Calipari's plan for NCAA change

[Roy H.]

Calipari is pushing for change at the NCAA level, advocating the following:

• Change the "one and done" rule to require players to wait at least two years from the time their high school class graduates before entering the NBA

• Players should receive stipends of $3,000 to $5,000;

• The NCAA should cover eligible players' insurance premiums;

• Athletes should be able to accept loans up to $50,000 against future earnings;

• If a coach leaves an institution, players should be able to transfer from that program without having to sit out a season;

• Athletes should be allowed one round-trip flight home every year.

• Players' families can purchase championship rings and can stay in the same hotels as players during events like the NCAA tournament.

•  An NCAA exemption to allow coaches to give players Christmas gifts that cost less than $50.

• Access to lawyers (this is vague)

• Funds for formal attire to wear when representing the school.

Most of those are pretty common sense.  I'm unsure about the "access to lawyers" thing, and I'm not sure I agree with the $50k loans, but I don't see why there would be a major objection to most of these ideas.

[PhoSita]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, regarding the "one and done" rule --

Allow players to be drafted as soon as they graduate high school.  Allow players, once drafted, to maintain amateur status and still go to school if they so choose (this is allowed in other sports, e.g. baseball and hockey).

However, I think players should be required to stay in college for at least 3 years if they choose to play there.  Players who drop out of school should have to wait a year before entering the NBA.

Players who want to circumvent school and immediately learn to play the pro game can enter the D-League, either through the D-League draft, or getting drafted by an NBA team and being stashed there (teams should be able to stash players in the D-League without using up a roster spot or losing rights to the player).


As for the other things listed, I don't think I know enough to say whether those specific suggestions are sound, but I like the spirit of them.  Maybe the players can't actually be treated like professionals, but recognize that they aren't just normal students, either.

[Donoghus]

Aren't his Kentucky players already receiving "stipends"? 

3 & 5 seem like no brainers to me.  Definitely.

[Fafnir]

I'm not a fan of the "d-league" draft idea. If a team gets your draft rights and you are playing professionally you should be compensated accordingly. Rookie 4 year deals are already a sweet enough deal for NBA owners.

[Moranis]

I'm not a fan of the "d-league" draft idea. If a team gets your draft rights and you are playing professionally you should be compensated accordingly. Rookie 4 year deals are already a sweet enough deal for NBA owners.

Yeah but you could make it that the NBA team is paying the kid his salary and his years are accruing, it just doesn't count against the big club's cap or roster spots until the kid is called up (and then just for the games he is on the big club roster).  To do that though you would need dedicated NBADL clubs for each NBA team and you would have to eliminate the age rule from the NBA entirely (I'd be ok with the baseball system in that case i.e. you can declare right out of high school, but if you go to college you are there for at least 2 or maybe 3 years).  That to me is the better system.  No more one and done in college, but the players that are ready for the NBA are there from the get go (you know like the Dwight's and Lebron's of the world).

[D.o.s.]

I'm not a fan of the "d-league" draft idea. If a team gets your draft rights and you are playing professionally you should be compensated accordingly. Rookie 4 year deals are already a sweet enough deal for NBA owners.

Yeah but you could make it that the NBA team is paying the kid his salary and his years are accruing, it just doesn't count against the big club's cap or roster spots until the kid is called up (and then just for the games he is on the big club roster).  To do that though you would need dedicated NBADL clubs for each NBA team and you would have to eliminate the age rule from the NBA entirely (I'd be ok with the baseball system in that case i.e. you can declare right out of high school, but if you go to college you are there for at least 2 or maybe 3 years).  That to me is the better system.  No more one and done in college, but the players that are ready for the NBA are there from the get go (you know like the Dwight's and Lebron's of the world).

Well this makes far too much sense -- The vibe around raising the age limit from the front offices seems to be that they want an extra year of forced player evaluation before a player is eligible for the draft, not a wider pool of draftees (and therefore a higher chance of drafting a bust).

[CFAN38]

Calipari is pushing for change at the NCAA level, advocating the following:

• Change the "one and done" rule to require players to wait at least two years from the time their high school class graduates before entering the NBA

• Players should receive stipends of $3,000 to $5,000;

• The NCAA should cover eligible players' insurance premiums;

• Athletes should be able to accept loans up to $50,000 against future earnings;

• If a coach leaves an institution, players should be able to transfer from that program without having to sit out a season;

• Athletes should be allowed one round-trip flight home every year.

• Players' families can purchase championship rings and can stay in the same hotels as players during events like the NCAA tournament.

•  An NCAA exemption to allow coaches to give players Christmas gifts that cost less than $50.

• Access to lawyers (this is vague)

• Funds for formal attire to wear when representing the school.

Most of those are pretty common sense.  I'm unsure about the "access to lawyers" thing, and I'm not sure I agree with the $50k loans, but I don't see why there would be a major objection to most of these ideas.

I agree with Cal, also would add that kids should be able to do non-national endorsements if the summer. Maybe make it a max of $5,000 that they can earn. Set it up so that local company's can have advertising featuring D-1 players but has to be done when classes are not in session.

[pearljammer10]

Love the two year rule to stop the one and done policy. Cant stand the one and done and have never liked it.

As to the 3,000 to 5,000 dollar stipend I am not in support of college players being paid to play their sports. Most of them are already on full-boat scholarships and are getting a free ride anyway. In essence they are already being "paid" to play by going to school for free and being given the opportunity of a free education and college experience.

[bdm860]

I think $50k loans against future earnings would be a bad idea.  Giving the players access to large amounts of money while not actually paying them (stipends in the mid to low 4 figures are okay) would cause more problems than it solves.  I just see so many ways this can be taken advantage of.

Maybe it will be 50k “loans” with no interest and no worries to pay them back ever.  Hasn’t this already been going on for years in the seedy, amateur underbelly?  How many agents or boosters have told a kid: it’s not a gift, it’s a loan, you can just pay me back when you make it big or you don’t have to worry about paying me back at all.  Seems like a very shady way to pay players.

But even putting severe regulation and strict terms around the loans, I see many more loans then NBA roster spots available.  Only 30 first rounds picks getting guaranteed money (along with a handful of 2nd round picks and undrafted players ending up with full year deals) every year, and I just see so many more loans than college kids really getting paid.  This will lead to one of 2 problems:  1) now the athletes who don’t make it big (which is most of them) will be buried under loans just like the regular kids are buried under student loans with no hope to pay them back.  Or 2) because they were star athletes and the VP of the bank is an alum/booster, they’ll just write the loans off and not hound the kids/ruin their credit over it, or wealthy alums promise to pay off the loans for the kids once they leave school (and no longer under NCAA jurisdiction) so really it’s another shady to pay players $50k without a dime coming from the school or NCAA. 

Not that I have a problem with paying players, but you know how the NCAA is, there’s the schools that are on a golden pedestal that never get punished or just a small slap on the wrist, and then there’s everybody else.  UConn gets banned from the tournament for a year, while the UNC kids have been handing in these A quality papers for years.

 And even though that might seem unfair to UConn, they still get off easier than probably all but 10 other schools would have.

I don’t like the idea of setting up rules that create more oversight and selective punishment by the NCAA  that will ultimately just end up creating even more cheating, which I think giving players access to large loans would do.  Either that or a lot of players who don’t make it will suddenly have $50k (plus interest!) holes to dig themselves out of.  Big loans sounds good in theory, but I think it would be a bad idea in reality.

[bdm860]

As to the 3,000 to 5,000 dollar stipend I am not in support of college players being paid to play their sports. Most of them are already on full-boat scholarships and are getting a free ride anyway. In essence they are already being "paid" to play by going to school for free and being given the opportunity of a free education and college experience.

The thing is stipends are perfectly normal for regular college students, even those already on full scholarships.  Just some examples:

Duke

The Fellowship includes a $4,300 stipend plus housing on Duke's Central Campus.

Kentucky

The Patterson Scholarship is a renewable scholarship, valued at $78,000, and includes the following: Four-year renewable award covers the cost of tuition, room and board, $1,000 yearly stipend, an iPad2®, and $2,000 for a Summer Education Abroad program.

Louisville

SROP students will receive a stipend of $3,500 for the 10 weeks

UNC

For their participation in the program, student fellows will receive 1) a
stipend of $3500 (students holding Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowships
will receive the summer stipend from their home institutions instead), 2) an
allowance for meals of $1500, 3) any required books, 4) a travel allowance
up to $500 to cover the cost of transportation to and from Chapel Hill, and 5)
on-campus housing.

University of Wisconsin

Undergraduate Research Projects; up to $2100.00 total payable to the student researcher, of which up to $1600.00 can be used to pay the student a stipend;

UConn

During the Spring semester, student apprentices will receive a $1,500 stipend

The maximum total amount awarded for SURF awards is $4,000 ($3,500 stipend for the student researcher and up to $500 for consumables associated with the project).

Students will receive a stipend of $350 per week; additional funding (up to $500 per month) may be available to students who require housing in the Farmington area.

Plenty of other kids are getting stipends for doing the things they enjoy or pursing their careers.  Why can't the athletes get stipends too?

[D.o.s.]

Not that I have a problem with paying players, but you know how the NCAA is, there’s the schools that are on a golden pedestal that never get punished or just a small slap on the wrist, and then there’s everybody else.  UConn gets banned from the tournament for a year, while the UNC kids have been handing in these A quality papers for years.

 And even though that might seem unfair to UConn, they still get off easier than probably all but 10 other schools would have.

That image was actually proven to be taken out of context.

http://deadspin.com/unc-player-did-not-receive-a-minus-on-that-awful-rosa-p-1559213408

It's not even a picture of a completed paper. According to Mary Willingham, the whistleblower from the Outside The Lines piece in which the paper was shown, it is probably a draft paragraph, to be used as part of a larger take-home final for an intro class.

If you listen to the interview, at around the 3:05 mark, Willingham, showing the paper, says "this is not even close to college work, yet this athlete was awarded an A-." A new question abruptly follows. According to Willingham, she never said the athlete was awarded an A- for the paper, but that the student received an A- in the class.

So, while UNC clearly has students who can barely write on an adult level, that picture is not the smoking gun for scam classes. It's just a picture of a portion of poorly written draft of a take home final. Jordan Weissmann from Slate spoke with Willingham and learned more.

    It's an original document from an athlete for an essay—for a final. That's all I know," she told me, later adding, "That is the grade level the person was writing at. That's the point."

It's a fair point, too, but one that gets lost in the punchline the segment and image created. What a joke, that paper got an A-minus. But that's not the real joke. The real joke is that it was written. A person enrolled in a major university in this country wrote that with the intention of submitting to a college professor. And the only reason it was even written in the first place was to pass some kind of smell test for the NCAA.

[Finkelskyhook]

Their tuition, room, and board at major colleges is worth more than most NBDL professional players make.  At what point does the compensation stop? 

[Fafnir]

Their tuition, room, and board at major colleges is worth more than most NBDL professional players make.  At what point does the compensation stop?

The amount of compensation isn't the biggest issue. Its the fact that they aren't able to negotiate in any way and aren't afforded basic employment protections.

Fundamentally not paying labor and calling it amateurism is just a method of controlling liability and ensuring all the money flows around the players and never too them officially.

[D.o.s.]

Anyone else see this?

http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/dmqmzy/sports-disparity---a-hero-s-salute

Their tuition, room, and board at major colleges is worth more than most NBDL professional players make.  At what point does the compensation stop? 

Are you joking?

[D.o.s.]

Also, because this remains the best synopsis of the situation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XEq6XYtMVU