Yet the Football Grifters need the kids tied to the universities for branding and a loyal fan base. Otherwise paying 19 year olds to play a game for some random made up team sponsored by some billionaire and endorsed by the NFL will draw flies like the G league.
Exactly. Lost in all the rhetoric about how the players are responsible for the popularity of college football and the money coming in, is the fact that there is so much loyalty to the schools from the fans. When a player transfers, the fans don't follow them to the new school, they stay with the school. This is more of a symbiotic relationship than people have acknowledged. The schools have given the athletes the vehicle. If they just went to a semipro league, nobody would care about them until/unless they made it to the NFL.
Exactly. That’s why IMO, if an entire of smaller, academic institutions are left out of the pay for play league, those schools should do everything possible to reinforce the concept of athletics tied to education. They don’t have to go full Ivy League mode, but make it clear that these are students first, with athletic scholarships. Not professional athletes.
Schools can and should do certain things to keep control on this. First, they should make the players student athletes and employees as through an employment contract they can exercise a degree of control
And that is what is going to happen, the first few years these schools will make a lot of money. But reality will set in that this is semi pro, and no where near the NFL. There will be half the 40+ schools with losing records. Fans will tune out, ratings will go down, and then tv and streaming will dry up.
I've said that too
There are a lot of naïve people out there.
I would feel terrible but I think through the rubble of this decision IMO we will have the contours of a reasonable athletic alliance with other like minded schools that won't be spending cap ex on athletic salaries to support programs.
I think the players at those programs are probably happy because they're gonna get paid. I think boosters will try to find ways to keep things even enough that everyone stays relatively happy. It'll be interesting to see what things look like in 5-10 years. I anticipate I won't be paying as much attention to college sports. Just like I don't pay as much attention now as I did 10-15 years ago. To be fair, that's not all because of the landscape changes, but they have certainly contributed.
Alabama made $100 million, so each of their players gets $1 million.
Do you think NC State and Louisville will fall amongst the heavyweights when things split and the dust settles? I wouldn't have put them there. Then again, I hadn't really thought about the specifics of who would end up where.
Oh, let me clarify. Things will be even enough within a given team (olineman make enough to keep from being ticked that the QB makes more), not from team to team.
When some of these schools lose their tax exempt status as an educational school, they will change their mind. The sham of student athletes will be completely gone, and the tax man will get millions of dollars
You need to put UVa and ND in the "No" group because the "play for pay" division will not require players to go to class and that's a mile-wide Red Line that won't be crossed by either. UVa football no longer has the boosters willing to write big checks that basketball has. There was one, but he died. It took a really long while for an anonymous alum to put up $40M toward the new football building, while Paul Tudor Jones readily stepped forward with his checkbook to build the b-ball arena.
I do not think this will be an issue if a division of college football truly becomes a minor professional league. I would see there being a union of the players just like in the NFL and a CBA that limits the number of players on a team. I also would not be surprised if there were multi-year contracts to stop college free agency, I mean transfers.
That won't be allowed. The semi-pro division members will want "all or nothing" for football, both basketballs, and baseball/softball in order to protect their investment. That would also cut out Duke.
One aspect where loyal student-athletes are suffering is the Transfer Portal where teams quickly bench their players in favor of guys they bring in from the portal. You have a guy who pays his dues and then a different guy who thumbed their nose at the school the 1st time around jumps right ahead of them after not starting at their factory.
Agree with your whole post. I love SU sports because 1)I grew up there, and 2)I did both my undergrad and grad work at SU. Still, my greatest love for SU has to do, not with sports, but the education I received and how it affected my career and thus my life. I may have Ernie Davis' autograph on my desk but the diploma on my wall is more meaningful.
