Can USA boxing upper weight boxing be fixed?

[Dr Z]

I am not offering 'pies in the sky' - I want all college varsity sports ban as well.

Only private colleges should waste their money on that nonsense.

Ever notice how you guys say that universities pay for themselves with ticket sales and TV appearance money. But the college never share that money back to the tax payer who guarantees their sport will exist.

College sport is a con game. Socialized sport with the government flipping the cost bill but with the college keeping all the profits.

Nice deal, if you can con the populace into accepting it.

What happens with a school that doesn't make a profit? It still gets financed the next year with my tax dollars.

College ball is socialized entertainment where the tax payer gurantees the product and the colleges keep all the money, and then pay a coach a million dollars a year.

What a con.

That is too far. Ban college sports?

Ban their tax exmpt status? Okay.

[DeeMoney]

You know . . .

I could go into a wrestling tournament/round robin event and wrestle five times in a long day.

I could get beat in all five of those matches and at the end of the day I could say, "Boy that s-ucked."

I could fight in one three round amateur Golden Gloves event. I can win that fight and spend the rest of the night with a cold compress on the back of neck fighting off the headache. (Did I mention I won the fight.)

I am not sure we really want this in our colleges.

Thats a fair point. Look at college football, when the NFL had their concussion backlash college football took it even a few steps further. I've seen college DBs get ejected for hitting defenseless receivers just for making a play on the ball. I wonder if college football would be akin to the 'olympic tag' that olympic boxing was a few years back.

[The D3vil]

When they graduate, they will get a job with the degree they earned, which was covered by their scholarship. Remember, their being in college on scholarship is predicated on them being a football player. If an athlete decides to quit their scholarship sport, to pursue college boxing (which has no scholarships) then they forfeit their scholarship and their free education.

Even if we assume college boxing has full ride scholarships (which it doesnt, and would be a tremendous stretch to achieve anytime soon, but lets just imagine), we'd have to assume that those scholarships would already have been given out to athletes who are joining the team out of high school. So to try and poach a football player would be useless because they don't have a scholarship to give.

Moreover, you are assuming they have a lucrative career in boxing after graduation lined up, one that is gonna pay more than what their degree can get them, but thats rarely the case. Just as in very few college football players make it to the NFL, very few boxers make it to the point where they can survive on boxing alone.

In summation, for a D1 college football player to give up football to join college boxing he would be giving up his NIL money (money in hand), his scholarship (which can lead to security and a job for years to come), for the opportunity to make it as a pro boxer (which itself is a long shot). Why would he not just wait to take that chance until after he graduated?

First of all, the majority of college football players' degrees isn't worth the paper it's printed on.

There's been plenty of scandals & exposees about how they're in college to play football, not go to school.

That's why 80% are broke within 5 years after the NFL. And that's the ones who make it to the big money in the NFL.

The ones who don't make it that far are no better off than anybody else.

there's no reason why a 22 year old 6'4, 235lb college linebacker couldn't start training in boxing after his college football career is done.

Again, we just watched Deontay Wilder do it after being a college athlete. There's thousands of young athletes who you could try to get to do it.

Will most of them succeed, no.

But all you need is a few.

Just lazer focus on trying to find your new Deontay.

[DeeMoney]

First of all, the majority of college football players' degrees isn't worth the paper it's printed on.

There's been plenty of scandals & exposees about how they're in college to play football, not go to school.

That's why 80% are broke within 5 years after the NFL. And that's the ones who make it to the big money in the NFL.

The ones who don't make it that far are no better off than anybody else.

there's no reason why a 22 year old 6'4, 235lb college linebacker couldn't start training in boxing after his college football career is done.

Again, we just watched Deontay Wilder do it after being a college athlete. There's thousands of young athletes who you could try to get to do it.

Will most of them succeed, no.

But all you need is a few.

Just lazer focus on trying to find your new Deontay.

I knew a number of guys who played ball back in the early 80s who told stories of teammates there just to play ball. But that was many decades ago.

I have known MANY kids to use college athletics as an ends to a mean over the past 20 or so years. Of course all we are bandying about is anecdotal, and while you can claim their degree is worthless, I dont see any evidence of it but I do know that over 90% do earn a degree- that is factual.

Most D1 college football players have no allusions of making it to the NFL. We see the tip of the iceberg types at Ohio St or Alabama and assume that they are all the same. Truth is, there are about 30,000 D1 football players at any given time, and the vast majority know their playing days stop there.

The 80% number you point to has little to do with this discussion, as those are players who made it to the NFL already, and as we have already stated there are far fewer of them who earn a degree as is. Additionally, you are playing fast and loose with your wording, as only 2% go bankrupt within a decade of retirement. That 80% is those who claim to have financial difficulties. But claiming financial difficulty is just a feeling, its like when many Westerners complain about the 'rich' ignoring the fact that they are rich compared to the rest if the world. That difficulty claim is nothing more than a feeling.

All this, to say that I'm still not against trying to find fighters from the pool of collegiate athletes. Just that D1 football is a difficult group to pull from, they often have too much being offered to remain in their current sport. But, there are 50k D2 & D3 football players, many are the same size, and they have far less holding them in place

[QueensburyRules]

- - Y fix a sport already fixed in stone immemorial???

Dana White created a combat juggernaut out of nother that made him a billionaire+

Fixed sports like Boxing have no real value to the vast public, hence boxing has become a fringe sport of no account...

[Dr Z]

I knew a number of guys who played ball back in the early 80s who told stories of teammates there just to play ball. But that was many decades ago.

I have known MANY kids to use college athletics as an ends to a mean over the past 20 or so years. Of course all we are bandying about is anecdotal, and while you can claim their degree is worthless, I dont see any evidence of it but I do know that over 90% do earn a degree- that is factual.

Most D1 college football players have no allusions of making it to the NFL. We see the tip of the iceberg types at Ohio St or Alabama and assume that they are all the same. Truth is, there are about 30,000 D1 football players at any given time, and the vast majority know their playing days stop there.

The 80% number you point to has little to do with this discussion, as those are players who made it to the NFL already, and as we have already stated there are far fewer of them who earn a degree as is. Additionally, you are playing fast and loose with your wording, as only 2% go bankrupt within a decade of retirement. That 80% is those who claim to have financial difficulties. But claiming financial difficulty is just a feeling, its like when many Westerners complain about the 'rich' ignoring the fact that they are rich compared to the rest if the world. That difficulty claim is nothing more than a feeling.

All this, to say that I'm still not against trying to find fighters from the pool of collegiate athletes. Just that D1 football is a difficult group to pull from, they often have too much being offered to remain in their current sport. But, there are 50k D2 & D3 football players, many are the same size, and they have far less holding them in place

100% And some of the 30,000 will try boxing if the school offer it say after football ends and this alone will up the USA talent.

[ShoulderRoll]

I think it’s cyclical, USA heavyweight boxing will rise again.

[Dr Z]

I think it’s cyclical, USA heavyweight boxing will rise again.

The international completion will prevent it for reaching it past heights. It has been 25-30 years. USA boxing has never been been down this long. This is not cyclical. When has it ever been?

But it can rise a bit from where is was. That is the point of the thread.

[Anomalocaris]

The US will never dominate the heavies again - the Iron Curtain came down and do you remember the ' Horizontal heaweight" cliche abott Brits?

Lewis and Fury have proved this wrong.

Let alone the brothers and Usyk..

This is a US site so it will not be a popular opinion.

[ShoulderRoll]

The Iron Curtain didn’t mean anything in the Olympics, American heavyweights like Foreman beat Soviet fighters on their way to winning Olympic gold.

Perhaps cyclical isn’t the correct word, the popularity of boxing has waned in the US. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to be a permanent state. There are signs that it could be starting to change, see the rise of boxing training clips from the general public on YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook.