of the pay-for-play issue. The “don’t pay:” Student athletes already receive a valuable scholarship. The “pay”: The dollars in college athletics and contradictory messages from the NCAA have grown out of proportion relative to the concept of amateur athletics. Therefore, it’s time for the athletes to share in the wealth.
My view is somewhere in the middle: I’m certainly not for handing football players $300 paychecks every game, as Spurrier is proposing. Finding a fair and workable salary system that fits into Title IX regulations would be nearly impossible. But I do think it’s time to look into giving student-athletes a small percentage of the peripheral income that a university’s athletic department makes off a a team or player’s name, whether that’s the sale of jerseys, T-shirts or video games.
Georgia coach Mark Richt put it best when he told our Chip Towers: “The spirit of wanting to get more financial help for our players is unanimous. But how to go about it, I’m saying that wouldn’t necessarily be the best way to do it. I didn’t sign [Spurrier's proposal] because I didn’t want to say that’s how I felt was the best way to get it done. … In no way shape or form was I saying I didn’t want to help student-athletes. I 100 percent do. … But how do you do it without hurting amateurism? How do you do it without tax implications? Maybe it’s through the scholarship becoming more valuable.”
Finally, let me add this: A sweeping change like this is not going to made because Steve Spurrier got Houston Nutt and Nick Saban – the biggest oversigning abusers — to sign his little petition. Nor is it up to the SEC, the Big Ten or any other conference. This is an NCAA decision.
But I’m happy for Spurrier that he’s so excited about this and was able to hold court with the ravenous media in a hotel lobby. Guess it beats answering questions about Stephen Garcia.
What are your thoughts on pay-for-play in some form to college athletes?
By Jeff Schultz
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264 comments Add your comment
BYRDDAWG
June 3rd, 2011
11:02 am
Yes Jeff please get Chip to let the columbus nut back on…….I need daily updates on Clarett & Schlichter’s prison cell happenings!!!! LOL
Buckeye
June 3rd, 2011
11:39 am
byrddog,
Happen to have a Georgia address, byrddog. Pay Georgia taxes.
Clarett is not is prison. Schlichter’s in deep trouble this time. So there. There’s your update
Have a nice day.
Beano Cook Fan Club
June 3rd, 2011
11:45 am
The University of Southern California and The Ohio State University just made some mistakes like all of us.
AltamahaDawg
June 3rd, 2011
11:55 am
As a proud former female athlete I take exception to RxDawg’s comments.
Hit A Single
June 3rd, 2011
12:00 pm
I really feel for these college football players. What a joke? There are many kids that would love to play for the love of Saturday afternoons and the game. I would like to know how many college football players eat spam after a game. If they do it is because they want it.
Billsen
June 3rd, 2011
12:31 pm
When I was in college at USC, I volunteered at the campus radio station, WUSC-FM. After a year, I was the promotions director. I got a stipend for my volunteer work. I think it was like $100 a month, and that was in 1988. I see little difference in what Spurrier is proposing.
Fan
June 3rd, 2011
12:34 pm
I would be in favor of compensating players for their athletic performance upon GRADUATION. You could put a system together to keep track of number of games participated in, or anything along those lines, but make the payment when they GRADUATE – so that the pay system doesn’t loose sight of the fact that this is COLLEGE athletics, and a COLLEGE, after all, is an institute of education, not merely a sports factory.
It’s clear that the NCAA serves as the minor league for the NBA and NFL …. and minor league baseball players get paid … why not minor league football and basketball players, or minor league baseball players that choose to compete in the minor league that includes and educational opportunity along with the baseball experience?
DawgByte
June 3rd, 2011
12:39 pm
Jeff Ding-Dong Schultz -
THERE IS NO MIDDLE GROUND!!! You’re either going to pay them a stipens above and beyond the benefits outlined in their scholarship, or you’re not. What you propose is as absurd as what VISOR BOY has put on the table. What the pro-pay tards don’t get is that the second you provide a cash stipens you’re opening up Padora’s Box that will be unenforceable and susceptible to MASSIVE FRAUD. The NCAA Compliance Dept. is already overtaxed and doing a poor job, not to mention head coaches and their staff’s ability to reign in 18 year olds who have a proclivity for f’ing things up. If you introduce a scheme like you’re proposing the sky’s the limit on the amount of abuse that will take place. Boosters will be setting up offshore accounts for players, gifts will flow and the dollar amount however humble it starts out will grow exponentially over time, with NO WAY to go backwards.
Wake-up people, we’re talking about college student athletes here – no more, no less.
Tell the truth
June 3rd, 2011
1:02 pm
AltamahaDawg You can ignore that fella- anyone who can say with a straight face today that we have too much regulation has no idea what is happening in today’s world. After Enron, the S&L scandal, Wall Street’s
greed that almost took the country down, the peanut butter fiasco in Ga, the failure of the SEC to do it’s job, etc, etc.
Tell the truth
June 3rd, 2011
1:25 pm
So Spurrier wants to call his charges “performers”; I thought they were student athletes??? Well if Rush Limberger can get away with that I guess others can also. You know anything to avoid taking responsibility for what you do and what you say.
SEC didn't go nearly far enough with 'oversigning' | Jeff Schultz
June 3rd, 2011
6:11 pm
[...] Earlier post: Spurrier’s pay petition meaningless but concept has merit [...]
It Ain't Rocket Science
June 4th, 2011
10:07 am
FSN,
Do you seriously think that coaches dipping into their own pay to pay their players would work? What is to prevent some coach, who might not want to play on a level playing field, from say, getting some extra money from a booster(s) and also giving that to the player. How would you control this to insure it doesn’t happen. Of course, I am not saying that we have any coaches in the SEC that would ever stoop to insuring players get some extra dough, even under the present rules.
Pay it Up
June 5th, 2011
1:53 pm
The players should get a lot more than $300 per month. they make millions for universities and should get at least $1,000 each month and probably more.
dekalb fan
June 8th, 2011
3:10 pm
There are several ACADEMIC scholarships that provide the student a monthly stipend and plane trips home if applicable. The athletic scholarship can be changed to include a stipend. NCAA rules prohibit atheltes from working so they should receive a stipend of some kind.