Oliver Luck has a really bad reason for why NCAA athletes don’t get paid

Oliver Luck tried to explain why NCAA athletes don’t make some coin, and it was a really bad try.

If there is truly one topic of discussion that will never go away in college sports, it’s the fact that the athletes that we watch throughout the year don’t make a dime doing what they’re doing. We’re led to believe that free education and room and board are enough to compensate them, even though they consistently bring in ridiculous sums of money for the schools.

You know what else is ridiculous? The way that NCAA executive Oliver Luck recently tried to explain why the athletes don’t get a little salary for their services.

Yeah that … that doesn’t work at all, right there.

So, what the father of the Indianapolis Colts quarterback is trying to say there, more or less, is that while the law recognizes a person 18-22 years of age as an adult, the NCAA, who generally tends to live in their own little world to begin with, doesn’t see it that way. To them, they’re children, that is until they’re done making money for the institutions through playing sports, then they’re allowed to be recognized as adults.

We can tell an 18-year-old that they can begin to set up the rest of their lives by joining the Army and potentially heading off to combat in some of the more hostile environments of the world, but when it comes to putting a football helmet on, they’re still a child. We can tell a 21-year-old that it’s OK to drink now, but if they’re helping lead a school to a Final Four on the basketball court, making that program millions in the process — nope, still just a child.

There are literally no words for how insanely out of touch and wrong this answer was.

Bottom Line: The NCAA should probably just stop talking.