It is getting harder and harder to try and watch a sports newscast without the mentioning of the negative topics that are rampant in today's games. Whether it is steroids in baseball, NBA referee's fixing games, NFL players getting arrested with such frequency, you name it.
The current issue has come from the collegiate ranks and once again deals with a star player getting gifts. It seems to be a problem only in football and basketball where players are forced into attending college to be able to some day play professionally. Why is that?
Every other sport does not have these silly restrictions that force kids into decisions that they might not be ready for or even want to do, which in turn hurts the universities' graduation rates and images when they do go out and break the rules.
Sure, college athletes get paid scholarships, but what a university gains from them is way more than what the students’ education is worth.
Why do you think you see jerseys with numbers of current players on them? Why shouldn't the student-athlete get a portion of their jersey sales?
Everyone in the world knows who No. 16 at Tennessee was. Shouldn't he have gotten a portion of his own sales? It was his number and image being sold.
The term student-athlete seems to have been lost in the passing of time. No longer are kids going to college in the big two college sports to get an education, they are going to work their way into the NFL or NBA.
It has all become about the money and image and not about the education and having fun while in college and getting a free ride.
What I propose to be done will anger most NCAA fans, because it would take away the large amount of talent that exists in collegiate amateur sports and place it into the professional ranks.
The NHL and MLB already have it and I believe that the NBA could definitely follow suit, and possibly even the NFL, though this would be a much tougher implementation.
A minor league development program.
This program would provide each team with a minor league franchise that would be stocked with young talent either from high school or college. And as the MLB draft does, if a player would get selected, they could go ahead and go into the minor leagues and sign with an agent or decline and go to college and work for a better draft position and more money the next year.
It gives amateurs an option and takes out all of the ridiculous one year exemptions and any temptations that an "amateur student-athlete" may have to take gifts. If 18-year-old baseball players and hockey players can travel and be a part of a team, why is it that a young basketball player or football player can't? Are they that much more immature that they are not allowed to be a professional until age 19? Or 21? Doesn't seem fair.
I know that this is a concept that would anger lots of college fans, but in the light of all of the problems that the NCAA and their schools are going through, maybe this is an option that should be at least researched. It seems to have worked for decades in baseball and hockey, so why is it that the other two major American sports have yet to try it? Oh yeah.
The big money the universities already get from these players. We can't have that taken from them can we?
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