It has been about the money for many years, and things just got worse. Get used to it, if you weren’t already.
A&M paying players for top recruiting class?
- Thread starter ChiTownLionPSU
- Start date
College football has officially become a “legal” freaking cesspool. Ugh
This is the kind of nonsense that Franklin has to deal with when he's out there recruiting against the TAMU's of the world.
It’s the SEC baby and the gloves are off. More and more of the elite talent will go there and more teams will sign up. In ten years, it will be the stepping stone to the NFL. It will become the American Football League with 30 teams. The combine will be every weekend. Everyone else will play college football.
College baseball players get far less scholarship money than their football counterparts, and most minor-league baseball players are barely paid at all, and live in poverty. Young football players better hope they aren't creating that kind of environment for themselves.
I'm sure in the very near future the content of talks with recruits & parents will be " forget about this bull **** scholarship & degree.....show me the money"
Indeed, this is where it's headed. Unless we get a bunch of wealthy donor to start up an NIL fund we're gonna be left in the dust
setting up NIL deals for what are essentially shell LLCs isn’t a big deal?
it’d be like pegula creating “midnighter llc” putting 100 million into it and then signing every kid we wanted to sponsor it even though it’s not really a thing.
I see D1A football spinning off into a tier 1 & tier 2 league. Who knows, maybe the NCAA is smarter than we think. If you really think about the idea of paying players, it’s the NFL that has the most to lose. I could see a superstar (college senior) with 4 or 5 million in the bank walking away from the sport after college.
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It’s no longer nil in that case. It has nothing to do with legitimate marketing opportunities. It’s just buying players. It’s different and iirc one of the few stipulations put in place was that funds couldn’t be contingent on attedance at a certain school which this flies pretty directly in the face of.
It’d be like the cowboys being up against the cap so Jerry Jones just sets up the “F Goodell LLC” and signs every additional free agent he wants to some massive marketing deal.
I've always liked the idea of adapting the baseball model to football. The fly in the ointment is the NFL. Greed is king there and it would be a hard fight to have the league pay for something they already get for free.
That stipulation is just about the easiest thing to meet while still effectively being tied to a specific school. It's also very questionable it could survive a court challenge if the ncaa tried to enforce it. The ncaa was already told they essentially have no say over what players can do outside of the actual sport.
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Agree for all sports, let the pro league dictate who is ready and who is not by creating a minor league or g league type. Need to move the LOI and draft times a bit so colleges are not losing kids in late July. Can use the usfl as the minors, split up each usfl team to be an affiliate of 4 nfl teams.
Correct. It will take an ironclad agreement with real teeth by the NFL & NCAA, to put this nonsense to rest. Sure, you will have social organizations and agents jumping up and down about equity and injustices, but if done correctly it will withstand any legal challenge. If nothing is done expect this to become a major financial hardship for colleges which usually means significantly higher tuition for parents of real students.
NIL is not governed by the NCAA to my knowledge; it's regulated/controlled by individual states. Whatever the NCAA has in place is vague/toothless enough to allow for a very broad application of NIL and that is what schools like Texas and A&M are talking advantage of. The NFL comparison is moot since there are rules in the CBA that provide for severe penalties (fines, loss of draft picks, etc.) in the event an owner is found trying to circumvent or compromise the salary cap (via backdoor licensing payments, payments to wives, etc.). Until the NCAA does more than what they have below (which is their NIL guidance), it's a free for all. They say this still prevents 'pay for play', but it doesn't, and they won't do anything about it. Texas NIL law prohibits a school from paying a player - doesn’t prevent a company or charitable organization from doing it though (same in Michigan which is why the Williams offer has been so blatantly advertised without consequence or as much as a raised eyebrow). Get with it or don't.
The policy provides the following guidance to college athletes, recruits, their families and member schools:
- Individuals can engage in NIL activities that are consistent with the law of the state where the school is located. Colleges and universities may be a resource for state law questions.
- College athletes who attend a school in a state without an NIL law can engage in this type of activity without violating NCAA rules related to name, image and likeness.
- Individuals can use a professional services provider for NIL activities.
- Student-athletes should report NIL activities consistent with state law or school and conference requirements to their school.
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So you are suggesting that the NFL and the NCAA collude to determine when someone can become eligible to move to the NFL level. I really don't think the NFL wants to put its anti-trust exemption in jeopardy,
Why would it be collusion? If it’s about putting specific parameters in place where neither party enriches itself from the agreement it can be done, at least I think it can be done. Also, isn’t collusion extremely difficult to prove?
Rex Chapman was saying last week that he got offers from every Ivy League school and he only had a 17 ACT.
The NCAA functions as an extension of the schools by contract, so it can do anything the member institutions want to do. If the schools all want to have anything goes, then NCAA can follow. It may be constrained in by state trademark laws which is where the NIL would fit.
Yes - NIL in in state trademark law jurisdiction. Nothing to do with the NCAA. The NCAA is essentially an extension of the schools and under contract with the member institutions can enforce anything that they want, that is within the law. The question on the table is not NIL itself, but the use of NIL $$$ to induce players to enroll or play for a given school. This interim policy clearly prohibits using NIL $$ to recruit an individual to attend a certain school. That could very easily be tested. BakerTilly (compliance law firm specializing in universities) indicates that BYU and Miami are now under NCAA investigation for violating this rule. I think the permanent rule is going to very likely address this, as the majority of the universities (President on the NCAA boards) will want this addressed. TAMU is in the minority.
My brother is a compliance lawyer and works in Columbus, and does some work at OSU. He says that the NCAA contract is actually hard to attack legally, but NCAA has given in without a fight in court on some matters. While he works in legal compliance, athletics is not his area, but he sees what is going on. The NCAA can make any rule it wants, as long as it does not violate state/fed law or regulations. For example, the NCAA could make a regulation that says any athlete who falls below X GPA and not making progress to their degree, could be held ineligible for participation. The athlete has not legal recourse to that policy.
The NFL has no need to collude with the ncaa, they have their agreement covering that with the NFLPA already, and it survived its Maurice Clarrett court challenge fully intact.
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