It is that time of year when we all sit before out TV sets and watch college football games. It is great fun to watch young kids who are not getting paid risk serious injury so that we can all have a good time and the coach can take home a pay check 10 times that of the President of the USA. Is this a great country or what? In most states, the university football coach is the highest paid person on the public payroll. Didn't know that did you? If the coach gets paid so much, why don't the kids who are doing all the work get paid? I have some ideas that I think need to be considered.
How about paying the players? As I see it, there are two kinds of games. The true game where the players play just to have fun and no one has to pay to see the game. The others are games where you have to pay to see the game. This is what we have for most college and high school games. I feel that if you have to pay to see the game, then it must be some kind of professional game and the players should get at least 50% of the gate. Seems fair to me. I used to play baseball in an industrial league. The rules for this league were that at least 2/3 of the players had to be employed by the company. This seemed like a good rule that prevented very large companies from dominating the league. We went out and recruited many good players to fill this 1/3 allowed. Our team was very competitive even though we were a smaller company.
Now where am I going with this? Notice in our colleges and universities how a few bigger schools seem to dominate the games? I propose that we allow colleges and universities to recruit non-student athletes to play on their teams. Combine this with paying all players 50% of the gate and TV rights, it would even up the teams and make watching TV that much more interesting. I know what you are about to say, "that is what we already have in college sports". Don't we already pay the players and we know that they don't have to go to class nor do they graduate, so they must be "non student athletes".
I think I mentioned in a prior Blog that when I lived in Buenos Aires, they did not have organized sports in the schools. School was for learning, not playing games. Recall that Argentina won the Gold Medal in basketball with an all white team against our all black team. Just because we have sports in our schools does not mean that it is the best way. We must know that sports in our schools interferes with the basic mission of learning. Most people will not agree with me on this because they have never thought the situation thru. If organized sports in our colleges is so good, then why do we limit the number of years a person can play to just 4? If a little is good, more must be better? Do you really believe that? Talk to your friends while watching football on TV and see what they have to say. What is more important, sports or education?
Years ago, I played baseball in an industrial league where companies sponsored teams. The quality of the play was at a high level.
