Athletic departments that can’t fund their programs now want State assistance to use University funds to pay for athletes and their NIL? When will it end? Crazy the direction this is taking us. Even Ohio State is $40 million in debt as a top program. Others have no chance. Reason why the Texas big oil type schools will always have top recruiting classes now. NFL should just have a minor league at this point and college athletics should just be amateur sports again. Just a ship and college education. Want more, go to the NFL development leagues
Does anyone really believe those two program's athletic departments completely fund themselves now? If so I've got a neat bridge for sale in Brooklyn.
Unless I’m reading it wrong?? UF was around $167mil on both expenses/revenue. Massive difference vs Texas, 1/2. https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/...3/5/25/2023_2024_Executive_Budget_Summary.pdf
Which is why those leagues won't pay. The situation we find ourselves in as fans is that the players have every incentive to keep the current college NIL model. It maximizes their potential revenue stream. The Colleges on the other hand would like to minimize that expense but hang on for dear life to their revenue stream from TV, Ticket sales, and booster contributions. Many have created such facility debt that they would not be able to service it without the TV revenue stream or a taxpayer bailout if the whole enterprise went off-campus. The result is a Catch-22 with Title IX being thrown in as a wildcard. If you follow the money, it is obvious that there will never be a voluntarily created Dev league for the NFL.
Alabama developed this model and proved it could work when Saban arrived, albeit mainly in Football. Their "NIL" expenditures soared, their talent assembled spiked and with the Championships, so did their revenue stream. Alabama's president even said that the $10M paycheck to Saban was the best investment they had ever made.
I don't really care what the NFL wants or what's good for the NFL, and the NCAA and it's member institutions would have done well to take a similar approach/attitude decades ago. The key issue here is that football is the only sport where there is no pro option out of HS. If that pro option had been in place - like it is in basketball, baseball, hockey, soccer, etc. - you might have been able to hold NIL off in the courts. But because there was no option out of HS, they were forced to rule the way they did. And I'm pretty sure they laid this out in their opinions. The system - NFL and NCAA - were literally colluding to deny a pro option out of HS. USSC had no choice. THIS is why I've been hammering this drum for decades.
I don't know if its the anti-trust exemption that is preventing players from going to the NFL directly from HS. I'm no expert, but my thought was the exemption was so that the NFL could negotiate a TV deal as a single entity rather than however many diff teams (you can tell I'm a big NFL fan...I don't even know how many teams there are currently). If I'm not mistaken, its the Collective Bargaining Agreement that keeps players from going directly to the NFL until they reach a certain criteria. That is what has been upheld by the courts, which is mystifying to me since it allows direct discrimination of legal adults based on age. Personally, I think the CBA should have been struck down by the courts....but to your point of collusion, I completely agree.
NFL rule mandating that players be at least 3 years removed from High School, backed by the NCAA. Cynical rule sold as "caring about the kid's education" when, in fact, it's all about saving $$$$$. The only rule more cynical (and openly so) would be the One-and-done (see: Kwame Brown) rule. Yeah, it's all about "the kids" and has nothing to do with wanting a smaller and more qualified sample size to scout/draft. That was always going to be the opening as I saw it and how they would wedge something like NIL into the system. Again, all about greed. NCAA couldn't stomach losing a single smidge of revenue, so they just went along, even though they were setting themselves up for disaster. My suggestion then (and somewhat now) is to go to war with the NFL. Start by making an announcement that academic standards (both for admission and eligibility) are going to drastically go up. Then watch the NFL squirm as they debate reaching into their pockets to fund a minor league or just watch all that talent waste away in the streets. Never happen, but if you wanted to force change, that would be the first place to start. P.S. And to be perfectly honest, this goes back a ways for me. I remember "annonomus" GM's talking shit about Urban's offense not "training players for the NFL." FU! That's not his job! They get all of this for free, and they still bitch and disrespect us by screwing with our recruiting. And we're doing these aholes favors? Why?
They also could go to war with the NFL by eliminating eligibility limits. Also allowing players that declare for the draft to be eligible players if they return because they don't like their NFL offer, drafting team, or draft position. Why the dichotomy between college baseball players that can do that now and football players that are prevented? Some enterprising player should get a lawyer and challenge that blatantly unfair rule...I'm sure the NCAA would cave as usual.
If what you’re saying was true, they would be getting paid for their play and the courts would have forced the employment issue. That’s not what’s happening. They were allowed to get paid for their NIL like every other college student has been allowed to do since the beginning of time. Don’t think the decision had anything to do with having no pro option. They only have no pro option because the pro’s don’t want them. They do actually have pro options too, college has just traditionally been a better option than other crappy pro leagues.
BOOM! This too!!! We're already seeing a little bit of this with guys staying for NIL money over lower round picks.
