Stanford coach David Shaw speaks out against ‘professional’ model in college sports

College athletics is becoming more professional by the day with the NIL rule changes. However, Stanford coach David Shaw is worried that college sports changing into more of a pro sports model would a bad thing overall.

At Pac-12 Media Days, he expressed his concern over the increasingly professional landscape of collegiate sports at Stanford and across the country.

“There have always been changes associated with college athletics. These are just more drastic changes, and a lot of them are happening at the same time, which has been the biggest difference. Bottom line for me, some people take this as a negative, and I will stand up against that, I want college athletics to be college athletics. I don’t want it to be professional athletics. I don’t want it to be professional.”

Shaw makes it clear he’s against this recent change that he notices across college sports. However, he is all for his players benefitting off of NIL deals.

“Now, I want our young people to take advantage of their opportunities through NIL and through other opportunities. I think there are a lot of different things that we can continue to do to help our student-athletes through health and safety, through, yes, other monetary avenues which I think would be outstanding to help our young people.”

So he’s in support of NIL compensation, but not the professionalization that may come along with it. Which means more video games and staying up until 2 a.m., according to Shaw.

“At the same time, I don’t want to hire and fire college athletes. I want to bring them in, I want them to be students. They’re 18, 19 years old, 20 years old. I want to them to enjoy college. I don’t want them to be professionals. Don’t want that to change, that experience to change. I want them to be on our campus. Be college kids, stay up playing video games at 2:00 in the morning in the dorms. I want them to have those experiences and then leave us and become professionals in whatever their chosen profession.”

The Stanford coach is optimistic that that rules can be put in place to keep the balance of professionals vs. amateurs across the board, but it will take time to figure out how best to regulate this new world.

“That’s the biggest thing for me. Handling these changes and making the adjustments we need to make in order to continue to have college athletics and the other opportunities for the other sports. These monetary things have put so much focus on football and men’s basketball. But college athletics can’t just focus on those two sports. We need to do what’s right for all the other sports, too.

“That’s my answer to that question. To maintain college athletics the way that they are not just for those two sports but for everyone.”