But, yes, I think the rule protects the long-term interest of the college football players.

and play for virtually free while risking injury. His other option is to sit and endure public ridicule.

It will be this way until the rule is changed.

It protects the short term and long term profit interests of college football. And that is it. Don't believe me? Watch people lose their shit if you suggest cutting college football back to 9 game seasons...for the long-term interest of the college football players.

Guys get hurt to varying degrees in the NFL regardless of age. This notion that sweet, sweet 19 year old children must be protected from 22 year old savages needs to expelled.

You are not alone, but anyone arguing that the 3 year rule is for the players is not be honest with themselves.

is simply not true - as I will be on the hook for about 80K per year shortly when my son attends ND. But beyond that I don't think these players are ready for the NFL physically. How many NFL players start under the age of 23? I don't feel like checking but the answer is not many. Would that change if the rule were different? Perhaps, but I envision too many of these players getting overwhelmed and washing out when their prospects for success would be greatly increased with more development.

Does that benefit schools and AD's and profit and the whole business of college football? - no doubt. I'm not stupid. But I think the notion that these players would help their careers by going to the NFL at an earlier age is wrong.

In that way I think the rule benefits football players.

if NCAA football were to cease to exist as we know it, I would guess that the NFL would move quickly to fill that void and have a developmental league similar to baseball. One would imagine that these players would then receive compensation for these efforts.

therefore, the idea that they're not physically ready for the NFL, while true in many situations, doesn't really serve the notion that they should come play for a relative pittance compared to what the schools are making off of their work.

For the record, I also have three kids that will be attending college within a few years and so I am pretty familiar with the costs as well. I can tell you that the majority of these big time schools are making out like bandits relative to the kid getting the "free" education.

The NFL wouldn't have 130 minor league teams with 85 players each. I suspect they may not even have 32, so if CFB went away, I'm guessing well more than 80% of the kids on scholarships would lose their scholarships. It's hard to argue that those kids aren't being fairly compensated.

The NFL get's a ton free scouting and development done by colleges. I would suspect that they would have the equivalent of a AAA team where they hold their reserves, top prospects, and injury recovering players, where they learn the system/playbook and are ready to move up to the show at any time.

After that, they would need to have a few developmental levels. They could even keep the current 3 year "rule" by having regional leagues that take the high school talent and work them in to the various systems for the teams, where the new coaches stretch their legs and probably where the PED's flow.

The issue is the variously 60-85 players and all the additional coaches and support staff each team needs is an order of magnitude bigger than what any baseball or even soccer team needs. That doesn't even touch upon facilities. I'm sure that there are quite a few cities that might be interested in hosting some minor league football teams, particularly if there was a void of college athletics, but I don't believe they would foot as big of a bill as they do for baseball.


All of that being said, I think the NFL would benefit from having either a Minor League (AAA) like baseball, or a junior league like the British Premier League (complete with relegation and elevation) as it would allow them to expand the product without watering down the top level of competition.

Is generally less than the cost of out of state tuition at most FBS universities and players go without a paycheck during their off-seasons.

Even if a three tiered Minor League system of Football developed, I'd expect greater than 50% of top prospects would still opt for college especially after the first few classes began offer the feedback of being the initial guinea pigs for such a system.

my guess is that there would still be a market for college football, but it would be different than the current model.

Look, in my opinion the best solution is to let the players profit from their image and likeness. I do not think that they should be paid by the schools and I am not in favor of them going pro right out of high school. That said, these pigs at the trough don't deserve to make all of this money without the kids being able to at least sign autographs or get sponsorship the way an Olympic athlete can.

The NFL reaps the benefit of better ability to assess talent without the risk of signing an 18 year old kid who will turn out to be a bust.

how any of these kids are physically ready to play in the NFL at 18, 19, and 20 years old? If the NFL wants to start a developmental league for players, I'm all for it. Forego the education and go play. I would bet that most in that developmental league would not be "called up" for quite some time.

Should kids get some form of compensation? Sure.

Incidentally, this makes my fourth, and final, college bound student. Hopefully they get some compensation.

at that age?

Not many. That said, when the NBA opened up their draft to high school seniors back in the day, there were still teams spending high picks on the seniors, even ones that needed time to develop.

By allowing players to profit off of their image and likeness and maintain a 3 year commitment to a University prior to entering a draft you can avoid most of these issues.

Is it relatively easy to ensure that these athletes receive only fair market value of their image, or is it almost guaranteed that the big program kids will receive inflated compensations for committing to a specific school over a competitor (eg. $10,000 from rich booster for an 8x10 photo)?

I don't have a better answer, but it is insane that schools benefit exclusively from the likeness/image of these athletes, and also indirectly at the box office, via TV rights fees, and donations. Meanwhile coach and staff salaries and facility investments continue to skyrocket.

I would prefer that a significant percentage of all profits from the revenue sports go into a fund for longterm health support, hardship support (both during and after their college tenure), and other benefits that would help those with the greatest need, but not sure that would be very popular and it would not fairly compensate the elite athletes.

and other people whose income we need to control.

In other words, you don't regulate it. People earn what they deserve; most people will end up with nothing for their image and likeness because it won't be worth anything.

Do you know what Marvin Miller's greatest fear was when he was negotiating for free agency (among other things) for the major league baseball players in the 1970's? His biggest fear was that the owners would just make every single MLB player a free agent after every year. And why is that? Because he knew that if every player was a free agent annually, only the very top players would get paid a lot and the bottom 2/3 of the players would be fighting for table scraps.

So by allowing the owners to "regulate" when players hit free agency, binding arbitration, etc. he was able to help drive up the salaries for all players.

Enhanced regulation is not the answer to any sort of problem you can come up with here, Pat.