Prospect Info: 2023-24 Prospect Info (CHL, NCAA, Europe)

95snipes

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Dec 11, 2019
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DU is pure trash, lucky arse organisation that got a gift-wrapped an amazing coach and all the prospects go there because they have this beast off-ice trainer, nothing more. They should have lost in the first game of the tourney in OT, but lucked their way to the win. I saw their other teams who won and this rubbish squad did not even come CLOSE to those teams in 2021. At this point, I would rather have North Dakota win it for the next 50 years so I wouldn't have to see DU in the finals again. I am fuming.
Not sure what you have against DU, but not sure how you can say they didn't have a great team.

Loaded forward group. Rizzo and Devine are both top 15 players in the NCAA. Broz stepped up when Rizzo was hurt. Mattika has an elite shot and allows them to run 2 dangerous powerplay units. Good depth with Thompson and Harris. Good bottom 6 players in Wright and Lorenz. Wouldn't surprise me to see 5 of these guys have NHL careers.

On defense, one of the best pairings in the country with Buium-Behrens. Then Davis was outstanding in net.

They haven't gotten the elite recruits like Fantilli/Cooley/Smith/Celebrini, but top to bottom they had a fantastic team.
 

UnkleKraker

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May 31, 2007
3,395
877
Washington State
It ain’t that stupid. The NCAA could’ve regulated this ages ago but refused. Now they’re getting their asses handed to them with every subsequent court ruling. There’s nothing left to do but acknowledge the players union and get to the bargaining table.

And I don’t want to hear one f***ing thing about how mercenary college players are when we see what coaches and now ADs do.
Yep, the whole landscape has turned completely mercenary, not just the athletes. Unfortunately this will only further concentrate the power into a handful of schools. I don't see that being good for the sport.
 

Pokecheque

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Yep, the whole landscape has turned completely mercenary, not just the athletes. Unfortunately this will only further concentrate the power into a handful of schools. I don't see that being good for the sport.
Oh I don’t think it’s good. I’ve said this system will likely burn down before they can get it right. But anyone pining for the halcyon days when students were effectively slave labor are simply fooling themselves.
 

UnkleKraker

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May 31, 2007
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Oh I don’t think it’s good. I’ve said this system will likely burn down before they can get it right. But anyone pining for the halcyon days when students were effectively slave labor are simply fooling themselves.
Long thought the kids should be able to get compensated. If you can work for an engineering firm while getting a degree then why shouldn't student athletes? That said, the way it has been implemented along with portal effects has been very disappointing.
 

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Long thought the kids should be able to get compensated. If you can work for an engineering firm while getting a degree then why shouldn't student athletes? That said, the way it has been implemented along with portal effects has been very disappointing.
The NCAA held the lid down for DECADES while pressure built to the point it blew up in their faces.
 

Pokecheque

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Long thought the kids should be able to get compensated. If you can work for an engineering firm while getting a degree then why shouldn't student athletes? That said, the way it has been implemented along with portal effects has been very disappointing.

The NCAA held the lid down for DECADES while pressure built to the point it blew up in their faces.
My thoughts exactly. They had so many years and so many ways they could've gotten in front of this, but nope, they stood firm and dinged kids for getting a free pair of shoes (all the while knowing full well there was all kinds of under-the-table stuff happening) while the money going to a few fat guys in suits and a lot of overrated coaches was flying all over the place.
 
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henchman21

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It is very easy to say and have the top sports like football and basketball should get paid. They should reap the rewards and popularity of the sports. They also have clearly been employees for a while. This whole idea that they have been amateur has been laughable for years. IMO all players should be allowed to move around and get paid (even directly) if they wish. It should be contractual and honestly, they should be allowed to be traded too. Just treat it like the professional sport it is.

The whole problem is these sports are NCAA sanctioned. Say what you will about the NCAA, but their whole purpose is to promote college athletics. That means athletics as a whole, not just the big sports. A big reason that random sports like field hockey have funding is because they are subsidized by the bigger sports… or there are just huge donors that likely played those sports. By how it would work now, equity issues would crop up on paying. If the NCAA allowed football and basketball players to be paid, a legitimate lawsuit would arise where lesser sports would need equitable pay. Despite the market forces. To avoid that, and to avoid the massive dropping of non revenue sports (which is already happening due to what is allowed)… they fight tooth and nail to keep a limit on the pay. The second that Pandora’s box is opened, and it will open eventually, we’re going to see a bunch of sports dropped to focus the funds on what brings in money. It is the natural way in a capitalist society.

IMO the only way to really save the lesser sports it to rollout the revenue sports into a set of professional leagues and treat them as such. Keep the other sports under the NCAA banner. This likely does still end up in a slow death as those college connections die off over decades. But the alternative is basically what is happening now, just to the extreme. The top sports get all the money, when the equity issues arise, the extraneous programs get killed. Even rich schools are seeing this. Washington just cut men’s and women’s swimming… Michigan State did too. They even said it would cost something like 5 million to save, then when donors stepped up. They suddenly said 20+ million just to move the goalposts so they could cut those sports. This will just continue to happen.

TLDR this will ruin college sports one way or another. It is the correct thing to do, but the market forces will dictate how funds are split and it will have other impacts that extend beyond the big sports. A side effect of this, is the US Olympic programs are very likely to be impacted in 5-10 years.
 

McMetal

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Sep 29, 2015
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It is very easy to say and have the top sports like football and basketball should get paid. They should reap the rewards and popularity of the sports. They also have clearly been employees for a while. This whole idea that they have been amateur has been laughable for years. IMO all players should be allowed to move around and get paid (even directly) if they wish. It should be contractual and honestly, they should be allowed to be traded too. Just treat it like the professional sport it is.

The whole problem is these sports are NCAA sanctioned. Say what you will about the NCAA, but their whole purpose is to promote college athletics. That means athletics as a whole, not just the big sports. A big reason that random sports like field hockey have funding is because they are subsidized by the bigger sports… or there are just huge donors that likely played those sports. By how it would work now, equity issues would crop up on paying. If the NCAA allowed football and basketball players to be paid, a legitimate lawsuit would arise where lesser sports would need equitable pay. Despite the market forces. To avoid that, and to avoid the massive dropping of non revenue sports (which is already happening due to what is allowed)… they fight tooth and nail to keep a limit on the pay. The second that Pandora’s box is opened, and it will open eventually, we’re going to see a bunch of sports dropped to focus the funds on what brings in money. It is the natural way in a capitalist society.

IMO the only way to really save the lesser sports it to rollout the revenue sports into a set of professional leagues and treat them as such. Keep the other sports under the NCAA banner. This likely does still end up in a slow death as those college connections die off over decades. But the alternative is basically what is happening now, just to the extreme. The top sports get all the money, when the equity issues arise, the extraneous programs get killed. Even rich schools are seeing this. Washington just cut men’s and women’s swimming… Michigan State did too. They even said it would cost something like 5 million to save, then when donors stepped up. They suddenly said 20+ million just to move the goalposts so they could cut those sports. This will just continue to happen.

TLDR this will ruin college sports one way or another. It is the correct thing to do, but the market forces will dictate how funds are split and it will have other impacts that extend beyond the big sports. A side effect of this, is the US Olympic programs are very likely to be impacted in 5-10 years.
Yeah, there really are no clean and easy solutions for this. The entire modern conception of college athletics was unsustainable from the start. As soon as the NCAA realized there was profit to be made from football and basketball programs, everything started to unravel.

To me, though, it comes down to this: if your business model requires that you don't pay people for their labor, your business model can't be allowed to exist. If paying college athletes a cut of the revenue means the whole thing falls apart, it probably deserves to fall apart in the end. It absolutely sucks that it's going to mean that smaller, unprofitable sports are going to get cut, but that just means that the system we've had for decades is going to have to be replaced with something else. What that looks like, I don't know, but the system we have is irreparably broken and there's no longer any point in clinging to it.
 

henchman21

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Yeah, there really are no clean and easy solutions for this. The entire modern conception of college athletics was unsustainable from the start. As soon as the NCAA realized there was profit to be made from football and basketball programs, everything started to unravel.

To me, though, it comes down to this: if your business model requires that you don't pay people for their labor, your business model can't be allowed to exist. If paying college athletes a cut of the revenue means the whole thing falls apart, it probably deserves to fall apart in the end. It absolutely sucks that it's going to mean that smaller, unprofitable sports are going to get cut, but that just means that the system we've had for decades is going to have to be replaced with something else. What that looks like, I don't know, but the system we have is irreparably broken and there's no longer any point in clinging to it.
Yup don’t disagree. There are consequences to this that we have yet to see and who really knows where all of this goes. It is about time players are getting their cut… doesn’t mean it’ll be easy though. Change rarely is.
 
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UnkleKraker

Registered User
May 31, 2007
3,395
877
Washington State
It is very easy to say and have the top sports like football and basketball should get paid. They should reap the rewards and popularity of the sports. They also have clearly been employees for a while. This whole idea that they have been amateur has been laughable for years. IMO all players should be allowed to move around and get paid (even directly) if they wish. It should be contractual and honestly, they should be allowed to be traded too. Just treat it like the professional sport it is.

The whole problem is these sports are NCAA sanctioned. Say what you will about the NCAA, but their whole purpose is to promote college athletics. That means athletics as a whole, not just the big sports. A big reason that random sports like field hockey have funding is because they are subsidized by the bigger sports… or there are just huge donors that likely played those sports. By how it would work now, equity issues would crop up on paying. If the NCAA allowed football and basketball players to be paid, a legitimate lawsuit would arise where lesser sports would need equitable pay. Despite the market forces. To avoid that, and to avoid the massive dropping of non revenue sports (which is already happening due to what is allowed)… they fight tooth and nail to keep a limit on the pay. The second that Pandora’s box is opened, and it will open eventually, we’re going to see a bunch of sports dropped to focus the funds on what brings in money. It is the natural way in a capitalist society.

IMO the only way to really save the lesser sports it to rollout the revenue sports into a set of professional leagues and treat them as such. Keep the other sports under the NCAA banner. This likely does still end up in a slow death as those college connections die off over decades. But the alternative is basically what is happening now, just to the extreme. The top sports get all the money, when the equity issues arise, the extraneous programs get killed. Even rich schools are seeing this. Washington just cut men’s and women’s swimming… Michigan State did too. They even said it would cost something like 5 million to save, then when donors stepped up. They suddenly said 20+ million just to move the goalposts so they could cut those sports. This will just continue to happen.

TLDR this will ruin college sports one way or another. It is the correct thing to do, but the market forces will dictate how funds are split and it will have other impacts that extend beyond the big sports. A side effect of this, is the US Olympic programs are very likely to be impacted in 5-10 years.
The original idea was to trade athletic ability for education. Seems very antiquated now. For me, the gross effect is that I enjoy college sports far less than I used to. I do believe that these kids getting compensated is fair but I don't like the net effect at this point. Paradox.
 

Hasbro

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The original idea was to trade athletic ability for education. Seems very antiquated now. For me, the gross effect is that I enjoy college sports far less than I used to. I do believe that these kids getting compensated is fair but I don't like the net effect at this point. Paradox.
In the Victorian Era! Impressive they've kept a system from the time of Kaiser Wilhelm going for so long
 
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McMetal

Writer of Wrongs
Sep 29, 2015
14,150
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The original idea was to trade athletic ability for education. Seems very antiquated now. For me, the gross effect is that I enjoy college sports far less than I used to. I do believe that these kids getting compensated is fair but I don't like the net effect at this point. Paradox.
The problem is, the education these athletes get isn't great. Supposedly, there are academic standards they have to meet, but there have already been a bunch of exposes written about how student athletes are given all kinds of breaks in classes to make sure they don't ever fall below the line. There are even made-up classes they get enrolled in that they don't have to show up for, they just get an A so they can boost their GPA.

And for the players, if you're going to go on to make a bunch of money playing pro sports, who cares if you didn't learn anything at school? But if, like most college athletes, you don't get drafted and have to go out into the job market, suddenly you have a worthless degree and no skills. College athletics works great for the elite players for whom their scholarship is a stepping stone to bigger and better things, but for the rest of them it's just a way for the schools to get all the profit they can out of their players in exchange for nothing.

So in the end, the real bargain being made isn't "trade athletic ability for education", it's "trade athletic ability to enrich the team owner". Which is an awful lot like the bargain pro athletes make. Except unlike pros, they don't get a cut of the profit that is made when they put their bodies on the line. It's just a rotten system.
 
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PAZ

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The problem is, the education these athletes get isn't great. Supposedly, there are academic standards they have to meet, but there have already been a bunch of exposes written about how student athletes are given all kinds of breaks in classes to make sure they don't ever fall below the line. There are even made-up classes they get enrolled in that they don't have to show up for, they just get an A so they can boost their GPA.

And for the players, if you're going to go on to make a bunch of money playing pro sports, who cares if you didn't learn anything at school? But if, like most college athletes, you don't get drafted and have to go out into the job market, suddenly you have a worthless degree and no skills. College athletics works great for the elite players for whom their scholarship is a stepping stone to bigger and better things, but for the rest of them it's just a way for the schools to get all the profit they can out of their players in exchange for nothing.

So in the end, the real bargain being made isn't "trade athletic ability for education", it's "trade athletic ability to enrich the team owner". Which is an awful lot like the bargain pro athletes make. Except unlike pros, they don't get a cut of the profit that is made when they put their bodies on the line. It's just a rotten system.
A degree from a prestigious university is worth more than any 'knowledge' you gain in university. Most athletes are usually enrolled in Commerce/Marketing/etc. where you learn almost everything on the job anyways and it's about connections rather than aptitude to get your foot in the door.

There are very few fields that require transferrable knowledge out from university. The majority of athletes aren't enrolled in a STEM program. Being a university student you learn some soft skills, but so does being a college athlete.

The academic system is broken in general, but it's not a bad deal for the players. If they want to focus on their studies they can - most chose not to. If they're good enough they can play overseas and get paid, and again most chose to stay in college. We're talking about 18-22 year olds - there are thousands of other systems that take advantage over people compared to college athletics.
 
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henchman21

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Until you get a Kaydn Proctor situation, then it's like hey maybe let's have some rules.
I mean good for him... if Iowa's NIL as dumb enough to pay him without ever playing, that's on them. Until we can have enforceable contracts, this shit will happen. The Jaden Rashada saga is worse than that one to me.... dude lined up 9m and then parlayed that into 13m that evaporated into thin air.
 

Gumballhead

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I mean good for him... if Iowa's NIL as dumb enough to pay him without ever playing, that's on them. Until we can have enforceable contracts, this shit will happen. The Jaden Rashada saga is worse than that one to me.... dude lined up 9m and then parlayed that into 13m that evaporated into thin air.
They didn't get a chance to pay him NIL money, I believe he got one local sponsorship deal with a car dealership in the handful of months he had portaled back. I don't see any way that a player committing to the same teams twice is helping anything. It'll just be more rich get richer stuff and ruin things. College football is the fun version of football for now, but it'll end up stupid.
 

henchman21

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They didn't get a chance to pay him NIL money, I believe he got one local sponsorship deal with a car dealership in the handful of months he had portaled back. I don't see any way that a player committing to the same teams twice is helping anything. It'll just be more rich get richer stuff and ruin things. College football is the fun version of football for now, but it'll end up stupid.
He confirmed he got paid NIL money and the wildfire was he paid for his Bama buddies to go on a spring break trip with him with that money.
 

Gumballhead

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He confirmed he got paid NIL money and the wildfire was he paid for his Bama buddies to go on a spring break trip with him with that money.
I never heard that but I stopped reading about it a while ago and you hear all sorts of rumors and things, like he stole teammates' things while at Iowa. This portal chaos is like everything else anymore, a huge over-correction on something that should have been made better long ago so now we just bathe in the madness.
 

henchman21

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I never heard that but I stopped reading about it a while ago and you hear all sorts of rumors and things, like he stole teammates' things while at Iowa. This portal chaos is like everything else anymore, a huge over-correction on something that should have been made better long ago so now we just bathe in the madness.
Yeah and I personally don't think it will get any better until the revenue generating sports are rolled out into a college associated professional league with contracts. That's the end game, but who knows when it will really happen and all the nonsense that will come with that. At the core, I'm fine with all of these kids getting paid while they can. It sucks for my own rooting interests and I'm certainly not putting my money up for it... but if an 18 year old kid can secure life changing money for him and his family for playing a sport. I'm all for it.
 

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