The differences in the freedom coaches have as compared to players is often cited, myself included. What is overlooked is that while coaches can move on whenever they want, it still comes at a price, typically paid by whomever is poaching the coach away. So, there is a penalty involved, it’s just monetary. So the difference remains in that coaches have their penalties paid on their behalf while players have to pay their own penalty by sitting a year. That brings us right back to an unfairness I can’t quite reconcile.
So to me, the answer lies in a penalty the receiving program pays on behalf of the player. Obviously the passing of money doesn’t work here, but there needs to be something. And no, using a scholarship on someone for a year who isn’t playing doesn’t actually add up to a penalty worth counting. There was a commitment made and the player wants to back out, but ultimately there is a program losing an asset and another gaining, just like in a situation with a coach. Why can’t they be handled more similarly?
FYI - the length of commitment being made by a signee:
http://www.nationalletter.org/frequentlyAskedQuestions/bindingAgreement.html
To me this is kind of like the argument for raising the minimum wage. It’s a good thing for the individual & probably doable for the large corporations who are making huge profits. It’s not so easy for the mid-size & small business without as much profit to spread around. If those smaller businesses fail or lay off employees because they can’t afford to pay the increased wage then it ends up hurting the employees who lose their jobs. The transfer rule & NIL rule were both put into place to maintain some level of parity & not meant to exploit student athletes. Way back then ESPN wasn’t lining the pockets of the top conferences & the NCAA wasn’t making hundreds of millions on March Madness. Some things need to be changed like spreading NCAA & television revenue around more evenly but the changes being proposed in my opinion are going to make things worse, not better. If the entire NCAA collapses or non P5’S discontinue athletic programs due to these changes, a lot of athletes will no longer have the chance to become student athletes and get an education they probably couldn’t have otherwise. People are so fast to want to change the way things have been in the past without really thinking about the reasons things are the way they are or the consequences of changing them. The rules were not set up to help the NCAA make a killing off of college athletes. The rules were set up to maintain a level of parity (I realize that is already dwindling away) that has made March Madness very successful & exciting & therefore very profitable. Allow the blue bloods to poach every up & coming player from mid majors & a lot of that excitement goes away. This rant was kind of all over the place & a little off topic but I am just very concerned about the future, if we even have one, of 49er athletics. If you are more concerned about Zion being able to have a shoe deal legally in college or a college athlete being able to make a knee jerk reaction to transfer after a rough practice, not getting playing time, or not getting enough media coverage than you are 49er athletics I really don’t know why you are here or even follow 49er athletics.
Is this rule the right thing for the student athletes? Sure.
Is it also the right time for me to walk away? Yes.
I asked this before, curious what folks opinions are. If we basically have player free agency and NIL rules allow basically paying players - clearly benefiting The top 20-30 athletic departments, do you feel it is right for student fees to continue to subsidize college athletics?
I don’t think student fees should continue in that case. However, if they want free tix they should be able to put those costs in their tuition if they wish.
I don’t see how transfer and NIL rules changes have much, if anything, to do with one another. It’s not like any program similar to our’s makes any more money off those rules change, so what do those rules and student fees have to do with one another anyway?
If kids can transfer freely and they leave for bigger programs while at the same time making cash on the side for their likeness, it’s not like the program still won’t be paying a scholarship and fronting the expenses for them to compete while at Charlotte. That’s exactly what student fees go to support.
My argument is students fees funding a budget for competitive programs is one thing. If Nike is able to basically buy talent and place it at top P5 programs, effectively rendering low level P5 and G5 programs just a farm team, should our students pay 4-5k over their academic career in fees to keep an athletics department in business that can’t win?
Well, first I think we should all agree that if student fees were tied to winning, at any point up until now, student fees would have been canceled in lots of places, including ours. And to your point, G5 can’t win anything now anyway. MAYBE we’ll see some G5 programs go deep into March, but for the most part we’ve all been watching the P5 party without us for years. Those rules changes, if they do what you fear, only make a bad problem worse.
And if all that ends up being the case, I think you’d see overall donations plunge first, then eventually someone picking the fight about student fees as programs hang on to what they had before.
So you’re basically saying we are in a gun fight with nothing but a slingshot so we might as well give our opponent a nuke?
I am at the point that I am ready for P5 to just go ahead and break away and return college athletics back to all the schools left behind.
I’m just saying things won’t be THAT different from what they are now, and the feeling that donations should stop and student fees should be reconsidered all of a sudden is a bit of an over reaction considering all that.
Well my preference would be changing rules that help level the playing field for all D1 schools but if we are going in the other direction maybe TheShowDawg is right. Maybe the P5 should just split off & form their own semi-pro mens basketball & football leagues. Looks like that’s where we are headed.
I think there few distinctions. It’s really basketball and football that are dominated by the top 30 or so P5s. Those schools also have little to no student fees support.
Other sports still see plenty of winning at the national level for non P5s. The transfer rules when combined with NIL just takes college sports really far down a professional sports model, essentially allowing free agency and paying players. This means any P5 elite school can win any sport by just buying Successful players at the lower level. Oregon comes to mind because Nike could just sign any and all athletes and pay them.
My point is, is it fair to continue to ask our students to pay 4-5k in athletic fees for a program that is relegated to a farm team for the very top.
I think we ask them to pay too much already, but the idea that it contributes to the experience and such makes it worth it. If the teams become Lambert and Price teams In all sports year over year and the Ls are ordinary and the crowds are tiny is it fair to make students continue to pay that?
I’m just looking at the dominos here. I get that the board is tilted against us right now but these changes happen and we aren’t even on the board.
I wonder a little bit how much the NIL will really change anything. The whales for P5s are likely already funding the players under the table, so this just gives them a path to making it legal.
At G5 schools a Charles Bassey at WKU might get some cash for signing autographs at the IGA on a Saturday afternoon, but he isn’t going to get rich. Part of the problem is when you are systemically blocked from winning the NCAA or being on ESPN nobody wants to throw money at you.
My concern isnt whales it’s corporations. If they can sign a player and steer them wherever that’s hugely concerning. Even more so if they can just pluck from G5 or lower level P5. Being out in the open just creates a P5 arms race.
With California and Florida passing the NIL laws already, have either laws added any regulatory language aimed at protecting athletes from all the sharks that may otherwise be allowed to operate in the open?
NWA’s assumptions aren’t unrealistic, but I really can’t imagine things would just be opened up as a free for all who have money to throw at whomever they want. Unfettered, college athletes would be taken advantage of at every turn, so I’m assuming SOMEBODY has ideas for how to have a check on that. If overall handouts to players at P5 programs are tempered, that would make this transfer rule also less of a blow to the G5.
The NCAA can’t enforce the existing rules so I have no faith in them to enforce any new rules necessary to make sure athletes aren’t exploited. It’s very black & white right now. No sponsorship or benefits are permissible & they can’t enforce that. If certain things are permitted & other things are not it opens up all kinds of grey areas that can be exploited.