hey, you want to find local community video/record stores? Go to any neighborhood with a big immigrant population. They're all over the damn place. And if you happen to live in one of those neighborhoods but have no interest in the latest Bollywood feature (as I do), Netflix is beyond awesome.

the named jersey thing sickens me to no end, but I don't think it would be fair to let the kids get money from that (the best athletes in any sport other than men's basketball and football would get absolutely nothing). The solution is to ban the sale of named memorabelia, full stop

oh, and it would have to be tied to very strict, very tightly monitored academic requirements

Rowan, that's pretty much what I think we're all talking about a stipend. Something like $100-$150 a week, what you would make for a campus job. But it would have to be for absolutely every athlete, not just the guys who get on ESPN

"Why is the onus on the school to make students of any stripe take their education seriously?"

@Dollar Bill Wirtz - the NCAA paying for a stipend for everyone out of TV revenue is absolutely fair.

yes, but it is the colleges' fault that they let those kids in in the first place. If they didn't have an open door policy when it came to admitting athletes, the incentive to take academics seriously would trickle down.

@ryan1 - your point is well taken, but I still think the onus is on the school to make sure their athletes are taking education seriously. In a perfect world, in the situation you described, the coach or athletic director would approach the football players and say "if you don't start taking your classes seriously…

endall has it exactly right: the big-time schools need to treat them like STUDENTS, not value-generating employees. And it's not like it's impossible, there are plenty of schools with good track records, both private (Stanford, Duke, Vanderbilt) and public (UC Berkeley, Indiana)

and it pains me to say this, but you know who did it (mostly) right? Bob Knight. The guy routinely had the highest graduation rate of any Div. I program.

and finally, at the end of the day, the athletes are still kids, for fucks sake. Don't go nuclear if they try to make a few dollars on the side, and make the coaches and administrators act like the goddamn grownups that they are.

that said, I think the Sea Captain's proposals are perfectly sensible. Scholarships often include preferred placement in campus jobs for walking-around money; because athletes have added time commitments, a small stipend is a sensible alternative. And schools selling personalized jerseys or other memorabelia is just…

The "pay the players" solution is really a situation of, if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The kids ARE being compensated in the form of a free or highly discounted education, which is very valuable.
The problems are surrounding the issue: why are coaches and administrators being paid so much? That…

Reinhold has is right - the kids ARE being compensated in the form of a good education at an elite institution, at minimal or low cost. It's the freedom to tear the scholarship up at will that's a problem

I have no problem with Giants fans gloating for a while - they've been through plenty. The line drive to Bobby Richardson, the earthquake, Scott Spezio's soulpatch …

Homer Bush

can I interest anyone in a Bill Pulsipher signed jersey?

@Heche - that's awesome. It warms my heart to know that Geddy is a real fan, he apparently has a great stock of memorobelia (including Negro Leagues memorobelia).

@Preparation Heche: so, it's just you and Geddy Lee, huh?

VORP and WARP are most useful when judging a player in the context of how much he is getting paid. As in, Neifi Perez could be making $1.5 million, but he's performing worse than a random scrub you could bring up from Triple A and pay the league minimum, so you're actually losing money by having him on your team