Schools To Directly Pay Players

[goodnterribles]

100%. My fear is that in a decade or so college football will resemble an another pro football league, absorbed contractually or otherwise under the NFL. Obviously it’s a de facto minor leagues now, but any/all of the charm, quirkiness, and pageantry will disappear with NFL control. The NFL is a profit machine with a quality product. But it will stifle everything fun and outside-the-lines about college football. We may get a few more years out of it, but college football as we know it is likely dead.

Yeah, I think this ship has sailed considering rivalries that have been around for over 100 years are now gone. My worry is now on college basketball.

 

[HuskerBred]

Yeah, I think this ship has sailed considering rivalries that have been around for over 100 years are now gone. My worry is now on college basketball.

Same. But I do I feel like college hoops is a few years ahead of football. It has been a true minor league for the NBA for a while, absorbed the impact of the G-League and foreign pro opportunities, and handled tv/March Madness profits better. Now it’s working through the NIL/open transfer era with small rosters - no easy trick. If college basketball can somehow survive the next phase — the likeliness of bidding wars for the best players — it may make it. The advantages over football are many: March Madness is almost a perfect post-season set up with an invite for dozens and getting bigger, a few quality kids elevate any program, it’s much cheaper to run a hoops program than many other sports (not including some of the travel), and players can come/go without quite the impact that phenomenon has on football. More hopeful for “college” basketball but we’ll see.

 

[EastOfEden]

Really a can of worms. Title IX anyone and what about antitrust laws. Labor laws anyone. Unions. Position or sport discrimination. What about the band. Cheerleaders and dance teams.

We focus on football. The case seems much broader than that.

What a pot we have been plopped into. Not long before games are fixed, fights regularly break out between drunks in the stands (hope they're not packing). The offensive line goes on a wildcat strike just before kickoff.

How much fun this will be.

 

[weaver75]

One problem is that the student-athlete model works for almost all sports other than Men’s BB and football. The athletes are students who will use their college degrees in the usual way, and the sport itself is not a profit center. The sport may be locally popular, e.g, VB at Neb, WBB at Iowa, Softball at OU, but the traditional model works. It will be a shame if these changes focused on the broken football and MBB sports ruin the other sports.

 

[Cornhuskers7]

--NCAA will pay more than $2.7 billion in damages over the next 10 years to current and past athletes (back to 2016).
--Any past NCAA athlete who agrees (settles) forfeits the right to file a future lawsuit against the NCAA.

This feels pretty standard. Of course the NCAA isn't going to open itself up to some 100-year lawsuit where guys like Turner Gill or Tommie Frazier can sue for money decades after they stopped playing.


--Revenue-sharing plan allows each school to share roughly $20 million per year with its athletes.

I'm curious to learn more about the particulars of a revenue-sharing plan. The keyword here is revenue, though, which means that the school's gotta earn that money in the first place. They can't tap into a university endowment or "academic" funding to make this happen. Revenue would seem to indicate that this is money earned by the athletic department.

On that note, Nebraska Athletics (thankfully) is in excellent health, financially. We're one of the few athletic departments in the nation who actually turn a profit. Most run at a deficit and rely on scholarships and donors to keep athletics afloat. Some schools funnel academic-side funding to athletics, because it's basically a big marketing recruitment ad for the university (more tuition from more students, even non-athletes).

NU should be well-positioned here. The Big Ten earns us a pile of money, and we make even more by filling up Memorial Stadium. I can't say that same for Iowa State, Wake Forest, etc. Also note that it's capped at approximately $20m annually. But that's not a massive number when you get $50-60m annually from your TV deal. Schools in the B1G/SEC should be fine. They won't have to decide between paying players -or- building new stadiums. Over time, this will widen the gap, even if the ACC / PAC / XII are too dumb to realize it. Their TV deals hover right around that $20m mark, so it's essentially a wash. They're just left to operate their business off the revenue they make from butts-in-seats. Meanwhile, the B1G/SEC get a free pass to funnel 30% of their TV money to players, keep the remaining 70%, and STILL earn ticket money from fans. If you thought that haves-and-have-nots was bad, just wait 5 years.

According to internet data, Nebraska has about 800 student-athletes. We know the revenue distribution won't be equal (Dylan Raiola will get more than Will Bolt's backup shortstop), but that averages out to just $25k per student, per year. Assuming the guys like Raiola or Tominaga (I know he's graduated) will get more, it probably means the average student athlete would get something like $5k.

It will be interesting to see different school's strategies here. Will Alabama throw all $20m into football? Will Duke throw it all at hoops? What about equal distribution between men / women / Title IX? Is it better to dump a pile of money into a single QB? Or go hire yourself the baddest, fattest, fastest OL in the country?

This adds a completely new angle to strategy - especially at the AD's office. Imagine Rhule, Hoiberg, Bolt, and John Cook all fighting for more cash from Dannen. Will be a totally new dynamic.


--Won't begin until Fall 2025.
--As of now, players will not be considered employees. Probably a 1099 situation for tax purposes.

I can't wait to see the first NCAA player go to jail for tax evasion. Seriously, though, AD Departments will need to start teaching financial literacy to these players. There's a long-established tradition of schools making up useless degree programs and slouch classes for athletes to attend, so we know there's already a portion of student athletes who, frankly, are morons. Vince Young, anyone? The guy scored lower on his Wonderlic than Forest Gump.

In a similar vein, expect a rise in drug use, prostitution, etc. Many student-athletes are serious about their futures, but you have to assume there are some boogers in the bunch. Imagine if Lawrence Phillips got $100k per year in Lincoln. Or if Randy Gregory suddenly had a fat stack of weed money in his pocket. There's yet another angle here in terms of vetting which kids are going to be stupid with their money, and how that reflects on the university. I fully expect schools to have some kind of "honor code" (see: BYU) where kids can forfeit their earnings if they get arrested, make a spectacle of themselves/the school, and so forth.

Brave new world.

As you point out, there are a lot of questions still left to be answered. The headline stands out, but when you start doing the math there isn't a lot of money to go around to athletes. Nebraska has more than 600 student athletes, if all get paid equally that is $33k each (nothing to scoff at, but probably less than some feel like the would deserve). Do you pay everyone? Do you pay everyone equally? Are there any repercussions to those decisions?

After reading some of the quotes, this ultimately seems like a Band-Aid to get out of some antitrust lawsuits that were going to put them in a serious financial bind. They can't settle those lawsuits and then continue to not pay players, because that ultimately would have led to more lawsuits.

My guess is that this is just the start. Very hard to pay players and keep them considered non-employees. If they are employees, they are going to become more likely to unionize and force a CBA.

Notre Dame's AD pretty much showed the hand the NCAA and schools are hoping to play. They want Congress to step in and put legal protections in to allow for the setup of "amateur, paid athletics" to be legal. Until something like that happens, you are going to continue to see things move closer and closer to the "pro model".

 

[NU_Alum]

Really a can of worms. Title IX anyone and what about antitrust laws. Labor laws anyone. Unions. Position or sport discrimination. What about the band. Cheerleaders and dance teams.

We focus on football. The case seems much broader than that.

What a pot we have been plopped into. Not long before games are fixed, fights regularly break out between drunks in the stands (hope they're not packing). The offensive line goes on a wildcat strike just before kickoff.

How much fun this will be.

How do you think Title IX will apply to pay for employee athletes? Without a CBA and likely an antitrust law, CFB will suffer greatly under labor laws as they exist, especially schools in states like CA.

Do you think NFL, NBA, etc... are fixed? I don't really see an issue there, but maybe I guess.

Fans have been drunk in the stands for generations, fights are rare. That isn't going to change. I have no real idea what "packing" has to do with anything here. Have you seen a lot of fights in the stands with guns? Anywhere?

 

[NU_Alum]

As you point out, there are a lot of questions still left to be answered. The headline stands out, but when you start doing the math there isn't a lot of money to go around to athletes. Nebraska has more than 600 student athletes, if all get paid equally that is $33k each (nothing to scoff at, but probably less than some feel like the would deserve). Do you pay everyone? Do you pay everyone equally? Are there any repercussions to those decisions?

After reading some of the quotes, this ultimately seems like a Band-Aid to get out of some antitrust lawsuits that were going to put them in a serious financial bind. They can't settle those lawsuits and then continue to not pay players, because that ultimately would have led to more lawsuits.

My guess is that this is just the start. Very hard to pay players and keep them considered non-employees. If they are employees, they are going to become more likely to unionize and force a CBA.

Notre Dame's AD pretty much showed the hand the NCAA and schools are hoping to play. They want Congress to step in and put legal protections in to allow for the setup of "amateur, paid athletics" to be legal. Until something like that happens, you are going to continue to see things move closer and closer to the "pro model".

Even if the decision to pay all athletes equally comes down (via law, CBA, whatever) I could see schools like Alabama removing half of their sports. Now they can pay double what we're paying for football/basketball players.

The people pushing this are the elite athletes, the media, and others that haven't thought this through. The VAST majority of college kids are going to be hurt by this. Maybe I'm wrong and guardrails are put in place so everything stays "equal" for all sports and across schools, but I don't have any confidence in NCAA, conferences, schools, or Congress.

 

[MHKHusker]

As much as I don't like the idea, I think you're going to see more high level prospects at schools that aren't your top dogs. It's been happening with NIL (Raiola to Nebraska, Williams Nwaneri to Mizzou, Dylan Stewart to South Carolina, Micah Hudson to Texas Tech) and I think that this could create even more of that. I always thought it was a rich get richer type of thing but I'm realizing now that maybe it isn't that way

 

[djlhuskerfan]

NCAA Finances: Revenue & Expenses by School - USA TODAY

Which are the most profitable college athletic programs in the country? See a ranked listed, including total revenue and expenses. Brought to you by USA TODAY.

sports.usatoday.com

Only a few schools on this list will be able to spend the max $20 million on athletic salaries. I believe we’ll see a windfall of laws passed at the state level that will ban any taxpayer or student fee monies going to athletes’ salaries.

Let's hope anyway

 

[MiniDisk]

How much fun this will be.

not really....

 

[wcbsas]

Yep. Allow players who have had their NIL made millions of dollars off them in the past to finally get money.

Want to get paid go to the professional leagues .. they won’t let you, sue for restraint of trade.

So athletes who play volleyball, baseball, T&F, wrestling, gymnastics, soccer, swimming … should PAY to play because their presence is costing the university money.

This viewpoint is so myopic because it very self interested in football and basketball. Nothing else matters, Title IX doesn’t matter.

Name the athletic programs that make money.
Now name those that do not.

Your viewpoint and the viewpoint of those that support football and basketball players getting paid is the downfall of college athletics. .

 

[DuckTownHusker]

As much as I don't like the idea, I think you're going to see more high level prospects at schools that aren't your top dogs. It's been happening with NIL (Raiola to Nebraska, Williams Nwaneri to Mizzou, Dylan Stewart to South Carolina, Micah Hudson to Texas Tech) and I think that this could create even more of that. I always thought it was a rich get richer type of thing but I'm realizing now that maybe it isn't that way

It really depends on the school. If you're probably throwing money at basketball players, not football players.

Sure, you could blow your entire budget on hiring the best football players, but (hopefully) KU is smart enough to realize that Duke, North Carolina, Kentucky and others will be in a basketball arms race. If you can only spend $20m, schools will have to think about their opportunity cost. By arming up in football, a school like Kansas may be directly hindering their basketball chances.

This gets tough for a school like Ohio State or Michigan State, who have historically been pretty good at both sports. Or NU Football AND Volleyball. Essentially, every dollar we give John Cook is one less dollar we can give Matt Rhule.

it will be interesting to see how schools divvy up these funds. Again, if you are a school like Creighton it's pretty straightforward. But what about schools like Stanford or Texas who have pretty solid Athletics across 10 or 15 sports?

Again this is good for Nebraska. I'm sure the bulk of our money will go to football. But if you are Wisconsin football, you are not only competing to outspend other Big Ten football teams, but you are also competing against Wisconsin hockey, Wisconsin wrestling, Wisconsin basketball, and so forth.
 

 

[phillycheez402]

Every business on the planet makes money off their employees. Yes, they get paid for their work, but so did the students... and most businesses make a lot more off your work compared to what you are paid. They students were compensated for playing, before this happened, with many free items, not to mention a career, if football didn't work out.

If they are going to get paid, then they should no longer get a free

This is a joke right? Or you're like 70 years old and just can't adapt?

 

[HuskerBred]

I’m also not sure the $20 million per school will be the final, FINAL number, ever accepted/followed by every program, and/or ever policed by anyone. So then the problem becomes not whether KU spends more for a point guard or a d-tackle or NU spends more for a libero or a running back. It becomes all about what program is willing to outspend whatever other programs, for any sport and for any player. This is where it starts to look/feel like a free-for-all, with no limits other than the imagination. Picture a Caitlin Clark dropped into this environment in a few years. How much money are alums, fans, donors, et al. willing to pay for their favorite “college” teams?!

 

[phillycheez402]

Want to get paid go to the professional leagues .. they won’t let you, sue for restraint of trade.

So athletes who play volleyball, baseball, T&F, wrestling, gymnastics, soccer, swimming … should PAY to play because their presence is costing the university money.

This viewpoint is so myopic because it very self interested in football and basketball. Nothing else matters, Title IX doesn’t matter.

Name the athletic programs that make money.
Now name those that do not.

Your viewpoint and the viewpoint of those that support football and basketball players getting paid is the downfall of college athletics. .

How were players compensated? A scholarship? Some meals?

Nebraska is finally starting to get back ahead of the curve and yet people can't get on board.

Weird 5 star recruits that could help us win championships aren't complaining