Kevin Brown

[Jammer7]

46 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Oh yea, the product isn’t what it once was. I would guess college football is the same but I don’t pay as much attention to it but all of this stuff is even worse for football.

It’s also why you see more and more upsets and more and more mid majors winning because those teams generally stay together for a while.  Guys develop in one system, under one coach and usually surrounded by a lot of the same teammates.

That said, the system was also always unfair to the athletes, so I’m glad they did things to change that.

The scholarships they receive are $40,000-50,000? Perhaps a good bit more in many places when all expenses are added in with healthcare, food, lodging, supplies, etc…

I realize how much money the schools make, so I’m ok with giving the players some kind of stipend. They did not allow the kids to work during the school year, IIRC. But to give them, in some cases, millions of dollars, what a joke. They have opened Pandora’s box with this “likeness” thing. 

The players are kids. Struggle is good. 

[Sports Guy]

3 minutes ago, Jammer7 said:

The scholarships they receive are $40,000-50,000? Perhaps a good bit more in many places when all expenses are added in with healthcare, food, lodging, supplies, etc…

I realize how much money the schools make, so I’m ok with giving the players some kind of stipend. They did not allow the kids to work during the school year, IIRC. But to give them, in some cases, millions of dollars, what a joke. They have opened Pandora’s box with this “likeness” thing. 

The players are kids. Struggle is good. 

There is not one single logical and good reason that players can’t make money off of their NIL. Any other student could do it. Any other student could work. These kids can’t. 
 

Years ago, Tyrelle Pryor was hit by the NCaA because he was selling his own autograph. That’s complete bs. No way that should be a problem.

Now, if you want to cap it or something like that, I think that’s a fair conversation to have. OTOH, would you cap another student if they were some instagram star that made a ton of money influencing products?  Why tell these kids no? Because we don’t like that the sport is worse? 
 

I think people are upset about this for their own selfish reasons.

[Just Regular]

8 hours ago, NashLumber said:

I heard him do a game a couple of weeks ago. I was impressed. Oddly, I didn't catch that it was him immediately, but when he introduced himself again after a station break, I yelled to my wife to come in and see. 

That said, I'd LOVE to hear Ben McDonald do hoops games just for the laughs. 

If Kevin comes back, at some point there needs to be a gag reel of Brown re-dubbing a call of some Ben McDonald LSU action.

As always thankful to Sean Forman for the codifying, in a few clicks one can find Ben was about 10th in minutes for Dale Brown on 1987 LSU.    Dale cut the rotation down to 7 guys as a #10 seed pushed #1 Indiana to the brink in the Elite Eight in a would be upset that would have denied Keith Smart his iconic moment.

By March, the baseball coaches may have wanted Ben, but he had time to ride those basketball benches.    Freshman year he was just 37 innings before exploding to 118 and 152.

[Frobby]

7 minutes ago, Just Regular said:

If Kevin comes back, at some point there needs to be a gag reel of Brown re-dubbing a call of some Ben McDonald LSU action.

As always thankful to Sean Forman for the codifying, in a few clicks one can find Ben was about 10th in minutes for Dale Brown on 1987 LSU.    Dale cut the rotation down to 7 guys as a #10 seed pushed #1 Indiana to the brink in the Elite Eight in a would be upset that would have denied Keith Smart his iconic moment.

By March, the baseball coaches may have wanted Ben, but he had time to ride those basketball benches.    Freshman year he was just 37 innings before exploding to 118 and 152.

I’m 99.9% sure Brown is coming back, or he wouldn’t have been prominently featured in that 101 video that was released last month.  

[RZNJ]

Or maybe it should be like baseball.  If you want to get paid for playing basketball, turn professional.  If you want to get an education and play basketball go to college.   Teams would soon be drafting HS seniors, giving them large bonuses and letting them develop.  

[Jammer7]

23 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

There is not one single logical and good reason that players can’t make money off of their NIL. Any other student could do it. Any other student could work. These kids can’t. 
 

Years ago, Tyrelle Pryor was hit by the NCaA because he was selling his own autograph. That’s complete bs. No way that should be a problem.

Now, if you want to cap it or something like that, I think that’s a fair conversation to have. OTOH, would you cap another student if they were some instagram star that made a ton of money influencing products?  Why tell these kids no? Because we don’t like that the sport is worse? 
 

I think people are upset about this for their own selfish reasons.

Oh, the NCAA and their rules are often ridiculous. Pryor is only one small example. There was (is) so much cheating and they tried to make more and more bad rules. 

There is no question that NIL is their right. SCOTUS ruling is pretty clear, I think. The only questions I have is without their participation in college sports for an NCAA school, what would their “brand” be valued at? What role does the institution, and the infrastructure they have built before the athlete enters play in that? Does it create an unfair advantage? What is amateur sport?

If they want to sell merchandise with their likeness, good. If they even want to get a job, good. But, forgive me for my ignorance, how can a University offer a kid millions of dollars based on what might be his value? Before he has even done anything? How is that an amateur sport? If he earns it, on his own, then great! I am all for it.

Fundamentally, the student-athlete is supposed to be there for an education. In most sports, the non-rev ones, they are. For football and basketball, it has become a minor league sewer. 

There is some selfishness, sure. @Frobby wrote a very well written post about it. Strictly from a consumer standpoint, it is a disaster.

From an idealistic standpoint of a parent, and as an educator, I want my kids to struggle. That is where growth happens. I know that is not the point of this discussion, but it gets lost these days because people simply only care about $$. 

[DrungoHazewood]

1 hour ago, Sports Guy said:

Oh yea, the product isn’t what it once was. I would guess college football is the same but I don’t pay as much attention to it but all of this stuff is even worse for football.

Yea, I'd argue it's just as bad for football. Even good teams will often see multiple starters leave. I really only follow Virginia Tech, but it seems like half the players are on their 3rd college, and it's being touted as a huge win and a minor miracle that 90% of their starters are returning for next year.

Sometimes you'll hear people talk about baseball free agency, and say stuff like "in the beginning they should have made everyone a free agent every year, the supply would be huge and nobody would get these giant contracts, it'd be awesome!" Yea... that's what we have in college sports now: everyone is on a one-year contract, and it's pretty much chaos. If you're not closely following a team you have no chance of figuring out who's playing for them.

"What happened to our QB, he's awesome, is he hurt? No, no... he's playing for Missouri now, but that's okay we got this other guy you never heard of from Utah, hopefully he learned the system in the last month." Clearly this is a far worse experience for the fans, who pay for all of this with tickets that are often just as expensive as the pros.

But having said all that, it was always ludicrous that Frank Beamer made $5M a year in a small town in SW Virginia, his assistant coaches $500k or more, while his players got $30k scholarships, and could be suspended a month for charging $5 for an autograph, and EA Sports had to keep names out of their college football games. Like the Olympics, it was a corrupt house of cards propped up by this nonsensical and frankly disingenuous notion about the purity of amateur sports, which was really a way to funnel $millions to the people running the organization.

[spleen1015]

3 minutes ago, Jammer7 said:

Oh, the NCAA and their rules are often ridiculous. Pryor is only one small example. There was (is) so much cheating and they tried to make more and more bad rules. 

There is no question that NIL is their right. SCOTUS ruling is pretty clear, I think. The only questions I have is without their participation in college sports for an NCAA school, what would their “brand” be valued at? What role does the institution, and the infrastructure they have built before the athlete enters play in that? Does it create an unfair advantage? What is amateur sport?

If they want to sell merchandise with their likeness, good. If they even want to get a job, good. But, forgive me for my ignorance, how can a University offer a kid millions of dollars based on what might be his value? Before he has even done anything? How is that an amateur sport? If he earns it, on his own, then great! I am all for it.

Fundamentally, the student-athlete is supposed to be there for an education. In most sports, the non-rev ones, they are. For football and basketball, it has become a minor league sewer. 

There is some selfishness, sure. @Frobby wrote a very well written post about it. Strictly from a consumer standpoint, it is a disaster.

From an idealistic standpoint of a parent, and as an educator, I want my kids to struggle. That is where growth happens. I know that is not the point of this discussion, but it gets lost these days because people simply only care about $$. 

I'm pretty sure it's not the schools paying them. It's boosters, sponsorships, etc.

[Sports Guy]

12 minutes ago, Jammer7 said:

Oh, the NCAA and their rules are often ridiculous. Pryor is only one small example. There was (is) so much cheating and they tried to make more and more bad rules. 

There is no question that NIL is their right. SCOTUS ruling is pretty clear, I think. The only questions I have is without their participation in college sports for an NCAA school, what would their “brand” be valued at? What role does the institution, and the infrastructure they have built before the athlete enters play in that? Does it create an unfair advantage? What is amateur sport?

If they want to sell merchandise with their likeness, good. If they even want to get a job, good. But, forgive me for my ignorance, how can a University offer a kid millions of dollars based on what might be his value? Before he has even done anything? How is that an amateur sport? If he earns it, on his own, then great! I am all for it.

Fundamentally, the student-athlete is supposed to be there for an education. In most sports, the non-rev ones, they are. For football and basketball, it has become a minor league sewer. 

There is some selfishness, sure. @Frobby wrote a very well written post about it. Strictly from a consumer standpoint, it is a disaster.

From an idealistic standpoint of a parent, and as an educator, I want my kids to struggle. That is where growth happens. I know that is not the point of this discussion, but it gets lost these days because people simply only care about $$. 

The university isn’t paying them anything.

These kids go to college, which is largely becoming a farce anyway, to prepare them for their job(s) after school.  Despite what these idiot professors nowadays feel, that is actually their only job. So, yea if a kid can go to college and be a millionaire, why not? Why should they have struggle to get there?  They worked hard to put themselves in that position, so why penalize them for it?

The amount of money the schools make off of these kids is obscene…and of course, that’s fine too but for years, we acted as if the education was more than worth it, which is and always will be total bs. 

Your last point , to me, is more about the stupid and atrocious idea that college should be “free”.

 

Edited February 11 by Sports Guy

[DrungoHazewood]

3 minutes ago, Jammer7 said:

What is amateur sport?

A sham.

The origins of amateur sports, and this high-minded idealism surrounding the concept, started off in cricket in England 200 or more years ago. Amateurs were the members of the landed gentry, the minor royalty, who had enough inherited wealth to not need to work. Naturally the posh, upper-class athletes weren't always the best. So cricket teams started recruiting working people, miners and blacksmiths and tradesmen and the like. But to play sports, especially cricket matches that took as many as five days, you'd have to pay them to take off work. Otherwise they couldn't live.

So professionals were members of the unwashed, uneducated lower classes. Amateurs were, you know, better people, at least in the traditions of that era. For many years cricket would talk about "gentlemen" and others, they'd have matches pitting gentlemen amateurs against lower-class pros. Eventually they had to stop because the pros destroyed the gentry.

The modern Olympics were started in the 1890s when this sentiment was still very strong. And this carried over to other sports, most notably in the US, college sports. Over time it became convenient to talk about the purity of amateur athletics so that you wouldn't have to give the players their fair share of the profits. The Olympics eventually gave up, the final straw being the Soviets pretending their pros were amateurs and beating the US players who were more like actual amateurs.

College stuck to this longer than almost anyone else, in part because it was so darned profitable for everyone except the players. And the players had no way to organize to try to fix it, and the best of them didn't have a huge incentive to upset the system because they were dreaming of NFL riches just around the corner.

[DrungoHazewood]

Just now, Sports Guy said:

The university isn’t paying them anything.

These kids go to college, which is largely becoming a farce anyway, to prepare them for their job(s) after school.  Despite what these idiot professors nowadays feel, that is actually their only job. So, yea if a kid can go to college and be a millionaire, why not? Why should they have struggle to get there?  They worked hard to put themselves in that position, so why penalize them for it?

The amount of money the schools make off of these kids is obscene…and of course, that’s fine too but for years, we acted as if the education was more than worth it, which is and always will be total bs. 
 

 

Of course 90% of collage athletes never go pro in their sport, so the education they get, the degree they get, is going to get them a substantial advantage in career earnings in whatever field they end up in.

[Sports Guy]

1 minute ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Of course 90% of collage athletes never go pro in their sport, so the education they get, the degree they get, is going to get them a substantial advantage in career earnings in whatever field they end up in.

Sure but we are really only talking about the small percentage anyway.

I mean, kids will get a lot of NIL money and completely flame out too but then it’s up to those individuals to follow through on their education and/or learn a skill that allows them to be a success later in life.

[Roll Tide]

40 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

The university isn’t paying them anything.

These kids go to college, which is largely becoming a farce anyway, to prepare them for their job(s) after school.  Despite what these idiot professors nowadays feel, that is actually their only job. So, yea if a kid can go to college and be a millionaire, why not? Why should they have struggle to get there?  They worked hard to put themselves in that position, so why penalize them for it?

The amount of money the schools make off of these kids is obscene…and of course, that’s fine too but for years, we acted as if the education was more than worth it, which is and always will be total bs. 

Your last point , to me, is more about the stupid and atrocious idea that college should be “free”.

 

I’m not here to create a back and forth. But many countries offer free college educations to their citizens 

 

“

Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Poland, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Sri Lanka and Uruguay, 

 

more

 

https://amberstudent.com/blog/post/countries-with-free-education#strongtop-15-countries-with-free-educationstrong

[Frobby]

Well, I’m guilty of being the one who steered this thread away from being about Kevin Brown, but now it’s not even about sports.   I’m washing my hands of it.  

[Sports Guy]

1 hour ago, Frobby said:

Well, I’m guilty of being the one who steered this thread away from being about Kevin Brown, but now it’s not even about sports.   I’m washing my hands of it.  

He’s a really solid broadcaster. I was wondering yesterday if ESPN “sees something” in him and want him to get involved in multiple sports.  He is still very young and you wonder if he’s one of those potential guys that people view as a long term Nantz type guy that does multiple sports really well.

Im a big Brian Anderson guy. I think he’s the best national PBP guy out there in baseball and he’s really good at CBB as well.  Brown could be headed on a trajectory like that.