I think this is a fair rebuttal, I even pointed out Indiana and Vanderbilt in my OP that kicked off this thread. But I would also argue that it misses some very important context. Such as the following:
1. We are in year 3 of NIL, and functionally we are really in year 2 of NIL being the primary determining factor of who gets the best recruits and transfers. EVERY team in college football is still adjusting to the NIL reality, and making adjustments based on what they find. As the teams with the most money become more experienced at navigating NIL, as they use their money to hire the coaches who navigate NIL the most successfully, they will further optimize for success in the NIL era. A lot of lessons will be learned in this first 5 years which will become principles upon which all programs operate. As those principles become more clear, the teams with the biggest NIL advantages will be able to maximize those advantages.
2. The price teams pay for players continues to skyrocket. The CBS article which reported an average of $600,000 per SEC caliber starter also said that last year that number was more like $300,000. Let's say Syracuse football actually got the $6-8 million in NIL money we sought to get this season. That would get us 20-27 starting caliber players. Now that number has been reduced to 10-13 starting caliber players, and I think we all know our NIL budget will not be doubled to match the price increases on starting caliber talent. So the barrier to entry continues to increase as we get further into the NIL era.
3. Indiana and Vanderbilt have MUCH larger budgets than we do. It has been publicly reported that Indiana is 12th or 13th nationally in NIL spending, and they just paid Cignetti an amount that we couldn't even dream of matching. Vanderbilt was reported to have an explosion of NIL money in 2023, which clearly has led to greater success in 2024 and 2025. They raised $6 million in ONE WEEK at the end of the 2023 season. That was reportedly our GOAL for TOTAL NIL spending going into 2025. So neither of these schools are economic peers, and that's really what matters in the modern landscape.
4. There are VERY legitimate questions as to whether we even have the fundraising capacity as a university to fully fund the $20.5 million in annual revenue sharing that we would need to commit in order to compete. Our current fundraising campaign seeks to raise $50 million over 3 years to directly pay players, which is $16.67 million per year. So our fundraising GOAL doesn't even cover the full cost of revenue sharing, and leaves nearly $4 million to be financed through other means. I have very significant doubts as to whether we have sufficient donors and institutional support to cover revenue sharing, much less any NIL that our fanbase has to come up with on top of that.
This is why I have come to the conclusion that we would be far better off focusing on basketball at this point. I don't see us as a viable competitor in the football arms race. If we weren't a private school in one of the most economically declining regions in America, which is also the region of America where college football is the least popular, we wouldn't be in such a difficult spot. But the combination of those things, a combination that only us and Boston College have to deal with at the P4 level as far as I can tell, conspire to uniquely put us in a horrible position to compete going forward.
