Solution for all the guys leaving early

[hifigator]

The issue of the student athlete leaving early is just getting worse and worse, at least if you consider leaving without a degree to be a negative.

We all know that the main incentive is money and regardless of our colored goggles which only serve in attempts to conjure up reasons why the kids should forestall riches in lieu of playing for our team, deep down inside most of us know that we would choose the money as well.

There will always be those kids who just simply don't want to go to school and are only going through the motions with as little effort as possible until the opportunity to go pro arises. I am not talking about those kids.

But there are a lot of kids smart enough to understand that they really enjoy playing in college and even though they could return to get their degree at a later point, they are really only college students this one time. But for many of these kids, they have simply never had money. The only guys with the bling bling they personally knew were the drug dealers. And it is legitimately impossible to convince most of these kids that they "should" stay in school to get their degree and then go pro if they want to. They see at least 6 figure contracts and in many cases well beyond that, there for the taking. If we needed any icing on the cake, they start thinking about the possibility that they either have a catastrophic injury or get into some kind of legal trouble which could remove the riches forever, and it is easy to see why so many are leaving early.

My solution to help with this problem is pretty simple. I think the NCAA should allow the Universities to purchase insurance policies for the players. The better the player, the more highly his draft stock is, then the larger the policy. There would be some expense involved of course. And I think one necessary component would be some draft advisory board which would serve to give as accurate assessments of draft status as possible. Cetainly there is still a big difference between say a $28 million 6 year contract and a one time payout of say $3million in the event of a major injury, but I think that something along those lines would be enough to encourage the majority of kids to finish school and earn their degree, if they had the interest to do so. Again, I am not talking about the guys who don't want to go to school anyway, but rather the rest. I think a program like this would work.

Next question: where does the money come from? Simple. It would come from the athletes who make it predominantly, and remember, theirs are representing the largest chunk of the premiums anyway since they have the largest upside potential.

Just throwing the numbers together, I think there could be coverage of $100,000 for each student-athlete to start with in the revenue generating sports. It gets a little bit more touchy in the subsidized sports, but I still think we could make it work. Remember, this is basically insurance against a catastrophic injury encountered while still a student in good academic standing, and just like all policies, there would be restrictions. Skydiving, snow skiing etc... might void a policy.

I obviously see the potential for abuse with bogus injuries but I think those issues could be dealt with.

Basically the players who are unlikely to play at the next level would have the minimum coverage ... and maybe 100k isn't reasonable, make it 50K. Then the predicted Lottery picks might have coverage to 3 or 4 million. And the other players fall in the middle. I also see the potential animosity among players who have different "worth" in the eyes of the insurance companies but again I don't see that as a problem which would preclude the whole program. These premiums would be paid back to the school by the student athletes which go on to the next level.

The only real problem I see that we might not be able to handle under a program such as this is parity. The larger and more prominent institutions would have an advantage over the smaller ones. One would argue that such advantages are already there, but a program of this sort might serve to exacerbate it.

What do you all think about a program along these lines?

[theexorcist]

I think Diet Dr. Pepper tastes nothing at all like Dr. Pepper. What a crock of an ad campaign.

[chep3]

The problem with that is whenever you let in different payments, then you give the bigger schools even more of an advantage. I personally think that the NCAA should permit some sort of stipend payment, but if that was to happen it wouldl have to be standardized at least across sports. If you let schools foot the bill for this insurance policy, then you are just going to get the same 5-10 state schools in the running in both sports every single year. That might not seem that bad given Florida's budget, but it sure would suck for us.

[doublehoya]

I thought of this idea, too, ut I think it would be very hard to administer. One possibility is for the NCAA to pay the bills, not the individual schools. That would avoid the Big school disparity problem. But again, you run into the valuation problem, which is a biggie. Maybe you have individual athletes apply and be reviewed for their value. That's a real tough issue to deal with, though.

[HoyaSinceBirth]

Yeah I mena you can take out inssurance policies on anything these days so I could see a talented athlete who wants to come back taking one out on themselvesbut I can't see this being an institutionalized deal with everyone having to do it.

[FromTheBeginning]

Title IX - Part 2 - Lawyers are lining up already.

[rosslynhoya]

Would you please identify how your proposal would be an improvement over the present system? You know, the capitalist "American" one, run by private entities, professionals in allocating funds to cover risk, individuals who are not totally compromised by intra-NCAA politics....

If it works as cleanly as was described in the previous HT discussion of this subject, I don't understand why every returning junior and senior doesn't take out an insurance policy if it's that clear that they're draftworthy. No money needs to be paid upfront, the insurer gets a cut of their first-year salary if they play. If no one is willing to insure you, well maybe you need to have some second thoughts about whether you should declare early after all.

hoyatalk2.proboards48.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=pro&thread=1175607682

[SFHoya99]

Killjoy.

[StPetersburgHoya (Inactive)]

Hifi, what's the solution to get you to leave?

[hoyas2008]

stpetersburghoya said:

Hifi, what's the solution to get you to leave?

Answer:

[hifigator]

rosslynhoya said:

Would you please identify how your proposal would be an improvement over the present system? You know, the capitalist "American" one, run by private entities, professionals in allocating funds to cover risk, individuals who are not totally compromised by intra-NCAA politics....

If it works as cleanly as was described in the previous HT discussion of this subject, I don't understand why every returning junior and senior doesn't take out an insurance policy if it's that clear that they're draftworthy. No money needs to be paid upfront, the insurer gets a cut of their first-year salary if they play. If no one is willing to insure you, well maybe you need to have some second thoughts about whether you should declare early after all.

hoyatalk2.proboards48.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=pro&thread=1175607682

I don't have time to go into details right now, but I just wanted to add a quick comment while fresh on my mind.

In an ideal situation, the private/free market would be best. The problem here is obvious. The "options" available to the student/athletes would be based on each individual's ability to pay their premiums. The problems here are obvious.

Secondly, just as larger companies are able to receive far better rates, and in the reverse, a larger customer base is less risky for the insurance companies, a University, or even better, a united bank of universities could receive far more competitive rates.

[hifigator]

doublehoya said:

I thought of this idea, too, ut I think it would be very hard to administer. One possibility is for the NCAA to pay the bills, not the individual schools. That would avoid the Big school disparity problem. But again, you run into the valuation problem, which is a biggie. Maybe you have individual athletes apply and be reviewed for their value. That's a real tough issue to deal with, though.

That is a possibility and I really wasn't intending a clear distinction between the NCAA and the University. It would be a more viable plan if it were uniform across all schools. At the risk of sounding like a liberal, it would work like this:

part of each players "scholarship" would include the premiums for such a policy. As the player's draft status improves, the coverage increases as well as the premiums. The insurance companies would do their work to evaluate the talent and therefore the potential. The player would only receive any compensation from the insurance company in the event of legitimate and catastrophic injury. So the player could only really "work" the system by getting free insurance and then personally electing to not play. And in such cases you could still write in clauses which would structure the repayment of the premiums.

I just don't see too much down side to this.

[RDF]

If the NCAA took care of it--what would that do to the schools that break NCAA rules by paying players? Would that not help "even" the playing field? Basically the entire $EC would be screwed, along with select schools across America.

[hifigator]

rdf said:

If the NCAA took care of it--what would that do to the schools that break NCAA rules by paying players? Would that not help "even" the playing field? Basically the entire $EC would be screwed, along with select schools across America.

I understand people lumping these issues together, but I honestly think they are 3 separate issues.

The first would be cheating/doing things outside the NCAA restrictions/requirements. That is and will always be a concern to deal with, short of eliminating all restrictions at all.

The second issue is simply paying players money aside from the value of their scholarship, books, tutoring, per diem etc... I am not against a reasonable stipend, but like I said, I think it really is a totally different discussion.

Thirdly is the insurance issue. I think we should look at the bigger picture and understand that a policy of that sort would encourage players to finish their education, and earn their degree. Like I said, there are issues to deal with, and I don't suggest this proposal as some sort of panacea, but I just think that the positives far outweigh the negatives.

[ExcitableBoy]

hifigator said:

rdf said:

If the NCAA took care of it--what would that do to the schools that break NCAA rules by paying players? Would that not help "even" the playing field? Basically the entire $EC would be screwed, along with select schools across America.

I understand people lumping these issues together, but I honestly think they are 3 separate issues.

The first would be cheating/doing things outside the NCAA restrictions/requirements. That is and will always be a concern to deal with, short of eliminating all restrictions at all.

The second issue is simply paying players money aside from the value of their scholarship, books, tutoring, per diem etc... I am not against a reasonable stipend, but like I said, I think it really is a totally different discussion.

Thirdly is the insurance issue. I think we should look at the bigger picture and understand that a policy of that sort would encourage players to finish their education, and earn their degree. Like I said, there are issues to deal with, and I don't suggest this proposal as some sort of panacea, but I just think that the positives far outweigh the negatives.

Greg Oden is not entering the NBA draft for fear of injury next year, the year after, or the year after. He is entering the draft because he is a lock to be a top-two pick--probably #1 overall--and very, very few sane people would pass up millions per year in a contract and tens of millions in a shoe/endorsement deals just because they have insurance against injury.

What it would do is allow rich schools such as Florida and Ohio State to take out huge insurance policies while poorer schools, i.e. Georgetown, could take out decent-sized policies. I veto this proposition.