re: New bill to allow athletes to get paid.

This will destroy college sports - ALL college sports. Some college athletes will make much more than their professional counterparts. And the real travesty is most college athletes will make zilch. Star QB makes $5 million. Walk on 4th string cornerback makes nada. Bench sitting volley ball players will make nothing. Money will bring crime (both organized and unorganized) into every college sport. But the biggest problem is money will divide the players against each other and "teams" will break into pieces - some STARS making big money and mostly everybody else who is not a star making nothing.

If they allow the players to unionize or negotiate as a group and create a scale of pay they'll have to share the money with every other sport and athlete - and that won't fly with the revenue sports.

You can kiss college football and every other college sport goodbye as soon as the money begins to flow to college athletes.

It's ova.

A lot will change once the free tuition, meals, housing, and “personal” trainers becomes taxable income for the athletes. It will be the same as any of us taking advantage of an employer’s tuition assistance program, it suddenly appears on the W2.

Now throw in the NIL income. The players are gonna owe the IRS mucho dinero.

quote:

---

Now throw in the NIL income. The players are gonna owe the IRS mucho dinero.

---

Only the select few who make the big bucks...the Tuas and the Trevors...will owe anything at all. And they'll still pocket a lot. The vast majority of athletes who will make anything off this...the MTSU QB who shows up at the Murfreesboro Nissan dealership on a couple of Saturdays or appears in a couple of ads...will likely make less than $10,000 a year and won't owe the IRS a dime.

quote:

---

It is significantly more money than that.

---

Yep, this is a 10 year old article from Forbes on the value of college football scholarships.

LINK

quote:

---

SYNOPSIS

Despite recent claims that college football players are "oppressed" and "undervalued" relative to the revenues they generate for their universities, I argue using "cost of attendance" and "projected earnings" data that the average "value" of a college football scholarship is in excess of $2 million for student-athletes who (1) play for one of the pre-season Top 25 schools and (2) would not have pursued a college degree if it weren't for their scholarship.

And for over 99% of Division I FBS college football players on scholarship, this projected value in excess of $2 million is far greater than what any of them INDIVIDUALLY generate in revenue for their school.

---

It will never happen and really can't for a lot of reasons, but I have always thought how fun it would be fun to watch a scenario like this play out:

College athletics has a draft for every sport structured much like the MLB draft. Each school has a pool of money they can allot to signing bonuses, but that pool has a strict cap, so if you want to throw the bank at one player you may not have enough for the rest of your players. The "league minimum" salary is the cost of admission/living for a college student. However, players drafted will also have slot salaries based on their round and pick in the draft. If a player is drafted by a school and they don't wish to sign, then must sit out one year and then they can walk-on to the school of their choosing the following year but would be solely responsible for all costs of attendance that first year. Let's say the draft would have 20 rounds with 65 picks in each round to accommodate all P5 schools (the P5 and G5 split in my hypo) If you are not drafted at all, you may sign a base contract with any school you choose and are eligible to play immediately.

In this scenario, players wouldn't be required to go to school, but they would be contract employees of the university. If they choose to go to school, then they are solely responsible for paying their own way. If they want to "transfer" or leave for whatever reason, there would be liquidated damages clauses in the contracts that would be the sole responsibility of the player. If players are not enrolled in schools, they may also be traded in this scenario at any time and without warning. If players are full-time students and in good academic standing, they cannot be traded.

I know there are A LOT of loose ends here and this would be impossible to implement, but basically what I'd like to see is a system where athletes get paid but also have skin in the game. They want all the free shite they get now (probably valued in the range of a couple hundred grand a year) plus more money. That's just a non-starter for me dawg. If they want to go out and earn a living by themselves, go for it, I don't think the NCAA should prevent them from doing that, but if they unionize and try to extort money from universities, then they can frick right on off.

quote:

---

Comes out to be about 350k or more

---

way, way more than that. $87,500/year would cover no more than tuition, room and board, and food (maybe not even all of that) a lot of places. Let's just take a standard OOS tuition cost at a school like Alabama. Out of state tuition, alone, is about $30k/year. Add another $15k for rent, $7-10k for food, and you're already close to $60k. Now add on the trainers, medical care, facilities, nutritionists, equipment, clothes, travel expenses, lodging on road games, tutors, etc, and you're probably closer to $200k/year per player at the bigger P5 schools.

That also doesn't even include the difficult to quantify value of the platform they're given at no cost to them.

quote:

---

College football is in an overall death spiral.

---

So THATS the reason the new SEC TV contract went from $50 million to $300 million annually.

I was listening to the 24/7 guy theorize that Miami would be making a comeback as a national power once this image likeness stuff is in place. I'll admit the kids are going to now have more than pocket money, but Miami and their school will not outbid or somehow bribe kids to their University as if they have dollars to spend than any other elite power 5 team doesn't have access to. The NCAA has to rule and will define it soon enough so that the Florida schools don't get that kind of head start. It just pushes this thing to its completion this summer.

quote:

---

I have still never seen anyone explain how this works with Title IX

---

I think it works with Title IX because it doesn't have anything to do with what the schools are providing in terms of opportunities to men and women equally. It simply allows all players in all sports, regardless of gender, to be able to earn an income in the open market. I don't believe Title IX would even be applicable in this. I'm sure if the NIL based bills have been proposed both in the NCAA and at the federal level in Congress, then there likely aren't Title IX issues they're worried about.

quote:

---

I think it works with Title IX because it doesn't have anything to do with what the schools are providing in terms of opportunities to men and women equally. It simply allows all players in all sports, regardless of gender, to be able to earn an income in the open market.

---

And making the argument the brand of the school and the school resources provided that opportunity for them to make more money is going to be the easiest and frankly valid argument against that idea.

No one is going to buy the defense that Ohio State and Alabama providing the best facilities in the world for their football team with a 100 year trail of boosters and support does not advantage the football team.

This becomes a shite show immediately