Are things really that bad?

A new national poll conducted by the New York Times and CBS News reveals that 70 percent of Americans feel that "things in this country ... have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track."

Lordy loo.

I get pretty upset about certain things quite a bit, but is it really THAT bad?

If you believed these polls, you would come to the conclusion that the economy is getting worse. I think pretty much every indicator I've seen recently states that is not the case.

Funniest of all is the idea that a major reduction in the annual federal budget deficit would create jobs. SPLIT RIGHT DOWN THE MIDDLE! I suppose the people that believe this are operating under the idea that if the deficit went down, taxes would go down, people would spend more money and businesses would be free to hire more people. It's semi-plausible, but it's more likely that businesses would keep making it work with less staff, making more money for the top percentage of earners and only further stratifying America.

Frankly, while I'm certainly not thrilled with everything President Obama has done, he really has started to get the wheels turning in the past year. Health care reform, while far from perfect, was a necessary first step. Despite the 75 percent of Republicans that believe health care is not something the government should be involved in, the majority of Americans are on board with it. So far, he has walked a fine line with the budget crisis.

I wouldn't say that Obama has necessarily delivered the CHANGE that he promised, but he has delivered PROGRESS. And, my God, that's a lot more than we've been able to say since 2000.

Still, an overwhelming percentage of Americans believe the country is SERIOUSLY on the wrong track. How? Why?

I think, frankly, most Americans are painfully uninformed about what's going on. The union busting tactics in Wisconsin were quite absurd indeed, but the whole process is still playing itself out. Besides, I would be shocked if Democrats weren't elected in the next cycle and restored most of the power to the people.

But people see that on the news or hear that from a neighbor and are PISSED. THINGS ARE GOING TO HELL, they say. And, you know, maybe they are. But as much as I hate the concept of patriotism in general, if these 70 percent of people ever had the opportunity to travel to another country, they would be singing a different tune.

It's still pretty good here in America.

At least if you're college-educated and white.

Mr. Krugman? Back on my good side

I'll write up a fuller explanation of this at some point next week, but this is SPOT THE F ON:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/15/opinion/15krugman.html

Ralph Nader was right. Kind of.

It's an argument that Outside The Lines seems to cover every other day. It's an argument that you've probably had with your Uncle Joe a few times.

Should college athletes be paid?

It seems there's a new allegation every other day that college players are ALREADY being paid, only under the table. The Cam Newton storyline dominated the college football landscape last fall.

So, what's new? Well, Ralph Nader got involved.

Regardless of your political leanings and his 2000 Presidential candidacy allowing George W. Bush to be elected (I'm still bitter), it would be hard to argue that Nader has affected a lot of good changes in America.

Nader calls for doing away with athletic scholarships and replacing them with need-based aid.

The idea is pretty sound. He's on the right track. He just doesn't get all the way there.

It's time to do away with athletic scholarships, yes. And athletes should be eligible for need-based aid when the situation calls for it.

But what we really ought to replace it with is full-on pay for play.

Yes, this runs counter to Nader's main argument -- that we need to stop professionalizing college sports.


That's just silly, though. Aside from the quaintness of the idea, there really is no logical reason that we continue to uphold this virtue of amateurism as so important. Collegiate athletes -- even those in sports that you don't ever hear about -- devote an insane amount of time to their sports. They deserve compensation just like any other student that works a job in college.

For their part, the NCAA keeps sticking its head in the sand. The NCAA keeps playing the part of Kevin Bacon in Animal House, standing and screaming ALL IS WELL as their fantasy world of amateur sports is crumbling around them.

For example, NCAA spokesman Bob Williams said "that referring to college athletes as professionals defies logic."

"They are students, just like any other student on campus who receives a merit-based scholarship," he said.

Right, except that any other student on campus who receives a merit-based scholarship receives that scholarship due to their merit AS A STUDENT.


One of the main problems with athletic scholarships is that they're not equal across the table. The value of an education at, say, Notre Dame, is not equal to the value of an education at Purdue or Indiana. This may not seem to be that big of a deal, but the end result is that there are situations where kids have to choose one school with a lesser education because that's where they can get a scholarship. They end up going to a school they don't really want to attend because it's the place they've been offered a scholarship. Is that fair to the kid? Is it even fair to the school?

Notre Dame is a more prestigious academic institution than Indiana, and while they do hold even their athletes to strict academic standards, they certainly offer athletic scholarships to kids who would never get merit-based academic scholarships. The end result is that Notre Dame is slighting itself as an academic institution.

So, what's the solution? Consistent PAY rates across the board at institutions by division. Minnesota, for instance, would pay a Division I basketball player the same rate as UC Santa Barbara. Appalachian State would pay a Division II football player the same rate as James Madison. And so on.

I hear you crying already (I'm good at foreshadowing like that). "But wait, Bob! Texas football makes A LOT more money than Troy State football! Why pay them the same? WHERE DO WE DRAW THE LINE WHEN SOME INSTITUTIONS MAKE BIG BUCKS AND OTHERS LOSE MONEY?"

OK, you might be right.

The 2004-2009 NCAA Division I Intercollegiate Athletics Programs Report (available here) stated that:

A total of 14 athletics programs in the FBS reported positive net revenues for the 2009 fiscal year, which represents a decrease from the 25 reported in 2008. The gap between the “profitable” programs and the remainder continued to grow, however a bit more slowly.

Just 14 of 119 FBS programs reported a profit in 2009! INCREDIBLE.

Furthermore:

In all three subdivisions, athletic aid and compensation are the two largest expense items. In the FBS, athletic aid as a percentage of total operating expenses remained at 16 percent in 2009. FCS schools also stayed steady at 28 percent. The same ratio for DI without football increased from 28 percent in 2008 to 29 percent in 2009, which is a reduction from the 2004 ratio of 30 percent. Total compensation as a percentage of total operating expenses has remained stable for all subdivisions, although the FBS saw a slight increase from 33 to 34 percent and DI without football increased from 32 to 33 percent.

So, clearly, scholarships are costly. Paying coaches and AD's and support staff is even more costly.

If you feel like taking a look at that monster of a PDF file the NCAA released, Page 21 of 105 is the most interesting. The fifth item on the chart is "Generated Revenues as percentage of total athletic expenditures (self-sufficiency).

Quite frankly, it's even worse than I thought. FBS schools had athletic programs that were just 71.9 percent self-sufficient in 2009, and "the median big-university subsidy from general funds to sports is $10 million per school, the NCAA found," according to Gregg Easterbrook's article here.

How do you explain that? If you had to explain that arrangement, where the everyday student and/or the taxpayer is paying to support a sport like, say, women's golf at a university, how would you do it? How would you explain the reasoning behind a university paying for sports that can't support themselves?



It's what everyone fears and abhors as "communism." (This is not accurate nor true communism, but that's for another time.) It's what so many people hate about welfare, only this is worse -- it's not a life-or-death, quality of life situation. It's taking from the rich and giving to the slightly less rich.

Now, I should note that boosters are HUGE in most of these non-revenue sports. I don't have the numbers to support this claim, but I'm sure many of the non-revenue producing sports out there will tell you that they're self-sustaining not because of revenue, but because of their boosters that donate funds to build new facilities and provide new equipment.

Still, that $10 million a year from general funds to support athletics doesn't lie. If a sport isn't able to sustain itself from a combination of boosters and other revenue, it shouldn't exist. Taxpayers and particularly other students should not be responsible to prop up these sports. If these kids want to play their sport, there are plenty of club teams at universities (yes, I realize these are often supported by the university as well, but at a much smaller price).


In the end, you just have to ask yourself: Is it really worth it? Do academic institutions really need to be involved with athletics at all?

While there's certainly something to be said about the student experience of going to high-profile sporting events, the majority of students at most schools don't take part. And they certainly don't take part in the lower profile sports like ... well, let's pick on men's tennis this time.

The bottom line is that athletic scholarships need to go. We need to pay coaches less. We need to do away with sports that can't support themselves. I'm proud of kids like those at the University of New Orleans, who said enough is enough.

And we need to, above all, pay kids who do produce money for the university. They put in the time, they make the money -- let's compensate them accordingly. If boosters start throwing bigger money at the kids, what's the problem?

In fact, that may be the best way to tackle the differing compensation rates that I discussed earlier. Boosters may be best able to pick up the slack for paying better players at bigger schools. Why not? If there's an equal "minimum wage" for paying kids in sport X in Division I, Division II, etc., but some schools can afford to pay more ... why not? Explain to me why this would be a bad idea.

After all, with the hours these kids put in, these sports ARE like a job.

And as long as a student -- any student -- does the work in the classroom, they're free to work wherever they please outside of the classroom.

If that so happens to be as a football player, what's the difference?