the check is in the mail

The NCAA has long outlived its usefulness, if it were ever useful. The list of malfeasance is nearly endless: recruiting scandals, inability to actually investigate anything, useless bans and suspensions, moneymaking skills on par with FIFA, shit leadership, and general incompetence. I have way too many thoughts on the NCAA to come to some clear conclusion and you blame that on my life long love of sport. I want it to be good and fair but I know it's not.

Paying athletes has long been an issue across major moneymaking sports at major universities. Right of the bat we should bear in mind this first fact - most major university athletic departments don't operate at a profit.(here's a link to a great site with mid-tier University of Iowa chosen). Undoubtedly, the massive programs (Texas, Alabama, Ohio St.) have football programs that pull the entire department over the line but the vast majority of departments lose money. Paying athletes, on top of the losing financial proposition in place, doesn't make financial sense. Football players at the major programs are now essentially 'paid' to study their chose profession - a year of tuition, room and board at USC is allegedly $72K. For a football player when you consider travel, equipment, special training, medical, additional facilities, special diet/food/training meals, etc, you can add something like 40% to that number, so we are talking about $100K per year, $400K over four years to study your chosen profession at a level that even academic scholarship students studying the likes of medicine, science, or English will never see. And, post-graduation, who donates more back to major universities, athletes or other alumni? Maybe the donations come because the football program is doing well. I don't know, but I suspect that non-athletes contribute to the endowment number more than athletes. I could go deeper into other stuff I ponder in this particular area, but I won't.

I won't go further because I'm more on the players' side than the universities and the NCAA. Even though I know that USC was USC before Reggie Bush, and USC will be USC after Reggie Bush, they did benefit from his name and likeness during his time there. Yes, USC made Reggie Bush, not vice versa (anyone think Reggie Bush at North Dakota St. would have had the same career?). It wouldn't be a reach to see schools begin to pay athletes but eliminate athletic scholarships and tell athletes that "we'll pay you $150K per year, but you owe us $100K for your training and facilities." Might not work out as well as one thought.

What else? Well, how about we do away with college athletics as we know it and move all the athletics to the Art Department? (Hat tip to anonymous source on that one.) How about the NCAA tries to get with the game and figure out how to move forward in athlete compensation. How about they work hard on details and methods to ensure that athletes whose names and likenesses earn money are compensated in some way.

How about the professional sports leagues who make billions of dollars fund minor leagues along the lines of MLB and junior hockey in Canada? I'm not sure why we still think that universities and colleges should be in the business of profit and sport on the level we currently see.

I'd like to think that the downfall of the NCAA might foretell the end of college sports but it will more likely bring more money and graft into colleges and universities.

Oh, what started this? What made you read all this junk? It's this article on California deciding to allow college athletes to be paid.

be there or be ...

I have a weird interest in traffic and civil planning (is that the phrase? City planning?) Having grown up on Omaha, all square aside from crazy Leavenworth St., and someone who enjoys walking in Manhattan (hello squares), this article piqued my interest. What more do you need then an economist, city/urban planning, and Burning Man? It reminded me of a once monthly visit/episode called "Shaping the City" that Kojo Nnamdi used to host with the architect Roger Lewis on WAMU in DC. I don't think the "Shaping" series is still ongoing but it was easily my favorite episode every month because Lewis had a way of talking about planning, architecture, memorial planning (it is DC, afterall), and all aspects of human economy. Having zero life experience how these things actually work I enjoyed reading how true experts understand and plan the human experience - obviously, some good and some bad.

The Burning Man event is human gathering that allows these folks to actually plan, create, inhabit, disassemble, and walk way every single year only to do it again in twelve months with added corporate (funny, right?) knowledge. Not only is this of interest for the caching of details for future city planners, but it should be of interest into how we can plan for tens of thousands of people needed immediate in disasters and migration (forced or otherwise).

Anyway, here's the article in the NYTimes. Enjoy.

the game

 

It's been a long and very enjoyable summer of baseball. Our primary source of sports entertainment was the Keene Swamp Bats who won the New England Collegiate Baseball League (NECBL) championship this season. The league consists of still active college players from across the country who spent the (short) summer league living in local homes and playing about 45 games throughout a chunk of New England. We also had a chance to see the Portland Sea Dogs host the Reading Fighin' Phils while on vacation (p.s. Portland's Hadlock Field is a very nice stadium). What brought this to the fore was following the Nationals v Mets game online last night. It was one of those games you rarely see where it gets totally crazy in the late innings. The gist: First, the Mets suck. Second, the game was to be a pitching dual between the last three Cy Young holders: Max Scherzer and Jacob de Grom. Scherzer exited first, de Grom went long, but all we need to know is the Nats closed to 5-4 at the end of the eight. I figured they'll get a shot in the 9th, right? Well, the bullpen gave up five in the top of the 9th, three unearned., and staring at a 10-4 deficit was rough. In quite a turn, the Nats rallied in the bottom of the 9th for...wait on it...seven runs. It all happened like this.

I've been following the Nats very closely this year, and it all seemed lost early on; lost for a really good team (if one overlooks a struggling bullpen, which every team seems to have this year). They started 19-31 (.380 ball on pace for 100 losses) that ended with an awful four-game (losing) sweep at CitiField in New York. Since then they've gone a MLB-best 59-28 (.678) and have both a MVP leader in Anthony Rendon (.338/32/112/1.054) and an outside shot at a Cy Young with Stephen Strasburg. They won't catch the Braves for the division, but they have just about locked up the #1 wild card slot. Granted, a one-game wild card playoff won't be my favorite, but it's what you get.