Delaware President on Paying Athletes

NewApp · Unread post by **NewApp** » Sat May 24, 2014 1:42 am

HOBSON: But if they were employees, and they were injured, they would be entitled to things like workman's comp benefits.

HARKER: So how would we do this? So think about this, right. So we make them employees. That means not only for the football and basketball players, but with Title IX, we have to do that with all our student athletes. Now our costs have gone up dramatically. How can we afford to keep doing this? We would just drop sports.

And I'll tell you what we would do at the University of Delaware. Most likely we would drop all our varsity sports down to club status because we simply could not afford to provide varsity athletics.

HOBSON: Well, what's wrong with that?

HARKER: Well, there's an argument there that it's possible that that is something that we should consider. The things that you take away are for the vast majority of our 600 student athletes, half of whom are on scholarships, are those scholarships. We're helping these young people get through college.

The vast majority of our athletic budget is scholarship money. It's not coaches' salaries. At our level, coaches are not making millions of dollars.

DoubleA · Unread post by **DoubleA** » Sat May 24, 2014 6:06 am

Returning college sports (outside of men's football and basketball, of course) to club status basically puts them on a DIII level, which is not all bad. Athletics could be put in their proper place as an extracurricular activity and participants could be students first, free to pursue academic interest as they choose, without regard to how much time is required for labs, study groups, productions, class projects, etc. Certainly the students would miss athletic scholarships, but perhaps this could be made up by more need based and academic scholarships.

bcoach · Unread post by **bcoach** » Sat May 24, 2014 8:22 am

DoubleA wrote:Returning college sports (outside of men's football and basketball, of course) to club status basically puts them on a DIII level, which is not all bad. Athletics could be put in their proper place as an extracurricular activity and participants could be students first, free to pursue academic interest as they choose, without regard to how much time is required for labs, study groups, productions, class projects, etc. Certainly the students would miss athletic scholarships, but perhaps this could be made up by more need based and academic scholarships.

So why not football and basketball?

DoubleA · Unread post by **DoubleA** » Sat May 24, 2014 9:49 am

So why not football and basketball?

Revenue sports are what they are, semi-pro leagues. The money is simply too big to ignore and walk away from.

asu66 · Unread post by **asu66** » Sat May 24, 2014 12:36 pm

Three dozen Title IX attorneys are programming our Chancellor's and AD's number into their Blackberrys even as I key this post! They l-o-v-e talk like this.

bcoach · Unread post by **bcoach** » Sat May 24, 2014 5:03 pm

asu66 wrote:Three dozen Title IX attorneys are programming our Chancellor's and AD's number into their Blackberrys even as I key this post! They l-o-v-e talk like this.

Isn't that the truth.