dave mcbride

Huh??? Football has ZERO to do with academic learning. Football and, say, engineering or comparative literature are not in the same universe. If you want to be an engineer or historian, you better damn well go to college. And rightly so. You appear to be relying on a "that's the way it's always been done" argument punctuated with resentment towards people you believe are spoiled for offering a dissenting voice about what in my view is an essentially corrupt system.

Fair point, but I don't think it's right to jump on the rare person who does raise the issue. It is real and his argument is logical, even if it's also true that NFL players make a lot of money. The working conditions for being a football player encompass more than just the paying part of the career - they also include the apprenticeship path. It's particularly relevant when said apprenticeship is an ironclad requirement for eventual payment. Re 2: so you're saying it's not ok to point out problems because it has been that way forever? "That's the way it's always been done" is not an argument.

Tons of college football players thank god publicly and demonstratively after every freaking game and often credit their victories to God. I find it highly irritating, but whatever. I don't hold it against them and don't treat it as an attention grab. But more to the point, how is that not expressing one's opinion about religion?

Your quote: "If football is stopping him from pursuing his degree of choice, why doesn't he pursue an easier one while he is playing or stop playing? He could easily pursue whatever degree he wants when he's done playing football." Rosen never said that football is stopping him from pursuing the degree of his choice. Never. http://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/20284353/josh-rosen-ucla-bruins-says-football-school-go-together-ponders-alabama-success-sat-requirement-raised He is talking about the broader system. College football is a star-building system. The league receives a large slew of ready-made stars every draft day.

So no one is ever supposed to complain about working conditions or career path requirements even if they don't make much sense. They should just shut up, never complain, and pretend that the big-time D1 college football system is the best system that there ever was.

Huh?? If someone is extremely talented at football but none too bright, they still should have a chance to apply their skills and be remunerated for it provided an organization that is willing to pay him. Or are you saying that a person who by every physical measure is a fit for professional football should forego that career path because he isn't good at college and instead ply his skills in a pizza parlor? Because that's the alternative if he doesn't go to college. No one can play in the NFL without going to college. That makes zero sense to me. That's not what he said AT ALL. Sheesh.

I dunno. I am more familiar with D1 college baseball, and they play upwards of 60 games per year and practice pretty intensely all fall and travel far and wide. It's tough to handle both, but obviously many do. I do think it's more demanding than holding a job and attending school, for what it's worth. Actually, if you want to play football professionally, you ARE forced to play football and go to college. There is no other option. That's not debatable.

I realize that. It's happening all over the country. Increasing out-of-state enrollment is a primary way for schools to increase revenue generation. http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-out-of-state-20140818-story.html. The cost to attend Michigan out of state is now $60K per year, and more than half of those enrolled there are from out-of-state. It's one of the reasons why getting into a master's program at a place like Oxford isn't THAT hard - the university charges people in the UK barely anything, but can charge out-of-country enrollees Ivy league prices.

Alabama, as I understand it, does have lower standards than UCLA, Berkeley, Northwestern, UVA, etc. for football player acceptancee. But all of these places (including Stanford and Duke) lower their standards for athletes to a degree. Let's remember that Alabama gets the best players in the country, and clearly a lot of them are not fit for college. But that school lives in a different world -- college football is a religion in that part of the country, and bigger than the NFL. Florida State, Clemson, and LSU are all in similar boats. The competition in that world is ferocious - more ferocious than at a place like UCLA or UVA, where the level of fan and media attention is markedly lower. The pressure to win there is unbelievable.

I wouldn't say that it's quite a rounding error, but you're correct in that it's a slender piece of the overall pie. The UCLA athletic department generated $97 million in 2016, with about 47 percent of it coming from football alone. The entire budget of the university is $6.8 billion. In contrast, the Alabama AD made something like $160 million, and the total budget for the U of Alabama in 2016 was $875 million. That's a lot more than a rounding error, particularly given that a lot of the AD money was straight-up profit generated by the football program.

I know a lot about Alabama and publish authors who teach there (I'm a book editor at Oxford University Press.) It's a perfectly fine public university but it's simply not in the same league as a UCLA, Michigan, or Berkeley. The latter three are by consensus among the best universities in the world. It's not like I'm a snob about this - I went to UB for undergrad (a fairly mediocre public university but a place where you can get a perfectly fine education.) Anecdotal stories about someone doing well at Alabama are all well and good, but in the aggregate it's not even close in terms of quality (meaning measurables) to the top UCs in areas like faculty research output, the quality of the undergrad student body, and the grad student population (especially). Of course, it doesn't mean that smart people don't go to places like Alabama, get very good educations, and do well in life (as you well know). If one is from Alabama, it's the logical place to go.

Pretty good stuff here! http://www.footballoutsiders.com/scramble/2017/scramble-ball-2017-east-overunders

You really have zero idea of what you're talking about. Yes, Stanford is harder to get into and ranked higher than UCLA, but UCLA is by just about every measure regarded as one of the top 15 universities in the world (e.g., https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2017/world-ranking#survey-answer ; http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2016.html ). Comparing it to Alabama, a school I have no beef with, is laughable. Tom Brady, Aaron Rogers, and Carson Palmer are from California. None are "wusses."

It is very funny this year. Best one yet on the Bills.

Paul Perkins, and yes they were solid that year. Last year, however, they were unbelievably bad - one of the very worst in the entirety of D1.

Dunno. Good question. In the mid-80s, a very close friend of mine from Palo Alto was drafted in the 8th round by the Mets coming out of HS but had scholarship offers from UCLA, Arizona State, SC, and the Univ of Washington. He's extremely smart and preferred basketball, so he went to Pomona and played D3 ball with Greg Popovich as his coach. But he told me that if had to choose, he would definitely have chosen college baseball because it was a better financial deal AND he'd get a free education. In HS, he played for an elite travel team (Greg Joyner was on it) and something like half the team was drafted. He told me that one kid got a $50K signing bonus, which he immediately blew $37K on for a BMW. He spent a year or two playing A ball in Idaho and washed out. He was 20 and broke. Gerritt Cole of the Pirates was drafted in the late first by the Yankees about 8 years ago (28th overall), but went to UCLA and was drafted #1 overall by the Pirates. Jacoby Ellsbury was drafted in the 23rd round out of HS, but went to Oregon State and ended up being a 2nd round pick by the Red Sox. The list goes on. The craziest stuff that happens is in the DR and Venezuela, where signing bonuses are given to 16 year olds.

Interesting recent example: Jeremiah Estrada (who faced my 16-year old son's team in a Georgia tournament last year!) is an elite pitcher from Southern California who committed to UCLA. Because of that, he was drafted far later in the MLB draft than his talent suggested (this happens all the time in the MLB draft--many players rightly see free college as a better financial deal than a single-A salary). Anyway, he was taken in the 6th round by the Cubs in June. The signing bonus (via MLB's slotting system) for a 6th rounder is $200,000, but the Cubs offered him $1 million *and* guaranteed to fully pay for a UCLA education if he washes out. He chose to sign with the Cubs.

Not just football. Here is a randomly selected D1 baseball schedule for a pretty good team in a big-time conference: http://www.wvusports.com/schedules.cfm?sport=baseball. Look at how long the season is and the travel it entails. Plus they practice nearly every day in the fall.

No offense, but it appears from your post that you have NO idea how demanding the athletic schedule is for players in on big-time D1 sports teams. Oh - and Alabama's football team alone generated $103.9 million in revenue last year.

Indeed. 100 percent right.

Rosen is hardly the problem. I suggest reading this: https://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2017/5/30/15704320/ucla-football-2017-preview-schedule-roster . Again, read above. He's been a lot better player than you suggest. Look at that run game. It has been historically awful the past two seasons. From the broken record dept: read the link above before you judge his game.

As a UCLA grad, I'm happy to see this. Good for Rosen, who is quite smart. He's of course 100 percent correct. I hope he avoid the injury bug this season.

Yup - he's the most physical receiver I have ever seen. I remember that hit. He said afterward that it "just football" or something like that.

Just learned about this. There is apparently video. If it's damning, he could go down for a long time. Landry and Beckham as a receiving corps at LSU - talk about an out-of-control pair.

Tannehill's teams are 37-40 when he starts, and Cutler's are 68-71. So yes, basically the same outcome.