Complicated issue for sure. I totally agree with dtm that my biggest issue with paying NCAA players (or allowing boosters to separately pay them, which is effectively the same thing) is that it would destroy the competitive playing field in NCAA athletics and leave Tech behind. It would in fact leave behind 90% of football programs and 80% of basketball programs.
Personally, I am for NCAA rules that retain a level playing field (or at least the best reasonable approximation), while having alternative systems to the NCAA in place to give players options if they want to go make more money now. I have absolutely zero issue with the NBA trying to establish the G league for players straight out of HS or the NFL trying to do the same. Good for them. Give the players options to be paid immediately. I just don't want it in the NCAA, as that would ruin college sports for me. And, if the players have options, it is totally up to them. Come play in the NCAA and accept the scholarship, stipends, etc. If you don't want to play by those rules, go to the G league, NFL D league, etc. What is wrong with that? That is already essentially the way it is done in baseball. The current problem in NCAA for me is not so much that players can't get paid, it is that, at least for freshmen in basketball and freshman through juniors in football, they have no other option than to play for free now.
That said, I don't have the fear that someone else expressed that such a minor league set-up would hurt the NCAA. I am of course a fan of Tech athletes, but only because they play for Tech. If Josh Nesbitt had gone to Tennessee, I wouldn't have cared about him one single bit. If he had gone to UGA, I would have in fact disliked him. If he had gone to some minor league NFL system team, I wouldn't even know his name. I am a huge Nesbitt fan only because he came to Tech. Ultimately, the school is what generates my interest, and I will root for the best players that play for my school, regardless of their ultimate athletic prowess.
To my point, if you took the best 40 high school basketball players each year and put them in the G league instead of NCAA, fine. I wouldn't care. I would still cheer for the players that come to Tech and would root them on to be competitive for championships just as I do now. I also wouldn't give half a s**t about the G league. Again, this is sort of how baseball works now. The best prospects skip college entirely. And I root for Tech baseball 100 times harder than I ever would the Gwinnett braves, despite the significant talent gap. It is not individual player talent that garners my NCAA spending, it is Tech. And as long as Tech can continue to remain competitive, I will continue to spend. On the other hand, if you were to somehow double the talent in the NCAA, but in a way that creates a system such that Tech could not even compete, then I am basically done as a fan.
I guess what I am saying is that I think allowing boosters to pay players in the the way dtm suggests would destroy my interest in NCAA sports and may in fact result in collapsing the inherent value of all NCAA sports in a way that would ironically destroy the giant revenue streams that players now claim they should have a bigger part of.
