What is Cal's upbringing? Do we know? He makes a lot of kids into millionaires, so it seems like he's doing exactly what he promises at the very least.
Sorry, but I don't give Cal credit for making "a lot of kids into millionaires". He's the best at recruiting the cream of the crop to spend one year at Kentucky. Those guys would be millionaires without playing for him. Same applies to other college coaches that do the same thing. It's like the credit Coach K used to get for helping his players "develop into men". The vast majority came from stable, two-parent families and were on the right track before going to Duke. It's a matter of which school wins the beauty contest.
I'm not sure the issue here. He promises them if they come play for him, they'll be millionaires. They become millionaires. The end. It's not like he tells them if they go to Duke or UNC, they *won't* be millionaires. What he offers is lots of playing time and a national stage along with a coach supportive of them jumping to the NBA when they get a good opportunity. I don't see an issue with his recruiting pitch. Saying he's from a poor background (was he? do we know?) is qualitatively no different than anything other coaches say to connect to kids.
What I'm saying is if Cal or any other coach promises to make these highly prized kids into millionaires, he's full of it. End of story.
Live their life and do their job for a week and you'll see. I seriously don't envy that job. Even with the millions. There are easier and less stressful ways of making millions than that.
YOur argument seems to be more of an accounting issue - how much should the football side of the ledger be charged for what amoutns to "goodwill" via the university and how should that goodwill be disbursed to others, including students? I don't take any position on that, but it's obviously a solvable problem, though not everybody might think it's fair or agree with the optimal allocation. That potentially suboptimal allocation kind of pales in comparison to the compensation to athletes - who are what people pay to see if the compensation models of other sports are a good model - being fixed at zero,that's more of an economic problem rather than an accounting one. And it's definitely suboptimal that htat money instead goes to pay strength coach's vacation home mortgages and for NCAA investigators to police who got too many free pairs of shoes rather than the disproportionately economically disadvantaged kids who earn the money. The sheer brutality of football and its gross exploitation of players physical and mental well being is simply another moral/ethical argument against it (frankly it's a ****ing abomination if you REALLY think about it but that type of emotional argument isn't really even needed given that it's obviously a cartel and that's obviously bad.) The "not so simple" argument is kind of absurd - I don't worship at the boot of free markets the way some do but it's pretty much designed to figure out situations like this and even if it's not ideal - allowing schools to compete by paying athletes to let them do with their wages as we see fit is better than what we have now where they spend the money on strength coaches and locker rooms - that's just economic waste, really.
Mack didn't fill the stadium, people came to the stadium to see Ricky Williams and Major Applewhite and Roy Williams and Vince Young and Colt McCoy do football sh-t, well, to other teams. Does he play an indirect role in all of that because he helped assemble it? Of course. Daryl Morey assembled the Rockets too - and they are both compensated highly. But in reality nobody came to see Mack clap clap clap on the sidelines, just like they don't go to the T-Center to see Mike D'Antoni to say "C'mon guys, Keep the intensity up, this is the PLAYOFFS!" during timeouts.
In a sense yes. Though the goodwill would be a real charge the football/sports program would have to fund in cash back to the university, not a non-cash charge, which would in turn reduce free cash flow available. Most any problem is solvable, just not always in the simplest manner. Again, I think a bit of an oversimplification. As a generality, people are paying to see the athletes. But more specifically, people are paying to see the athletes representing their school. While there's like some very small % of fans who follow individual players even from high school to college, the vast majority of paying fans to college sports programs are paying to watch their college team play. Football Player A or Swimmer B obviously has family, close friends that are paying to see that particular person. But most people aren't. They're paying to see their school/university represented by whichever players are doing so. And a school/university exists first and foremost for different reasons other than to promote college athletics. Back to the goodwill analogy, the concept here is that goodwill represents a ton of the value here, not the actual players themselves. This isn't different than professional sports. I'm a Rockets fan first. Which is why I think its more complex. Because in professional sports, its clearly a for profit economic model where the sole existence of the sports is for the sole existence of the sport. Absolutely agreed. Definitely agree on the economic waste. Still don't think this is as simply solvable as you make it out. I think you narrowed it down to a "goodwill" argument succinctly, which I agree with, that goodwill being an actual cash charge. But that charge is not a simple item to figure out. I know there will be plenty of people that would argue the charge should be very high. And looked at through the lens of "go ahead and eliminate the college sports entirely and let them be minor league systems on their own", I know that it would probably fail or at least certainly not be anywhere near the economic juggernaut they are now... because people don't care about minor league sports. Again, they care about the affiliation. And the more profitable the sports program, the likely higher that affiliation goodwill charge should be. As I noted, personally I love sports, don't really have a college team I root for, yet still love college sports, and want to see more "fairness" in the model.... but I'd also love to see the cost of higher education lowered a ton, and also put "fairness" in quotes for the reasons noted.
