Milehighhawk":38ejej3i said:
I think the saddest part of this discussion is just cementing the reality that college football has become all about the few stars that have a shot (not even a guarantee to make it) in the NFL and part of the result is that the of college players that won't seen an NFL down are cast aside as if their contributions to the game don't matter.
Honestly, I think it's just a player driven correction to the artificial barriers put in place between college and the NFL.
The NFL adopted a minimum age requirement for entry in the NFL (the 3 years out of high school rule). In part, this was to prevent players from coming out too early (Clarett/Mike Williams). It was seen as a concession between the NCAA and the NFL to force players to stay at college and presumably enrich schools. The NFL still gets their free development league of sorts and schools continue to make profits on student athletes.
This isn't really any different than the college basketball 'one and done' dynamic. Except it's more punitive to the athletes as a whole and forces increased risk.
If college football was all about the few stars, then you wouldn't see such resistance to a profit sharing scheme. Or schools could simply not charge for the games and become truly non profit entities as it pertains to sporting events. The bottom line is, when a player (or for that matter just a student at the school studying any discipline) is at a level where they have enough talent to ply their services in the marketplace -- they should be allowed to make that decision.
To artificially force someone to provide services just because of an arbitrary rule is going to change the labor dynamic. In this case, the student athletes who are imminently eligible to serve professionally weigh risk and loss of value against what is in essence nothing in return.