Racial resentment and your opinion on paying college athletes

Many workplaces have drug testing programs where you get fired if you come up positive. Professional athletes are constantly tested for PEDs. Legal items are not within the scope of their commands, and clearly this is directed at supposedly black purchasing so they should be firing anyone who starts pushing such an agenda.

I am saying pay them but forget about the scholarships and as they are now proper employees a code of conduct should be rigerously enforced. One step out of line and life time bans from all college sports teams. In short, make it like many other industries.

Who, the journalist? Or the researcher?

Or dunno, someone can fund a minor league for those who are seriously looking to make it in the NBA and leave college to ball as the extracurricular activity it's supposed to be.

I do have a passing interest in watching, for example, the final rounds of basketball, US football, baseball, hell even association football/soccer with last year's Euro 2016. I don't disagree that they provide entertainment and jobs--of course they do! I just disagree that those are productive jobs. And I don't agree with the disproportionate amount of time people spend watching sports and carrying out side activities like fantasy leagues.

Regarding physical fitness...well, that's a mixed bag. If you've ever watched a US football game, you'd see the stadiums lined with hundreds (if not thousands) of physically unfit people. Granted, that may be a selection bias because the US is generally fatter, but most people don't watch sports to want to actively engage in exercise. Rather, they watch sports passively to root for their team. I don't deny that professional sports can encourage physical fitness (soccer and basketball especially), but not in the majority of cases.

Fair enough. It's a matter of line-drawing. For example, I don't consider certain 'arts' such as reality TV to be productive (e.g. the Kardashians), but I do see value in various art forms and media.

It isn't just the NFL. Sports franchises build stadiums partially with taxpayer money. This just occurred in my city, with our local NBA franchise. The economic benefits to a city vary from barely beneficial to completely non-beneficial. It really depends on the city and the franchise. But having a sports franchise and building a sports arena does not automatically benefit a city/region. It obviously depends on many more factors.

It isn't just US football/grid iron, and it isn't merely limited to concussions. Serious injuries occur in association football/soccer, hockey, rugby, baseball, basketball...really, any contact sport. Plus things like car racing (which I don't consider a sport, but many do).

I don't dispute this, and I'm sure there are plenty more direct/indirect jobs.

I don't necessarily view increases in materialism as a good thing, but I recognize that others might see it as a positive.

This is a very good point. But what's stopping golf-viewers, advertisers, merchandisers, etc. from donating directly to those charities? Surely, a more direct transaction would eliminate the PGA as a middleman, thus decreasing costs associated with having such an intermediary.

This is a really interesting discussion, and I appreciate your point of view on this. You're giving me strong points to consider.

Honestly my problems come mostly from school athletics, and also from when the city or state is supporting the industry through tax dollars that would probably be better spent on infrastructure. But when it comes to school athletics, it's a joke that there is so much focus on athletics, even at the middle and high school level. I've seen plenty of examples of a city getting a new school only for the majority of it to be dedicated to athletics. Like in Bemidji, only about a third of their current high school is actually the school. The rest is gym and training areas. Most of the funding goes to athletics, too, both in high school and at the college level. At my high school, the basketball team got new uniforms even though it was the last year before our district combined with another and would have different colors and a different mascot. Screw getting updated computers for the computer lab, though, or welding equipment for the shop. I also don't know how many times I've seen examples of universities spending millions on new arenas or sports training centers, or "wellness" centers, yet the buildings that they have classes in are rotting and sometimes even get to the point they have to be condemned and knocked down.

"I have my own issues with professional sports, particularly tax funded stadiums as well as the attitudes of some of the athletes. But your post is spot on.

The issues with athletes being broke is due to their carelessness with money. 30 for 30 did an excellent documentary that covered the reasons why athletes go broke.

On concussions and head injuries the NFL has improved lots with trying to reduce them. Much more than boxing, which doesn't even require their athletes to use head gear ." - T.R.

Here is the problem with NFL head injuries - it's all about the physics: athletes get bigger, stronger, and (more importantly) faster every year. Their padding/protective gear gets better too. So you have 250+ pound behemoths who run into each other full speed - but there's no padding inside the human skull to protect the brain from bouncing around when the impact occurs.

As for boxing, head gear may or may not be the answer. The results of studies are mixed - google it, it's pretty interesting. BTW do you know why they use big thick gloves? It's not protect the guy getting hit, it's to protect the guy hitting's hands! Hand & finger bones are no match for a thick human skull or chin. Yep - way back in the bare-knuckle days you didn't have boxers hitting each other in the head constantly, because that will mess up your hands. So the fight was mostly body shots or clinching and shoving, because you really had to pick your shots.

So to better entertain the audience gloves were introduced - now the fight was non-stop punching in the face at full force because nobody had to worry about messing up their hands. Now guys started getting head trauma. If by some reason (it will never happen) boxing were bare-knuckle (no wraps either - wraps keep your hand/finger bones from spreading) head trauma would be a small fraction of what it is now.

So, as I was saying...

Source

That's what that was about? I saw some tweets but they were out of context.

They're hoping to find another instution to take them, but that's a hard sell---nobody has money for this anymore