Re: The Boston Celtics Mailing List Digest V5 #314

[Shawn Roth <ufpdev!shawnr@uunet.uu.net>]

Peter,

   Your understanding is correct.  I'm not exactly sure how or why someone can
   play minor league baseball and comback to play football or basketball at the
   college level.  I think it would have something to do with the fact that if
   you were to get a job at the local level (i.e. pizza delivery, landscaping,
   etc.) you could possibly get paid for doing absolutly nothing (which has
   happened in the recent past), while in the pros it is quite easy to see that
   you are playing (err, working) for your money.  That may not be it at all,
   just a stab in the dark really.  I would also love to know the true reason.

Shawn

   
Originally from Peter Delevett:
> 
>          Reply to:   Re: The Boston Celtics Mailing List Digest V5 #314
> It will be interesting to see what happens with the CBA. Besides this new "college pro" league, there is another startup league (the International Basketball League) that's looking to compete head to head against the CBA. The CBA is planning to counteratt> ack by hiring Spike Lee to design a new logo and image! And I think I read they're trying to rework their deal with the NBA - right now the league gets just a few million dollars from "The League," and in exchange they can get their best players called up>  at any time, which makes it difficult to build a fan base. I think they want to have CBA teams affiliate with NBA teams, as in the minor league baseball system. 
> You're right that college scholarships, from a dollar value perspective, do amount to 'paying' collegiate players, but as we've already noted, many of these players arent necessarily interetsed in an education anyway -- they see college hoops as a stage o> n which to gain notoriety and springboard to the pros.

So how 'valuable' to them is this commodity they're receiving, especially when they have to put in long hours just to make the minimum grades that will allow them to play -- on top of which, they're n> ot given any spending money OR the right to get a part time job to earn some? Can anybody out there explain to me how an athlete who plays minor-league pro baseball in the summers, and receives money for it, can still retain his collegiate athletic eligib> ility, but a player can't get a pizza delivery job during the year to earn some beer money? At least that's my understanding of how it works.