Brief reflection on the new landscape of college athletics

Given the cost of tickets, and the massive amount of TV and other revenue received by the schools, it's fucking crazy that fans are asked to "donate" to a fund for the players.  Fuck that.  We pay enough already.  Pay them yourselves.

I think the NCAA will eventually be smashed to pieces by the courts.  It's just a matter of time and will.

Hey, what's wrong with getting fans to donate $ so schools, coaches, TV networks and the NCAA don't have to give up any of THEIR revenue?

NIL is a band aid.  The idea that players would choose it over being, you know, actual employees with benefits (like the NFL) seems shortsighted.  

Old political axiom: There are no solutions, only tradeoffs.

If several thousand years of recorded history has taught us anything, it's that ANY system of government (or regulatory regime, or system of justice, etc.) will create real or perceived harm to some group.

But I was told by many people on Facebook, Reddit, X, and various other platforms that if only I followed their system the world would be a perfect utopia! You're telling me that's not true? Man, what are you gonna tell me next? That the holes in the car the shady salesman sold me that look suspiciously like bullet holes are not actually speed holes like he told me?

I guess there could be unintended consequences that would be disastrous that no one has foreseen. But the "harm" to anti-NIL people seems to just be: fans don't like change. The harm under the old system was very material to the players financial situation. Given the number of athletes is orders of magnitude more than the numbers of highly paid suits in the AD, I'm not sure how it isn't already very obvious that NIL creates less harm than restricting someone's earning potential.

NIL causes inequality.  Some institutions have lots of money and some don't, That isn't going to change.

Michigan has lots of money available if it were to choose to spend large sums, but chooses to walk a different path.

From a legal standpoint, I see no easy way of avoiding antitrust issues short of setting up a union like the NFLPA. That would present its own set of problems, particularly when conferences share revenue equally - a horrible mistake if you are Michigan or OSU.

The biggest problem Michigan faces is its inability to separate the academic side of the institution from the athletic side.

Just a ballpark guess but didn't Bo come to Michigan in 1969 for around 20K? What was the Texas AM offer to Bo to leave Michigan, wasn't it around 700K?

Old system was just fine!

I am get off my lawn guy.

Shockingly I agree with this take which is why an alternative title to this thread could be:

"Brief reflection on the new landscape of minor league football"

BTW the pre-BCS, pre NCG final four and soon to be 12 bowl line up with fixed conference tie-in's would've looked like this from about 1975 to 1997.  Somebody show me the problem, please.

Rose Bowl: #1 Michigan vs #2 Washington

Orange Bowl: #5 Florida State vs #6 Georgia (highest ranked team to not win a conference)

Sugar Bowl: #4 Alabama vs #5 OSU (2nd highest ranked team to not win a conference)

Fiesta Bowl: #3 Texas vs #7 Oregon

The old system could be fine if not for one major caveat--everyone in the system was getting rich but for the players.  Your tradeoff of an education/exposure in exchange for benefits to the college makes sense until you realize that the benefit to the college, in addition to any intangible benefit such as recognition/marketing, is worth millions and millions of dollars.  And those dollars are making coaches rich and providing very good livings for people that are involved in sports programs that bring in almost no financial benefit to the school.  All one has to do is review the relative salaries of NFL GM/Head Coach with those of NFL players to understand that FBS football players are not getting the same relative value for their efforts.

I recognize that there are real problems in the new system that does threaten to greatly diminish, if not destroy, the college football system.  However, sticking one's head in the sand and just going back to the old system is not the answer.  The original sin was insisting on monetizing every single aspect of college football, and that was part of the old system.  It may never have been avoidable given how TV developed, but we should be clear eyed about the inherent problems, both in the old system and the current system.

To add on to your post, I'd also challenge the OP's assertion that the athletes were/are underpaid.

not being compensated fairly (or at all) despite being massive generators of revenue for their universities

This is a common assertion, but while college athletics are a massive revenue driver for universities, my hot take has long been that I don't think the athletes themselves are actually responsible for much of that value. Taking Michigan as an example, I'd argue that the vast majority of the value is derived from the winged helmet, not the players wearing it. You could take the entire football roster--players, coaches, etc.--and plug it into the new XFL/USFL league, and it would only be worth a tiny fraction of the value it had at Michigan (and even then, I'd say most of that value would be driven by the Michigan connection, not the players themselves). Or you could replace the entire roster with an FCS roster, and while the value would certainly go down (winning helps), I don't think it would drop as much as people expect (M was still one of the most valuable programs in the country during the RichRod/Hoke years).

If these high school kids could go straight to a minor league, I think you would see just how stark the contrast is. So few people actually care about minor league sports, and the players by and large get peanuts there, yet if the value was truly tied to the players instead of the teams, you would think it should be about the same...

lol ok. Yea, players got an education when they were admitted to universities past their abilities and funneled into athlete-only courses so they could stay eligible. And yes, Michigan did it too. There’s a reason why half the football team was taking Ojibwae as a foreign language. Again, just looking for come consistency. Either it’s a giant multibillion dollar business or it’s not. If you want to go back to the old way, let’s do it and get rid of the tv deals, pointless bowls, mega conferences, etc. why does Jim Habruagh need 12 million a year to coach amateur athletes who are just playing for school spirit? 

The downside to that system was that with anything (drugs?) where you can create a black market, people will take advantage. Thus we had the underhanded Alabama real estate dealings, McDonalds bags of cash, etc.....which disproportionately benefit only a few people and teams in the systems...so prohibition of paying players doesn't work and "only" legit NIL doesn't seem to be working either. 

My thought would be that student athletes becoming employees, paying them a fair share of revenue which would be real money, offering real NIL opportunities as a condition of the employment contract, and then making violations of the rules (NIL or others) grounds for non-payment would dis-incentivize taking non-sanctioned NIL or other payments because there's a financial tradeoff that would make it less appealing would mitigate the worst of it. There will still be an OSU paying millions for a top guy and offering to buy out their contract basically but the steeper price tags would in theory reduce those.

How can you say the old system worked fine? Plenty of assholes -- NCAA types, bad coaches, administrators -- made millions of dollars while the "student athletes" worked their asses off for minimal compensation. It worked fine for some, but not the athletes, esp. the ones who don't make the pros (which is by far most of them).

EDIT: I can't believe this comment of yours is getting upvoted at all. It is so dinosaurish in its thinking.