Milton C. David: Why doesn’t NFL support a football minor league?
Re “Education should trump UC athletics” (Opinions, Jan. 27): Your opinion that football is ruining college education is right on. However your title to the article should have read, “The NFL is ruining college football.” Unlike Major League Baseball, the NFL is too greedy to require the owners to pay for a football minor league. So the NFL uses the colleges as its minor league. A kid who doesn’t have the aptitude or desire to go to college, but wants to play in the NFL, has to go to college for three years out of high school.
The NFL pays ESPN to control college football by paying hungry colleges huge amounts for TV rights. Thus ESPN determines the time and day that colleges play their games. Alumni are robbed of the traditional Saturday afternoon game times and must endure ESPN’s TV schedule.
In Sonny Dykes first year at Cal, 28 of the players did not go to one day of classes in the spring. If the NFL had a minor league these kids could have gone into it rather than college. Colleges have sold their football souls to the NFL and ESPN.
Milton C. David MD, Modesto
This story was originally published January 29, 2015 at 3:19 PM with the headline "Milton C. David: Why doesn’t NFL support a football minor league?."