(03-04-2018 09:47 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(03-04-2018 02:21 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  But 4 Star being offered $100,000 from Bobs Used Carplex in Tuscaloosa after he signs with Bama? I ain’t buying that as a legitimate payment tied to the guy’s advertising value.

Why should there be some limitation based on someone's opinion of an athlete's advertising value? No doubt there are many Olympic athletes whose sponsorships reflect not only advertising value but the sponsor's intent to help support the athlete while training in his or her sport. It's still legal for a swimsuit manufacturer (for example) to pay a prospective Olympic swimmer more than the company could expect to obtain in advertising benefit.

Agreed.

Too many people are worried about potential abuses, yet the point is that the abuses ARE happening and they're all occurring under the table.

The whole point of the Olympic model is that it allows the NCAA and colleges to get out of the way of the compensation issue completely. If a car dealer booster feels that he/she wants to pay $100,000 to an offensive lineman to sign autographs for one day, then so be it. Let that player cash in on his free market value (which, unless you're going to the NFL or NBA, is going to be higher as a college recruit than at any other point in that person's life).

Once you start having caps and limits to where and how athletes start receiving endorsement money, then that's prima facie evidence that there IS an employer-employee relationship between the universities and their athletes... which is what those universities are trying to avoid in the first place. That also brings back in Title IX issues, which those universities are also trying to avoid. So, if the Olympic model is used (and I personally think that it's probably the best solution out of a set of admittedly imperfect solutions), then it has to be free of any NCAA restrictions or oversight. Otherwise, there's no point to the Olympic model at all.