NCAA and Power 5 Agree to Allow Schools to Pay Players

[Wrestleknownothing]

14 minutes ago, ionel said:

https://www.essentiallysports.com/nfl-ncaa-news-colorado-football-suffers-nearly-sixty-k-loss-due-to-poor-record-while-ncaa-champions-michigan-reaps-hefty-payout-from-ea-college-football-twenty-five/

Are any wrestling programs on the EA Sports gravy train?  If Michigan needs to start paying football players will they share any of this with wrestling?

That was a brutally bad article to read.

[ionel]

26 minutes ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

That was a brutally bad article to read.

"Journalism" these days, we are lucky to still get capital letters and end of sentence punctuation.  

[Wrestleknownothing]

27 minutes ago, ionel said:

"Journalism" these days, we are lucky to still get capital letters and end of sentence punctuation.  

No one calls that journalism. Random sentences, some of which are coherent, perhaps.

[fishbane]

4 hours ago, ionel said:

Once they have to start paying taxes and paying tuition some of these new employees are going to wish they weren't.  

You've said this multiple times.  Do you have any reason to believe it will actually happen?

Students on academic scholarships have been able to be paid for on-campus employment for decades and decades.  Their scholarships have never been considered taxable income.  Now that the NCAA changed their internal rule about directly paying players you think the IRS will change the tax treatment of their scholarships?  Why exactly do you think that will happen?

The tuition discounts that universities give as a benefit to their employees and their families is not taxable income.  So you're telling me that PSU football coach James Franklin could get a 75% tuition discount on all the PSU classes he takes and all of his offspring can get bachelors degrees at a 75% discount without any of it being taxable income, but some athlete in a non-revenue sport not getting a huge percentage of the $20 million annual salary cap is going to get taxed on his/her scholarship?  I doubt that is how it happens.

[billyhoyle]

1 hour ago, fishbane said:

You've said this multiple times.  Do you have any reason to believe it will actually happen?

Students on academic scholarships have been able to be paid for on-campus employment for decades and decades.  Their scholarships have never been considered taxable income.  Now that the NCAA changed their internal rule about directly paying players you think the IRS will change the tax treatment of their scholarships?  Why exactly do you think that will happen?

The tuition discounts that universities give as a benefit to their employees and their families is not taxable income.  So you're telling me that PSU football coach James Franklin could get a 75% tuition discount on all the PSU classes he takes and all of his offspring can get bachelors degrees at a 75% discount without any of it being taxable income, but some athlete in a non-revenue sport not getting a huge percentage of the $20 million annual salary cap is going to get taxed on his/her scholarship?  I doubt that is how it happens.

You're right...This is going to be a huge windfall for the football and basketball athletes. For the athletes in non-revenue sports (everything else), it will be a complete disaster.  Anybody suggesting otherwise is in denial.

The other thing that I find funny is seeing people still claiming that very few D1 programs make money. Every P4 program (except Cal, Stanford, SMU) is now profitable with their new TV contracts (obviously they can't turn a profit so they invest the money in facilities and other sports). And the other schools with football programs are doing everything they can to get there, which is why they are investing in football and ignoring nonrevenue sports. 

 

[fishbane]

5 hours ago, billyhoyle said:

You're right...This is going to be a huge windfall for the football and basketball athletes. For the athletes in non-revenue sports (everything else), it will be a complete disaster.  Anybody suggesting otherwise is in denial.

Colleges paying athletes was inevitable.  Anyone who thought the old system where colleges could take in upwards of $100-$200 million in revenue from TV deals, ticket sales, and sponsorships without sharing any of it with the players could continue was in denial.

The lawsuits that were settled posed an existential threat to college sports both revenue and non-revenue.  The settlement came at a fairly cheap price too - 22% of the average power 5 annual revenue is low compared to the near 50% revenue share of pro leagues. Surely the reason the players agreed to only 22% was in part the very real risk of bankrupting the NCAA and though that percentage is schedule to increase under the settlement it won't hit the level of revenue sharing seen in the pros.

Athletic departments will be scrambling to figure out how to pay the settlement - cutting staff, cutting salaries, cutting sports, delaying/cancelling investment in facilities/equipment, drumming up donations (not counted in revenue split calculation), increase rental/events at athletic facilities - I'm sure it's all on the table.  It's not all negative though - paying the players should also open the door to revenue streams that had been turned off by previous lawsuits.  Licensed video games are back on the table.  Personalized jersey sales could be back on the table.  And whilst colleges will have to share these kinds of revenue with players the share percentage is still quite favorable to the universities with them getting to keep upwards of 70% of it. 

A logical person could, in light of the alternative, view the settlement as a win even for non-revenue athletes.  The blame for the predicament that college athletics found itself in must fall squarely on the greedy institutions that for far too long tried to keep all the money.

[feet2back]

The Schools that will benefit the most..IMO

PSU

Iowa

Ohio State

Iowa State

Rutgers

Oklahoma State

Oklahoma

Virginia Tech

Missouri

 

 

[CHROMEBIRD]

16 hours ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

That was a brutally bad article to read.

That company is based in India and uses bots to generate and promote articles. They've been banned on several subreddits.

[billyhoyle]

5 hours ago, fishbane said:

Colleges paying athletes was inevitable.  Anyone who thought the old system where colleges could take in upwards of $100-$200 million in revenue from TV deals, ticket sales, and sponsorships without sharing any of it with the players could continue was in denial.

The lawsuits that were settled posed an existential threat to college sports both revenue and non-revenue.  The settlement came at a fairly cheap price too - 22% of the average power 5 annual revenue is low compared to the near 50% revenue share of pro leagues. Surely the reason the players agreed to only 22% was in part the very real risk of bankrupting the NCAA and though that percentage is schedule to increase under the settlement it won't hit the level of revenue sharing seen in the pros.

Athletic departments will be scrambling to figure out how to pay the settlement - cutting staff, cutting salaries, cutting sports, delaying/cancelling investment in facilities/equipment, drumming up donations (not counted in revenue split calculation), increase rental/events at athletic facilities - I'm sure it's all on the table.  It's not all negative though - paying the players should also open the door to revenue streams that had been turned off by previous lawsuits.  Licensed video games are back on the table.  Personalized jersey sales could be back on the table.  And whilst colleges will have to share these kinds of revenue with players the share percentage is still quite favorable to the universities with them getting to keep upwards of 70% of it. 

A logical person could, in light of the alternative, view the settlement as a win even for non-revenue athletes.  The blame for the predicament that college athletics found itself in must fall squarely on the greedy institutions that for far too long tried to keep all the money.

It was not inevitable if universities acted reasonably by: 

1. Capping coaches/AD admin salaries

2. Actually providing an education to the athletes.

3. Not paying the athletes under the table. 

4. Being less greedy on the revenue side. Providing some broadcasting free with minimal ads. Not monetizing the athletes to the degree that was done. They did not HAVE to make 100 million/year on TV deals.

They chose to act recklessly and it has destroyed athletics. Turning college sports into professional sports is a terrible idea and will not work at all for non revenue sports. Thinking otherwise is a great example of cognitive dissonance. “Don’t look up”, the asteroid for NCAA wrestling is coming. 

Edited May 27 by billyhoyle

[Wrestleknownothing]

1 hour ago, billyhoyle said:

It was not inevitable if universities acted reasonably by: 

1. Capping coaches/AD admin salaries

2. Actually providing an education to the athletes.

3. Not paying the athletes under the table. 

4. Being less greedy on the revenue side. Providing some broadcasting free with minimal ads. Not monetizing the athletes to the degree that was done. They did not HAVE to make 100 million/year on TV deals.

They chose to act recklessly and it has destroyed athletics. Turning college sports into professional sports is a terrible idea and will not work at all for non revenue sports. Thinking otherwise is a great example of cognitive dissonance. “Don’t look up”, the asteroid for NCAA wrestling is coming. 

Knowing what we know about the paragons of amatuer athletics, The Olympics, combined with man's basic greed for power and money, it probably was inevitable. But that is easy to say when you know the result, and impossible to prove.

[Wrestleknownothing]

The one significant party that has yet to weigh in on this situation is Congress. Remember that the NCAA is lobbying hard to get Congress to put at least some of the genie back in the bottle. If successful, the NCAA could get Congress to role back some of the gains athletes have won in court.

[billyhoyle]

3 hours ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

Knowing what we know about the paragons of amatuer athletics, The Olympics, combined with man's basic greed for power and money, it probably was inevitable. But that is easy to say when you know the result, and impossible to prove.

The Olympics never made sense to be for amateur athletes only-they are about seeing the best athletes around the world compete against each other.  NCAA athletics does make sense to keep for amateur athletes only because Universities shouldn't have professional teams attached to them-their focus should be on education....And there already are professional leagues where athletes can go and make money.  

It wouldn't have been THAT difficult to avoid the level of greed that has brought us to this point, but the SEC has never cared about anything but $$$ and has brought the other conferences along with them.

Edited May 28 by billyhoyle

[Lipdrag]

i misread this topic title at first.  I thought the last two words were, "say prayers".

 

[fishbane]

6 hours ago, billyhoyle said:

It was not inevitable if universities acted reasonably by: 

1. Capping coaches/AD admin salaries

2. Actually providing an education to the athletes.

3. Not paying the athletes under the table. 

4. Being less greedy on the revenue side. Providing some broadcasting free with minimal ads. Not monetizing the athletes to the degree that was done. They did not HAVE to make 100 million/year on TV deals.

WKN already pointed out the general issues with amateurism, but there are more specific issues with your suggestions. 

1) Placing a cap on AD/coach salaries is an antitrust lawsuit all its own and a losing one for the NCAA. 

2) Paying the athletes based on their economic value eliminates the issue with providing them with a potentially low quality education.  The education becomes a fringe benefit in addition to their salary.

3) Allowing institutions to pay student athletes their economic worth in the open removes the incentive to pay them under the table.

4) A fair way to assign broadcast rights is to give them to the highest bidder.  Giving them away for less than the market rate creates incentive for networks to bribe or wine/dine NCAA and institution officials that get to decide who gets the rights.  If there is $100 million in demand for the broadcast rights then thats what they should be sold for. 

7 hours ago, billyhoyle said:

They chose to act recklessly and it has destroyed athletics. Turning college sports into professional sports is a terrible idea and will not work at all for non revenue sports. Thinking otherwise is a great example of cognitive dissonance. “Don’t look up”, the asteroid for NCAA wrestling is coming. 

Bro you're the one with the cognitive dissonance problem.  The NCAA has been operating a pro league for decades the only thing that was missing was cutting the players in on the revenue.  Keeping all the money was simply untenable.  This is an asteroid that's been on a collision course with the NCAA for decades.  Paying the athletes is not a terrible idea - it is literally the only option available to the NCAA in 2024.  The only thing that might possibly save D1 college sports.  The alternative is to continue the legal fight and get sued into Bolivian.

[billyhoyle]

19 minutes ago, fishbane said:

WKN already pointed out the general issues with amateurism, but there are more specific issues with your suggestions. 

1) Placing a cap on AD/coach salaries is an antitrust lawsuit all its own and a losing one for the NCAA. 

That's just not true.  Many university jobs have fixed pay scales for positions that vary by factors including seniority. Universities are not for profit institutions and they could easily say only X dollars should go into salaries, while the majority goes back to funding student programs.

 

19 minutes ago, fishbane said:

2) Paying the athletes based on their economic value eliminates the issue with providing them with a potentially low quality education.  The education becomes a fringe benefit in addition to their salary.

How about fixing it by actually providing them an education...You know the whole reason that a University should exist. 

 

19 minutes ago, fishbane said:

3) Allowing institutions to pay student athletes their economic worth in the open removes the incentive to pay them under the table.

This logic can be applied to any illegal activity-it is not a good solution. 

19 minutes ago, fishbane said:

4) A fair way to assign broadcast rights is to give them to the highest bidder.  Giving them away for less than the market rate creates incentive for networks to bribe or wine/dine NCAA and institution officials that get to decide who gets the rights.  If there is $100 million in demand for the broadcast rights then thats what they should be sold for. 

Bro you're the one with the cognitive dissonance problem.  The NCAA has been operating a pro league for decades the only thing that was missing was cutting the players in on the revenue.  Keeping all the money was simply untenable.  This is an asteroid that's been on a collision course with the NCAA for decades.  Paying the athletes is not a terrible idea - it is literally the only option available to the NCAA in 2024.  The only thing that might possibly save D1 college sports.  The alternative is to continue the legal fight and get sued into Bolivian.

I didn't say provide broadcast rights for less than what they are worth.  I said mandate providing a significant portion of the content for free to limit the revenue.  Is there a mandate that says a college football game has to air a commercial every time there's a punt?  They didn't have to turn everything into a revenue stream whenrunning a not-for-profit..In fact, it's a bad idea to try to do so. University admins forgot that they aren't running for-profit businesses and in the process destroyed the good thing they had going.

The cognitive dissonance is thinking that this change won't destroy nonrevenue sports and erode the brand of college football/basketball by making it entirely pay-for-play. How fun is it watching a Colorado football team where every single athlete is a transfer every year? Are we going to look back when only a handful of schools will be left offering D1 scholarships in wrestling, swimming, track, and hockey and think the change has been good? 

 

Edited May 28 by billyhoyle

[Wrestleknownothing]

16 hours ago, billyhoyle said:

I didn't say provide broadcast rights for less than what they are worth.  I said mandate providing a significant portion of the content for free to limit the revenue.  Is there a mandate that says a college football game has to air a commercial every time there's a punt?  They didn't have to turn everything into a revenue stream whenrunning a not-for-profit..In fact, it's a bad idea to try to do so. University admins forgot that they aren't running for-profit businesses and in the process destroyed the good thing they had going.

 

A mandate providing a significant portion of the content for free IS providing broadcast rights for less than what they are worth. All that achieves is providing even larger profits for broadcasters (they have no cost) thereby moving the money further away from the athletes who provide the live entertainment that is the single most valuable commodity in the world of broadcast/streaming today.

The impact of money on sports is not a new concern. From the 1928 National Collegiate Athletic Association Official Intercollegiate Wrestling Guide:

"Extend the foregoing argument that the influence of professionals is condemnatory and it becomes applicable to practically every known sport. One might just as fitly stigmatize tennis, football, baseball ad lib as being attainted, because the "root of all evil" sometimes grows into a giant and casts its shadow over almost every human activity."

But I do not see how you can un-ring that bell. The money is here, and it is not going anywhere. We live in a country dedicated to economic activity. This is just one more example.

[fishbane]

14 hours ago, billyhoyle said:

That's just not true.  Many university jobs have fixed pay scales for positions that vary by factors including seniority. Universities are not for profit institutions and they could easily say only X dollars should go into salaries, while the majority goes back to funding student programs.

I mean if each university independently decided to set up an internal pay scale for coach/AD/admin positions it would be fine.  If they got together and did this on a conference/division/NCAA level this would violate antitrust law no question.  Coaches and ADs know what each other make (or at least those as public universities) due to disclosure laws, so all it really takes is for a few to care about winning in a few sports for them to have to adjust the scale to market rate to get the person they want in the position they are trying to fill.  One school decides they really want to win and pays up to get a coach, that fact becomes widely known, and any school that want to compete must do the same.

14 hours ago, billyhoyle said:

How about fixing it by actually providing them an education...You know the whole reason that a University should exist. 

Some students get more out of college than others, whether athletes or not, and some colleges take education more seriously than others, but by and large they provide student athletes with an education.  Not doing this has always been against the rules and would remain against the rules after this settlement. Where pay-for-play helps is that in the past when a school didn't take their educational mission as seriously as they should the athlete's only compensation was a shitty education, now that the athlete can be financially compensated too.  This makes the deal more fair for the player.

14 hours ago, billyhoyle said:

This logic can be applied to any illegal activity-it is not a good solution. 

Paying student-athletes was never illegal.  NCAA rules are not laws.  There should be a good reason for something to be "illegal" or even just institutional rules against it.  We are talking about paying someone for doing something that generates revenue for the university that shouldn't be illegal.

14 hours ago, billyhoyle said:

I didn't say provide broadcast rights for less than what they are worth. 

But that's what you described.  And this has already happened and has been litigated.  Back in the 1980s the NCAA used to sell the football TV rights as a package and distribute money to school.  Some schools sued the NCAA for the right to sell the rights to their own games believing they could do better. They won the lawsuit with the NCAA found to have violated antitrust law.  A group of schools got together and packaged their football TV rights for sale and swiftly found out they were getting less than what it was worth under the NCAA's deal.

14 hours ago, billyhoyle said:

The cognitive dissonance is thinking that this change won't destroy nonrevenue sports and erode the brand of college football/basketball by making it entirely pay-for-play.

In my opinion the NCAA's reputation suffered more attempting to prevent paying the athletes than by this settlement.  The settlement itself is tacit acknowledgment that the NCAA behaved unlawfully for years depriving NCAA athletes money that was rightfully theirs.  The settlement goes to righting those wrongs.  

14 hours ago, billyhoyle said:

How fun is it watching a Colorado football team where every single athlete is a transfer every year?

If players become employees like coaches transfers could go down.  Professional athletes typically sign multi-year contracts.  If Colorado is able to pay their players they might be able to sign a top recruit to a multi year deal and keep them around longer.

14 hours ago, billyhoyle said:

Are we going to look back when only a handful of schools will be left offering D1 scholarships in wrestling, swimming, track, and hockey and think the change has been good? 

What makes you think this will happen?  How many D1 wrestling programs do you reckon will be around in 5 years?

[billyhoyle]

4 hours ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

A mandate providing a significant portion of the content for free IS providing broadcast rights for less than what they are worth. All that achieves is providing even larger profits for broadcasters (they have no cost) thereby moving the money further away from the athletes who provide the live entertainment that is the single most valuable commodity in the world of broadcast/streaming today.

The impact of money on sports is not a new concern. From the 1928 National Collegiate Athletic Association Official Intercollegiate Wrestling Guide:

"Extend the foregoing argument that the influence of professionals is condemnatory and it becomes applicable to practically every known sport. One might just as fitly stigmatize tennis, football, baseball ad lib as being attainted, because the "root of all evil" sometimes grows into a giant and casts its shadow over almost every human activity."

But I do not see how you can un-ring that bell. The money is here, and it is not going anywhere. We live in a country dedicated to economic activity. This is just one more example.

This is my mistake-I wasn't clear in what I meant by free.  Not free to broadcasters, but free to viewers.  So instead of being sold and broadcast on ESPN, the events could have broadcast somewhere with minimal commercials (e.g. the NCAA could have created its own network or shown it free online as they do for D2/D3). 

I agree that it is too late unless congress acts reasonably (which won't happen)-I don't agree that it was inevitable though. 

[billyhoyle]

4 hours ago, fishbane said:

I mean if each university independently decided to set up an internal pay scale for coach/AD/admin positions it would be fine.  If they got together and did this on a conference/division/NCAA level this would violate antitrust law no question.  Coaches and ADs know what each other make (or at least those as public universities) due to disclosure laws, so all it really takes is for a few to care about winning in a few sports for them to have to adjust the scale to market rate to get the person they want in the position they are trying to fill.  One school decides they really want to win and pays up to get a coach, that fact becomes widely known, and any school that want to compete must do the same.

Some students get more out of college than others, whether athletes or not, and some colleges take education more seriously than others, but by and large they provide student athletes with an education.  Not doing this has always been against the rules and would remain against the rules after this settlement. Where pay-for-play helps is that in the past when a school didn't take their educational mission as seriously as they should the athlete's only compensation was a shitty education, now that the athlete can be financially compensated too.  This makes the deal more fair for the player.

Paying student-athletes was never illegal.  NCAA rules are not laws.  There should be a good reason for something to be "illegal" or even just institutional rules against it.  We are talking about paying someone for doing something that generates revenue for the university that shouldn't be illegal.

But that's what you described.  And this has already happened and has been litigated.  Back in the 1980s the NCAA used to sell the football TV rights as a package and distribute money to school.  Some schools sued the NCAA for the right to sell the rights to their own games believing they could do better. They won the lawsuit with the NCAA found to have violated antitrust law.  A group of schools got together and packaged their football TV rights for sale and swiftly found out they were getting less than what it was worth under the NCAA's deal.

In my opinion the NCAA's reputation suffered more attempting to prevent paying the athletes than by this settlement.  The settlement itself is tacit acknowledgment that the NCAA behaved unlawfully for years depriving NCAA athletes money that was rightfully theirs.  The settlement goes to righting those wrongs.  

If players become employees like coaches transfers could go down.  Professional athletes typically sign multi-year contracts.  If Colorado is able to pay their players they might be able to sign a top recruit to a multi year deal and keep them around longer.

What makes you think this will happen?  How many D1 wrestling programs do you reckon will be around in 5 years?

The NCAA could avoid antitrust simply by requiring all coaches to also be faculty members and that their pay fit the standard salary scale of the faculty. That is not fixing coaching salaries at a particular point, but rather requiring that they have a faculty appointment. Would this shitshow have happened if the coaches were making 200K/year instead of 20 million?

The reason that we are about to lose a lot of D1 programs is simple math.  The money that is going to pay the football players is going to have to come from somewhere.  I don't know how many we will lose.  I hope it is only a handful, but my expectation is we will have most of the B10 programs left, OKstate, Oklahoma, Arizona State, the Ivy league, and then anyone with a strong enough alumni base to raise enough money to survive.

 

Edited May 29 by billyhoyle

[fishbane]

1 hour ago, billyhoyle said:

The NCAA could avoid antitrust simply by requiring all coaches to also be faculty members and that their pay fit the standard salary scale of the faculty. That is not fixing coaching salaries at a particular point, but rather requiring that they have a faculty appointment. Would this shitshow have happened if the coaches were making 200K/year instead of 20 million?

The NCAA could probably have a rule that coaches must be faculty, but they wouldn't be able to tell universities that they must have a pay scale for faculty nor that they strictly adhere to the schedule for all faculty appointments including coaches.  All it would take is a handful of schools to care about winning to pay more for special faculty appointments.

If would have happened if there were billions of dollars being collected and not shared with the players.

1 hour ago, billyhoyle said:

The reason that we are about to lose a lot of D1 programs is simple math.  The money that is going to pay the football players is going to have to come from somewhere. 

The $2.75 billion settlement has to be paid, but I think that is over something like ten years.  And dollars paid to football players have to come from somewhere, but schools aren't required to pay their football players at all in subsequent season.  Will all schools opt to even do this?  I doubt it. This will probably be common at FBS schools, less common at FCS schools, less common still at D2 schools, and unheard of at D3 schools would be my guess.

 

1 hour ago, billyhoyle said:

I don't know how many we will lose.  I hope it is only a handful, but my expectation is we will have most of the B10 programs left, OKstate, Oklahoma, Arizona State, the Ivy league, and then anyone with a strong enough alumni base to raise enough money to survive.

You can probably add the service academies (Air Force, Army, and Navy)  to the survivors.  I don't see how this could take out the programs there. 

I think you can add Franklin and Marshall to the list of unaffected too.  They are D3 for all sports except wrestling where the compete in D1.  I don't see them blowing their entire budget paying football players. I'd say something similar about the PSAC schools (Bloomsburg, Clarion, Edinboro, Lock Haven), which are D2 except for wrestling, but they have experienced decreased enrollments and there had been talk of closing entire universities in the system a few years ago.  

The biggest threat is probably to FBS schools outside of the power 5 conferences.  Most of these don't have wrestling.  I think the only FBS schools outside of service academies not in a power 5 conference are App State, Central Michigan University, Kent State, NIU, Ohio University, UB, and  Wyoming.  Oregon State will also be out of the power 5 next season with the dissolution of the PAC-12.

[Wrestleknownothing]

2 hours ago, billyhoyle said:

This is my mistake-I wasn't clear in what I meant by free.  Not free to broadcasters, but free to viewers.  So instead of being sold and broadcast on ESPN, the events could have broadcast somewhere with minimal commercials (e.g. the NCAA could have created its own network or shown it free online as they do for D2/D3). 

I agree that it is too late unless congress acts reasonably (which won't happen)-I don't agree that it was inevitable though. 

The NBA is on the verge of signing a $70+ billion dollar media rights deal that will nearly triple their annual take even though their viewership has been in steady decline. With the skyrocketing valuation of any live sports programming it really is inevitable that college football and basketball would become big business.

[CHROMEBIRD]

1 hour ago, billyhoyle said:

I hope it is only a handful, but my expectation is we will have most of the B10 programs left, OKstate, Oklahoma, Arizona State, the Ivy league, and then anyone with a strong enough alumni base to raise enough money to survive.

The new rules are really going to stress test athletic depts' commitment to their Olympic & non-revenue sports, even in the Big Ten. Would Nebraska, Maryland, Michigan State cut wrestling to maintain a roster cap or pay higher salaries in football and basketball? Those sports are a big deal at those schools and they'll have to find the money somehow. They're getting a huge chunk of media money, but they'll have to reinvest it to keep up in the college FB/BB arms race esp with USC, UCLA, Oregon, and Washington in the mix, none which sponsors wrestling. I can foresee a separation of haves and have-nots even within the Big Ten and SEC.

Like NIL, the new pay for play rules will be the wild west if it's just unleashed without a well-defined framework for it to work. I can foresee the formation of players unions ramping up quickly so athletes can negotiate and leverage salaries like the pros do, and maybe some friction with right to work and at-will employment in some states. Conversely, pay for play can trigger ruthless practices from athletic departments. If an athlete doesn't perform up to expectations or violates a rule, could they be "fired" on the spot, mid-semester? Will they be quick to dismiss student athletes who break rules (like the recent gambling case) and generate bad PR for the institution, like corporations do? Lots of details to be worked out, but it feels like a huge can of worms.

[billyhoyle]

13 minutes ago, fishbane said:

The NCAA could probably have a rule that coaches must be faculty, but they wouldn't be able to tell universities that they must have a pay scale for faculty nor that they strictly adhere to the schedule for all faculty appointments including coaches.  All it would take is a handful of schools to care about winning to pay more for special faculty appointments.

If would have happened if there were billions of dollars being collected and not shared with the players.

The $2.75 billion settlement has to be paid, but I think that is over something like ten years.  And dollars paid to football players have to come from somewhere, but schools aren't required to pay their football players at all in subsequent season.  Will all schools opt to even do this?  I doubt it. This will probably be common at FBS schools, less common at FCS schools, less common still at D2 schools, and unheard of at D3 schools would be my guess.

 

You can probably add the service academies (Air Force, Army, and Navy)  to the survivors.  I don't see how this could take out the programs there. 

I think you can add Franklin and Marshall to the list of unaffected too.  They are D3 for all sports except wrestling where the compete in D1.  I don't see them blowing their entire budget paying football players. I'd say something similar about the PSAC schools (Bloomsburg, Clarion, Edinboro, Lock Haven), which are D2 except for wrestling, but they have experienced decreased enrollments and there had been talk of closing entire universities in the system a few years ago.  

The biggest threat is probably to FBS schools outside of the power 5 conferences.  Most of these don't have wrestling.  I think the only FBS schools outside of service academies not in a power 5 conference are App State, Central Michigan University, Kent State, NIU, Ohio University, UB, and  Wyoming.  Oregon State will also be out of the power 5 next season with the dissolution of the PAC-12.

I agree on the additional programs you identified that are likely safe. The reality is that we don’t truly know how bad this will be. I anticipate that if this becomes a free market and there isn’t a federal law that ensure funding go to nonrevenue sports, the 14 team requirement will be dropped and we will lose programs we never thought we would. Is there a big donor/alumni base funding Missouri? How about Wisconsin or Indiana? 

[Wrestleknownothing]

7 minutes ago, CHROMEBIRD said:

The new rules are really going to stress test athletic depts' commitment to their Olympic & non-revenue sports, even in the Big Ten. Would Nebraska, Maryland, Michigan State cut wrestling to maintain a roster cap or pay higher salaries in football and basketball? Those sports are a big deal at those schools and they'll have to find the money somehow. They're getting a huge chunk of media money, but they'll have to reinvest it to keep up in the college FB/BB arms race esp with USC, UCLA, Oregon, and Washington in the mix, none which sponsors wrestling. I can foresee a separation of haves and have-nots even within the Big Ten and SEC.

Like NIL, the new pay for play rules will be the wild west if it's just unleashed without a well-defined framework for it to work. I can foresee the formation of players unions ramping up quickly so athletes can negotiate and leverage salaries like the pros do, and maybe some friction with right to work and at-will employment in some states. Conversely, pay for play can trigger ruthless practices from athletic departments. If an athlete doesn't perform up to expectations or violates a rule, could they be "fired" on the spot, mid-semester? Will they be quick to dismiss student athletes who break rules (like the recent gambling case) and generate bad PR for the institution, like corporations do? Lots of details to be worked out, but it feels like a huge can of worms.

To unionize, be subject to right to work, and at-will employment the athletes would have to become employees first. This is something the NCAA has fought against successfully....so far.

[fishbane]

1 minute ago, billyhoyle said:

Is there a big donor/alumni base funding Missouri? How about Wisconsin or Indiana? 

I tend to think these will be okay.  The Big Ten is the money conference and the SEC is right behind it. The annual salary cap is set by 22% of the average revenue in the power 5 conferences teams in these conferences should be above or near the average.  Id be more concerned with programs in the ACC and Big 12 which have relatively bad TV deals compared the SEC and Big Ten.

I wonder if some non-p5 FBS schools will pack it in and go down to FCS.  Whilst I think it remains to be seen whether this will be the doom of non-revenue sports it certainly isn't good for competitive balance in FBS football.  It kind of sucks this happens a few years before the playoffs were set to expand.  Probably makes it just as unlikely for a non-P5 team to get in as it was before expansion.