Yahoo Reveals Three Kentucky Players in FBI Documents

...and what do you believe will sprout from its demise?

Kids get a free education and food and living expenses for four/five years. They are getting paid. A lot. NBA/NFL shouldn't make kids sit out a year after high school. If they want to go to the big leagues instead of college, they should be allowed to. For those that aren't good enough/want an education, the NCAA essentially educates and gives you living expenses for free as long as you play a sport.

Now the question after that is, "should players be allowed to make more money off themselves outside what the NCAA is already guaranteeing them?" There are two outcomes to this.

If kids can make unlimited money off their talents this eliminates any amateurism issues and shady back deals. What you see is what you get. It is fair for the players who can collect what they are worth. The bad side to this is that small schools that can't spend more money than what they already have will get screwed. They will get left behind and the thing that makes college athletics unique and intriguing is demolished. All top talent will coalesce into a few top programs who pay top dollar or who have the boosters with the deepest pockets.

Everything is fine the way it is now, in my opinion. The NCAA just needs to actually enforce its rules on the "big programs" who seem to get away with just about anything. It literally took strippers to force the NCAA's hand, and now the FBI is getting involved where the NCAA turned a blind eye. If you can't win legitimately, big repercussions need to happen. This serves as a deterrent for anyone who would think to break rules. When situations like UNC happen and they get off without a slap on the wrist... then inevitably everyone else thinks that cheating is a risk that is worth taking to win. So enforce the damn rules and hammer the schools involved. I do not care if it is 175 out of 350.

Same here. What do people want in its place? Do people want only the power 5 conferences to be together? If that happens I think we see the demise of the popularity of college bball. One of the biggest draws is the big dance.

Plus the demise of the ncaa is problems for small schools too. I don't want it to go away but I do think the ncaa can update to the times of today and make rules that fits today and not have Same rules in place from 50 years ago.

Kids get a free education and food and living expenses for four/five years. They are getting paid. A lot. NBA/NFL shouldn't make kids sit out a year after high school. If they want to go to the big leagues instead of college, they should be allowed to. For those that aren't good enough/want an education, the NCAA essentially educates and gives you living expenses for free as long as you play a sport.

Now the question after that is, "should players be allowed to make more money off themselves outside what the NCAA is already guaranteeing them?" There are two outcomes to this.

If kids can make unlimited money off their talents this eliminates any amateurism issues and shady back deals. What you see is what you get. It is fair for the players who can collect what they are worth. The bad side to this is that small schools that can't spend more money than what they already have will get screwed. They will get left behind and the thing that makes college athletics unique and intriguing is demolished. All top talent will coalesce into a few top programs who pay top dollar or who have the boosters with the deepest pockets.

Everything is fine the way it is now, in my opinion. The NCAA just needs to actually enforce its rules on the "big programs" who seem to get away with just about anything. It literally took strippers to force the NCAA's hand, and now the FBI is getting involved where the NCAA turned a blind eye. If you can't win legitimately, big repercussions need to happen. This serves as a deterrent for anyone who would think to break rules. When situations like UNC happen and they get off without a slap on the wrist... then inevitably everyone else thinks that cheating is a risk that is worth taking to win. So enforce the damn rules and hammer the schools involved. I do not care if it is 175 out of 350.

Question do you think only having your housing paid for and food is worth 12 to 14 hour days? Would you like a job where you work 12 to 14 hour days and at best you have a room and food, but literally no money to go buy anything even though you work 12 to 14 hour days. Which is what days are like for college athletes.

I never could understand how athletic scholarships became entwined with higher education. I believe we are the only country in the world where college students receive athletic scholarships. Just because a person is good at some athletic endeavor why should that entitle that person to receive free schooling in a college setting, where academics is the main pursuit? There are certainly many NCAA athletes who, were it not for athletic prowess and the conniving of athletic departments, would not be in college.....and if truth be told do not really belong in college. Academics is the not the main pursuit in these scenarios, rather it is keeping the athlete eligible to play his/her sport.
I know this kind of chicanery has been going on since the days of George Gipp and Adolph Rupp and that big-time athletics is such a money-maker now that it would it would be hard to change the paradigm. But I think we would all be better served if universities awarded scholarships to those who earned them by dint of academic accomplishment rather than a 40 time. D-3 schools do quite well with their non-scholarship athletic teams and I daresay that those who have participated in D-3 athletics probably gain a more wholesome experience than the majority of D-1 football and basketball players. What I guess I'm driving at is that academics and athletics should be separate.

If you think scholarships and room, food and board are equivalent to getting paid is simply foolish. That stuff doesn’t cost these universities anything. Considering how much these athletes are worth to the university it’s literally nothing. Pay them what they are worth.

$40,000 (less at some, more at others) is nothing? You realize athletic departments pay the school for each scholarship student, right? You can't pay some kids and not others, that is a Title IX issue. Athletic Departments, almost always, don't make near enough to cover their budget already.

I’m not advocating paying everyone I’m a fan of people being able to make what others feel they are worth. The idea of amateurism is my biggest flaw with the system. Amateurism isn’t fair.

Okay, so pretending for a second that what you're proposing was legal in this country, which the Supreme Court has said it isn't, let's look at an example. So let's say all of the money generated by Xavier Men's Basketball was kept within the program and the players shared the profits after coaches, scholarships, travel, scouting budgets, etc. That means the other 230 student athletes at Xavier would cease to exist. None of those sports could cover themselves for one day, so they'd be gone. So now instead of graduating 230 former student athletes, who by and large become far more successful adults than regular students, you graduate only 12 really wealthy basketball players. So now those 230 kids can't afford to go there, so Xavier loses them, which means you have to cut faculty and services (230 x $40,000 x 4 years is a lot).

You think that model, extrapolated across 350 D-1 schools, is the right answer? At most schools football would be example, not hoops, but the net result to the school is the same -- or far worse.

Again, if your suggestion was even legal, which Title IX prevents. Paying the QB, and not the libero, won't fly.