Overtime Elite athletes will now be eligible for McAA game going forward. See below.
I knew they were not eligible before. But what I didn’t know is that Overtime Elite players can be recruited to play college ball once they become college age. Case in point, Overtime Elite’s Rob Dillingham, who would have been a McAA, will be a freshman at Kentucky next season.
Does this mean, Bryson Warren, (Nick and Ware’s teammate at NLR high school, who signed with Overtime Elite after sophomore season) could have been recruited to play college ball for the 2023-24 season?
Need clarification on this from anyone who knows. Don’t have time to do my own research this morning.
RD, Scottie or anyone?
He’s been receiving a contractual 6 digit salary the last 2 years. How could he have maintained his amateur status? I wonder if OTE has recently offered a “no salary” option for elite HS players who want to complete their HS education at a place that also provides a concentration on basketball skills development?
As a side note about Bryson, I’m surprised he isn’t held in higher regard in this upcoming NBA draft. I always thought that he would have been an NBA lottery pick after one year of college. OTE may have been a bad choice for him.
I just remember that every article about him mentioned he was signing a professional contract with OTE. Perhaps OTE now offers some kind of an “NIL contract”? I can’t imagine it could be retroactive for Bryson though.
Bob, you’re almost as enamored with the word amateur as Avery Brundage, who if you don’t remember was president of the International Olympic Committee for 20 years, a complete sphincter and an anti-Semite to boot. He was the one who refused to postpone or cancel the 1972 Munich Olympics after the terrorists killed the 11 Israeli athletes, and he fought any relaxation of Olympic amateurism rules tooth and claw.
And remember why amateurism came into being: Because wealthy European aristocrats didn’t want to compete against lower socioeconomic classes, so they wrote the rules to favor those who were too rich to work. And if it also excluded those who weren’t white, so much the better.
Actually I remember him. One thing I hated was if an American Olympic team member even mentioned turning pro after the Olympics, he ruled him ineligible.
I certainly agree he was way out, but, paying high school and collegiate athletics is not going to work I feel.
Whether it will work remains to be seen. What we do know is that the old way has been declared illegal, all the way up to the Supreme Court full of recent appointees, and it isn’t coming back. Tuition, books, room and board was collusion in restraint of trade (the market for services of college athletes). So they have to figure out how to make the new way work.
I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t see any way that athletes aren’t recognized eventually as employees, in the same way that regular students who work in the library or cafeteria are employees, and probably will have some kind of collective bargaining. And that may happen sooner rather than later; there are cases in the federal pipeline that go way beyond Alston or O’Bannon.
Brundage not only was against postponing or cancelling the remainder of the 1972 Munich Olympics he also fought against the proposed boycott of the 1936 Berlin Olympics. He was a prince of a guy. And he did find a German Princess to marry in retirement, not that there’s anything wrong with that.