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(Update: Over $1 million raised!) 1890 Initiative asking for Husker fans help.

I'm glad the Huskers got their guy but if this 1890 business is the new way college football recruiting is going, well, I'm just not N. The whole idea troubles me quite a bit. It is simply buying players and for how long? There are no guarantees. Those who put up the money are taking all of the risks. Players are not contractually bound to Nebraska at all as far as I know. I don't know what their obligation is frankly.

But the bigger picture is this: as an alum I want my fellow alumni to represent my school, our state, with honorable contributions to society. Cure cancer. Start a company and employ a lot of people. Go to Mars or at least engineer the Mars projects. Make history.

Football brings plenty of national attention to our school, to any school, but paying $2m to a kid is akin to hiring actors to participate in graduation ceremonies. It just feels wrong and it feels wronger to ask hard working nebraskans who live paycheck to paycheck to pay some high school kid that kind of money to be a fake student. All to fill the stadium on Saturday.

I am losing interest. I think I would rather watch Kearney State or Wayne State on a fall Saturday afternoon.
 

Kilgore Trout said:
I'm glad the Huskers got their guy but if this 1890 business is the new way college football recruiting is going, well, I'm just not N. The whole idea troubles me quite a bit. It is simply buying players and for how long? There are no guarantees. Those who put up the money are taking all of the risks. Players are not contractually bound to Nebraska at all as far as I know. I don't know what their obligation is frankly.

But the bigger picture is this: as an alum I want my fellow alumni to represent my school, our state, with honorable contributions to society. Cure cancer. Start a company and employ a lot of people. Go to Mars or at least engineer the Mars projects. Make history.

Football brings plenty of national attention to our school, to any school, but paying $2m to a kid is akin to hiring actors to participate in graduation ceremonies. It just feels wrong and it feels wronger to ask hard working nebraskans who live paycheck to paycheck to pay some high school kid that kind of money to be a fake student. All to fill the stadium on Saturday.

I am losing interest. I think I would rather watch Kearney State or Wayne State on a fall Saturday afternoon.
Click to expand...

Then blame the administrators, boosters, and tv execs. And coaches and fans. We all created this environment. I'm not disagreeing with you, but I won't blame the players for trying to get a tiny slice in a multi-billion dollar pie.
 
Kilgore Trout said:
I'm glad the Huskers got their guy but if this 1890 business is the new way college football recruiting is going, well, I'm just not N. The whole idea troubles me quite a bit. It is simply buying players and for how long? There are no guarantees. Those who put up the money are taking all of the risks. Players are not contractually bound to Nebraska at all as far as I know. I don't know what their obligation is frankly.

But the bigger picture is this: as an alum I want my fellow alumni to represent my school, our state, with honorable contributions to society. Cure cancer. Start a company and employ a lot of people. Go to Mars or at least engineer the Mars projects. Make history.

Football brings plenty of national attention to our school, to any school, but paying $2m to a kid is akin to hiring actors to participate in graduation ceremonies. It just feels wrong and it feels wronger to ask hard working nebraskans who live paycheck to paycheck to pay some high school kid that kind of money to be a fake student. All to fill the stadium on Saturday.

I am losing interest. I think I would rather watch Kearney State or Wayne State on a fall Saturday afternoon.
Click to expand...
Way more people living paycheck to paycheck have donated way more to Nebraska football for years and years in seat donations and even outright contributions than have to 1890 so far, not to mention what rich folks were also doing.

So if that's your beef it's not because it's new, it's just because you weren't thinking about it.

And many of Nebraska's star players weren't coming to Nebraska for the education or to cure cancer, they wanted to play for a winner and maybe even make the NFL. For money.

It's been big business for decades. The big difference is now some individual players are getting extra direct compensation based on their potential contribution to the team*. Kind of like coaches have for decades already.

I don't particularly like this ratcheting up either, but Nebraska and all other big time programs have been a little bit pregnant on these issues for a long time.

I do value the spirit and ethic of amateurism of college sports, but it's never been pure. Heck, even in the 1800s teams would recruit local non-student ringers to play for money to make it more likely they could win.

That doesn't make me say just anything should go, but in our imperfect world virtue is always mixed with vice. Unless you want to live in a monastery, imo you have to accept a balance of the two, and always think about the general direction your personal actions are pushing things, even while you stay involved.

* Beyond the summer jobs they were hired into that didn't require actual attendance or the car dealer loaner cars they have gotten in the past.
 
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I'd add this unregulated wild west of NIL that the courts unleased, for a fair purpose actually, does have a benefit of reducing exploitation of star athletes at the hands of their schools and rewarding them according to their market value. And it's a fallacy to suggest as freshmen athletes don't deserve to be compensated based on the market's best guess of what they might produce in the future. Every new hire in every industry is hired based on a guess as to how much they can contribute and a good number of those guesses turn out to be wrong. That's not unique to this situation.

Trev Alberts and Matt Rhule are not leading the industry into this whole thing, they're only doing what they think is needed to remain at all competitive with other schools.

Rhule in particular coaches to create team unity and emphasize development of the whole person in his players. You can tell he wouldn't be choosing this if it hadn't become what big schools have to do. This whole thing is a challenge to him, not just to make sure he wins but also to achieve the other goals I believe he thinks are equally or even more important. I think he's a good bet to meet that challenge as well as anyone and better than most.

I hope and somewhat expect Trev and Rhule and the powers that be at Nebraska will be at least trying to encourage some benefit from NIL money to be pushed out to more players than just the handful with heavy leverage. Though in this really fluid current environment that might not happen as much as I like right away.

I also think NIL will become more regulated in the next 2-3 years, which will be a good thing, but not something we can just do nothing and wait for. The purpose won't be to save schools money, but instead to protect players from inevitable abuse, probably at the same time congress allows schools to create some kind of hybrid "employment" relationship so all players at top schools receive some share of compensation beyond just scholarships that reflects how much they contribute to the financial success schools have been keeping to themselves.

In the meantime I'm happy to contribute to 1890 and proud so many fans stepped up that we beat the goal. It will help Nebraska stay at least as competitive as its been, while I wait for the industry to be more regulated by rule or custom, at least as much as possible given what the courts and regulators are doing.

Keep in mind, Nebraska football has been running on fumes as far as fan support goes. It's important it get better quickly or seats won't stay filled and the athletes in the non revenue sports where amateurism still prevails will gradually lose out, as will the rest of the university which still, unusually within college athletics, receives financial transfers from the athletic department.

At Nebraska at least and unless or until something changes in regulation of the sport, I feel strongly 1890 and the NIL program is doing what needs to be done and deserves my support.
 
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huskernut said:
I'd add this unregulated wild west of NIL that the courts unleased, for a fair purpose actually, does have a benefit of reducing exploitation of star athletes at the hands of their schools and rewarding them according to their market value. And it's a fallacy to suggest as freshmen athletes don't deserve to be compensated based on the market's best guess of what they might produce in the future. Every new hire in every industry is hired based on a guess as to how much they can contribute and a good number of those guesses turn out to be wrong. That's not unique to this situation.

Trev Alberts and Matt Rhule are not leading the industry into this whole thing, they're only doing what they think is needed to remain at all competitive with other schools.

Rhule in particular coaches to create team unity and emphasize development of the whole person in his players. You can tell he wouldn't be choosing this if it hadn't become what big schools have to do. This whole thing is a challenge to him, not just to make sure he wins but also to achieve the other goals I believe he thinks are equally or even more important. I think he's a good bet to meet that challenge as well as anyone and better than most.

I hope and somewhat expect Trev and Rhule and the powers that be at Nebraska will be at least trying to encourage some benefit from NIL money to be pushed out to more players than just the handful with heavy leverage. Though in this really fluid current environment that might not happen as much as I like right away.

I also think NIL will become more regulated in the next 2-3 years, which will be a good thing, but not something we can just do nothing and wait for. The purpose won't be to save schools money, but instead to protect players from inevitable abuse, probably at the same time congress allows schools to create some kind of hybrid "employment" relationship so all players at top schools receive some share of compensation beyond just scholarships that reflects how much they contribute to the financial success schools have been keeping to themselves.

In the meantime I'm happy to contribute to 1890 and proud so many fans stepped up that we beat the goal. It will help Nebraska stay at least as competitive as its been, while I wait for the industry to be more regulated by rule or custom, at least as much as possible given what the courts and regulators are doing.

Keep in mind, Nebraska football has been running on fumes as far as fan support goes. It's important it get better quickly or seats won't stay filled and the athletes in the non revenue sports where amateurism still prevails will gradually lose out, as will the rest of the university which still, unusually within college athletics, receives financial transfers from the athletic department.

At Nebraska at least and unless or until something changes in regulation of the sport, I feel strongly 1890 and the NIL program is doing what needs to be done and deserves my support.
Click to expand...
Awesome post!

Only thing I will add is if you strongly believe against donating to NIL then you can't complain if our NIL does not compete with the big boys!
At least our donations go 100 percent to the the players!
 
"..At least our donations go 100 percent to the the players! "
Please clarify for me. Are the employees at 1890 not being paid for their efforts? Is management at 1890 working for free?
I'm suspicious if a % is not retained for operating expenses.
 
RogelioVB said:
"..At least our donations go 100 percent to the the players! "
Please clarify for me. Are the employees at 1890 not being paid for their efforts? Is management at 1890 working for free?
I'm suspicious if a % is not retained for operating expenses.
Click to expand...

A family is covering all expenses which allows 100% of the donations to go to the athletes.

Read post 111 in this thread.
 
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The way 1890 got off the canvas to become a legit force in the NIL world is awesome. They took a lot of heat but stepped up huge.

oKbPSF.gif
 







Smoker said:
are you personally in charge of the money? if not, you dont know 100% sure, your assuming
Click to expand...
While what you are saying is obviously true, is it at the same time a good reaction to be a pessimist and assume this is one of those times where lies and deceit are possible/likely — without any evidence that is the case? It seems like everyone here would want the collective to be graciously supported by anyone/everyone able. It also seems like speculating that things may not be as claimed is (until proven otherwise) a slap in the face to the donor family and the collective management.
 
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Article about Buffet and Cornhusker football from 2010. He went to games, Rotary club speeches by Devaney, appears to have gotten along well with Osborne. I would be surprised if he didn't donate some at least back then, or even today. But if he did or does he has no particular reason to advertise it. (And I don't really get why some seem to think he should just cover ALL the bills.)

huskers.com

The ?Oracle of Omaha? is a Husker at Heart

It's halftime and Warren Buffett's team is trailing Texas 17-3. As he stands in a concourse at Memorial Stadium on Saturday, a young father approaches.
huskers.com huskers.com

I've always thought Buffet's investment approach is a lot like Osborne's coaching - heavy emphasis on fundamentals, long-term strategy, take dominant positions. He sounds like he liked Devaney and Osborne a lot.

I have zero insider info, but I speculate he may not be going to as many games now at 93 as he used to.

I do know he was quoted after Solich turned the team around in 2003 from 7-7 to 10-3* that "In his (Buffet's) line of work, when a manager does a turnaround like that we give him a raise, not fire him."

I put that in quotes to make sure it was clear Buffet was saying it and not me, but it's only a paraphrase, though I 'll warrant a good one.


* We fired Solich at 10-3. Wow. Regardless of what any of us thought about the wisdom of that at the time, it's incredible to me to type those words. At this point I would give my left husker*** to go 10-3. :(
 
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Another article about donations. He gave $260 million to his daughter's foundation, which gives need-based scholarships to students at looks like every college in Nebraska.

And $100,000 to the Daily Nebraskan.

www.barrons.com

Warren Buffett Donates $3.4 Billion to Major Foundations and a Student Newspaper

Warren Buffett donated about $3.4 billion in Berkshire Hathaway stock to various charitable causes.
www.barrons.com www.barrons.com
 
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