Players that would otherwise go to fringe pro leagues are sticking around (NIL, Covid)
Freshmen who aren’t ready aren’t being asked to play as much
Portal allows players to “find their level” and that can help all teams (Barnes)
Pro leagues for HS players now mean the best players aren’t coming to college
The development of the G-League means that fringe guys are leaving sooner (Houstan, Jett, etc.)
The portal means that there is so much movement that development in role is less likely (Frankie)
I think I would say that there is more parity than before, the overall average team is perhaps better with older players and more up-transfers, but the pure talent level is lower because Chris Webber isn’t ever coming to Michigan these days and Juwan/Jalen at best would show up for 1 year, not 3.
Yeah good point. It was a lot cleaner and simpler when it was just coaches pitching a player to join their program for 4 years. Now it’s all about getting a bag and if the bag doesn’t cash then you can go elsewhere and does winning even matter if I get my money.
NIL and Transfer Portal were long overdue and were deserved by the players. It just sucks how it’s all blowing up in proportion
I think the NIL and Portal are good in general…but wrong in practice. Look at the pro leagues. Players are trying to get long-term contracts with escalating financials and job security. Few players try to chase the bag every year. They leverage free agency, but only a couple of times over the course of their career.
I think if the portal and NIL were aligned to be mutually beneficial with multiple years in mind it would benefit both parties. Maybe this SEC/B10 partnership will think outside the box and get creative, but neither of those leagues have shown anything other than “we want all the money and to get the best players no matter what…until we want to push them out for different players.” We’ll see.
I think if NIL evolves into more of a “salary” or “revenue sharing” there are ways to incentivize institutions to develop players and for players to stick around at schools. The sport - players, coaches, teams, conferences, etc. - needs more stability not more chaos.
I’d love to see NIL only allowed to be given to enrolled student-athletes and each program has a set salary cap they use in line with the rest of their conference/nationally. That way players can rightfully get money for their NIL, but then it’s not all about who can offer the most money to the most players
I’m ready to get back to the four year meta but if the NCAA can’t enforce transfer restrictions then I’m not sure they’d be able to force four-year eligibility restrictions either. The whole thing is gonna have to blow up sooner or later. Someone who can make substantially more staying in college versus going pro is going to sue one of these days.
Yeah this is kind of where I’m starting to go with things. What exactly is even going to make it college sports moving forward? IDC how much money they’re making but even if they’re signing contracts and have salary caps that probably is going to make it just feel less like college sports to me. Especially with the big schools probably breaking away and doing their own thing, which will likely destroy the NCAA tournament as we know it
I think it’s very possible that these idiot ADs and Presidents and TV execs end up just ruining the whole thing for short term football money gain
We’re gonna have Christian Anderson III sign a contract with Hulu and Michigan for 2 years $20million with a player option if he wants to come back a third year
yeah, what worries me is i don’t think it’s possible to have a salary cap without a union, and it’s plausible to me that union never gets formed. if all it is is schools agreeing to one without a strong enforcement engine in the ncaa, then the black market that currently exists will just…continue to exist, right? they’d just keep playing players on the side?
A salary cap will only create a line in the sand where people will know how to go above and beyond.
A salary cap will just tell teams that want to cheat how much extra they need to land recruits.
The NCAA’s problem is that any time it enforces a rule at this point, people cry foul. That’s just never going to work moving forward and is a complete disaster.
Imagine if NBA teams were like suing Adam Silver or something like that because of MVP rules, or tampering charges, or who knows what.
yeah, that’s exactly what i mean. and i don’t really know how that stops? even creating contracts, etc doesn’t seem like it would really work, though i guess that could lead to players getting sued (fun!)
I mean, Michigan suing the Big Ten isn’t that much different than what I’m talking about.
The entire D1 sports landscape is filled with people out for their own self interests – whether it is schools, coaches, conferences, parents, athletes, boosters, CFP, grandstanding politicians, whatever – without giving a dang about the big picture.
Yeah it’s this stuff that makes me pretty unhappy with the product rn. Stalions Gate made clear to me–feel free to laugh that it took that–that college athletics is filled with unserious maroons and grifters. Coaching either football or basketball rn is very unfun and the incentives for coaching talent to stay here than go literally anywhere else are poor.
Not sure about that part, I mean more the transfer waiver lawsuits, the Tez Walker thing, the AGs getting involved, all of that noise – it is all misguided IMO with no consideration for repercussions.
The sheer idiocy of every party involved there was blackpilling for me. Jim clearly had no idea what was going on in his own program, his LB coach tried to go full omerta on his players, every other coach in every other program cynically played it for their own gain and most did so so clumsily that it was very evident that these coaches are no different from Jim. And it all started with a private investigator clearly tied to a rival coach trying to save his job. Not a single respectable, intelligent actor.
You’re very plugged in with CBB so the various equivalent stupidities I’m sure come to mind. But that Stalions nonsense was grim from my perspective.
Not that you need my permission, but feel free to delete if you think that’s going to send this thread sprawling in a dumb direction.
I think Dylan got it right - the problem with the NCAA is that it isn’t really an organization at all. It is all a bunch of individual schools out for themselves - plus the players, coaches, agents, boosters, etc. There’s no collective motivation to make the product better. Whether that is player benefits/health, financials, competitive balance, fair play, growth, etc. No one cares about anything other than their own self interests and those are often related directly to the billions of dollars pouring into the sport.
I have almost zero optimism that the NCAA can be fixed for football and basketball for those reasons. I have slightly more optimism that an individual conference like the B10 or SEC could decide on some framework of rules and conditions that are agreed to and enforceable - but I’m still skeptical.
The only path that seems logical is that the players need to officially become employees. As such they are under contract, get benefits, agree to provisions, etc. That has to benefit them in some way financially (revenue sharing, escalating bonuses for years at school, etc.) or else they wouldn’t do it. But that’s about the only path and it is complicated. But the real money isn’t with some alum who owns a car dealership and wants to put $5M into NIL. The real money is with Fox and ESPN throwing billions at these big conferences. GIve the players a piece of that in exchange for confidence the check will clear, security that they can’t be pushed into the portal easily, etc.
Very complex…so not sure who’s smart enough to figure it out.
But it is an organization! And you have people who are members and involved with coming up with the rules… then they turn around and sue to override them when they don’t get what they want.
Right - it is only an organization in name because there is no authority or incentive for the members to follow along since they are only motivated from self interest. Then in a court of law the NCAA falls apart.
In the NBA, teams and the league agreed to a salary cap and there are penalties enforced for going over it. The Pistons want the league to punish the Cavs if they go over the cap. The courts aren’t going to help the NBA in such a dispute anyway because it is a self-sustaining company with collective bargaining.
Honestly I have never been a fan of a super league model…but that might be the only way to make this work. Let the NCAA be for non-revenue sports or smaller leagues but a super-league can just be an NBA/NFL minor league with similar structure and requirements. You’ll get paid if you get signed by a team, but you’re locked into rules that you can’t run to a friendly judge for.
