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Arizona Cardinals rookie QB Josh Rosen has been an opinionated athlete for years and has openly criticized the NCAA’s amateurism model, so this from Yahoo! Sports is nothing unexpected:
Josh Rosen envisions an NCAA that actually works for all involved parties – fulfilling the lofty ideals of higher education and addressing the brass-tacks reality of fair athlete compensation. And he doesn’t want to blow up the entire thing to make it happen.
“I’m not against the NCAA,” Rosen said. “I do strongly believe in the student-athlete experience, and I don’t think the free market is the way to go. I also don’t want a system that was created in the 1950s to stay the way it was. I want it to be like the iPhone, constantly updating to stay current with the times.
Rosen is smart enough to know that vaguely expressed dissatisfaction with the status quo unlocks nothing. Whining gets nowhere. So he’s gotten down to specifics.
Rosen reached out to Tye Gonser, a partner in Weinberg Gonser LLP, a Southern California business law firm, and USC law student Bryan Bitzer. Together they put the idea on paper.
That link takes you to a site outlining the proposal, which this video also runs through in a couple minutes:
Basically, the idea is that college athletes would earn a seat at the table, with their cut of revenue being set aside until graduation. This plan would also establish a “Clearinghouse” to manage athlete licenses; distribute revenue to individual athletes, groups of athletes, and a scholarship fund at large; and stand between athletes and corporate money.
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There’s a lot more there, including a 39-page PDF titled “Modernization of College Athletics as an Incentive for Graduation.”
I think my personal favorite part is the idea to send a portion of scholarship money to the towns that produce star athletes.
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Most of these are familiar proposals, and a lot of it is pretty similar to several solutions a lot of fans suggest whenever it’s time to debate how the NCAA should change. But it’s presented well and coherently, with some new wrinkles and a big-name athlete attached to it all. The NCAA will have to change at some point, and we might as well have good solutions ready ahead of time.