Coaches, admissions offices and university alumni operations profit from the stars.Īll kinds of people beyond campus are also making money from this lopsided system. Thanks to plush television-rights deals, like the 12-year, $3 billion contract the Pacific-12 conference signed with ESPN and Fox in 2011, vast revenues will keep rolling into university coffers.
The uncomfortable question has surfaced just as college sports are booming. Manziel is surely worth a great deal more. Why shouldn’t a player worth so much to his school, to his town and to the college-football brand be able to sign his name for money, just as any other celebrity has a right to do? How much longer can everyone else make money from college athletes like Manziel while the athletes themselves see their cash compensation capped–at $0? According to a recent study, if college football operated under the same revenue-sharing model as the NFL, each of the 85 scholarship football players on the Aggies squad could see a paycheck of about $225,000 per year. Manziel’s alleged crime and televised punishment have teed up a debate that has been simmering for decades but is now more intense than ever. He mimicked signing an autograph while jawing with an opponent and pointed toward the scoreboard in the fourth quarter, earning an unsportsmanlike-conduct penalty and another benching, this time from his coach. He threw for three touchdown passes in the second half of A&M’s 52-31 blowout victory over the Owls in front of almost 87,000 fans at Kyle Field in College Station, Texas. They're very much in the same family.īut as of now, Manziel's issues only seem related to Manziel-which is a good thing if you're a Texas A&M fan.Like most college-sports critics, Manziel responded to this punishment by mocking it. Is the Manziel scandal related to what happened at Ohio State?Ībsolutely. If Fitch was shopping Manziel's signature during the season, he could be considered an agent under the recently passed "Cecil Newton rule," which would call Manziel's eligibility late last season into question.
It still could impact the Aggies' 2012 season.
#JOHNNY MANZIEL AUTOGRAPH FOR FREE#
Unless head coach Kevin Sumlin knew that Manziel was planning on signing for cash during the season-and judging from the specific circumstances detailed in ESPN's report, that doesn't seem likely-he hasn't had the opportunity to lie by omission by signing the NCAA Certificate of Compliance form knowing a player could be ineligible.Įven if the follow-up report from ESPN claiming that a second broker was told by Manziel's assistant Nate Fitch that Manziel would no longer be signing for free during last season is true, there's nothing to suggest that the program knew or should have known. That still seems to be more of an individual problem that would directly impact Manziel's eligibility-not the program overall. Let's just say, for instance, everything in the ESPN report is true, and Manziel took five figures to sign hundreds or thousands of items in South Florida. While Manziel's eligibility is far more tenuous than Pryor's and the rest of the Buckeyes due to the greater amount of money he is alleged to have received, there's nothing to suggest that this is something systemic that could spiral out of control and become a program- or institution-wide problem. The specific five-figure dollar amount Manziel is reported to have received from memorabilia dealer Drew Tieman remains a mystery, but even if it's in the low end, the level at which he'd be profiting off his own name is still enormously greater than Pryor and the "Tattoo Five." While the size of the alleged payday in Manziel's case makes it more concerning from an individual standpoint, it's far less concerning overall. Pryor had to pay back $2,500 for his 2008 Big Ten championship ring, 2008 Gold Pants from the Michigan game and his 2009 Fiesta Bowl sportsmanship award, according to USA Today's Tim Gardner.
Similar? Yes, in the sense that they both involve amateur athletes potentially receiving benefits from their status as college football stars. In that case, five players-including star quarterback Terrelle Pryor-were found to have received tattoos in exchange for autographs and memorabilia. One of the more prominent incidents was the "tattoo-gate" fiasco that got five Ohio State players suspended and eventually played a role in head coach Jim Tressel's resignation from the Buckeyes.
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