What do you suppose the impact would be if the student athlete had to choose between a scholarship or NIL money? You could have one, but not both.
College Hoops Coaching Carousel
- Status
Yup. Earn a million dollars per year with endorsements, pay your own college expenses then, come April, write them off as the cost of doing business.
Mr. Tibbs
- southeast DuPage
yea
as much as I wanted to like Matt Mayer this year , he made it hard .
Not sorry to see him move on .
You hit the bullseye dead center here.
Following any sports organization is all about making a personal emotional connection with that organization. It can be pro team, college team, high school team, or little league team if your child is playing.
Something... someone... maybe your family or friends... took you to a game and you began to root for ‘your’ team once the real energy in your making a personal connection and link and commitment to that team – many times without even realizing you were doing so such as when you are taken to a game when you are five years old. Or you watched your father and grandfather catch a game on TV and you began to get caught up in their fandom. And of course when
you make an emotional (and financial) link to a college or university and now you have a personal investment with that institution.
We find reasons to CARE about a team. And even when we learn years later that we are largely just rooting for a logo and laundry... that connection we made along the way survives. Not every single time for every single person... but mostly it endures. It's now part of our youth and it has become part of our own personality. As long as we derive some kind of enjoyment from that connection then it’s serving us well.
Players have their own reasons for becoming personally invested and that has little to nothing to do with anything except who is paying them. It’s just that they ARE getting paid. And that's OK from their perspective.
But players do have a motivation to do well while they are with ‘your’ team. So they have their reasons to want to succeed... and you have yours. Just because the primary motives may different doesn’t mean they don’t converge on having ‘your’ team succeed in the moment.
Without a personal connection it's just a bunch of guys or girls running around playing some kind of game and you are getting nothing out of it. Might as well watch guys painting a house or digging a ditch to occupy your time.
Same with certain coaches.
NIL restrictions WERE INDEED ridiculous and exploitative. And athletes SHOULD always have had the ability to profit off of their own name, image, and likeness.
The system today may not be perfect but it is much more fair overall than the player-servitude system that existed prior. Yes, servitude even with scholarships that bound one to a hard cap of 'remuneration' with big penalties for anything additional.
Contracts are the way. Pros do not have unrestricted free-agency every season for every player. They are tied to and committed to an organization for a fixed term and everyone agrees and is bound to that. Some kind of college sports contract will mirror how the pros have found some kind of stability.
NIL has simply removed some of the false innocence of College athletes that existed prior. It was a pleasant fantasy that hid unfairness and inequity in the relationship among players, high-paid coaches, and institutions that may have made large fortunes of money off this arrangement.
We hate it when we learn there is no Santa Claus. But it's much worse when we continue to believe in a myth. At some point, phony innocence has to go. (No disrespect intended for all Santa Claus lovers. There are occasions where a myth is exactly what we need).
sacraig
- The desert
Agreed. I think NCAA NIL contracts will slowly morph to be more like pro contracts with defined lengths, performance incentives, and buyouts.
It's plausible that the donors/brands funding these will overcorrect for the current Wild West situation and end up with overly restrictive contracts as well.
I could potentially see a future where the eventual equilibrium involves a CBA for college athletes, to be honest.
sbillini
- st petersburg, fl
Take away all official connections to uiuc (or whatever university) and rename the team the chambana honest Abe’s, and I’m willing to bet, within a decade, tv ratings, merchandising, tv contract sizes, etc etc, will drop meaningfully. Eventually, it’ll be no different than the minor leagues for baseball.
Dunno… the Chambana Honest Abes vs the Tuscaloosa Plantation Confederates would present an interesting storyline.
Virtually no one is arguing against letting athletes being allowed to make money on their NIL. So, I think the cheerleader/cs major comparison is moot.
In my opinion the unlimited transfers are the thing most have a problem with. A cheerleader/cs major doesn't change schools every year. The athletes are students plain and simple. They cannot play for a college team without being students. If that connection goes away then it is no longer college athletics. Why even bother with only having four or five years of eligibility? Why not just let NBA or NFL players come back and play? And, so on. If they are students, then the universities (via their associations; the NCAA and conferences) have a core mission in having their student athletes make progress toward a degree--just like other university students. Moving schools every year makes it very difficult to make progress toward a degree.
Wait, … what?
Last edited:
Yes, but that’s the thing. The connection to (legacy) university and (flesh-and-blood) students fosters that ongoing built-in connecting point to create personal interest and connection. Without that un-severable connection inherent to College Life... college ball would just be another G-League. And G-League teams don’t and won’t ever have that kind of personal-connection-investment.
As long as college arenas fill up with students and The Big Dance remains essentially as it is... those are unique attributes that will sustain college ball and general fan interest. The Dance remains one of the few reliable ratings-grabbers that TV has mostly lost over the years. Unscripted live TV programming that draws people which draws advertiser dollars.
The thing that could alter the landscape is when and if fewer students decide to go to college in the future. If they feel the financial cost isn’t worth it or they don’t want to commit those years to that anymore... fewer students will be on campus and fewer personal connections to Program will be made. And that is when the fan interest really begins to slip.
Yes. A lot of the basketball players going forward will more or less amount to what were once called ringers.This +100000000000
I'd wager my beach house (in Tuscany) that most of the posters on Loyalty love Illini sports because of their love for the university. We always viewed the players and coaches as representatives of the university. That's gone, likely never to return.
I feel similarly about sports in general. I liked it better when athletes were generally identified with a single team.
I still see nothing wrong with the old rule that basically required student athletes to redshirt if they transferred. They could even keep their scholarship and got a 5th year. I did like that the NCAA separated the medical and regular redshirts, and added the penalty free graduate transfer.
First rule of life - "Life is not fair, get over it, I'm sorry Momma lied to you, but life is not fair."
Second, let's ask the 1st year med student, the second year nursing student, the third year psych student, the senior business management student if it's fair that they are going to graduate with $50-500K of student loan debt if life is fair.
sbillini
- st petersburg, fl
I don’t disagree with your premise at all. And I’m actually in support of the NIL in general. But the broader point that I made earlier pertaining to this is the primary connection is to the university, not the team itself (as I believe you’re saying the same thing). So the lack of economics going to the university in general vs virtually all going to the DIA, coaches, players is totally incongruent. Ultimately, less should be going to the players/coaches and more to the university in general.
And to your point bolded above, that’s already occurring. Matriculation rates are declining for 4 year universities broadly. The exception is flagship/better regarded schools (like UIUC) are seeing growth as people are delineating between the average college degree (less valuable), and a good college degree. But it’s a bit of a question if that’s sustainable or do even good college degrees lose value over time in place of alternate career training programs.
The pitch clock is an absolute travesty.
Nope. Cannot be performance based. Must be quid pro quo.
I think the NCAA will change this and that will be the catalyst for some semblance of rationality.
NCAA and rationality in the same sentence does not compute.
sacraig
- The desert
I didn't say tomorrow. I said slowly. But I don't think the situation now remains status quo.
Legally, why can't NIL contracts be performance based? (Search for my earlier note on potential team issues w/performance based contracts.) In general, teams that win are worth more in terms of tie-in advertising. Are you more likely to buy the Illini special when the team is 20-10, or when the team is 10-20?
Because they have to be quid pro quo and not a “pay for play” inducement.
In the future, could it be that way? I suppose. Any top tier prospect would be a fool to sign a multi-year performance based contract.
I think what it comes down to is that the lawsuit says that players can profit off their name, image, and likeness. Throwing in performance starts to turn it into pay to play.
Of course, the reality is that it is pay to play, and none of these lofty numbers we here about have the remotest connection to someone's value as an endorser.
I think other add ons for NIL contracts might align with the lawsuit but the current opinion seems to be that if you go to the players and say that their contract goes away if they transfer, etc. that we'd lose people. This could be, but over time, the number of people getting burned will grow and there will be ways for the people with the money to get more safeguards.
Does the $$$ being paid college athletics now really have much to do with NIL?
Illini92and96
- Austin, TX
The lawyers haven't figured out how to do it yet. When they do............
- Status