Comments about ‘Brad Rock: Colleges should get aid from rich NFL’

An interesting article that touches on some of the dysfunction of college athletics. Maybe universities should tap into their ridiculously large endowment funds if they keep wanting to squander their money.

By the way, the shot at "Obamacare" was way off track. Obamacare is about people being responsible for their own health insurance. It is the mandate that Republicans claim not to like (because their own idea was adopted by the President). We now know that the GOP does not like personal responsibility.

It would be easier to force the NFL to subsidize college sports than it would be to force the NFL to build it's own farm system, like there is in Baseball, Hockey and Soccer. Yet, this is one of the advantages that the NFL has over the other pro sports leagues. Thank you for bringing it to our attention.

There are no easy answers here. Many colleges, big ones, seem to have an athletics first, academics second attitude. With no real motivation to change that. Perhaps they can't afford to reverse the two without losing students.

I'm sure the NFL would tell colleges that it has plenty of its own issues to deal with.

The bigger view for some equality from the $ standpoint would be for all Division 1 schools to have to put some of its football revenue into a pot, then have that shared somewhat equally among all the schools.

Baseball has its own minor league system.

Hockey has its own minor league system.

The NBA has flirted with the D-League, but it is still too small and insignificant to be considered a true minor league system. I give them props for "trying", but they still use colleges as a free minor league.

The NFL has no minor league system. They benefit greatly from colleges basically running their preparatory system. They absolutely should help finance it, or get their own minor league system going.

Well, this has officially gotten ridiculous. Of COURSE the NFL gets the best talent. This is known as graduating to the professional ranks, which is the entire point. Where are the articles lamenting the fact that Google uses U.S. universities as a "farm program" for their corporate objectives, pillaging the best programming talent after the university provides *academic* scholarships to the best and brightest? Or that Ernst and Young cherry picks the choicest accountants, or Wall Street the finest financial program graduates? Because such an article would be preposterous and, yes, un-American. Give. Me. A. Break.

I think Brad Rock should also bring up the fact that for a number of years now the University of Utah athletic department has been receiving $5 million/year in taxpayer subsidies. It is time to end this abuse of tax revenue that goes against the interests of the vast majority of the state. It is time for the U to pay out a return on the taxpayers investment - no more subsidies, half the TV money goes to the state's general education fund, and they have to do a home and home with Utah State in football. They've taken the tax money of the poor and widows, now they need to pay John Q. Taxpayer back.

PGVikingDad...of course many US firms pluck the best and the brightest from college ranks. That is the idea. Many of these big Wall Street firms do, in fact, support America's college and university system financially. Many students who are not athletes have benefited directly from this type of generosity. Many companies, even in these tough economic times, help their employees further their education. As a graduate of the University of Nebraska system, I have seen the results of these programs first hand. I, myself, earned part of the money for my own Master's Degree from the company where I worked at the time.

The NFL gets nearly all of it's talent from colleges and universities who sacrifice a great deal to field a football team and the league pays very little for it. That is something that must be corrected.

That entitlement koolaid must taste real good. Too bad it has such a lowsy aftertaste.

Once colleges start accepting NFL money, and adjust their budgets to depend on that money, just like a drug, the NFL has the colleges hooked. Once they can't meet their budget obligations without the NFL money, the NFL will start placing 'conditions' on reciept of the money. Those conditions will increase until the colleges are nothing more than a farm system for the NFL. Not good.

and to Esquire ... saying Obamacare is about 'personal responsibility' because the government forces people to buy government healthcare coverage is akin to saying that paying excessive income taxes to pay for lavish government spending is our 'personal responsibility' to help our neighbor. That liberal koolaid tastes good when you first drink it but in the long run it leaves the nasty aftertaste of dependency and entitlement. Yuck!

Observation list, The system being proposed is not nearly as repugnant as the current system that encourages cheating and rule breaking and punishes excellence. USC, Ohio State et al vs. Utah, Boise State and TCU are a prime example of the disunction of the current system. I would love to see the NFL mandate that teams actually compete for a national title instead of having a small group of the wealthiest institutions mandate the rules for getting in.