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Message: [QUOTE="Consigliere, post: 5356379, member: 559"] Agree completely that the model is messed up. Ultimately the logical approach is to raise ticket prices and direct costs to the consumer, but in an era of declining attendance that approach may be counterproductive and lead to a death spiral. The risk of the donor based approach is that a large proportion of the customer base will be comfortable thinking this can all be accomplished with OPM (Other People's Money.) These changes have all but destroyed competitive balance in the landscape and created three broad tiers. Those who can affort to compete at the highest level, those that are struggling to maintain the possibility to compete with, or just slightly below the top tier, and those who, simply put, will never have the resources to do so. Without fundamental changes that middle tier will slowly disappear as a small number will ascend, but the majority will not. I think Syracuse falls in that middle tier and is trying to tread water until there is legislation (governmental or NCAA) that reins in the madness or market forces and a diminished ROI stops megawealthy boosters from escalating the nuclear arms race. As far as tax implications, I won;t pretend to have a clue. It is a sign of the times, however, that three states now have pending legislation to exempt "NIL" payments from state income tax. It should be no secret that those three states have large land grant univesrsities with successful athletic programs. It's really tragic that this toxic environment all emerged from a worthwhile concept to allow student athletes share in the revenue explosion. When we launched the SyraCRUZ Tailgate NIL Initiative we did so by offering modest sums to a broad range of SU athletes. Now, we have some of the higher profile ones scoff at the thought of spending two hours interacting with fans at a tailgate blocks away from their rooms for a pittance of $500 - $1000. [/QUOTE]

Verification: What is a Syracuse fan's favorite color?