I never really believed it, but had hoped those of you who said we were in a good place for NIL with the large business community in Charlotte, were right. But it has turned into what I was afraid of much faster then I expected. It has nothing to do with advertisements or selling a product. It is all about pay to play & if you donāt have graduates & alumni who own successful businesses & support the program you are out of luck. Im ready for the top 30-40 programs to break off & leave the rest of us to go back to the way college athletics used to be. I donāt care if we all become FCS. Just give me a system where those with the most money & television networks donāt call all the shots. I would prefer the FCS system where the NCAA is still in charge & has real authority.
It wonāt be 30-40, at least not long term.
Initially, the ability of the booster groups of 30 to 40 programs to pay anything will separate them from schools like us, until we wither and die (and take with it 85 opportunities to play CFB in exchange for an education, food and a place to live).
But eventually, with NO OVERSIGHT ENTITY and no guardrails in place, the NIL arms race will start claiming victims amongst even those that break off, as the prices for college players get driven higher and higher. Again: see UCLA. Itās the natural, inevitable end of an unregulated competitive system.
It crosses over into culture war / political discourse, but itās a fact of life. Survival of the fittest isnāt a kumbaya party. It means that only a small number, sometimes just 2, or even 1, survive.
In college sports, there is probably just enough geographic resistance/ support to keep one team per region alive, maybe 2 in Florida and Texas. That equals maybe 12 or 16 teams, depending. Thatās the only natural guardrail against a Highlander āthere can be only oneā endgame. Itāll take boosters in entire regions pooling money to afford to bankroll an entire roster as the prices of elite players go up and up. Meanwhile, those 3 star and below kids will lose all of their current opportunity when all of the other 130 or so FBS programs throw in the towel, because who wants to try to compete with an NFL roster? (At some point, it could get so ridiculous that Alabama may actually be able to compete with the Jacksonville Jaguars, instead of that being a stupid bar fight debate).
Especially if what NWA says happens. Expiring eligibility is the last separation between NFL and College teams. If you have no salary cap on college programs, and no expiring eligibility, than how can the NFL even compete? Those NFL teams are subject to a salary cap, but Alabama isnāt. This sounds ridiculous but itās the logical conclusion to the current trends.
Realize if you havenāt already that the NFL has 3 HUGE COMPETIVE BALANCE MEASURES which are what makes it a viable competition:
- A Salary Cap
- A Draft
- A (much smaller than FBS) roster limit
FBS / CFP football has NONE of those and likely never will, now that there is not even the specter of an oversight entity left. The only potential opportunities to change that are probably: 1) Congressional / State government intervention, and 2) a grassroots coalition amongst the current FBS programs to put a stop to it by establishing such oversight and competitive measures.
I donāt see either of those options happening in enough of a deterrent level to stop this out of control train. The sport is in its early death throes. Itās over. All thatās left is to watch this play out to inevitability.
NA, I know Iām the old curmudgeon on the board but Iāve been saying this for a while now. Itās over if care anything about anything other than having a good time with friends at the games. Iāll keep doing that and anything else is gravy.
The quicker we can get into a different division than the legally cheating big boys the better. Once again, where Iām from there isnāt anything wrong with winning a AA state championship.
the attempted Euro Superleague shows that fans do have the power to stop this. The issue is the fans of the top programs donāt really give a damn about th college football product. They just care about their program.
We are still a young football program and our facilities need expansion. The money I contribute will be going towards the building campaigns for the time being. I have no interest in contributing to a NIL collective at this time. If that means we lose players that is a trade off Iām willing to accept.
I realize that we have to fund raise for facilities, but wouldnāt it be prudent to start a collective and still encourage people to give the majority towards the building fund? All of our peers have collectives now. Hate to get left in the dust when we are so close.
Hootie, the only place I disagree with you is that I believe this out of control train isnāt just going to relegate us to an FCS level of football, I am also genuinely worried that it will kill the entire sport in the process, through a series of gradually harsher and harsher cuts until school presidents, state legislatures, and even fans just say āto hell with itā.
Yeah, even the fans. With so many other entertainment outlets, CFB is only interesting at its highest competitive levels. Without that draw, as people like me and you keel over, we wonāt be replaced. Younger potential fans will find something more relevant to apply their $ and attention to.
In the interim, I agree with you: enjoy the tailgate. Thatās all thatās left.
Your post and NWAs are interesting, but I worry they represent micro level and not macro.
Pay to play represents a massive shift in the revenue streams in college football.
Currently, FBS football programs are supported by 3 primary revenue streams:
- Booster / Alumni donations
- Media Rights
- Student Fees
We all know the issues with #3. As this gets more ridiculous, I contend that #3 being yanked from athletic departments becomes more and more likely.
That leaves the top 2. Right now, the networks already enjoy huge control over the programs / system via #2. You might as well rebrand the SEC and B1G as the āFOXSPORTS CFB LEAGUEā and the āESPN CFB LEAGUEā.
Pay to play NIL is going to result in even more economic pressure on athletic departments, and more resulting control by the networks as Booster dollars (revenue stream #1) are allocated out of the revenue streams of the AD and into NIL collectives so that Michigan can buy a better QB to beat OSU and so forth. That check that an Arkansas booster was writing to the AD every year is going to get chopped down to $0 eventually as he/she has to instead send that money to the Razorback NIL collective so that the program can stay competitive in the SEC. And even then, theyāll probably go 4-8 because they just donāt have as much money as Bamaās NIL collective (or Ohio Stateās or Notre Dameās, etc). At what point does Billy Bob Razorback Booster throw up his hands in futility? That is the end game reality of Pay to Play. These are well documented forces inside and outside of this industry. Itās why the NFL has its competition measures to ensure itās product stays viable.
The Networks can choose to subsidize half of their new leagues operations to try to maintain some competition, but they can only subsidize the AD itself. Until such time as they are directly paying players, itāll be up to the boosters to fund the team payrolls, and there are limits. As they tap out, the gap widens until more and more programs give up or are marginalized into obscurity (the latter being the Vanderbilt effect).
Meanwhile, the booster dollars that allowed the ADs some measure of independence from the networks are going to be reallocated leaving the ADs 100% beholden to the networks. Ask any AD how they feel about that.
The sport is dead. The train is a runaway, and I cannot think of any likely method to get a conductor back on it to hit the brakes. We are all going to watch it drive itself off a cliff. Itās over folks. Itās just a question of when now.
I think the problem is that the NCAA has talked about cracking down on collectives & boosters paying players but they havenāt enforced it yet. This kind of thing wasnāt supposed to be allowed but it wasnāt enforced & schools are going to push it as far as they can & dare the NCAA to do something about it. It seems like we are trying to play by those rules instead of pushing the limits like many others have.
clt would prefer to give money to the 49er club than a 49er NIL.
At what point does the NCAAs inaction destroy their ability to ever do anything about it?
The NCAA has done only one thing in recent years: continue to abdicate its enforcement responsibility / authority in these situations. Theyāre too busy giving Cleveland State the death penalty for using #3 pencils on their scantron forms. The NCAA is a joke. There isnāt a single big boy AD that thinks that organization has any teeth left, and the NCAA itself seems to agree. That ship has sailed.
BTW, here is where we already are in terms of competition. Pay to Play NIL is just going to make this worse:
Any familiar names there?
I probably need to move all this discussion to the NIL thread. Iāll probably do that in a bit. As the chief culprit, Iām sorry.
I think I mentioned it earlier in the thread, but I talked with Chris Fuller and he said for the most part the collectives have not represented new money into an AD at this point. They are simply companies and boosters repurposing their current support from gifts and sponsorships to the AD to directly to the players.
Obviously this COULD represent just the tip and after some winning they maintain both revenue streams, but I would bet that they wonāt significantly increase their giving if they are giving to collectives. That means many of these ADs will have to come to a financial balance of not bringing in additional capital for salaries, facilities etc. Now it is true they are now getting a bucket load of cash from media partners, but this is still a significant impact to AD current revenue models.
The student fee mention by NA is I think a HUGE issue. For schools that rely on those fees, students should be on the edge of revolt. If there is soooooo much money in college football then why are they paying anything? Of course at Bama they donāt, but when this hits the courts they arenāt going to care if its Bama, or State or us.
I donāt think NIL will play out exactly as some are prognosticating. Some of these NIL collectives may never get off the ground or run out of steam. When I give to the athletic department I have a pretty good idea how the money is being spent (annual reports). NIL money could be misused or squandered. You could also blow all your money on the wrong players. I think more time needs elapse before our fans get majorly distraught.
NinerGreene thatās kinda the concern though. Thereās gonna be a handful of teams with such deep pockets it doesnāt matter if they can count
Weāre on the other side of that coin.
And the Sanchez comments are just bad, good gracious just give up dudeā¦
Here is a question Iām gonna ask even if I donāt like the answer or what it means for our program:
Assuming one of us had won that big lottery jackpot the other day, how excited would you be to create an NIL Pay to Play warchest with your winnings, to compete with the big boys? Do you think it would be an effective (forget smart) use of your money?
I would have donated to facilities improvement but I wouldnāt be interested in getting into bidding wars for college athletes. F that.
I think I would have seeded some cash, but the majority of the money would have gone to capital expenses. I think its a combo. The league/brand plus the NIL. I donāt think just straight cash gets it done honestly. So no matter how much we offered we wouldnāt have made a huge leap, but certainly would have contributed enough to make our NIL collective competitive with AAC schools and given us a leg up on all but State and Chapel Hill in state.
clt would have donated enough $20M for the fb expansion and required more bojangles at the rich
Iām a Charlotte fan not a SEC fan. We have a lot of items that need to be funded on the priority list over throwing money at random players that could bounce on a whim. If I ran into a windfall of cash I would donate to tangible facilities projects then to academics.