In Reply to: Michigan must have an unseemly amount of money posted by ej on April 23, 2025 at 15:51:34
> Perhaps it's old fashion of me or quaintly anachronistic to think that a university's teams should reflect in some way the institute of higher learning they represent.
I look at this as a student's rights issue.
Every other student at a University is free to negotiate their value on the open market.
I know a person who was so smart that UC Riverside offered to give him a Bachelor's without him ever taking a class, just so he would enter their graduate program.
He instead called UCLA, and they said they would give him the same deal, so they gave him a UCLA Bachelor's degree.
He then took that degree and enrolled in UC Berkeley as a 17-year-old graduate student.
I know another UCLA student who was accepted by both UCLA and Caltech. A professor told her to make both colleges bid for her. He helped her write letters back and forth, telling them what the latest best offer was. She eventually got free tuition and an annual payment for her enrollment.
For exceptional students, colleges bid for their services. Finally, we are doing this for revenue-generating athletes.
We are finally seeing exceptional athletes getting the same transactional deals that other exceptional students get.
We artificially forced athletes to not have the same economic freedoms other students have if they are that special.