Just compare the interest of college baseball to college football. It may be a better “system” in your mind, but I’m not sure it’s a better business model.
The NCAA very much created this mess. "NIL" was going on for years and the NCAA selectively "enforced" the rules. Had the NCAA actually dealt with the PREVALENT cheating at certain schools back in the day they could have gotten a handle on it and we would have actual college football not some jumbled up version of NFLSECACCBIGMONEY league.
I didn’t say that they didn’t create this mess. I said they didn’t “wish” to create this mess. This was not their goal. They are incompetent and they 100% did create it, but this was not their goal. Their goal was to stop it completely. They should have been proactive and tried to come up with something before the court rulings, but they weren’t and this is what they got. They don’t have the power to do much about it at this point either.
I’m not gonna run numbers and percentages, but my guess is that the percentage attendance in college baseball compared to MLB is a fraction of the percentage attendance of college football compared to NFL. A lot of that has to do with the current “broken” system as many want to call it.
Football players aren’t your average college students. I would guess it hasn’t changed all that much and that there are some players getting an education and some are just there to play football. The opportunity is still there for the kids that want an education. I don’t think that part has changed.
I don't think attendance comparisons are really valuable comparisons. There are 30 MLB teams and 32 NFL teams compared to, it looks like 301 D1 baseball teams (I could be wrong I asked google) and 131 football teams. That said ncaaf has been about business for a long time, whereas I think NCAA baseball is still mostly about baseball.
Not sure what other metrics we can use relative to the respective sports, but my point is the current system where college football is the farm system to the NFL is generating far more interest in the sport. Those that say they love the purity of amateur athletics of college baseball are the same ones that won’t support our baseball team.
They might just not like baseball. Personally I've been to quite a few games but it isn't interesting enough to cause me to plan around it. Many of the most popular college football players, both by name recognition and likely revenue generation, have hardly been successful in the NFL. The NCAAF is not successful because it's a farm system to the NFL, the NFL uses the success of NCAAF to get around funding its own farm system. Minor and semi pro leagues are money pits. It's tough to find meaningful comparative metrics because outside of both being football leagues the NFL and NCAAF are very different creatures. Or were, not so much anymore, and the ball is up in the air as to if this is good or bad on a macro level.
Yeah, I'm beginning to think that some people in the NCAA had their hands out just like the 5* star players at UGA. It's like they played favorites for certain teams, and that goes all the way back to the Escalades at the FSU players parking lot. They have picked winners and losers by not investigating cheating teams for years... someone was getting paid at the NCAA level not to hand out penalties with teeth.
It’s a member institution. The ncaa is just the colleges themselves. The teams with the most power aren’t going to use their power to punish themselves. Will the nil stuff, they’ve now lost most of whatever control they used to have anyway.
I never thought that it would happen, but I am starting to feel my interest in college football waning. I don't begrudge the players for taking whatever NIL money they can get and looking to the transfer portal for better opportunities. These guys should do what is best for them. The problem for me is that I root for UF because I'm an alum, loved my time at UF, and felt a connection to the student-athletes at my alma mater. That sense of connection is rapidly fading for me. Without that connection, there just becomes less of a reason for me to care about what a collection of players who happened to stop by UF for a season do during that season. I sometimes wonder if I am wishing for a return to something that never was. The college experience of a football player at UF even before NIL was already a lot different than mine, so maybe that connection only existed in my head.
Great post Doc........... Sums it up for me. I don't begrudge players and families wanting to make some money. Ya know, capatalism, the most defining aspect of the American Experience since 1776. I sometimes wonder if I am wishing for a return to something that never was. Very intriguing sentence here and difficult to explain it. For me the sport was essentially amatuer, with a ruling body. The problem, like any "institutionalized" idea is that the persons controlling the NCAA and trusted to "fairly" enforce the rules, failed in that mission. It became a "good ole boys club". "Do what I say, not as I do" kind of thing.
While the experience itself was likely much different, both you and the football player went to UF because of an actual desire to go to the school. You and the player wanted to be UF Gators. Now that is no longer true, that's a pretty important change in my opinion. That was the only thing I had in common with the student athletes at UF as well.
Like i said before, if a school sells $10 million in Tebow jerseys, he deserves a cut or an arrangement established etc. If the kid has true social media following and can make money off it let them. If a kid can sell their jerseys, apparel with autographs let them. If the kid was famous in high school like Zion, let them profit on that. But just paying a kid because he's coming to UF or UGA is wrong. These collectives are such horse crap. They are a new business model for people running the collectives to get paid. It should be up to the kid to get endorsements or find companies interested in their NIL -- not collectives set up by boosters. It shouldn't be "how much NIL money can I have if attend your school" --- These kids want handouts. Your getting a freaking handout, its called a 4 year all expense paid scholarship with the best trainers, dr., coaches at your finger tips. All D1 athletes at power 5 schools work their tales off, its non-stop 7 days a week, with very little time off. It gets worse when your team is actually good, everything is x10, expectations are higher and accountability.
