The poll on cheating has ended

Football Insider Board
#1

So I thought I’d summarize the results, combining the Lounge and the Insiders board.

A total of 215 votes were recorded on both boards. Of those, 182 (84.6%) said they were not comfortable with UA cheating in recruiting to win at football. Another 13 (6.0%) said they were OK with cheating if we don’t get caught, and 10 (4.6%) said they were OK with doing anything to win. Ten more (another 4.6%) said their opinions did not match any of the other three choices.

By board, 9% on the Lounge were OK with doing whatever it takes to win, 11% were OK with cheating if we don’t get caught, 75% don’t want to cheat to win and 5% said none of the above. On the Insiders board, 87% did not favor cheating, 4.7% were OK with cheating if we don’t get caught, 3.5% said whatever it takes to win is OK, and 4.7% said none of the above.

#2

Cheating is akin to stealing. Difficult to view that positively.

Might as well disband the program if that is what it takes.
Games are not life or death.

If me or my family faced certain
death that could only be avoided only by stealing, then I would
take that route.

#3

Agreed. But I suspected that there was a segment on these boards who would think otherwise, and the poll results confirm it. I also suspected that the Lounge crew would be more accepting of cheating than the Insiders, and by percentage, they were.

#4

When the “cheating” is paying an inner city kid, coming from a single parent, get some cash, pay for rent, while coaches, administrators, clothing lines make millions off this kid’s performance, I don’t associate it with stealing.

Well, there is some stealing going on, but I better not go there.

But to each their own.

#5

2009 I agree with your point but that is a systemic issue of all college sports. The players should be paid for the value of what they bring to the school and that may offset the desire to take money under the table.

#6

Right on.

#7

A stipend was a step in the right direction.

My only concern is not many schools can afford to pay players. The vast majority of athletic departments are operating at a loss and are subsidized. The vast majority of athletic departments dont make much off their players.

I dont know what the answer is, but I can say the way they are doing it now isnt fair. It will take someone a lot smarter than me to figure out a way to pay the players without destroying the system.

#8

Players are picking schools to get to the pros, they don’t care about loyalty to a school or state. It is all about what can you do to get me to the pros? I hear stories or recruiters lying to players about playing time and then kids get on campus and it all changes. Look at how many kids transfer the last 10 years. Kids are going to other schools with a sour taste in their mouths about their last school. The kids look at the money made by the schools from their exploits with bitterness. I predict more college players will turn teams into the NCAA or support an investigation.

#9

Things these kids get that cost money.
Tuition, books, room and board, tutoring, training, health insurance.

Anyone on here have an idea what that would cost a regular student? I do for the most part as my daughter is in her 3rd year at the UofA.

All these things add up to at least 35k per year.
How many 18-22 year old kids would make that coming out of high school? Not many.

The system will never be perfect, but we shouldn’t forget what they are getting that normal students aren’t.

I think the solution would be to give each athlete about $50 to $75 per week. That should be plenty on top of what they’re already getting.

#10

That is one reason the rules needed to be changed so they could be paid at least something for the value they bring the school. Some kids really need some extra help. However, we all know that the big problems with the cheating had nothing to do with compassion for poor kids, but instead was incentive for the best players to come to the booster’s program. It wasn’t buying the kid a coat in the winter or buying him a meal when he was hungry. It was big payola to run, catch, pass, block & tackle. The recent changes at least have the positive effect of removing the need for the altruistic help for the poor kids.

#11

I am not naive. No school – none – follows every rule to the letter. Even holier-than-thou Notre Dame just had to vacate two years’ worth of wins. And I know very well that we have had boosters who are well versed in the art of the $100 handshake, because one of them was my late FIL (at the time).

But we’re talking about systematic stuff here. Auburn’s infamous ATM machines. SMU’s slush funds that got them the death penalty. The car that the Aggies bought Eric Dickerson only to watch him drive it to SMU. The Ole Miss staffers that were pumping out money to Laremy Tunsil and apparently others. From this poll, our fans are by and large not OK with this type of thing.

Stipends and cost-of-attendance are a whole different issue. Jeff Long is preparing for this. Fortunately for him, revenue streams from SECN, etc., are such that covering all 400-something scholarship athletes in this way is not going to break the UA bank. I would say this is true for all Power 5 schools, although certainly there are haves and havenots even among those 65 schools, counting ND.

#12

I gotta know why you thought the Lounge voters would be more likely to be OK with cheating. Funny.

#13

I thought so too. There have been numerous posts on the Lounge from users who advocated winning at any cost. They did not care what Petrino might have done in his time here, they wanted him back.

#14

Yep, I noticed the same thing Marty did. Win at any cost, didn’t care if BP cheated on his wife, cheated on the NCAA, whatever. To paraphrase Al Davis, just win, baby.

#15

Great post ZBhog. Most posters choose to ignore the 35K+ being paid to allow our student athletes to attend school. I agree the athletes need spending money, but to say they are being exploited is way off base.

#16

I’m not ignoring anything. And it’s more than that if the kid is coming from out of state. I just think that’s not adequate, and that athletes are still being exploited.

I assume you have, or in the past had, a job or jobs. You may have been a lower level employee or you may have been higher up in the ranks, or both as time went on. Over the years, if you did your job well and your company did well, there was a reasonable chance that you got a raise or raises to reflect that. And if you didn’t, you were probably looking for another job.

Well, college athletes are only there for 4 or 5 years. But over the decades, the amount of money generated by college athletics has exploded. The total UA athletic budget when I was in school 35 years ago was probably under $5 million. Now it’s $100 million plus, so the “company” is doing very well indeed. Yet the athletes’ compensation has not only not kept pace, it has actually gone DOWN; they took away “laundry money” and some other benefits. And without the athletes, there is no flood of money; these are not janitors who make a minimal contribution, these are the people without which the whole thing doesn’t happen. And if they go looking for another job (transferring), the school they go to has the same limits as the one they’re leaving. Or they go to the NFL or whatever.

Is it slave labor? No. They do get the compensation of room, board and books. Which is a lot more expensive than it was 35 years ago as well, but the athletes are not really receiving money, they are receiving a service of a free education. And the service they are getting is basically the same as it was then, even a little less as I noted. Is it adequate? Well, if your company’s revenue has gone up 2000% and your pay has gone down, I would think you might feel a bit exploited too.

Then there is the issue of images, rights and likenesses. The reason that the revenue in college sports, and in pro sports as well, has exploded is largely because of TV. Which means these kids are being shown on TV a lot. If an actor appears on TV, he expects to get paid; if she appears on TV more often, she expects to get paid more and more often. These athletes’ names and images are being used to make the schools a whole shipload of money, and they’re not seeing any of it. Not to mention when EA Sports was using barely disguised real athletes in video games. I very well remember buying a college basketball video game in the late '90s. The “Arkansas” team in this game had a white guard who made a ton of 3-pointers and wore #22. There was no name on #22, but it was very obvious who it was: Pat Bradley, the Shootah. His image and likeness was being used to make the game company money, and he wasn’t getting a nickel of it.

#17 
 While I somewhat agree with your post, I would point out that #1, yes they do really receive money.  They get the calculated cost of room in board, in cash, and if they live off campus and eat cheaply they get to keep the difference.  And #2, while there is a lot of money made off of their images, IMO most of that money is due to the name on the front of the jersey, not on the back.  
 You mention Pat Bradley from an old video game.  Obviously you knew who he was supposed to be, but how many other people who bought the game did?  And did you know all the players from all the other teams?  I doubt there were very many people who went out and bought the game because of one single player.
 I agree that these kids should not be in a position where they can't have a good college experience, or travel back and forth from home to see their family.  But I also think when talking about how much they deserve, it should be kept in mind that a large percentage of the fans in the stands (along with their donations) would be there whether any one particular player was there or not.
#18

The off-campus food thing has been changing. They reinstated the dining hall, which had been taken away as a cost-cutting move. Our athletes can eat three meals a day plus snacks at the Jones Center if they want. I think they do get money to rent apartments off campus, which can be stretched if they room with teammates, etc., and probably do have some extra money for late-night Taco Bell runs, but it ain’t much.

The fact that our fans are mainly rooting for the cardinal and white laundry does not change the fact that they need 85 human beings to wear that laundry. NFL teams might have 2 or 3 people that are real draws, either on TV or at the ticket office, but the other 50 guys on the roster also get paid very well, and they all have the opportunity to maximize their income either through negotiations or free agency. College athletes can do neither.

Do you remember the Ed O’Bannon lawsuit, which started a lot of the process which has led to cost of attendance and possible name-image-likeness payments? Ed may also have been in that game I bought, although he was probably a couple years before that. He recognized that EA Sports had a 6-8, 220-pound, bald, left-handed, relatively light-skinned African-American playing power forward in a UCLA #31 uniform (all of which were characteristics of Ed O’Bannon); he had not given permission for any such use, and he certainly hadn’t gotten any money for it. So he sued, and he won, and EA Sports went out of the college games business (in the NFL, they pay the NFLPA for rights to individual players’ names and images, and the players are compensated, so everybody’s happy). The judge ruled that NCAA rules barring payments to athletes were not just unfair, they were completely illegal, a violation of federal antitrust laws (businesses cannot conspire with each other to hold down their employees’ compensation, which is exactly what the NCAA limits do). Of course, the NCAA contended that they’re not employees, they’re student-athletes (the student-athlete fiction was concocted in the 1950s to help schools get around the legal requirement of workers’ compensation coverage for those injured on the job). The judge found that this was complete BS.

#19

Everything you say is true. It is also true that I remember hundreds of players that played for the Razorbacks. But I have personally bought probably 60 or 80 razorback hats and 30 or 40 shirts, sweatshirts, or jackets and none had a specific player’s name or number. Again, I believe the players should be able to enjoy their time at college. Just think the talk of outright paying the players is opening a big can of worms.

#20

Yup. Big can of worms. But the can is now open and the worms are wiggling out, and it can’t be resealed. We have a federal judge who came down on the side of the athletes, and came down hard. NCAA is appealing, of course (EA Sports gave up and has created a fund to pay the athletes like O’Bannon who were depicted in previous games). But I don’t think things will go back to how they were in the 70s and 80s. Because the money isn’t going back to where it was in the 70s and the 80s. When the total budget was $5 million or less, a free education was a lot more equitable compensation than it is for a $100-million-plus operation.

But the real can of worms is the Kessler case. O’Bannon’s case was about names, likenesses and images, both in video games and in televised games. Kessler (who is the lead attorney representing a group of current and former football and hoops players) cuts right to the heart of the matter – he contends that limiting athletes to just a scholarship is illegal restraint of trade. He calls the NCAA an illegal cartel acting to fix the prices paid for the labor of student athletes, and seeks a removal of such limits. What will that lead to, assuming he wins (and I suspect his chances are pretty good)? Can players go to the highest bidder if he wins? Will they be able to work out a system where college athletes share in a pool of money coming from TV rights, etc., in addition to their scholarship? Nobody knows that answer yet.