Discussing the big changes in the Big Ten
An athlete and a writer say the conference’s expansion and college players getting paid are good for the game.
University of Michigan college football.
The Big Ten conference recently announced that by 2024 the University of California Los Angeles and the University of Southern California will join its fourteen other teams, creating a 16-team super conference. This news comes along with the fact that college players can now get paid based on their name, image and likeness.
What does all this mean? How will it change the Big Ten and college sports as we know it?
“College football and basketball have run like businesses for a long, long time. Decades. Decades and decades and decades. And we like to pretend that it’s not,” — Shawn Windsor, Detroit Free Press sports feature writer.
Listen: Explaining the myriad changes to come for college sports
Guest
Shawn Windsor is a columnist and sports feature writer at Detroit Free Press. He says players need to get paid for their work.
“College football and basketball have run like businesses for a long, long time. Decades. Decades and decades and decades,” says Windsor. “And we like to pretend that it’s not.”
Braylon Edwards is a former University of Michigan receiver and NFL player. He is a talk show host at the Woodward Sports Network. He says the NCAA has been greedy, hoarding the money that should have been going to athletes and diverting it to other organizations and individuals.
“I don’t know if we thought it would be like this — kind of like the wild, wild west — but the NCAA put themselves in a situation for this to happen,” says Edwards.
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