FEE takes the predictable pro-market view of the SCOTUS decision that student athletes can be paid for autographs, use of their likeness, etc. I think it is the right decision, despite the potential for abuse by boosters funneling money to recruits this way. However, I don't think the athletes are going to make much cash out of the deal.
Wednesday, June 30, 2021
Student Athletes
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A neighbor in the physics TA bullpen at the UofI had a football player in his class. Sort of. The player was enrolled, and showed up the first week, and was never seen again. The player quit later that year to join the Saints, injured himself in pre-season practice, and I've never heard of him since. (My wife caught lots of static when she tried to flunk a basketball player.)
OTOH, when I was an undergraduate my roommate's cousin was on the football team, and majoring in Chemistry. (This one was not a Big 10 school...)
At my big (but not quite enormous) Southern state school, the big sport athletes are like royalty--pampered, and seen only on special occasions when the commoners are supposed to swoon.
My buddy the provost used to say that the most expensive sports program is the one that loses. I said fair enough, what's the cheapest?
Cousin Eddie
There was a limit how much you could hide people at William and Mary. There was a fair bit of sneering about the easy courses that the football players got steered towards, but I don't think most of those were actually all that easy. The few athletes I knew moderately well were all decent students, except for one.
A history dept chairman told me once that our basketball coach actually called him every semester to make sure his player-students were doing the work! I only ever adjuncted at night so I never saw any athletes in the classroom.
Another basketball coach, corrupt as hell according to those who study such things, dropped a big gift on the library when we moved to a new building, but his example did not spread.
That conversation was about the mid 1980s or so, and both men are dead. The coach was a local kid, a champion player there, and very popular--like the current coach, but they've segregated the players from the rest of the students so thoroughly with exemptions, tutors, and hangers-on that the notion seems quaint now.
Cousin Eddie
I can't think of a good reason for this. Very few collegiate athletes from very few schools will benefit monetarily and I'm not sure the monetary benefit is worthwhile. Of course, I might just be a curmudgeon.
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