@Kcmatt The market is already paying them to go to college.

I don’t know what you mean by your first question.

I agree that there is a competitive imbalance. But KU is a part of that too. I wish it weren’t there. Coaches should be able to recruit a kid like Blakeny and not have him back out because Louisville isn’t a Nike school. And I say that even as i loathe Louisville for their corruption.

As for the Olympic model, you might receive some pushback from the college golfer or rower who says I’m an NCAA athlete too and I practice just as much as the football player. Where’s my share of the pie?

When we read the stories of some of our own, Jamari and BMac come to mind right now, we can understand privilege better. Most of us, I’d suspect, didn’t have to go to practice in HS hungry as BMac did, leaving behind a freezing cold apartment. We didn’t spend a winter in Chicago living in a car as Jamari did.

I know some people get carried away and yell privilege to the point of making us feel guilty for being middle class, but when you think of what people who grew up in underserved communities have to overcome to make it, well, it’s just a lot tougher.

I tend to agree with @HighEliteMajor when he says the kids going to college and participating in NCAA sports are receiving a lot already including a stipend, so they are paid some. I scraped by in college paying for a dollars worth of gasoline at a time when that’s all I could buy. I also believe that even if we start paying these athletes in college that corruption will still happen because Nike will still want their kids to go to whatever school it is at the time. Agents will still want to influence players to sign on with them. Boosters will still try to find an inside position with their favorite teenagers. Corruption won’t end with a system of playing players.

So if all things are equal, KU gets slammed by the NCAA and east coast schools don’t? East coast bias or not if this happened our school reps, ie lawyers would have a hayday pointing out the illegality of that.

We fans really like to smell out the conspiracies!

@HighEliteMajor I always miss the good ones.

@BeddieKU23 At the end of the season they were playing well enough to play MSU to the wire twice and beat Purdue. They get a freshmen back who was hurt who was playing well before his early season injury. Trice will be back too, but I’m not super high on him. They’ve had some major recruiting misses so I think this is a big season for Gard.

If Ethan Happ comes back, the Badgers will find themselves back in the top 25 I’m confident. They were playing pretty well by the end of the year.

My interest has been more at the local level through coaching my kids and some school teams. I have so many sports to watch I’ve never gotten into it a whole bunch. But it is a great sport.

Looks like Mellinger had the same take as Forde. http://kuhoops.com/ku-basketball-news/209330689/

Do you have a link to Forde’s article so we can read it ourselves? I get it most of us don’t like him, but some of the inflammatory language here makes me cringe a bit. Some of us here have questioned the repeated problems with the guys over the years too. I’d just like to read it for myself if you could find it. Thanks!

DanR said:

I figured he was gone when he turned to run back up the court and let a Villanova player shoot an uncontested layup with about 5 minutes left in the F4 game.

That was a heady play. If he’d guarded him the dude would have stopped at the 3 point line and made another 3. He actually saved us a point!