Dangerous game to play, assuming, but I think he does this because he knows it’s funny.
I agree with this. My dad and I talk about this quite a bit.
(taking a step back, I think it’s ridiculous that college athletes cannot be paid or even profit from their own likeness, and I believe that the NCAA’s primary purpose at this point to make sure the money train keeps flowing to old white guys in the athletic department instead of labor rather than to enforce any meaningful policies regarding the education received by student-athletes, but that’s another tangent)
In the framework of the current system, I wholly agree that routing “student-athletes” in the major revenue sports through junk degree programs is problematic on many levels.
My dad and I actually believe that the creation of a major in “professional athletics” or something of that nature could be made a reasonable degree program if it were done right (ha). You could have courses in personal finance, talent management, tax law, nutrition…it actually could be a decent “major” and leave the athlete with some viable, useful skills for the workforce if they didn’t make it as a professional athlete.
I donno man, tax law isn’t easy to understand and as Basement said a lot of these guys have no business being in college in the first place. I could see personal finance and other personal skills a pro-athlete would need, but I think creating a 4-year degree would be tough.
My other concern, from a parenting perspective (not that I have superstar genes or anything…) would be that some kids that have no shot at being a pro-athlete will still pursue this degree because “it’s their dream” or some version of that statement. Perhaps, they could use the degree to become an agent or something related to their sport assuming the program actually taught something useful for employment, but that circles back to my previous concern.
Personally, I think the “farm” college athletics should be completely separated from the college they represent. You can still have the Ohio State Buckeyes or whoever, the stadium can still be on campus, etc… and you can offer some kind of crossover for true student-athletes, but it would be a separate legal entity that pays for performance.
You could set it up similar to the NFL. Make the centralized body a 501(c)(13?) and make each team their own LLC or whatever.
Or, you could bring the all-knowing LaVar Ball to make sure you’re on track, focus in specific subjects: “Math and English are his stronger subjects so he can count his money and communicate when it’s not right”
I agree with you guys, and think there are a lot of areas where you can educate athletes in areas they are interested in. A lot of the athletes I played with majored in Kinesiology because they liked working out.