Article: What 2024 Commit John Bol Brings The Gators

Amazing. And the guy has already decided to come to The Rock?

Never fear, though: the NCAA is on it.
Despite NIL issues remaining unresolved entering Year 3, the NCAA now has even bigger fish to fry

 

The end of amateur sports.

 

SHOW ME THE MONEY!!

 

kind of different than say Rashada situation. This was Bols camp asking for more…including a job for a handler/friend of family and more bags beyond what NIL deals were previously discussed / agreed to.

 

The problem with following recruiting is that it’s more volatile as it’s ever been…making it more of a waste of time than it’s ever been. Let me know when they show up on campus and how happy they are when they are here.

 

Personally, all that has changed is who we are going to sign (allegedly). What transpires is going to potentially change our outlook on basketball and football. Can we live with a lesser product than what we "deserve"?

 

Um, the final end of the appearance of amateurism in the major college sports. It is ugly but it is real.

And as I post plenty of times, the other shoe to fall is when these young and naive players suddenly get cut and they are no longer BMOC. It goes both ways. It is going to be sobering for a lot of them.

 

“This” marks the end of amateur sports?? When schools started buying cars for students and admitted/passed students that could barely read, that may have marked the beginning of the end, especially when the NCAA turned a blind eye to that and academic fraud. When coaches started getting paid tens of millions not to coach, that was a sign. When schools/conferences signed TV contracts for hundreds of millions of dollars, who could have guessed they might care more about the “athlete” than the student?

The notion that these players were primarily amateurs and students in revenue sports died long ago. The only difference now is that the students are feeding openly at the same trough as all the other participants. Expecting to keep a multi billion dollar enterprise designed to make money an “amateur” sport was a canard.

As to Bol, I agree that recruiting is much less interesting now. Just wait each year to see who is on campus. So much of the joy of watching kids commit and grow is gone now, but since everything is reduced to making money (kids, schools, coaches, conferences) it is the product we are left with…

 

Schools, coaches, conferences have made investments, massive investments. Kids have not. They have potential is all.

 

But he said he was 10000% committed.

 

Very well reasoned, @SeabudGator ... if I made add to the list: "us". We get the politics we deserve -- unfortunately. And we get the college sports we deserve. We've become win-at-all-costs fans. We almost never care about GPA nor graduation rate.

It's not just college football.

I coach high school girls lacrosse. I just heard about an 8th grader who is going to switch to a Richmond high school to play for her elite travel team coach. Richmond is....60 miles away. So they're moving. The "elite" (aka $$$) machine starts young.

 

Parents moving for …. 8th grade girls lacrosse? Is this a career that changes the trajectory of that family’s existence? At some point you reach absurdity where our slavish focus on sports resembles Rome and we have lost the meaning of citizenship or a meaningful life.

Sports reflects society, and in our society there are plenty of cutting edge companies valued at billions of dollars that have little more than “potential”. Kids fresh out of law school make over $200k in NYC with little more than potential. If some alumni wants to give millions to an 18 year old kid, who am I (or you) to say that is wrong? Kid may be the athletic equivalent of Nvidia…

My point is that it is misguided to for any of us to suggest a limit as to what such an athlete is “worth.” Once you open the door to capitalism, the market decides their worth and arguing it is just “potential” falls. The kids are worth what people will pay them, just like a stock.

In my opinion kids should be getting scholarships as amateurs and the sport should be modeled as a not for profit. This means no giant TV contracts, no ridiculous coaching salaries, no ignoring of NCAA rules, no admission of kids who cannot be admitted but for sports, and teams actually are barred from playing if their athletes do not pass classes. That ain’t happening, and it is similarly Pollyanna to complaining about what kids make under NIL.