College Football Catch-All Thread

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For the handful of Indiana football games I’ve watched, I tuned in after the game was already in progress. Do their players wear the red and white striped pants during warmups?
 
superrific said:
You should. It exacerbates income wealth inequality, and putting substantial economic capital in the hands of 18 year old football players is not going to pay big returns.

I mean, it's not as bad as crypto bros getting rich because they followed line goes up investing, but athletes everywhere are now making serious bank and little good can come from that. Not that it's a concern of any individual institution -- they play to win and sitting it out doesn't really make much difference. But when the starting QB on a high school football team makes more money in college than the valedictorian will make in 20, it distorts incentives.

My son's high school used to be one of the best public high schools in the state. It had terrible football but robust Science Olympiad participation, robotics teams, some girls' sports. Tons of AP classes, a good marching band. And they are cutting that stuff back to build a new football stadium and buy new amenities for the football team. There is no way in hell this can be considered a good outcome for the nation.
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Then I will clarify. In the current landscape of unfettered capitalism I will not hold young adults to idealistic standards when the adults around them are getting filthy rich off those young adults’ bodies. Until this society decides to care about its mind I will not begrudge those athletes for staking a claim to the billions.
 
superrific said:
You should. It exacerbates income wealth inequality, and putting substantial economic capital in the hands of 18 year old football players is not going to pay big returns.

I mean, it's not as bad as crypto bros getting rich because they followed line goes up investing, but athletes everywhere are now making serious bank and little good can come from that. Not that it's a concern of any individual institution -- they play to win and sitting it out doesn't really make much difference. But when the starting QB on a high school football team makes more money in college than the valedictorian will make in 20, it distorts incentives.

My son's high school used to be one of the best public high schools in the state. It had terrible football but robust Science Olympiad participation, robotics teams, some girls' sports. Tons of AP classes, a good marching band. And they are cutting that stuff back to build a new football stadium and buy new amenities for the football team. There is no way in hell this can be considered a good outcome for the nation.
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You've been anti-player compensation for a while. When those 18 year-olds are scrambling their brains for our entertainment, and taking years off their future life expectancy, I think they deserve a healthy chunk of the profit.

Southpark nailed it.

 
Calheel said:
You've been anti-player compensation for a while. When those 18 year-olds are scrambling their brains for our entertainment, and taking years off their future life expectancy, I think they deserve a healthy chunk of the profit.

Southpark nailed it.

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I've never been anti-compensation. I've been concerned about the effects of excessive compensation. The "scrambling their brains" applies to football but not other sports. It's not just college players, of course. It's pro players. Not just in the US either.

Overall, I don't have any data on this but it seems that an increasing % of the wealth in this country is controlled by people who didn't really earn it, or earned it dubiously. And that creates all sorts of knock-on effects. For instance, athletes aren't going to be investing their money; hopefully they are dumping some of it into hedge funds. But that makes soulless hedge fund managers richer and gives them more assets to use anti-socially. The more concentrated the wealth, the more tax evasion pays off. The more that wealth is controlled by people who didn't make it by thinking, the more we can expect that the money won't be well utilized.

This is why, for instance, countries with extreme wealth maldistributions tend to underperform economically. Countries with more dispersed wealth tend to have stronger economies.

Athletes are by no means the only or worst offenders. Mr Beast is egregious. Bitcoin bros. Family money. Silicon Valley overnight billionaires. And so on. But anyway, when I say "didn't really earn it" -- for college athletes, I'm making a moral judgment about the combination of youth and style of income. It's hard to say that anyone "earns" 5 mil or whatever at age 18. There is meaning of "earn," of course, that fits here. I'm not using that one in this case. I'm making a judgment about what it should mean to earn something.
 
superrific said:
I've never been anti-compensation. I've been concerned about the effects of excessive compensation. The "scrambling their brains" applies to football but not other sports. It's not just college players, of course. It's pro players. Not just in the US either.

Overall, I don't have any data on this but it seems that an increasing % of the wealth in this country is controlled by people who didn't really earn it, or earned it dubiously. And that creates all sorts of knock-on effects. For instance, athletes aren't going to be investing their money; hopefully they are dumping some of it into hedge funds. But that makes soulless hedge fund managers richer and gives them more assets to use anti-socially. The more concentrated the wealth, the more tax evasion pays off. The more that wealth is controlled by people who didn't make it by thinking, the more we can expect that the money won't be well utilized.

This is why, for instance, countries with extreme wealth maldistributions tend to underperform economically. Countries with more dispersed wealth tend to have stronger economies.

Athletes are by no means the only or worst offenders. Mr Beast is egregious. Bitcoin bros. Family money. Silicon Valley overnight billionaires. And so on. But anyway, when I say "didn't really earn it" -- for college athletes, I'm making a moral judgment about the combination of youth and style of income. It's hard to say that anyone "earns" 5 mil or whatever at age 18. There is meaning of "earn," of course, that fits here. I'm not using that one in this case. I'm making a judgment about what it should mean to earn something.
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Mr. Beast earns it and the athletes certainly do.

They are in the .000001% of the population that can do what they do. They are absolutely elite at a skill that is highly marketable and valued by the public.
 
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