Has anyone seen "Schooled: The Price of College Sports"? The NCAA is nothing more than a bunch of lawyers and a few PR people protecting the revenue of a few. This documentary that examines how college sports in America became a billion dollar enterprise built on the backs of its unpaid athletes.

108  2014-10-21 by [deleted]

Schooled: The Price of College Sports

Administrators and coaches benefit. "Student athletes", which you'll see is a specific legal term, take much of the risk, and often are cheated out of portions of their scholarship, cheated out of an education, yet generate tons of revenue for the school athletic department.

30 comments

I've never watched South Park, I'll have to check that out when I get home.

I've never watched South Park

Wow. If you're into the type of stuff discussed on this sub you'll love it. They constantly touch these issues and usually make the people involved look like fools. Their writing is brilliant.

I find it more outrageous that people don't know about these issues after the fact that there's been a south park episode exposing that issue for years.

When they made the cable company episode it was like "well this is a good 6-8 years overdue but whatever I'll take it, now people have no excuse because south park has made an episode out of it.".

Dude. You're missing out on one of the few shows (if not ONLY) that actually covers/makes fun of establishment bullshit. Please start out with the emmy winning episode, "All About Mormons"

I get the same feeling from this as I do when I see huge corporations posting ads looking for "volunteers" to work for them for free.

It might not be explicitly illegal but it's taking advantage of people who are not in a position to negoatiate for themselves.

I've seen it. It was very well done, and a little bit rage-inducing.

It makes me wonder how much different the major university system would be if it didn't become so identified with sports/party schools/etc.

It would be night and day. I graduated from a SEC university and it was all about football, all the time.

It on netflix?

just looked, yes it is on netflix

Awesome, love a good doc. I'll check it out

I didn't realize it was on streaming as well. Plus it's narrated by Sam Rockwell, who is awesome.

Most people already know the NCAA is a load of crap.

A lot of sportscasters want it gone and for college athletes to get some sort of compensation.

I will probably get flamed to hell for this...but I feel like getting 4 years of college education for running around holding a ball is pretty good compensation.

To put it into perspective...for me to go to college I had to pick up a gun, go overseas, and dodge bullets.

  1. If they are on schlorship they have to maintain a certain gpa.

  2. If the college falsifies their gpa so they can keep playing, they're not really getting an education.

I'm not sure most people know this, but it may start tipping that way. This documentary brought the debate right out into the open.

I think what would happen is the schools would refuse to pay, and would turn their programs into walk-on arrangements rather than pay scholarships and treat players like employees (with contracts, insurance, etc). There would probably sprout up a minor league for football, and the players would skip the charade of being college students. I wonder if in the long run that wouldn't be better for the schools.

Yes the NCAA is an exploitative piece of shit, but it also happens to be the only thing standing between numerous, larger corporate entities and the complete capture of college athletics by big corporate money. I'd think that this subreddit in particular would be more wary of the corporate-owned media (Disney-owned ESPN in particular) railing this hard against any entity.

This is not a conspiracy, it's a well known fact. That's why students and unionizing and groups are suing the NCAA. 2014 has been rough for the NCAA and, so far and things are slowly changing for the better.

TIL getting room/board and 4 years of college education for free = unpaid.

TIL getting room/board and 4 years of college education for free = unpaid.

That's what I used to think. TIL? Today you didn't learn anything. Today you just assumed you were right and already know it all. Watch the video if you can (it's streaming on netflix). The language in the title of the post was taken from IMDB, but the video explains how the NCAA behaves entirely like a cartel. It's really interesting - you'll like it.

The students are being paid through scholarships and being allowed to do what many would do for fun.

That was my opinion until I saw the documentary

I think sports should be removed from institutions of learning, but that's me. It'd be nice to remove the problem. Sports do not make schools better and typically only bring down the academics overall in the name of winning.

This is the principle that this great country was built upon.

This focuses on DII but still relevant and interesting.

Foolsball should not be within 100 miles of "higher education" facilities. It is guys running around in tights hitting each other. School is for learning. Gym facilities are for sports.

It's modern day slavery.

I wouldn't go as far as that - obviously being a college athlete isn't compulsory. Though in the documentary one of the athletes laughed when in one of his history classes he learned about indentured servitude, because it reminded him of his situation.

I know right...all those poor slaves going to university for free every day! We will overcome o'lawdy, we will overcome.