While the proposal is admirable and shows that at least people are thinking, it also shows they have thought or at least investigated too much into the US model or its practicality.
The reasons the US College program is so successful AND popular has many reasons. The reason it will not work in Australia are also many.
1. There is a very great value placed by the yanks on College allegiance, to the point graduate student become benefactors, thereby providing the funds necessary for the College sport’s program. Alabama’s football program has a budget of $33 million, yes, 33 million, and that’s not the biggest when viewed from what the program is worth to the school in terms of dollars brought in.
And remember, the college players do not get paid one red cent.
What’s in it for our Universities???
2. American Colleges are bigger, generally far bigger with a massive on campus accommodation, hence at home games they have a ready crowd of supporters.
We would enjoy typical subbies type crowds, our students are not at the Uni on the weekend and due to the geography are unlikely to travel there to watch a game of rugby in which they have no interest.
3. They place a large degree of identity with their college, hence home coming etc.
Our Uni’s do not have anywhere near the level of emotional support that is enjoyed in the US.
4. The Colleges have MASSIVE sporting infrastructure. Football stadiums (seating upwards of 100,000) have their own medical triage suites complete with MRI’s and emergency theatres for diagnosis and treatment of injuries etc..
Our Unis (if they have a sporting venue have nothing, not even Sydney Uni would be considered adequate by US standards).
5. Who is going to fund it as so far as infrastructure is concerned.
I’m sure Griffith Uni is not going to fork out the readies to set up training facilities when realistically there is no real positive point for them, Aussie Uni’s do not attract academic patronage on the back of sport whereas in the US this is a big aspect of the system.
6. Additionally, while the US colleges play a number of their games against conference teams they also play games well away from their base – Notre Dame at Detroit played Stanford in San Francisco – there is a great degree of flexibility in the US structure to allow footballers to take such a large amount of time away from study. On campus living is one way to do this, it allows training and study to be integrated easily whereas our players generally will not be staying on campus which can make travel to and from study and training difficult.
Additionally, our system is very rigid with only deferred exams for good reasons. There is very little study flexibility in our system to accommodate this form of behaviour.
7. Cost: from the figures released it doesn’t add up. The previous attempt failed due to lack of funds (and identifiable interest). They propose Australian Universities playing a competition, similar travel distance than the USA – the travel costs will kill it before it’s off the ground, unless an airline kicks in.
8. Lastly, are our Uni’s going to give study scholarships to these players? Our Universities are graded and funded on a complex system of results and are not going to tolerate sub par academics for the sake of sport when it has a direct impact on their federal funding.
The US system has a large emphasis on academic integrity, entry is still determined by high school grades and continued participation in sport (NCAA rules) requires continued academic performance. While the bar isn’t too high, there are footballers in Australia at even national level and super level and certainly premier Grade level who – and let’s be honest, aren’t the sharpest knifes in the draw.
Anyway, just a few thoughts.
While having great positive merit for rugby, I really don't think the plan has been thought out well at all in terms of interested parties.
