RU4- I usually agree with you but not this time. Comparing it to a job is so off the mark. If a student has a part time job they work while going to school- their job only cares what they do while at work. So, as long as they show up and work, they get paid. Their job does not care if they stay out late, pass a class, make weight, etc
Also, the simplistic view if they get free school, board, books and food, they need nothing else, is just that, simplistic.
If you give a coaching staff authority to impose fines, how do you control it? I know if times that players would confront the coach for basically being a prick, if said coach could also impose fines the way they unfairly imposed the doghouse, there would be a mutiny.
I think you might be misinterpreting. Let me try and boil it down.
My argument with regard to free tuition, etc., is not that they're not entitled to it, don't work for it, whatever. My argument is simply that it is compensation. Which it absolutely is. By any measure.
I have no issue with the stipends. I did point out that most students have to *work* for college spending money. Whether most students have more free time than football players is arguable. I can tell you that my oldest daughter, who is in graduate school in the medical field, does not have more free time than a football player. My youngest daughter, who typically carries a 16 credit course load at one of the top private colleges in the country doesn't have more free time than a football player. But it's really neither here nor there. The point is that football players get a stipend, and that's fine.
But the ability to fine players against that stipend is, I think, a good thing. As I've said repeatedly in this thread, there has to be structure to it, there have to be rules. The idiotic strawmen popping up in this thread proclaiming that "schools are going to pocket ALL their money for NO REASON AT ALL" are intellectually exhausting.
What I'm proposing is that the requisite rulemaking be put in place to allow for an agreed-upon schedule of infractions against which fines of no more than $100 could be levied no more than three times in any given season. The total potential loss of $300 against an annual stipend of $4000 - 5000 isn't going to break anybody's bank. They're not going to starve (since they're already getting fed for free anyway). It's a couple pairs of Nikes or an overpriced pair of Beats headphones. But it provides another disciplinary mechanism which is purely personal and individualized and doesn't affect the team's performance as a whole.
Once an individual player has, in any given season, met the "3 strikes" fine quota, then the next steps would include disciplinary actions such as game suspension.
I think this provides an opportunity to put some structure around the overall disciplinary process, which is something that is sorely lacking at the D1 level, today. People worried about the inconsistent application of fines should really be focused on how inconsistent disciplinary measures are, now. I would think that all parties would welcome the opportunity to put some realistic governance to the process.
