(02-19-2024 03:30 PM)Soobahk40050 Wrote:  

(02-19-2024 02:23 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(02-19-2024 01:59 PM)4x4hokies Wrote:  

(02-19-2024 01:00 PM)Turtle Power 98 Wrote:  

(02-19-2024 11:59 AM)freshtop Wrote:  Most of the ones whining are the old guard who won't adjust to the times.

Players are finally getting some of the freedoms and money coaches have always had.

Embrace it and use it to your advantage. Instead of blaming it for all your programs problems.

Coaches are rightfully angry because instead of spending time coaching they spend 90% of their time being a general manager worrying about losing players.

They probably need to allow a split in head coaching duties. You'd have a GM coordinating recruitment and logistics while the head coach focuses on player development and playing philosophies.

It’s a good point. There’s a reason why the combined coach/GM is a rarity in pro sports and even the greatest coaches often aren’t great at being a GM (see Bill Belichick). The more that money is involved in recruiting players, the more that it makes sense that a GM-type role totally dedicated to the personnel role may be needed. The main obstacle is that college coaches, by their nature, are total control freaks.

That may have kept Kelly at UCLA for another season. Seems like he wanted to coach, not play GM.

College coaching has ALWAYS been about recruiting, which Kelly never had any appetite for. His biggest problem is that he has shown he has zero ability to do the human relations part of pro coaching either. At this point he is probably where he should be, an OC that can sit in the booth and call plays.

(02-19-2024 09:58 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  When NIL and the Portal became a reality, some wondered if the G5 would benefit by being able to attract good P5 players who are stuck on the bench and would rather play for a G than ride the pine for a P.

Seems like it hasn't worked out that way. The good P players who find themselves on the bench transfer to other Ps. The good G5 players who were passed over during recruiting transfer to Ps as well, mostly.

It's leveled out competition among the better Ps (Georgia, Clemson, LSU, Alabama and Ohio State can't hoard all the top players anymore, opening the door for Michigans and Washingtons) but it has widened the P/G gap, and that gap was wide to begin with.

Probably is doing the same for the P2/M2 gap as well.

Why would NIL favor, say, Arkansas more than TCU? It favors ND, Michigan or A&M b/c we have such wealthy/motivated boosters, but that has nothing to do with our Conference affiliation. SMU and Houston are both looking like big movers in the coming years for example. That doesn't mean that Georgia or Ohio will be any worse, but perhaps the teams chasing them will be closer in talent and have a shot to beat them more often.

(02-19-2024 12:18 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(02-19-2024 11:56 AM)Hootyhoo Wrote:  Coaches are so whiny about the portal. If you find someone under recruited or raw and you develop them to the point that a bigger program wants to poach them, that's a success. Go keep doing that instead of crying about it. Sell to recruits that your program can do that.

I agree.

This is essentially what junior college recruiting has been for a long time. There are a lot of indications that the G5 is taking a lot of that role now. You can either embrace it or complain about it, but you’re not going to stop it.

Adapt or die.

I'd argue that would work for walk one who might want to go to the NFL also. A backup or third string with little playing time might want to transfer to get the extra polish plus easy playing time to get their skills out there. 2 years of backup training maybe 3 if redshirted. You then transfer with a year or 2 of eligibility left.

(02-19-2024 09:42 AM)loki_the_bubba Wrote:  

(02-19-2024 09:33 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  https://sports.yahoo.com/as-college-foot...ccounter=1

NIL for walk-ons is not something I had realized. The 85 scholarship limit is pretty much dead.

That is something we talked about in 2021 when the maker of "Built Bar" did an NIL deal with all the BYU Football walk-ons.

(02-19-2024 09:53 AM)ken d Wrote:  

(02-19-2024 09:42 AM)loki_the_bubba Wrote:  

(02-19-2024 09:33 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  https://sports.yahoo.com/as-college-foot...ccounter=1

NIL for walk-ons is not something I had realized. The 85 scholarship limit is pretty much dead.

For the P5, the beauty of that is that NIL to non-scholarship players doesn't require increasing the number of scholarships for women. I wonder how long before schools figure out that if they replace some scholarship football players with NIL walk-ons they can reduce women's scholarships or eliminate women's teams entirely.

Machiavellian Scholarships.

(02-19-2024 11:34 AM)ArmoredUpKnight Wrote:  

(02-19-2024 11:23 AM)ken d Wrote:  The very fact that walk-on football players are getting paid by NIL collectives is proof positive that these collectives are shams. What legitimate market value does the name, image, or likeness of a practice squad player have?

Rudy made $22.8M in the box office

Movie about a Notre Dame walk-on

Enough to pay for one year of a ND QB!

(02-19-2024 12:54 PM)xCougarDavex Wrote:  Everybody's a farm for the bluebloods

It has been that way for Coaches forever. Illinois is a top 20 basketball program, but that didn't stop Kansas from poaching Bill Self, which was a vacancy because Roy Williams left Kansas for North Carolina.

(02-19-2024 03:45 PM)bryanw1995 Wrote:  I don't necessarily think that he's wrong. What he doesn't realize is that they're in the middle of the farm system. FCS and Div II/III are like Class A ball, g5 is AA, P4 is AAA, all to feed the NFL. Some kids jumps straight from A or AA to the Big Leagues, some spend some time in AAA, but one thing they all have in common is that nobody wants to end his playing days in AAA.

Less than 2% will make it to the NFL. A lot of these young adults are just going for the money grab. They can play Arena Football straight out of HS and make around $20 per hour.

(02-19-2024 03:30 PM)Turtle Power 98 Wrote:  

(02-19-2024 02:38 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(02-19-2024 02:32 PM)Turtle Power 98 Wrote:  

(02-19-2024 02:28 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(02-19-2024 02:20 PM)Turtle Power 98 Wrote:  If you think it is going to stay higher than ever long-term like this, I think you are naive. Much of the changes are recent and fans are just starting to realize what is happening.

Fans know what’s happening and they don’t care. It’s amazing how oblivious so many college sports fan are to how the casual sports fans (who are much more important and numerous) watch college football. They don’t give two craps about how much players are getting paid. To the casual sports fans, the P4 product that they’re watching is as competitive as ever. (Certainly more so than the Alabama/Ohio State/Clemson cycle that much of the pre-portal/NIL first decade of the CFP consisted of.)

Now, could there be a tipping point where way too many teams are cut out of the top level? Absolutely. That’s why I’m not really convinced that a P2 breakway makes sense. Having more competitiveness within the overall P5 (or now P4), on the other hand, is what the casual fan cares about and that’s being delivered.

And, once again, regardless of personal feelings, open free market NIL is the law. This isn’t a choice and it’s not going back. Either adapt or die.

Fans will care when the athletes don't even attend or have any association with the schools they go to and play for.

A vocal minority (disproportionately represented in forums like this one) may care.

The tens of millions of people that ESPN and Fox want since this is where college football can grow - the NFL viewers that they want sampling a couple of hours of the top college football games every week - absolutely don’t care. They just don’t. They want a couple of hours of high profile games to pass the time on Saturday and something to gamble on. That market is *massive* compared to the G5 fan universe.

Plus, once again, allowing NIL is the *law*. This isn’t a policy choice by the NCAA or Big Ten or SEC or MAC or anyone else. You have to comply with the law, so either use it to your advantage or stop complaining.

What do you mean it's the law? Are you suggest college football isn't able to make any rules at all regarding payments? That they can't have a salary cap? How can a league operating without being able to make rules?

Alumni are going to massively lower donations if players don't even go to the school and take classes.

Have you been paying attention to the avalanche of court cases regarding college sports for the past 3 years? It’s not my suggestion: the courts have been stating that colleges cannot make rules about payments.

Now, if colleges want to enter into collective bargaining agreements with athletes whereby restrictions on income are imposed, then that might be legal. However, colleges can no longer *unilaterally* impose them as they had been doing for the last century.

As to your last point, no one has said anything about students not taking classes. Players still have to attend the schools that they’re playing at. Even then, I think alumni are perfectly happy if a superstar comes through the transfer portal by being enticed by an NIL deal and their team wins championships. The main cause of a loss of donations is about teams not winning as opposed to some sort of bygone principle that exists of the minds of old school college sports fans.

(02-19-2024 03:30 PM)Turtle Power 98 Wrote:  

(02-19-2024 02:38 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  ... Plus, once again, allowing NIL is the *law*. This isn’t a policy choice by the NCAA or Big Ten or SEC or MAC or anyone else. You have to comply with the law, so either use it to your advantage or stop complaining.

What do you mean it's the law?

He means that it is illegal to interfere with a player making an NIL contract.

Quote: Are you suggest college football isn't able to make any rules at all regarding payments? That they can't have a salary cap? How can a league operating without being able to make rules?

This is NIL, not salary. If players formed a union and the schools reached a collective bargaining agreement with players, it would be legal to have a salary cap. Without the collective bargaining agreement (or an exemption from the law passed by Congress), it would be an illegal rule.

But if the NFL can't control NIL payments to players that they have a collective bargaining agreement with, what hope do colleges have to control NIL payments to players that they are pretending are student volunteers playing for the school as an inter-varsity activity? Why would someone be in a position to deny a volunteer worker their right to benefit from their Name, Image and Likeness rights?

Quote: Alumni are going to massively lower donations if players don't even go to the school and take classes.

"The law is inconvenient for our business model" is not an excuse that holds up in court.

(02-19-2024 04:51 PM)BruceMcF Wrote:  

(02-19-2024 03:30 PM)Turtle Power 98 Wrote:  

(02-19-2024 02:38 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  ... Plus, once again, allowing NIL is the *law*. This isn’t a policy choice by the NCAA or Big Ten or SEC or MAC or anyone else. You have to comply with the law, so either use it to your advantage or stop complaining.

What do you mean it's the law?

He means that it is illegal to interfere with a player making an NIL contract.

Quote: Are you suggest college football isn't able to make any rules at all regarding payments? That they can't have a salary cap? How can a league operating without being able to make rules?

This is NIL, not salary. If players formed a union and the schools reached a collective bargaining agreement with players, it would be legal to have a salary cap. Without the collective bargaining agreement (or an exemption from the law passed by Congress), it would be an illegal rule.

But if the NFL can't control NIL payments to players that they have a collective bargaining agreement with, what hope do colleges have to control NIL payments to players that they are pretending are student volunteers playing for the school as an inter-varsity activity? Why would someone be in a position to deny a volunteer worker their right to benefit from their Name, Image and Likeness rights?

Quote: Alumni are going to massively lower donations if players don't even go to the school and take classes.

"The law is inconvenient for our business model" is not an excuse that holds up in court.

You and Frank are just 100% wrong and out of touch on the last point. Turtle is really talking about 2 different things, a) pay for play; and b) requiring the athletes to be students. There is nothing hindering b) in the courts.

Just because you slap a university name on a minor league club with no real affiliation with the university mean alums and students will care. They won't. You're limited to the local support for a minor league franchise.

You're also putting the tax exempt status at severe risk. In that case, it looks to me like it is all Unrelated Business Taxable Income and, in addition, donations may not be deductible.

(02-19-2024 01:02 PM)Yosef181 Wrote:  I know it's not quite the same thing, but in the Premier League, Brighton has become successful because they embrace the same "farm system" feeling.

Part of Brighton's strategy in landing players is not holding them back if they want to go somewhere else. If you want to actually play on the field, build your stats, prove how good you are, and then go make more money with a different team, go ahead. We're happy for you. We'll give you the opportunities to shine while you're here though.

Sometimes players will leave Brighton for more money, and then lose to Brighton (happens a lot with Brighton players who go to Chelsea), because coaching, game plans, and strategy are still important.

That's a poor comparison as each time Brighton sells a player to a "bigger" club, they receive a transfer fee as compensation for the player. They can then use the transfer fee to either invest in their academy or buy a player from another club(i.e. from the EFL Championship, another country's league, etc).

(02-19-2024 05:19 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(02-19-2024 04:51 PM)BruceMcF Wrote:  

(02-19-2024 03:30 PM)Turtle Power 98 Wrote:  

(02-19-2024 02:38 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  ... Plus, once again, allowing NIL is the *law*. This isn’t a policy choice by the NCAA or Big Ten or SEC or MAC or anyone else. You have to comply with the law, so either use it to your advantage or stop complaining.

What do you mean it's the law?

He means that it is illegal to interfere with a player making an NIL contract.

Quote: Are you suggest college football isn't able to make any rules at all regarding payments? That they can't have a salary cap? How can a league operating without being able to make rules?

This is NIL, not salary. If players formed a union and the schools reached a collective bargaining agreement with players, it would be legal to have a salary cap. Without the collective bargaining agreement (or an exemption from the law passed by Congress), it would be an illegal rule.

But if the NFL can't control NIL payments to players that they have a collective bargaining agreement with, what hope do colleges have to control NIL payments to players that they are pretending are student volunteers playing for the school as an inter-varsity activity? Why would someone be in a position to deny a volunteer worker their right to benefit from their Name, Image and Likeness rights?

Quote: Alumni are going to massively lower donations if players don't even go to the school and take classes.

"The law is inconvenient for our business model" is not an excuse that holds up in court.

You and Frank are just 100% wrong and out of touch on the last point. Turtle is really talking about 2 different things, a) pay for play; and b) requiring the athletes to be students. There is nothing hindering b) in the courts.

There's nothing hindering [b] in the courts at present. Unlike Frank, IANDL, so I have to hear from those who are before I know whether there might be one coming down the track.

But the rhetorical questions I was responding to were about the legality of the salary cap.

Quote: Just because you slap a university name on a minor league club with no real affiliation with the university mean alums and students will care. They won't. You're limited to the local support for a minor league franchise.

If having no real affiliation with the university would kill the earning power of the Buckeyes, then it would be a poor business model to break all real affiliations with the University, but obviously the space in between "actual sudent-athletes who picked the school they want to study at and then went out for a team in a sport they play" and "no real affiliation with the school whatsoever" is not a canyon, because not just the P4 players but also the Go5 scholarship players are in the space somewhere in between.

The question of how much affiliation is enough so that people in Northeast Ohio suddenly decide they've been Buckeyes fans all their life when the Buckeyes start playing good football ... that's an open question about where in the range in between actual student-athletes and a minor league club with a University as one of their advertising sponsors starts to interfere with that brand equity.

Quote: You're also putting the tax exempt status at severe risk. In that case, it looks to me like it is all Unrelated Business Taxable Income and, in addition, donations may not be deductible.

I didn't say anything about that, while Frank has consistently repeated that Schools are not going to go for an approach that makes them give up their tax exempt status, so I'm lost how that claim makes Frank 100% wrong.

The whole thing stinks IMO.

Reality? Yes.

Law. Probably (unless Congress gives anti-trust help).

Fun? NO.

Do I HAVE to agree or be thrilled ? NO.

I am Not going to apologize or feel intimidated for being an "old school" fan and purist.

(02-19-2024 10:08 AM)PeteTheChop Wrote:  "Jamey Chadwell is a proponent of the Group of Five holding its own championship. So too is Rhett Lashlee."

Interesting about Lashlee. Wonder if he'll still be at SMU when the ACC implodes and Mustang boosters are working back channels to get an invite from Brett Yormark?


"The suggestion: Have the top four teams in Group of Five play for what Chadwell calls a “mythical Group of Five national championship.”

The G5 — or whatever's left of it once the P5 dominoes have stopped falling — with it own playoff?

Love the idea. But forget the short-sighted four-team invitational and have a legitimate playoff. Bring up the cream of the crop from I-AA.

Could develop a sizeable following for a niche product

SMU can't buy their way into the Big 12. Their situation with the ACC was unique and only came available once the ACC Presidents realized that if Cal and Stanford can go through this then ANYBODY can go through it, and even then it was facilitated by Geography as a convenience for the Conference and also as a money maker for the ACCN. The Big 12 needs no more Texas schools (right now) and they already have TCU in the DFW area, anyway. In fact, the only way I see SMU moving into the big 12 is if TCU joins the P2.

(02-19-2024 11:16 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(02-19-2024 09:53 AM)ken d Wrote:  

(02-19-2024 09:42 AM)loki_the_bubba Wrote:  

(02-19-2024 09:33 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  https://sports.yahoo.com/as-college-foot...ccounter=1

NIL for walk-ons is not something I had realized. The 85 scholarship limit is pretty much dead.

For the P5, the beauty of that is that NIL to non-scholarship players doesn't require increasing the number of scholarships for women. I wonder how long before schools figure out that if they replace some scholarship football players with NIL walk-ons they can reduce women's scholarships or eliminate women's teams entirely.

I don’t think that’s the M.O. There are still very different financial and tax advantages that both the school and student receive under a scholarship versus the equivalent amount in compensation (e.g. if you’re going to cover a player’s education costs), it makes zero sense to use both athletic department income that has to be taxed and then have have it taxed again as taxable income as opposed to a scholarship. You add on 30%-40%-plus more costs compared to a scholarship to provide the same benefit. I think the zeal for employment income for athletes (something I fully support) sometimes gets conflated with this needs to be on *lieu* of scholarships, which I totally disagree with. The most competitive packages will consist of both.

If anything, I think it’s going to go the other direction. The way that power conferences can totally bury the G5 is not about football and basketball costs, but rather being able to provide a scholarship for every roster spot to every non-revenue sport as opposed to be being limited by NCAA scholarship limits. THAT is how the power leagues can cause a separation that isn’t just based on a list that ESPN/Fox value the most for football. Support for women’s sports is where the power leagues have the complete upper hand in creating a neutral way to separate from the others. Women’s teams aren’t going anywhere (despite a lot of fantasies here trying to argue otherwise).

We aren't looking at what the g5 do tbh, unless they're thwarting our CFP plans or other such nonsense. We'll do what we want. However, I think that you're right in that what we want to do is to fully fund every scholarship athlete in every single sport, and then on top of that we want them to be treated like Rock Stars at their training facilities, etc etc.

My take on the whole "scholarship vs employee vs both" argument is that it's possible that schools end up treating current "scholarship" athletes as employees, but that the value of the scholarship at almost every school is deemed to be high enough that the kids aren't paid anything else other than perhaps a per diem or some such to help with incidentals when they're on a trip. If the kids need to be enrolled in school to play for the team, and there is an enrollment and room/board cost to every other student in the University, then it's really easy to determine the cash value of that enrollment, and the only way to ensure that the kids are actually enrolled and paying their tuition is you're paying it for them.

(02-19-2024 11:56 AM)Hootyhoo Wrote:  Coaches are so whiny about the portal. If you find someone under recruited or raw and you develop them to the point that a bigger program wants to poach them, that's a success. Go keep doing that instead of crying about it. Sell to recruits that your program can do that.

It's pretty ironic seeing Liberty's coach whine about this, you're not wrong. If Marshall's coach, or UNT's wants to complain? Ok, they're not swimming in money. But Liberty? Come on, this smacks of misdirection, if he's actually complaining about the system then he's an idiot.

(02-19-2024 11:34 AM)ArmoredUpKnight Wrote:  

(02-19-2024 11:23 AM)ken d Wrote:  The very fact that walk-on football players are getting paid by NIL collectives is proof positive that these collectives are shams. What legitimate market value does the name, image, or likeness of a practice squad player have?

Rudy made $22.8M in the box office

Movie about a Notre Dame walk-on

A worthwhile story told from hindsight. It was worthless during his playing days.

(02-19-2024 02:23 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  It’s a good point. There’s a reason why the combined coach/GM is a rarity in pro sports and even the greatest coaches often aren’t great at being a GM (see Bill Belichick). The more that money is involved in recruiting players, the more that it makes sense that a GM-type role totally dedicated to the personnel role may be needed. The main obstacle is that college coaches, by their nature, are total control freaks.

I don't know that being "control freaks" is the main obstacle. The reality is that a college head coach is a public figurehead in a way that NFL coaches aren't. The majority of these kids can pick from a number of schools. They're generally picking based on the relationships developed with the coaching staff during their recruitment. An appointed GM just isn't going to be able to serve that same role.

(02-19-2024 09:04 PM)djsuperfly Wrote:  

(02-19-2024 02:23 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  It’s a good point. There’s a reason why the combined coach/GM is a rarity in pro sports and even the greatest coaches often aren’t great at being a GM (see Bill Belichick). The more that money is involved in recruiting players, the more that it makes sense that a GM-type role totally dedicated to the personnel role may be needed. The main obstacle is that college coaches, by their nature, are total control freaks.

I don't know that being "control freaks" is the main obstacle. The reality is that a college head coach is a public figurehead in a way that NFL coaches aren't. The majority of these kids can pick from a number of schools. They're generally picking based on the relationships developed with the coaching staff during their recruitment. An appointed GM just isn't going to be able to serve that same role.

That’s how it has been in the past. If players are increasingly picking schools based on NIL deals, though, then the NFL GM comparison becomes more apt. Granted, players still care about the coaching relationship and playing, so yes, it’s not solely a money issue. Still, I’d look ant it more about taking the money/NIL stuff off of the coach’s plate at a minimum. When you consider how many staffers a P4 college football team has these days, it’s certainly worth it to have someone dedicated to the money side at this point.