The Tipping Point
The following post will affect your fandom of Michigan sports not at all, because nothing does, so WATCH PARTY. Join HomeSure Lending's Matt Demorest and Seth at HOMES this evening for the game. First drink is on Matt. Ask for his Hightower impression.
It might take five years but NCAA amateurism is on its last legs. The Adidas investigation is about to be a shoe-industry wide thing after Michael Avenatti's farcical but still potentially revealing extortion scheme. A little connecting the dots from the players Avenatti's mentioning leads directly to a person who knows where a few bodies are buried:
Avenatti’s tweets on Tuesday morning narrowed down where the feds should start looking by calling out two of the star players from the Nike-sponsored California Supreme basketball program. That program is coached by Gary Franklin, who Yahoo Sources identified as the disgruntled AAU coach who appears in court documents allegedly attempting to conspire with Avenatti to shake down Nike. (Federal documents cite an unnamed coach who was no longer receiving his $72,000 annually from Nike to run his program, which fits Franklin.)
The 7-foot Ayton played for Franklin's California Supreme team in the summer of 2016, was ranked the No. 3 senior in the nation by Rivals.com in 2017 and became a one-and-done star at Arizona. The 7-foot-2 Bol, played for Franklin in the summer of 2017, was the No. 4 senior according Rivals and went to Oregon. …
Avenatti first accused Ayton and his mother, Andrea, of taking “cash payments” from Nike, which would likely be illegal under NCAA rules and could also have greater legal implications. He accused Bol “and his handlers” of taking “large sums” of money from Nike. “The receipts are clear as day,” Avenatti said in a tweet. “A lot of people at Nike will have to account for their criminal conduct.”
The issues are not so much whether the allegations are true—they are obviously true—but whether there's a paper trail of receipts. Avenatti purportedly tweeted some out before he took his twitter account private. Given Avenatti's approach to life (Goodfellas with a law degree) there's a higher than usual chance those were garbage, but that chance is still pretty low.
[after the JUMP: nobody cares! about this, not this post, you care deeply about all posts]
The prospect of a paradigm-altering offseason in the near future just went up another notch. At the same time that there's a vast amount of attention being paid to the college basketball black market by the government, the public does not give a single crap:
Adidas stock is basically at the same level it was before the charges were filed. Matt Powell, a senior industry advisor at the NPD Group who studies these kinds of things, told Deadspin he has seen no ill effects to Adidas: “I have not seen any material impact to Adidas’ business because of the convictions. I have not had any negative feedback from my Twitter followers either.”
Despite this tournament featuring at least one team 99% certain to have its participation vacated (LSU) and several others who have clearly been buying players, directly or indirectly, for years (Duke, Kansas, Louisville, Kentucky, Maryland, Auburn), ratings are up. This is in the immediate aftermath of more or less direct proof that all of the schools in the previous parenthetical are buying players with the aid of the shoe companies that sponsor them. The public does not care about that, at all.
This does two things. One, it knocks out one of the tentpole defenses of the NCAA's anti-competitive restrictions on compensation. The NCAA has repeatedly argued in court that if payers are paid the system will collapse because fans will lose interest. This has always been a ludicrous thing to argue—fans don't even lose interest when rape allegations are repeatedly swept under the rug at Michigan State, or Florida State, or Baylor. One wonders if there is literally any level of depravity that would materially affect the size and passion of a college's fanbase. But that argument is a lot more indirect to present than "it was revealed that a bunch of guys got paid and nobody cared."
The second thing it does is start emboldening legislators. If the public perception of the NCAA is that it's useless, or corrupt, or unfair, and that it should be blasted into the sun, well, that's when bill start popping up. And they have. There are currently four different bills, two federal and one each in California and North Carolina, being proposed that seek to bust up some part of the NCAA's cartel. They come from both sides of the aisle. They may not get through immediately, but they are the tip of the iceberg.
Industries confronted by the prospect of regulation frequently attempt to self-regulate their way out of trouble. The NCAA is reaching that point and will likely start taking more action than the incremental drips and drabs of revenue they've permitted to slide to the athletes, especially once they are confronted by the fact that they've either got to ban their moneymakers from the tournament or reinforce the reality that amateurism is a scam coming and going.
Enjoy the game tonight!
There may be change coming, but I’m not so sure that we are all going to like it. The professional leagues have changed over the years in different ways and many former fans have lost interest. They watch less. Some don’t watch at all.
People may be turning a blind eye to some of the illegal activities going on now, but it could be different when fundamental changes occur that results in a different product on the field or different behavior by coaches and players.
Exactly right. Cheating has been going on for over a hundred years in college athletics. And it will go on forever no matter what the rules are. This solves nothing, except will likely force a bunch of academic institutions to reevaluate whether or not they want to be in this business.
People say "cheating will go on no matter what the rules are"...but I can't help but notice that I've never heard a story about how an NBA team signed a star free agent by paying him extra money illegally under the table. I also haven't heard a story like that in the NFL or the MLB, and while I don't follow the NHL or any other of the domestic pro leagues, I would be very surprised to learn that cheating of this type is common there either.
I know people keep saying fewer people are engaged in sports but that doesn't mesh with reality. NFL ratings were up last year, every NBA franchise is worth $1B+, and the multitude of ways people can engage with sports, from betting to fantasy to merchandise, continues to grow. People may claim they stopped watching but (a) the majority of them are probably lying or at least doing false calculations, and (b) it's apparently still a really small number.
I'm sure paying players would change how some people perceive college athletics; that's true for almost any significant change. But as we've seen over decades, it hasn't really hurt the bottom line.
Honestly to me, those who think paying players would change how they perceive college sports are naive. College athletics is a billion dollar enterprise - whether college athletes are paid or not doesn't change that fact. So if you are watching it now, you're already watching something entirely different than 20+ years ago. It's all a big business, and everyone is after a big piece of the money pie.
The only thing that would change is the paying players stuff that right now is wink wink nudge nudge under the table would be legal and out in the open, which I don't know the effect that would have on a large scale for competitiveness...but at the end of the day you'll still be watching a sport that generates billions each year. Which is fine with me, I enjoy watching the sports. Just let's stop pretending that it is in any way an "amateur" thing.
I'm glad Brian included Duke in the list.
That is all.
Read the first line and stopped reading. Tired of this. Yay, let's ruin college sports. And for what gain? I guess we'll all go play intramurals, brotha.
When athletes get paid and don't perform well, will booing become as acceptable in college as it is in professional sports?
At the end of games, instead of jumping into the arms of fellow students, will players rush out and go to booths where they can autograph and sell various souvenirs?
I also wonder if (when) it is established that certain schools paid players to play for them, will fans have a cause of action against the programs that cheated?
Pardon my sarcasm, but this whole thing seems to be headed in the direction of a major clusterfuck. Or perhaps, it's already at that level.
They boo all the time in college anyways.
No. You don't see NBA, or any other professional players, doing that.
Unlikely.
It's already a clusterfuck, just lots of sleazy things being done to cover it up instead of owning what's actually going on.
You glossed over his argument. Brian bangs the drum for paying the players every year, yet he also rails against crowds booing teams or calling out individual players because "they're just kids in school."
You can't have it both ways - either these are full time students playing a school sport outside of class, or they are full time professional athletes who might be taking a college course or two outside if work.
I've told this story on here in the past. Not sure if it's worth repeating because no one will be shocked.
Anyway. A year ago, I was in Vegas and my Uber driver to the airport was a big time Chicago city basketball player (I'll leave his name off for now). He played at Louisiana Tech for college, then bounced around a lot of professional leagues before ending up at some coaching gig at UNLV. We got to talking and I asked why he chose Louisiana Tech (he was recruited by every school in the midwest). He simply said "because they paid the most". Apparently he was paid $200k ($100k to him and $100k to his mom). And this was about 20 years ago.
Shocked? yea, didn't think so.
Avenatti is a two bit chump. I'd be surprised if that doofus knew anything that the feds didn't already have.
The fact that Nike, who is already cooperating with the feds, wired up and entertained this idiot in his second attempt to shake them down is hilarious.
Michael Avanetti Got Arrested = M.A.G.A.
Enjoy the game tonight. Eat at Arby's.
Blah. Whatever.
Things will happen when they happen, if they do they do, if they don't they don't. Don't care about Michael Avenatti. This is a really stupid post to have up on the front page today, particularly with a picture of Charles Matthews? Poorly conceived. Poorly executed.
Go Blue. Beat the Red Raiders.
I really look forward to a day when everyone gets paid for many reasons. But a primary reason is a desire to see if certain schools (e.g., Duke, Kentucky, Kansas) continue to reap multiple five stars annually or if those recruits spread out.
Oh wow. I hadn't considered that. Thanks Brian.
I see this in two lights.
1. It seems obvious and a no brainer that the current arrangement is unfair to the players. Of course they get something out of the deal, but setting an arbitrary cap on what they can get that creates an obvious and huge imbalance in power seems clearly wrong.
2. This sort of change will likely make a significant and probably negative impact to the experience of being a fan of these teams.
But, in sum I think #1 has to override #2 because it is the right thing to do. My analogy is to the Napster days of the early 2000s. Yeah, it sucked that we had to start paying for music again because it was way better for me that I got it all for free. But, it was clearly unfair to the musicians and producers of the content to just take their stuff and not give a fair and market driven price.
I'm going to reluctantly pay devil's advocate. If what Brian is talking about is a complete free market for college athletes I think that it would affect fan interest.
Yes, people watch despite what happens at LSU, Kentucky, etc. But I think most fans believe (or tell themselves) that those are exceptions and that their school plays by the rules (not sure Kentucky fans think this but I bet Duke fans do).
That said I think if college players negotiated contracts the way NBA and NFL players did viewership and attendance would decline over time. People don't watch sports or other forms of entertainment for rational reasons, and I think that one reason people love Michigan football or Kansas basketball or whatever is because of it's connection certain perceptions, myths or whatever about college (even for folks who didn't go to those schools or any college).
And even if you want to look at major college sports purely as a business the question becomes whether that business can survive/thrive on an even more uneven playing field than we have now. I would argue that Michigan and Ohio State are less in competition for revenue between each other than college football as a whole is in competition with other sports and forms of entertainment. When players pick/are recruited to their teams rather than being drafted and there are significant differences among facilities due to unequal resources there already are a competitive balance issues. Alabama's never going to be worse on a regular basis than Vandy, which is why Vandy has a relatively apathetic fan base. If the occasional lower end 4 star/high 3 star who Bama is willing to take but who could start at Vandy gets 300k from the Crimson Tide vs. 75k from Vandy there's even less of a chance that he'll consider the Comodores than there is now. If it's absolutely clear that fewer and fewer teams can getwithin 40 of the Tide interest will decline.
I have no problem with significantly reallocating resources to players through generous cost of attendance stipends, additional forms of insurance, post-athletic career tuition and career benefits. I agree that coaches/administrators shouldn't get the lion's share of the resources. I just think that mimicking professional sports contract negotiations could have more serious consequences than most are acknowledging
By far the best take on this subject I have seen.
And the award for most sanctimonious and out of touch post goes tooooo: MaizeandBlueWahoo! Come on down and claim your trophy for having the worst take on this issue!
Im honestly not sure if you’re trolling or not by saying something as patently absurd as “never having to really work for a living” with regard to a potential professional athlete. What reality are you living in?
The one thing I care about most of all is that the rules be applied with fairness and equality to each program.
Paying players is paying to win. That's all it is. These players aren't inherently valuable. Nobody would watch them if they played in some minor league that wasn't attached to universities. They're only valuable in the sense that you can win more games by buying better players. Is that really what you want college athletics to be? A game where the wealthiest school wins every year?
I struggle with where I stand on this topic all the time. I do NOT want college to become a pro-league for all the reasons I prefer college sports to the NFL and NBA. I also don't take it for granted that an education (though it is rare for these elite basketball players to stick around for one) is something that is of significant value. Yet for the NCAA, schools, and conferences to rake in billions with minimal compensation for the athletes drives me nuts. As does trying to compete with schools who willingly cheat and are never held accountable.
But I haven't heard anyone propose an answer that I'm satisfied with yet. Something needs to change....but what is it? Things I'd want in a new system:
- More money from these high revenue sports to go toward reducing the cost of education at those universities. Instead of a fancy new building for women's blind-folded badminton....maybe lower tuition costs a little.
- Players to be allowed to make money on their likeness....but perhaps the companies paying them and the use of those likeness need to be vetted by the school or NCAA?
- Some sort of living stipend paid to players of revenue sports....but that stipend has provisions built into it for grades, staying out of trouble, length of time in school, or something.
Also, you say people don't care....but I do think there is a large population that does care. Over the holidays at a family party we got into a debate about this topic. Most of my family members or friends who aren't big sports fans were appalled at the idea of paying college athletes. They were 100% against it. Their argument was rooted in "those kids made a choice to pursue athletics and are rewarded with a scholarship, room, and board."
I tried all of the logical arguments about rich old men taking all the money, schools spending it on coaches or assistants or buildings, the fact that they were sacrificing their time/body/likeness with no reward, etc. Nothing convinced them.
They kept getting hung up on stuff like "why is the field hockey player or the soccer player or the marching band member putting in a ton of hours for the university without being paid? That's their choice and what they want to do with their life." It was both fascinating and frustrating at the same time.
My point is....a lot of people care, I just don't think they're the kind of people that influence TV ratings or Shoe company stock prices. ESPN clearly doesn't care because they lauded Duke and their top recruits all season in the midst of every other top-20 recruit being under a cloud of scandal.
There are rules. Some people follow the rules. Some people don't follow the rules. At some point the rules might change.
College athletes get room and board, tuition, good, world-class training and conditioning, shoes, gear, swag bags, the love and admiration of huge fan bases, free trips all over the country and (in some cases) the world.
Some say that isn't enough, some say it is. It sure looks quite a few of the players themselves think that it is.
I think if people have an issue with college athletics, the way college athletes are compensated, how rich some people get off of it, etc. etc., then they should not watch or consume the product. I think people who go into passionate speeches about how much college athletes are taken advantage of and then go get some wings to watch the big game are ENORMOUS hypocrites.
If there is so much money flowing under the table in NCAA recruiting these days, it amazes me that IRS doesn't get involved in the investigation. Granted, $100k here and there isn't much to them, but if it is so widespread (as people claim), the we are talking potentially millions of dollars in un-taxed revenue. Plus, the political perception of helping to clean up dirty money in sports is another incentive to act.
NCAA amateurism on its last legs would be an amazing thing. But I'd settle for simply being able to be directly taken to the "after the jump" place where I stopped reading in the MGoBlog post instead of the top of the article and being forced to scroll down to where I left after hitting the "More" icon.
There seem to be two separate issues here that get discussed interchangeably: whether some players are getting paid; and whether some schools are playing by the rules. I can see why they are intertwined since paying players under the current paradigm is against the rules, but in looking at the issue normatively, I think they are distinct. While I agree that many don't care if some players are getting paid (and many argue they all should), I also think many definitely care if some schools are cheating by indirectly paying players while others are not. I couldn't care less if Zion got $100K from Nike, for example only (wink wink), but I care greatly if he got $100K from Nike to play for Duke and Duke knew about it or was a part of it. Whatever the rules are for compensating players, they need to be enforced evenly, as others have said, and it is a separate issue than whether players should be paid. I hate that Beilein has to compete against other schools and their bagmen for recruits.
Honest legal question: could the federal government just dissolve the NCAA if it wanted to?
It's not a monopoly. No one is forcing any of these kids to play sports at a school, with the understanding that they are supposed to be charged (in principle) for attending the school and not be paid to play the sport.
It might be better to have a frank discussion about the legality/fairness of having athletic scholarships to institutions that rely on academic merit for admissions criteria.
So embarrassing how badly we have fallen in terms of ethics these days
March 29th, 2019 at 12:22 AM ^
"The issues are not so much whether the allegations are true - they are obviously true..."
That Avenati seems like a trustworthy guy.
Whether or not people watch the sport event Has no hearing on if it is right/fair to compensate these student athletes more so than they already are. If they want to be professional basketball players immediately, there are already myriad ways (direct to NBA, minor leagues, Europe, etc.) for them to do it that don't involve committing to an amateur-status sport offered as an extracurricular activity in school. The trade off for going to college is the deferred payday in exchange for training/development to increase that payday when it comes.
These schools/players knowingly broke rules (which the tacitly agreed to follow by their participation in NCAA sports) and have worked to cover it up. They deserve any punishment they receive (which will probably be weak anyway).
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