There is a discussion about athletes receiving renumeration for their name/likeliness in second half of article but throught this posturing was interesting..
The Buckeyes and others might support that to hold off on schools paying athletes themselves.
www.cleveland.com
>>...I just don’t think that’s the model you should implement, to pay student athletes.”
Smith also knows it might happen eventually. So here’s how he explains a world that could include colleges paying athletes -- Ohio State in his opinion shouldn’t be part of it. Smith, in an interview with cleveland.com in December, outlined a system where a new dividing line for college athletics would include those schools paying players and those that don’t. Think of it like the division between FBS football schools, which award 85 scholarships, and FCS schools, which award 63 scholarships.
“We would have to set new priorities and have a new philosophy if we were to go down that path,” Smith said, relying, as he has before, on the idea that Ohio State couldn’t support 36 sports and 1,000 varsity athletes, at it does currently, if it paid football and basketball players.
His idea?
“Let’s say the Pac-12, Big 12 and the Big Ten do similar things,” Smith said. “That’s our peer group, that’s our national championship ... So we could have a whole new model on what a national championship means."
You’ll notice he left out the SEC there, though Smith did mention non-power conferences that could align with the Big Ten.
So imagine this ... the SEC and ACC play players, and become a separate football division and play for their title. The Big Ten, Pac-12, Big 12, American Athletic Conference and Mountain West continue on a path of 85 scholarships, and play for a separate title, perhaps with the MAC and Sun Belt and Conference USA folded into that group, like they are now.
Wouldn’t that mean Ohio State is no longer competing on the highest level?
“The highest level would be redefined,” Smith said.
Maybe you would think Ohio State would no longer be part of it. But Smith was talking as if proponents of the current amateur model might regard that new Big Ten division as a true amateur champion.
It’s a drastic idea, but it’s what Smith is thinking about now.<<