Hoodie

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College Football Players and the Almighty Dollar

There have been recent allegations that Auburn quarterback and Heisman Trophy front runner Cam Newton was involved in a "pay to play" scandal where alleged solicitations of money were made in exchange for Newton's participation in a particular collegiate football program.  Below is an abbreviated list of some of the many places that that the money generated by college football players winds up.  What compensation do NCAA players receive?  Zero money.  One college scholarship.  

• Birmingham Business Journal - Auburn pockets $59.6 million in football revenue for 2007-2008 season.
• In 2008 ESPN and the SEC inked a 15 year deal worth $2 Billion for the rights to broadcast SEC athletics including football and basketball.  
• The SEC has a long-term contract with CBS that earns $55 million annually.  
• Gene Chizik, the Auburn Tigers head football coach received a raise prior to the 2010 season that upped his salary to $2.1 million.  
• In 2009 Chizik also received a $50,000 bonus for Auburn's bowl game appearance.  The better the players do, the more money the coach makes.
• The Bowl Championship Series, which puts on five high-profile bowl games, including the National Championship game, made $142.5 million on the games in the 2009 season.  
• The tuition at the University of Auburn for a non-resident is roughly $10,000 per semester.  That's $20K per year.  
• Division 1 football allows for 85 full ride football scholarships each year.  Subsequently, Auburn would spend in the area of $1.7 million in scholarship money to field its entire football squad (including a number of players who don't even suit up for games).  If you combined the money it takes for Auburn to pay its ENTIRE football squad (not in real money but in scholarships) and its ENTIRE coaching staff, this would be the breakdown:  PLAYERS 29% COACHES 71%.  Contrast this with the 2009 Super Bowl Champion New Orleans Saints. Here is the breakdown:  PLAYERS 90%+ COACHES less than 10%.
• The best part for the NCAA is, that a star quarterback and a second string punter cost Auburn the exact same amount - one full ride scholarship.  Just to put some more icing on the cake, if a player is good enough to leave for the NFL a year early, that's one less year he receives a scholarship. 
•  The better a player is, the more money he makes for the University and the less money he takes from it. 
• In the early 2000's collegiate athletes were leaving for the NFL after only a year or two in college.  This made sense considering the narrow window for earning money in the NFL.  
• Much to the delight of the NCAA, the NFL issued a new rule that stated players entering the NFL must be at least three years removed from high school. 

I think Cam Newton deserves to be paid.  He is making ridiculous amounts of money for the university, the NCAA, television networks and anyone else who can profit off of the exploitation of unpaid collegiate football players.  The large amount of publicity surrounding the alleged Cam Newton scandal only sheds more light on the abuse and under-compensation NCAA football players are receiving for the valuable product they bring to the football field on Saturdays.  

Base 12 and the six fingered man

Remember the six fingered man from The Princess Bride played by Christopher Guest?  He would have been an ideal candidate for counting in base 12.  Humans probably developed the base 10 system we currently use by looking at our ten fingers.  Had we all been born like the six fingered man, we might have counted in base 12. 

I stumbled across the idea of base 12 when reading a book by Alex Bellos.  Why is a base 12 system superior to a base 10 system?  At a very basic level, consider the amount of numbers that can be divided evenly into each.  With 10 you are only able to divide evenly by 2 and 5.  If you wanted 1/3 of 10 it would be 3.33333 out to infinity.  If you divide 10 into four parts you get 2.5.  12 on the other hand (think six fingered man), is evenly divisible by 2, 3, 4 and 6.  If we divide 12 by 4 we get 3.  If we divide 12 by 3 we get four. 

There are actually many advocacy groups for base 12 systems.  If you want to know more here is a link to the Dozenal Society of America. There are of course many other base number systems out there.  Take for instance another character played by Christopher Guest - Nigel from "This Is Spinal Tap."  He used a baffling base 11 system to rock out even louder.  "These go to eleven!"  But it would seem that 12 is the most logical base if we were to start our numbering system from scratch.  Of course, this would be a major headache, switching everyone who has base 10 hard-wired into their brains.  Check the internet for base 12 converters.  They're fun to play around with.