Dick Vitale Quotes

If the NFL can keep getting away with forcing players to wait three years out of high school before they're drafted - three! - the NCAA should be made to do away with its rules against paying players beyond room, board and tuition. I'm not talking about some token, $2,000-a-year 'spending money' stipend for every player.

I got some cash from agents. I've talked to the NCAA. I think that should be legal. I want some money, too; everybody else is making money. I want to go on dates. I want to go buy myself some new suits. I want to buy myself some new sneakers, and I paid the agents back.

I don't want players coming in from the college level that are either trying to avoid a suspension, declare themselves ineligible on their own, hire an agent and decide, 'I'm going to enter into the NFL.'

If you offer athletes stipends, then you're into pay-for-play, and that's the ballgame. People should realize that, and they should realize that amateurism never has been a sustainable model for a sports-entertainment industry. It wasn't in tennis. It wasn't in the Olympics. And it's not in big-time college sports.

The difference between the National Football League and college is this: In college, you are a broke college student.

The N.F.L.'s rule on underclassmen should be abolished, and the N.B.A. should be discouraged from adding an age limit.

What is the NCAA going to do a program if a kid leaves before two years. You can't control it. The NBA is the one that has to control it.

Obviously, college stars deserve substantial compensation, right?

The structure of college basketball never made sense to me. The coach is the star and you get up at 5:30 A.M. to run before class. That was never appealing to me.

The N.C.A.A. is a multibillion-dollar business built on the talents of players who are often unqualified for or uninterested in being students and who benefit materially from the system only if they are among the few who turn professional.

College players make money for the colleges. You think they spend all that recruiting money to get the best students? Come on.

I was in school to play basketball; I wasn't trying to be a doctor. It's hard to talk about the NCAA rules and everything that happened in the past because I've just been focused on practicing and getting ready... I was trying to reach my dreams, and that's to play in the NBA.

Some college athletes don't want to turn pro, they don't want to take the cut in pay.

What would be wrong with letting a kid go pro, and if it doesn't work out he can come back to college? What's the harm in that? The reason is the word "amateurism." The NCAA has to protect colleges' tax exemption.

LeBron james came, and he gets $10 million a year. There was no stigma or blemish, like you have with one-and-done. Now people say, "He's not a student, he's an athlete." Well, of course he's not a student! He's here for one year and he told you he's here for one year, and the school took him with open arms.

I have long been one of those tedious people who rails against the coronation of 'student-athletes.' I have heard the argument that big-time athletics bring in loads of money to universities. I don't believe the money goes anywhere other than back into the sports teams, but that's another story.

I'm moving to a point that I'm fed up with the N.C.A.A. dictation.

If you work for Google or Apple, stock options give you a chance to share in the increasing value of the company. In the N.F.L., nothing like this happens; the players, though rich, are just working stiffs like the rest of us.

Award trophies, as opposed to letting the players define and claim their own. Ultimately, pay them to play so that their activity not only resembles work but is work.

Even though I play a professional sport now, I love college baseball.

I was tempted my junior year to go out of college and forgo my eligibility. I had broken several world records. I did have a lot of people telling me that I should go pro.

I went to a football school, which meant that I went to a university that served up education and was simultaneously operating a sports franchise.

I wanted to go to college and play football.

The best way to stop the problem of agents would be for the NCAA to come down hard and suspend a school for two years if it finds players with agents on campus.

When you're on a football scholarship, you get a stipend that's supposed to cover your rent and a few incidentals. It was $360 a month. This was the late 1980s, and the NCAA has an interesting rule where you're not allowed to supplement your income with a part-time job.