19A- Idea Napkin 2

1. I am a Junior sports management major here at UF. I am also a member of the Baseball team. Being a student athlete is something that has given me many experiences. From winning a national championship to getting the chance to be involved with the community more, to studying at a great university, this opportunity has been a great thing for me. Upon finishing my sports career, I plan on going into the business side of sports whether it be player representation or working with the teams in a front office role. Knowing how difficult life as a Student Athlete is, has given me motivation to get athletes treated fairly across all sports in the collegiate level. I am involved in this situation and will be pushed to finding a solution to the problem of how the NCAA is treating its athletes.

2. The service that I am offering is one that will help the student athletes be able to earn money off of their own likeness and be able to market themselves. Athletes are used by the NCAA and the universities to sell merchandise and other memorabilia. The schools and the NCAA can make money off of them, but the athlete who is the one in the commercial or ad cannot. It is imperative to allow student athletes to work with video games, memorabilia companies, and local businesses to sell themselves. This would be the best option when it comes to this debate.

3. I am offering this service to the NCAA and the Student athletes involved. This would be a way to work it out with all parties involved to find a way to get the athletes compensated for what they bring to their schools, conferences, and the NCAA. in addition to those, the local businesses would be able to use the athletes to promote deals and their brand more. Athletes would show up for events to promote the brand. It would be useful for them as well.

4. I believe that this opportunity would work if each party got together, set guidelines and figured out a way to make this work. By involving the athletes and the NCAA to get this solution resolved, it would be one that would encounter some difficulties but would ultimately be one that could be good in the long run. I think that local businesses would pay money to work with the athletes in order to attempt to get more marketing for their own product.

5. I think that this opportunity still would be a major breakthrough for the NCAA and the student athletes. The biggest issue is that the athletes are being exploited for the benefit of the NCAA and not themselves. The athletes are subject to any ad for the NCAA and no not get a portion of that. Tim Tebow brought more money to UF than anyone while he was a student athlete here. If he could've made money off of his likeness, he would've benefited greatly. No one has figured out a way to get this to work without the repercussions of recruiting issues and other difficulties that may be apparent.

I think that these work together for this opportunity. I believe that if the right people are on board with this and fans and the media get involved with the fair treatment that the student athletes are chasing, then this plan and opportunity would be effective.

In the first Idea Napkin Feedback appeared as that there would be some difficulties in this plan. I believe that there would be some difficulties with recruiting. Teams who would be able to offer more opportunities to market themselves would get the better players and make college sports lopsided. I do believe however, that this is a way to solve this problem. Another point that was brought up was how college athletes are "amateurs". Little League players are also amateurs but they do not have a corporation making over 1 billion dollars on the athletes. Fans go to the games to watch the athlete compete. The athletes sell the tickets, the athletes are the ones who get people to buy the gear if they are winning. The NCAA makes revenue off of their athletes like they are workers with no payment towards them.