Keany Parks to Transfer Portal

[Bosler]

Everybody is a fan of the free market, until the free market starts to operate.

Colleges are largely taxpayer supported institutions. They’ve never been part of a true ‘free market.’ We’ve now (through Sherman Act interpretation) created a model where publicly funded schools with historic sports programs are subject to a system where players are not obligated to honor contractual type commitments nor subject to reasonable restriction when the universities themselves are subject to all kinds of restrictions based on the very nature of being public and taxpayer funded.

I completely get what you and many of us don't like. Totally legit. But this is not true.

Colleges have always been part of the free market. They could have, first and primarily, just been colleges and not tried to run minor leagues for professional sports. Like the rest of the planet. But they chose not to.

When they made the opposite choice, they decided to band together into the NCAA and establish all sorts of rules. Most relevant here are the umpteen rules about what their athletes could and couldn't get, what they could and couldn't do, where they could and couldn't go. This has zero to do with any tax/public status. This was to protect their minor leagues, and make sure all the money went only to the guys (they were mainly guys) who were running things.

Last, there is nothing at all stopping athletes being bound by their contracts. In fact, that is going on now in the NIL world.

Basically, athletes now have the same freedoms and rights as plumbers, nurses, accountants, engineers, etc. That's the free market, whether we like it or not.

 

[Outlaw Arthur Morgan]

Everybody is a fan of the free market, until the free market starts to operate.

Everyone loves the idea of the free market, until it starts costing them their star quarterback or favorite rivalry game. What we're seeing in college sports isn't a failure of capitalism; it's capitalism working exactly as designed.

Adam Smith might remind us that a truly free market should serve the broader good, not just the powerful players. If the invisible hand of the all mighty dollar only rewards the top-tier programs while hollowing out the middle, the system stops being a market - it becomes a monopoly with better PR. The NFL went through this 50 years ago.

 

[laxwyo]

I completely get what you and many of us don't like. Totally legit. But this is not true.

Colleges have always been part of the free market. They could have, first and primarily, just been colleges and not tried to run minor leagues for professional sports. Like the rest of the planet. But they chose not to.

When they made the opposite choice, they decided to band together into the NCAA and establish all sorts of rules. Most relevant here are the umpteen rules about what their athletes could and couldn't get, what they could and couldn't do, where they could and couldn't go. This has zero to do with any tax/public status. This was to protect their minor leagues, and make sure all the money went only to the guys (they were mainly guys) who were running things.

Last, there is nothing at all stopping athletes being bound by their contracts. In fact, that is going on now in the NIL world.

Basically, athletes now have the same freedoms and rights as plumbers, nurses, accountants, engineers, etc. That's the free market, whether we like it or not.

No it isn’t. This is like pink hair commies ripping on capitalism. We have pseudo capitalistic society and college football is no where near a free market. Where’s the 30 yr olds playing? It’s a free market in a narrowly defined area.