Gifts from boosters now not only cool, but celebrated

rghoae said:
I mean, if there is any concern here, they just include it as part of the standard bowl game gift package.
Lebron’s only job here is to add some celebrity to it. It’s not like he has literally bought these from his own money. It’s more likely that Beats is giving them to these players for free, and further, are paying Lebron for the association with him.
In fact, I’d bet Clemson also got the same Beats headphones, without the associated Beats celebrity marketing.

Edit: The article literally says...

“That year, he worked with the NCAA to make sure the school and players would not be violating any rules by accepting the headphones. “
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To make this even less exciting, didn't GT players get headphones as part of the bowl package recently...?

Got tired of Googling, but this article about the 2014 Orange Bowl says the NCAA allows teams to give out up to $550 worth of gifts to as many as 125 players for each bowl. Gift cards worth hundreds of dollars are a common bowl gift.

Yawn!
 
Bowls do give gifts. What’s odd about this is that they are supposedly from LeBron directly as a gift to his favorite team. If OSU players had to take less from the bowl gift package to offset, then I could see it working...but on its surface it’s a wealthy fan giving gifts to players, which is clearly off-limits.
 
JoeCakeEater said:
Bowls do give gifts. What’s odd about this is that they are supposedly from LeBron directly as a gift to his favorite team. If OSU players had to take less from the bowl gift package to offset, then I could see it working...but on its surface it’s a wealthy fan giving gifts to players, which is clearly off-limits.
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That’s most likely a marketing gimmick. I really doubt Lebron paid for anything here. If anything, Beats probably paid Lebron to attach his name to their bowl gift.
 
JoeCakeEater said:
Bowls do give gifts. What’s odd about this is that they are supposedly from LeBron directly as a gift to his favorite team. If OSU players had to take less from the bowl gift package to offset, then I could see it working...but on its surface it’s a wealthy fan giving gifts to players, which is clearly off-limits.
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Well, the article does explain that they jumped through the hoops necessary to make it legal...
 
18in32 said:
?
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Our transfer from Florida who was not granted a hardship waiver to avoid sitting out a year even though he was moving closer to home and a sick relative.

meanwhile, Fields gets granted an immediate hardship because someone called him the magic word in a stadium with 93k people in it and Fields didn’t even hear it.
 
savbandjacket said:
Our transfer from Florida who was not granted a hardship waiver to avoid sitting out a year even though he was moving closer to home and a sick relative.

meanwhile, Fields gets granted an immediate hardship because someone called him the magic word in a stadium with 93k people in it and Fields didn’t even hear it.
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Or Tate Martell who moved further away from his family and tweeted it was because he didn’t want to sit behind Fields, but somehow received immediate eligibility to play at Miami.

Tate Martell’s argument was that Fields coming to OSU was detrimental to Martell’s football career. How TF was accepted?
 
savbandjacket said:
Our transfer from Florida who was not granted a hardship waiver to avoid sitting out a year even though he was moving closer to home and a sick relative.

meanwhile, Fields gets granted an immediate hardship because someone called him the magic word in a stadium with 93k people in it and Fields didn’t even hear it.
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Ah. I was referring to the bowl money.

This is a completely different question.
 
savbandjacket said:
Two separate issues, but illustrative of the fact that there are at least two sets of rules.
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Maybe! I don't think we know nearly enough about all those situations to be able to say that. There are plenty of transfers into big programs that have to wait, and plenty of transfers into programs like ours that don't. I'm sure a lot of it has to do with the quality of the argument (hire a good lawyer, GTAA) and the composition of the panel (don't want the hanging judge) and probably what they ate that morning. It's just Occam's Razor. There are lots of reasonable arguments that explain a lot more of the facts other than some kind of NCAA conspiracy favoring Ohio St. Heck, the NCAA investigation is what pushed Tressel out.
 
18in32 said:
Well, the article does explain that they jumped through the hoops necessary to make it legal...
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Those of us who have had to deal with the NCAA regarding player eligibility know just how 'flexible' and arbitrary those rules are, depending upon the school.
 
daBuzz said:
Those of us who have had to deal with the NCAA regarding player eligibility know just how 'flexible' and arbitrary those rules are, depending upon the school.
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You're a booster at multiple schools? Do tell.
 
18in32 said:
You're a booster at multiple schools? Do tell.
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No. I was the head baseball coach of an East Cobb travel team for 7 years that had 19 out of 23 end up playing college baseball. And I had to deal with the coaches and administration of those schools as I helped my players navigate the NCAA's arcane and stupid eligibility rules. Baseball is an especially grievous animal for college athletes and due to the limited number of scholarships, they play some incredibly wild and ethically questionable games at every school to shoehorn players into every possible dollar of financial aid available.

Fortunately for the 2 of my players in question, they had multiple offers and were able to not only pick and choose but leverage those offers from other schools to get more in money/aid from the schools they eventually attended.
 
daBuzz said:
No. I was the head baseball coach of an East Cobb travel team for 7 years that had 19 out of 23 end up playing college baseball. And I had to deal with the coaches and administration of those schools as I helped my players navigate the NCAA's arcane and stupid eligibility rules. Baseball is an especially grievous animal for college athletes and due to the limited number of scholarships, they play some incredibly wild and ethically questionable games at every school to shoehorn players into every possible dollar of financial aid available.

Fortunately for the 2 of my players in question, they had multiple offers and were able to not only pick and choose but leverage those offers from other schools to get more in money/aid from the schools they eventually attended.
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I would be curious to hear your stories about how the NCAA allowed schools it favors get more benefits than schools it doesn't favor.
 
18in32 said:
I would be curious to hear your stories about how the NCAA allowed schools it favors get more benefits than schools it doesn't favor.
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I’ll be glad to tell you in person or in a private conversation but I don’t want to put either of the two players’ eligibility in jeopardy so I won’t post them here.
 
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