Three prominent former student athletes went on stage at the ’14 IMG Intercollegiate Athletics Forum today for a panel that turned into a lively debate on the amateur athlete model of college sports. The panel featured ESPN basketball analyst and former Duke player Jay Bilas, former FSU safety and neurosurgery student Myron Rolle and Bonnie Bernstein, Campus Insiders VP and All-American gymnast. Here are some quick hits from the panel:
* Rolle, on college athletics as professional sports: “[Let’s say] I walked into a clinic and saw a patient, and I saw clinical manifestations of lobar pneumonia in a chest x-ray and pleural effusion, all different signs and symptoms that tell me that this person now has strep pneumonia. I go to my attending physician and say, ‘This patient has strep pneumonia,’ and they tell me, ‘No, he has a broken foot.’ … It’s like the NCAA not wanting to realize the exposure, the amount of money, the amount of increase, the amount of attention and awareness that presented in college athletics now. It’s not run like a professional entity when it truly, truly is.”
* Bilas, on being a student and an athlete: “When I was recruited, they spotted me in gym. They weren’t walking through a library and said, ‘Hey, you look like a good student. You don’t happen to play basketball because that would really help us out." ... I wasn’t recruited as a student. I was recruited as an athlete. They are not mutually exclusive. You can be both.”
* Bernstein, on the feasibility of paying players: “I just find it very hard to believe that the preponderance of athletic departments in this country have the ability to pay athletes without cutting sports. My greatest fear is that if we go down this road, we’re going to be robbing thousands of kids of that opportunity.”
Bilas: “You used the term robbed. If we give money to these athletes, you athletes are going to be robbing someone. What coach is taking a discount for the student athlete experience? Who among you is taking a discount in your negotiations in your salaries? I wouldn’t do it, either. We’re all making good money and rightfully so. We’re making fair market value based upon this big huge business. Then we say if the athlete wants more, now all of the sudden we worry about the gymnastics program.”
* Bernstein, on how student athletes are different today: “Student athletes have a better understanding that you’re not only there to go to school and to participate in a sport, but you’re starting to build your own brand and being able to leverage the platform that you have.”
Rolle: “I think that players are more aware now. They are astute and understand the amount of money that’s coming into the sport. They’re walking into the school bookstore and seeing their jersey being sold and realizing that they had three touchdowns this past Saturday and say, ‘OK, that jersey’s probably for me.’ They’re not naive to those facts.”
