Not sure of the future of CFB. Money has become the end game for the players and this old timer is close to moving on from the sport I really love. Good friend who is a Nolie has opted out. Know another long time Gator pal with family tix for 50 years who is not renewing. Maybe Stricklin is right to reduce capacity cuz it maybe difficult to fill the stadium in the coming years as many fans simply get disillusioned and opt out as well. Loyalty to a school and academics are no longer important. Money is king. Issue is whether you want to be a part of it going forward. Saw where Wash St QB was entertained in Miami by Cristobal and some rapper at a high end restaurant with a $1000 bottle of champaign. Perhaps it was better when bagmen roamed the earth and the fans were shielded from the underside of the sport.
While it will get saner in the end (unless there is one of those meteor striking events), what it is becoming will just get clearer. And that may not be what the traditional fans desire.
Obviously, something has to be done. While I understand why the courts did not think it was fair-or legal-for third parties to profit off the NIL of players without compensating them, inherent in that decision was that their NIL would ACTUALLY be used. The "actually used" part has been completely by passed. Force the "collectives" to demonstrate how the player's NIL was actually used in order to justify the payments. If they can't, bust the University for recruiting violations. To me, that seems a much easier task than trying to track down the shadow booster payments of the past, because now it is open and publicized.
Man, this place is going to be a ghost town when the season starts back up with all these posters proclaiming they are done with college football. and YES the Gators are just as much a part of college football as any other team.
I dropped season tickets a while back and cancelled my insider account at another site. This is the first year I didn’t watch every game live. (TV) Sadly, It's just not there for me like it used to be. I’ll still follow the Gators here. Read more than post.
I’ve been done for the last 2 seasons. Kids played for regional bragging rights. We cheered for regional players and bragging rights. Now, $1M to stay at your school??? Complete crap. Reminds me of when Miami got rid of Shula for that sleaze ball Jimmy Johnson. First thing he did was get Lawrence, drag her by the hair for 3 flights of stairs” Phillips. College football has always been my game and I enjoyed the highs and lows of Gator football. First season was 0-10-1. Not anymore.
Those are good points. You know, it occurs to me that I've still never personally seen an NIL ad with the name, image, or likeness of a local college player in it... odd.
With players speaking on podcasts and streaming channels of late, I wonder if they are all nil engagements
I am curious about where all this NIL money is coming from. There are a handful of national ads with college players but otherwise I don’t see anything. Really it’s just ‘collectives’ paying players to play at their school. Who is putting all that money into collectives to pay players? Does anyone actually care what soda or hamburger the quarterback at XYZ pretends to like?
The kids do lots of stuff for the collective. Few gators have been in commercials for local businesses too.
The strange thing to me is that many of the universities are trying to become elite academic institutions (UF &UGA as an example) at the same time as ignoring any semblance of pursuit of higher education in Football. I really do hope a CLEAN split happens in the near future. League A is a minor league with farm teams paid whatever they market will hold and League B is 100% amateur (only kids that can earn a spot at the school they attend irrespective of athletics can play full stop). Hopefully this happens sooner rather than later and ironically I think BN would be a great coach of league B Gators.
it was definitely better when Georgia was giving Fred Taylor $50,000 under the table. What people don’t know doesn’t seem to bother them.
The Ivy league is already that and nobody gives a shit. You have to have good players. truly nobody wants to watch a bunch of untalented guys play, tidilly winks. It is a complete mess though, and a lot of people are losing interest.
At least Fred would’ve had to sit out a year or two as a penalty/disincentive to transfer, if he were so inclined to shop around for even more money.
Well he went to Florida, so he just might have. In the interview, he never did say Florida paid him anything.
Well, you couldn’t watch the first game cuz ESPN pulled their $#!+. About 90% of us didn’t watch it either.
Did Fred mention any money from FSU? Bobby wanted Fred bad enough to lie to him on his visit to FSU. Fred found out about Bobby’s lies the following week when he visited UF. How much did Reidel Anthony receive?