A lot of interesting stuff in this article. Didnāt realize in some states, schools are already feeding their own money into collectives.
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Interesting numbers on this redacted NIL invoice, most certainly from a public P4 school. Looks like only teams in which every member is getting whatās listed as a āTalent Feeā are menās basketball and gymnastics. In fact, MBB is over the scholarship limit of 13 with 15. Anyway, no surprise that vast majority of money is going to football and menās hoops, with latter actually getting the most.
I donāt think there is anyway to make the NIL playing field equal without collective bargaining.
How do you limit the spending without that?
I donāt think you can.
Until then itās a mishmash of state and NCAA regulations.
I think we are going to see years of more Wild West before this gets fully organized.
You would think the P4 would be more interested in controlling costs and making them predictable and manageable, but until they are forced to do so there is going to be a lot of incentives to screw their rivals on player acquisition via NIL until the money dries up. And it may never dry up.
The issue is unlike the NFL or NBA where a single entity has an eye at the health of the entire program college sports are just individual college looking out for themselves. Why would Ohio state or Georgia do anything that limits their ability and gives other schools an equal footing?
Once you open up the NIL and pay for play can of worms you have to go completely in on the professional model or there will never be anything close to a level playing field. Without those tampering and salary cap guardrails like the NBA and NFL have, there is nothing to keep those with the most money from always running over everyone else. I think a level playing field was the original intent of a lot of the NCAA rules that have recently been eliminated and not taking advantage of the student athletes like some would have you think.
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One could argue equal footing first started to unravel when the NCAA went from a single division to a couple in 1957 with the creation of the University and College divisions with the former comprised of the highest level programs and the latter the lowest ones, typically corresponding with size of school.
Then in 1973, it became three divisions - D-I, D-II, and D-III. The first two were allowed to offer scholarships, while none in the third. Further subdivision came in 1978 with D-IA and D-IAA for programs with football. (D-IAAA was the designation for programs without football, which included the Niners until football was resurrected.) Division renaming followed in 2006 with D-IA becoming FBS, while D-IAA became FCS.
As far as basketball goes, the last small school to win the NCAAT was Loyola Chicago in 1963, while the last time for whatās now called a mid-major was Texas Western (now UTEP) in 1966. The Larry Johnson-led UNLV team in 1990 - while no mid-major in any sense of the term - was the last champion outside the menās hoops P6.
And as the MBB Selection Committee have shown and more recently with the MCWS Selection Committee this week, a level playing field is a thing of the past.
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Great points, Run. I think the main difference between then and now is that they used to try and keep up appearances. Now they just screw you over out in the open and shrug their shoulders if you object.
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Yeah this was my point. Hasnāt been a level playing field in a long time but the rules were at least, in theory, setup to help. But now weāre moving much further away from that instead of closer.
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Itās not going to last. Itās just a question of when and how. Iām in favor of refusing to play the cartel schools.
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Wow, no revenue problem in college sports! 
clt says we need to be able to bet on the end of college sports
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What are the chances we see schools spin football and basketball off away from AD into legit franchises that just use college name?
The school cold just be part of the ownership group
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The lengths these greedy bastards will go to to get around any rule put in front of them makes me wish the G5 would just become itās own division or join FCS. Canāt compete with them because we donāt have the money and wouldnāt want to play their shady little games even if we could afford it. Top level NCAA athletics is one of the most corrupt, dirtiest businesses in this country. The US government is about the only thing I can think of that can compete.
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If you are buying NIL rights does that now mean we can trade players? Just curious. Sounds a lot like pro sports with swapping player contracts.
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That seems likely the path weāre headed down.