Player Salaries Need to Come ASAP
I always opposed player payments believing that they would destroy the sport as we know it and bring about a radical transformation in it with unforeseeable consequences. And I still believe that. But I also believe that you can't kill what's already dead.
We're now faced with the following situation:
- Amateurism is dead. Officially dead. NIL ensures that. There's no way back. Pandora's box has been well and truly opened.
- The further consolidation of power and resources among national brand programs via the playoffs.
- The threat of SEC national hegemony to a degree where they are indisputably seen as the only first tier 'major' college football league.
For Michigan this is a perilous situation, but also one of many chances. As a financial heavyweight with resources ranked more highly than our on-field successes in the last two decades would indicate, Michigan could be a winner in this situation. But it can also be a loser if it fails to read the signs of the times.
In reality, only a handful of players at each of the biggest 20-25 programs in the country have image and name rights of any significant value. Many more will get deals where NIL purely serves as a cover for compensatory payments. This will be impossible to police. Any attempt to police it will solely be an impediment to your competitiveness and quite frankly ridiculous. But this will act as a further catalyst for consolidation at the top as some programs may have guys willing to pay a left tackle 250k for NIL rights while most won't.
And there is of course another problem here. On the one hand, NIL is convenient for programs because they don't have to be the ones paying the players. But on the other hand, this makes players beholden to whoever is paying them. If you have a NIL deal for 500k with an agency, well that agency owns that player. If it is with a prominent booster, well that booster could literally buy control of the team by acquiring the rights for the majority of star players on the roster. He who pays the piper, calls the tune. This could be a huge problem for teams as you're dramatically increasing the power of shadowy figures and power brokers on the fringes of the sports entertainment industry.
It seems to me far more logical and healthy for the teams to pay players in order to be able to maintain control over the players and to ensure some regulation of said payments.
It would behoove Michigan exceptionally well to take the lead on this rather than to deny the inevitability of professional college football. Taking a bold leadership role would allow Michigan - and other institution s- to set the terms for this apparent professionalization rather than to be behind the 8 ball by clinging to a dead past. Player compensation needs to be organized in a sustainable and fair way - which cannot be done if you leave the initiative and control to shoe companies, sports agencies and power-hungry boosters.
And it would allow Michigan to take advantage of its huge fan base and massive commercial potential in a completely legitimate and ethical fashion. It's time to re-think Michigan Football as a professional sports entity. Michigan needs to come up with a vision of how that business can be set up in a way that ensures maintaining the traditions of the team and its historical ties to the university while being realistic about what is needed commercially to compete at the top of the game.
The only real alternative is a complete opt-out (which will not happen for many reasons, so let's not even go there). But if you're saying "yep we want top level football" then you can't be a reluctant follower in the area of commercialization, you need to be among those leading the way.
Sweet, I'm brushing up on my dish machine operating skills now!
Please explain to me why the football players should be paid more than the students who work the dish machine in their dorm cafeteria or the student who checks out books in the library. Without them, those football players would not be able to perform.
If these football players want to be paid "professional" salaries, the NFL should set up a minor league system to accommodate them? Why should the colleges be running a free minor league system for the NFL who benefits from this system without incurring any expense.
Priorities and values seem pretty skewed.
^this.
The day the uM starts directly paying players I’m done.
IMO, for 90%+ of the players the tuition, expenses, room and board is ample compensation for a COLLEGE football team. Sure, some of the stars can claim they bring more to the table. But they are also likely to be extremely well compensated after school.
I would be all for allowing players to complete their education at any time and things like that.
But setting up a true payroll? At that point it’s just a minor league.
Like everything else, the decision makers at the University will dictate whether or not Michigan Football is allowed to compete (off the field) with the SEC/OSU/Clemson types. Your words should be directed at those people. Obviously anyone on this blog or on the football team / athletic department wants to loosen things up and fire the money cannon to allow us the same flexibility and resources as the top football schools. Unfortunately, they need the University to agree.
Many players already get salaries....institutions that take football seriously with fanbases that won't accept an average on field product have been paying the going rate for some time now.
The sales pitch of education, future network, collegiate experience doesn't carry the weight it did 25 years ago. Back then a car from the local dealership or a few under the table payments to elite athletes and their families was sufficient.
UM is 2 decades behind here. Small perks and $100 handshakes no longer cut it in big boy football.
By 'big boy football," you mean professional football.
Correct. The football that’s been played at OSU, Bama, UGA, Clemson, LSU since the start of the BCS and now the playoff.
-Where the majority of elite prospects go to get ready for the NFL.
Texas has a plan to get all of their football players 6 figures per year in 1-2 years. That should be the minimum goal for Michigan as well.
"It seems to me far more logical and healthy for the teams to pay players in order to be able to maintain control over the players and to ensure some regulation of said payments."
If you make players salaried employees of the university, you open up a few other cans of worms that I am sure some people around here really would raise the alarm bells over, not the least of which is that you now make them subject to various labor laws, candidates for employer-funded medical insurance, regulations regarding overtime depending on how you classify them, etc...
As a represented employee myself, I am all about adding people to the ranks of the represented, and making them employees makes that much easier to achieve and if I were a player, that's exactly where I would go with that.
I'm honestly just surprised that a local periodontist hasn't reached a deal with Eli Brooks. Get that dude a nice new shiny tooth and a sponsorship.
NIL won’t help Michigan football. The program is too far gone. Hopefully basketball can take advantage.
All notions of schools or amateur teams as egalitarian institutions. . . pfft. Can we tattoo Waste Management Services on quarterbacks' foreheads yet? Don't cook tonight, call Chicken Delight? Is there a single fool foolish enough to believe that the rich won't get richer very quickly, and much of collegiate sports lie on life support?
Happily, we'll have the option to forego.
Nope.
I am convinced that the only way to salvage the soul of Collegiate amatuerism is to make athletic departments taxable entities.
Unless they adhere to specific standards to keep their tax exempt status. If they violate them, then they lose their tax exempt status.
Its disgusting that OSU football alone can be valued as a billion dollar franchise and it's completely tax free.
I love US Naval Academy football. 35,000 people (sellout) at every home game with great tailgating. It's an event just like M football, but on a smaller, more manageable scale. Every student, not just the football players, is getting a free ride. Now, on the other hand, the student body has to march in formation to the stadium - let's try that at U of M. Of course, they owe the navy 5 years after graduation...
Much as I love it, I am about done with big-time college football. None of the answers proposed in this thread are palatable to me. Call me an old whatever - class of 1975. Maybe the University of Chicago was just ahead of its time.
I can't believe the politicians have now gone from fucking up the country to fucking up college athletics.
The system was fine.
Next step once all the realignment is done, player salaries and college football becomes a true minor league system for the NFL. With no requirement to attend classes and no eligibility restrictions. School brand names will be way more popular than any of the other leagues that have tried to compete.
Just stop pretending about the 'student' part. Remove semi-pro/minor league football from colleges and let it be what it is. This path is just dumb and doesn't go anywhere good (adding enormous piles of money to something already corrupted by enormous piles of money is in no way a cure).
Then do the same thing with basketball, where good players have no intention of earning a degree.
Then colleges can refocus and reinvest in actual students.
And what if and then what if and then what if...
You are getting all spun up in the what if world. Suppose that players are paid (and then become employees of the school.) Do you believe that it would operate as some type of free market economy where each school could decide on how much to pay each player? Consider that every school would be mandated to operate with some type of salary cap other wise the number of schools with a program begins to dwindle and before long you are simply minor league football.
The NIL experiment is going to find that the top players are going to be compensated but they were going to have that happen in the pros anyways and the rest of the players are going to be thankful that they are on scholarship and realize that the little bit of NIL money that they do make pales in comparison to the scholarship they are getting.
Lots of good ideas here.