YlJacket
Helluva Engineer
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The law kind of frowns on indentured servitude. I think it went out of style what - 100 years or so ago?
Baseball is not being held by ties to NCAA but by a restriction negotiated with MLB and players union. That is the only mechanism that can control/limit entry to professional leagues due to their union status and requirement. The tool the NCAA has is eligibility to play in their "league". The primary limitation they use is academics - and then amateurism. They have been watering down both of these limitations for years.
FWIW here is the logic train you need to think about. If players become "employees" then their salaries cannot be controlled or limited by the NCAA. That dynamic was already settled by the courts when the NCAA tried to limit assistant coaches salaries and got blown up by Duke assistants who sued and won easily. So you will have athletes negotiating their salary before signing on to play for any specific team. That means the rich get richer and college athletics for all intents and purposes becomes a 10 team league or so.
The way around it is what the professional leagues have done and unionize. Only through labor laws and labor negotiations can you limit or control salaries. AKA salary cap.
So at a very simplistic level you either try to make the current amateurism and student athlete model work or you have to go to a full professional model with unions for athletic employees. Even in that model I don't see the NCAA being able to restrict athletes from leaving for professional leagues who pay more.
One thing that Hewitt said is spot on and tends to get lost in this. All this hype and noise in the NCAA is really about 10 or so players per year that have a shot (not guarantee) of being drafted by the league if they were available. If they go straight to the NBA or DLeague then the shoe companies don't really care about the rest and corruption goes back to the $100 handshake level that everyone thinks is kind of cute but not earthshaking - and we can bring back our middle aged white guy to great effect
The con that college athletics and especially basketball has to be ready for is those 10 are still the stars (generally speaking) that drive a lot of the top teams and March Madness. They have to be ready for a major talent drain to the NBA. I can wax eloquently (at least in my opinion) about whether this is good or bad but generally the athleticism and quality of play will go down.The fly in the ointment is that the NCAA and college athletics have pretty much left the amateurism model behind for everyone except the athletes. A large chunk of the money now goes to facilities and coaches with the resultant reaction that players are left out - despite the reality that 98% of all student athletes are getting a great deal in the current model. It is the "stars" that are the only ones you can make a case for being undercompensated.
