re: Saban in Congressional roundtable speaking about NIL today

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Finally, in terms of being delusional your final two sentences in your post have me picturing someone out of touch with the reality that most large college athletic departments are money-driven win-or-else organizations that are almost completely divorced from the purpose of the college

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This is what you are responding to:

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US college sports have no true parallel anywhere in the world. It is a totally unique animal and should be treated as such if people want to preserve it. If it is allowed to become a true professional league, then its uniqueness will be lost forever.

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You state that I’m out of touch with reality. I want you to prove it.

Please tell everyone which country has anything remotely similar to the US involving college athletics and why the US’s system is not unique.

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The problem with that is that there are any lsu fans capable of reasonable or rational thought. Most of them have an IQ level below room temperature.

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There are, they just dont post on TD. The internet self selects the dumbest and loudest to get the most attention. To those with a juvenile mindset, another team cant just have a better coach and program which is why they win more. Its that they "bought players"

These nimwits would rather the sport of CFB be completely destroyed than admit that Nick Saban was just a good coach with a good system. Thankfully these people are losers in real life and hold no actual power to make any decisions. They will just continue to call into Finebaum or post nonsense on here.

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Nothing entitles the players to this piece of which you speak.

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The 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and all of its derived labor laws and anti-trust laws, might not agree with your assessment. I suspect the Supreme Court won't agree with you either.

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The reality is that it is a multi-billion dollar business

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That pays for the majority of University operations. Can you imagine what shape most of our major universities would be in without the proceeds from football.

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then see the very founding principles of the economic might of this country undermined because a few boomers

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Are you serious here? Farmers that provide the very food that is on your table. What's their worth How about a doctor that can hold your heart or brain in his hand? How about a fireman that will actually put his life in danger to save yours. Or the man or woman in the military that will stand a post so you and I don't have too. Worth? These are kids playing a freaking GAME. I think our priorities have gone astray. Destroy it all!! From college on up!!

I am absolutely serious. I completely agree that the true value to our society of the farmer, fireman, or military person is far greater than that of a college athlete.

However a free market not restrained by artificial regulations or programs is the surest route to providing free people what they want to spend their money on.

This may bring about the scenario you express concerns about, colleges having to stop depending on football teams for huge sums of money,…….i think that would be GOOD. Let the education the college is providing stand on its own merits.

I also agree that our priorities have gone astray, and maybe if we let this play out we will get a correction that will bring all of this back to a more sane system.

I said in another post, this thing has always been a house of cards and fans didn’t see it because, well, they’re fans. And fans have tunnel vision.

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Gus, you talk about college football like it is some amateur sport that got tainted by NIL in the last few years.

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Again, you keep making things up. Please provide my quotes where I ever stated that NIL has tainted college football. Again, you won't be able to. The issue anyone with any sense about the subject has is that this system is unsustainable. MILLIONS of future student-athletes will end up losing opportunities that are currently available now (through scholarships for non-revenue sports) if schools have to start paying players (which is exactly what you are supporting, because you wrongly believe that the players currently are being mistreated).

Another major equation in this issue is the current unrestricted free agency. Once again, people who are clueless on how the entire system of college athletics works are in favor of the current rules (or lack thereof) for transfers.

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Now that NIL has started providing a path for players to get what the market says they are worth all the people that are part of the old system (most especially Saban) are fighting against it.

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Why do you insist on being obtuse? Seriously, why?

You keep saying that Saban and I want to fight NIL. Do you have a problem with reading comprehension?

I stated the following:

"NIL can be regulated to where it is truly used as intended (name, image, likeness of player with NO input from schools) rather than the current Wild West with unlimited transfers. I do not know exactly how, but it can be done. No professional league has unlimited free agency, why should college?

Again, I have no problem with a student athlete cashing on themselves (NIL), but not at the expense of eliminating ALL non-revenue sports (and subsequent opportunities) for millions of future student-athletes."

How you can interpret that as me wanting to get rid of NIL or blaming NIL for "tainting college sports" ?

I blame the complete lack of enforcement of the rules that were in place for both transfers and NIL. I never said both of those should go away, regardless of how often you want to say so. I just think those issues should be tightly regulated by a governing body put together by the member schools (totally gutting the NCAA would be a great start).

Do you honestly know the true intentions for NIL? If not, it is supposed to be a rule that allows student-athletes to be compensated for using their name, image and/or likeness to endorse products, services, etc. It was ONLY supposed to be between the student and the entity paying them for their "services". Schools were not supposed to be involved in any way (which was laughable from the very beginning).

My point (as is Saban's) is that there needs to be some kind of rules in place with an enforcement agency to enforce them.

Every single major school (and many smaller schools) now have collectives which are used to entice recruits to sign with their schools. That absolutely has recruits signing with the highest bidder, which is even worse than pro sports because the pro sports are not "lawless". Why can't you see this?

Also, the unlimited transfers allowed currently will absolutely destroy college sports. If you can't see that now, you never will until it is too late.

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But of course he never did that when he was at LSU.

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I doubt it. Saban was still young in his career and LSU (obviously) didn’t have any system set up for doing that before then. Obvious, because we freakin sucked. But who knows?

Gus, I do appreciate you responding. I am not trying to be obtuse and if you carefully read what I wrote I am not making things up. However, I do feel like we are both genuinely trying to understand our disagreement, but to some extent we are talking past each other. Given that I will try again.

There are several things I agree with you on (trying to use your exact same wording when I can below):
- this system is unsustainable
- Schools were not suppose to be involved, but it was laughable to think this way
- the current system has players signing with the highest bidder
- unlimited transfers will destroy college sports as we know it

Some of the things disagree with you on are:
- I believe college football players have been being mistreated in a college football market value sense for that last 20-30 years , their earnings from the college football business were a pittance compared to what the coaches and administrators received.
- I believe Saban wants another system just like the failed one that has existed for the past 20-30 years. A set of rules (NCAA regulations) with an enforcement agency (the NCAA). I would rather have free markets letting institutions pay what they want for players ( they already do this with coaches, and Saban personally benefited from that).
- let the players go play where they want, it is supposed to be a free country, I sure as hell do not want someone to tell me where I can or cannot go to work for money
- NIL and the money flowing through it are just a small symptom of a much larger problem, it is like a small crack in a hugely out of balance business system that is college football today.

Some ideas that I have heard/considered for the future of college football that could be examined more:
- separate college football teams from the education institutions, they are separate organizations that have vastly different goals and they end up corrupting each other.
- let players contract with a team, they could sign a contract for 4 years and “x” million dollars with penalties if they leave, or a contract for 1 year for less money
- maybe things are so bad with college football that it does need to be destroyed as we know it now, and then if it is something that people truly value it will be resurrected in a more pure form.

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Schools don't like Missouri NIL laws because it's an unfair advantage change your states NiIL laws then quit crying

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State NIL laws have nothing to do with schools enforcing the rule that says SCHOOLS cannot be involved in offering NIL deals. At the moment, schools ARE INVOLVED in offering NIL deals, no matter how "disguised by collectives" it is. They are not supposed to be.