College Football: Bob Bowlsby Becomes Another Obstacle to Full-Cost Stipends

We know Bob Bowlsby is going to takeover for the Big 12 soon and the league is desperately in need of a leader that will not kowtow to the whims of Texas and that has the best interest of the collective at heart. He's walking into an interesting landscape where expansion rumors are flying rampantly and teams are all looking over their shoulders to make sure no one is gaining ground on them from a revenue standpoint.

While fans, media, conferences and universities worry frantically about expansion; there is another issue that should be equally, if not more, pressing in college football. Last year, as ESPN reported, the NCAA voted to approve the allowance of a stipend to help bridge the gaps in cost for scholarship athletes. That measure then was rebuffed at the turn of the new year as schools did not like the idea of the stipend. As Andy Staples at Sports Illustrated points out, the sticking point is a major, legitimate rift in college football; haves versus the have nots. 

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Schools that didn't enjoy the largesse of massive media rights deals considered the proposal nothing short of class warfare -- and ingenious class warfare at that. By couching it as a student welfare issue, the big-money schools had a moral upper hand.

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Big schools for giving their athletes some relief, after all those are the backs that the money is being made upon. Small schools whining that they cannot afford it so no one should be able to help their athletes out because that would not be fair to them or their budgets.

Well apparently it is not just the "little guy" who does not want the stipend. Bob Bowlsby, the new commissioner of the Big 12 is against the stipend as well. As Sports Illustrated reports: 

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"We should never do anything to establish an employee-employer relationship," Bowlsby said. "There are places you can go and play for money, but colleges and universities are not among them. This is an educational undertaking."

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The overall hypocrisy in the statement is pretty remarkable. The man brought in to help manage the television contracts, get the Big 12 more money, set up their cash grab of a bowl game with the SEC and maximize their revenue streams is telling us this is an educational undertaking. He's telling us that the idea of giving the kids a little relief in the form of cash, the same cash he is all about making, would create an employee-employer relationship and the college football world cannot have that.

Honestly, I liked it better when it was just the little guy being honest about not being able to afford the stipend. Now, we've got a guy who lords over one of the mega conferences telling us that the stipends are a bad thing because of the relationship they would establish. Paycheck or not, college football is already these young men's job. A little relief is not going to adjust their relationship when the worker-boss dynamic already exists.

It is sad and troubling to read such a trumped up, empty excuse as to why they do not want to provide some relief to their student athletes. At least the little guys were talking about not being able to spend money they don't have. Here, we're looking  at schools that have the money but according to their leader Bob Bowlsby, their athletes just are not important enough to spend it