Court Blows Up NCAA Transfer Rules

[SOWEGA Jacket]

The real world includes contracts that have non compete clauses that prevent people from working for competitors? There is also not a single sports league in the world that has 100% free agency for all their athletes each and every year. This utopia where every employee can move around and go the highest bidder does not exist anywhere except now in college sports.

Better yet, provide one single example of true sports that has this model. I will not hold my breath waiting for an answer.

Leather, we agree on this subject. But everyone is mad at the wrong group. It’s not the athletes fault. It’s the schools. GT could come out tomorrow and say they will not accept transfers for athletes unless you meet the same requirements that any student transferring from Kennesaw State would need. And conferences could simply set their own rules for transfers regarding athletes. But they don’t. Hence, I have no issue with players or their families making year to year decisions. I would love for the athlete to have to sign a non-compete clause. Maybe GT will be the first? But we all know the minute any school does that their recruiting will tank which has led us to where we are. It’s been corrupt like this for 60plus years and no school has tried to stop it. UGA buys Herschel and wins a Natty yet SMU gets the death penalty. Clemson has players flashing wads of cash on Facebook yet GT gets stripped of a conference title. Look at Auburn with Cam and not one school stood up. They could have all boycotted playing Auburn which absolutely would have led to change but they all took the money and remained silent. At this point, I’ll take the Wild West year to year player over what we’ve had where schools like GT had zero chance and only had the rules enforced against them.

 

[IM79]

True sports is called 2A high school but its not fun to watch. 5 and 6A HS quarter finals to finals is close to pure and fun to watch.

Our 2 hs qb recruits have done very well in Georgia and Texas. Atl and Gt footnall w great academics ( W GREAT TUTORING ) and a NIL hybrid type COOP PROGRAM for O linemen who stay 5 years could be a winner for gt football and players.

I am not a fan of gt to Patriot Conference

There is no way we can drop down to a level or division without major conference TV money. If you read the bond documents that were given to our athletic facilities bond investors, they state that the bonds would be repaid through the growing media revenue received via the ACC. If we lose major conference TV Revenues, that puts those bonds in danger of not being repaid. https://www.fitchratings.com/resear...-series-2024-revs-a-outlook-stable-13-11-2023

"Revenues recovered some in fiscal 2022 with a return to more normal football and basketball seasons, growing Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) revenues, strong fundraising and other revenue initiatives, along with continued expense discipline"

I say the GT leadership should go to the Governor and the General Assembly leaders and say you need to order UGA to sponsor GT into the SEC in the next round of expansion or else UGA gets punished. If GT gets left out, these bonds could default and the state could take a hit reputation wise and financially. They will never do it so we are at risk.

 

[IM79]

conferences could simply set their own rules for transfers regarding athletes.

I'm sure conference transfer rules would be challenged as well. All conferences used to have their own transfer rules and even schools would not release players to an opposing school on their schedule.

 

[stech81]

you need to order UGA to sponsor GT into the SEC in the next round of expansion or else UGA gets punished. If GT gets left out, these bonds could default and the state could take a hit reputation wise and financially. They will never do it so we are at risk.

that won't happen.

 

[leatherneckjacket]

The most likely result of the dot gov getting involved is a worse situation than we currently find ourselves in; not to mention the likelihood of legislation trying to return us back to the old status quo would likely be found unconstitutional by the USSC. IMO, best case scenario is enough university presidents get together to force systemic change to the NCAA. The total number of institutions greatly outnumber the mega-sports schools, so hopefully an equitable solution could be found. I think we're likely headed to a system of contractual SAs in major sports, although I'm not sure how Title IX is preserved with that...

I do not think this resolves the issue. Any entity that dictates the flow of labor that does not have anti-trust exemption would run afoul of existing labor law. As such, neither the NCAA or a group of university Presidents can come up with a set of rules for eligibility because it would be deemed as collusion.

Theoretically, a student athlete can cheat on his SAT (or receive direct compensation for play, or any other major NCAA violation), get caught, be designated by the NCAA as ineligible to play, but then sue the NCAA because it is impacting that persons ability to receive compensation for NIL. At this point, there are no rules that the NCAA can enforce without running afoul of labor law.

 

[leatherneckjacket]

Leather, we agree on this subject. But everyone is mad at the wrong group. It’s not the athletes fault. It’s the schools. GT could come out tomorrow and say they will not accept transfers for athletes unless you meet the same requirements that any student transferring from Kennesaw State would need. And conferences could simply set their own rules for transfers regarding athletes. But they don’t. Hence, I have no issue with players or their families making year to year decisions. I would love for the athlete to have to sign a non-compete clause. Maybe GT will be the first? But we all know the minute any school does that their recruiting will tank which has led us to where we are. It’s been corrupt like this for 60plus years and no school has tried to stop it. UGA buys Herschel and wins a Natty yet SMU gets the death penalty. Clemson has players flashing wads of cash on Facebook yet GT gets stripped of a conference title. Look at Auburn with Cam and not one school stood up. They could have all boycotted playing Auburn which absolutely would have led to change but they all took the money and remained silent. At this point, I’ll take the Wild West year to year player over what we’ve had where schools like GT had zero chance and only had the rules enforced against them.

I am not mad at the student athletes.

 

[cpf2001]

The NFL has those because of congressional antitrust exemptions—I think they were written in the 1950s. That’s why we didn’t have NFL on Friday nights or Saturdays—the law protected college and high school teams from pro competition

You don’t need an antitrust exemption to have a pro league with a collective bargaining agreement, though.

There’s some carve outs for TV agreements that I think cover the big 4, but there is no NHL antitrust exemption law that lets them negotiate with the players union that I know of.

The big difference there compared to CFB is that it’s a union and a league negotiating rules together and coming to an agreement instead of a league dictating terms for labor and colluding to (nominally) punish schools that break those rules with no actual input or other options for the players.

I think CFB could do that today but they’d have to admit “this is a big-money professional enterprise” and they still aren’t willing to do that. Despite the SC making it pretty clear that if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck and makes everyone else involved millions of dollars, then you can’t claim “amateurism” as a fig leaf. I generally agree with your take that the Gorsuch decision was less aggressive than what Kavanaugh sounded like he would support and probably was part of a “give them some time to fix it themselves” restraint. Oops…

The proposed division split probably doesn’t even help that much - how do you enforce that the lower division doesn’t have big revenue or player compensation without getting into the exact same problem?

Edit: you can probably also have a free for all of contracts for players, but the collective bargaining part is how I think you get restrictions and parity-promoting rules across the finish line.

 

[leatherneckjacket]

You don’t need an antitrust exemption to have a pro league with a collective bargaining agreement, though.

There’s some carve outs for TV agreements that I think cover the big 4, but there is no NHL antitrust exemption law that lets them negotiate with the players union that I know of.

The big difference there compared to CFB is that it’s a union and a league negotiating rules together and coming to an agreement instead of a league dictating terms for labor and colluding to (nominally) punish schools that break those rules with no actual input or other options for the players.

I think CFB could do that today but they’d have to admit “this is a big-money professional enterprise” and they still aren’t willing to do that. Despite the SC making it pretty clear that if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck and makes everyone else involved millions of dollars, then you can’t claim “amateurism” as a fig leaf. I generally agree with your take that the Gorsuch decision was less aggressive than what Kavanaugh sounded like he would support and probably was part of a “give them some time to fix it themselves” restraint. Oops…

The proposed division split probably doesn’t even help that much - how do you enforce that the lower division doesn’t have big revenue or player compensation without getting into the exact same problem?

I believe pro players are employees of the league for which they play. Since there is no CFB league, and there is really no way to set one up, there is no way to get to a similar situation they have in the pro sports leagues.

 

[g0lftime]

Oh well. I was hoping the NCAA might revisit the one-time free transfer rule to rein in the portal/tampering craziness...guess that's not happening.

They tried but as usual they were inconsistent on allowing waivers. Case in point is Tez Walker at UNC who had the NC Governor and attorney General threatening the NCAA so he could play and which he ultimately did. I enjoyed the big hit he took in our game that was a fumble we recovered. Helped us win.

 

[SOWEGA Jacket]

I'm sure conference transfer rules would be challenged as well. All conferences used to have their own transfer rules and even schools would not release players to an opposing school on their schedule.

Thats backward thinking and of course would be challenged. What I’m saying is schools could simply not accept transfers in. You can’t stop transfer outs but you sure can not accept people coming in. It just happened to thousands of high school kids for the early admission period for next year. But what nobody says is that the schools will never do this even though that is the easy fix. If every school simply said they would not accept transfer athletes the portal would die because the transferees would have no new school to attend and play.

 

[cpf2001]

I believe pro players are employees of the league for which they play. Since there is no CFB league, and there is really no way to set one up, there is no way to get to a similar situation they have in the pro sports leagues.

Yeah step 1 would be “ok yea this is employment, min compensation is a scholarship, max compensation is X” and then the NCAA and players bargain that out…

I think the Supreme Court was hoping that step 1 admission and process would happen organically.

In practice probably the NCAA is too big, and there’s too much of a range of schools involved and also everybody is terrified of admitting players are pros vs just paying them under the table or quasi-above-the-table now for PR reasons.

 

[Southern psu fan]

Courts are ruining

Just my opinion but I believe the “everybody gets a trophy people” wants to destroy college football because that can help destroy the NFL without having to go after the NFL. The NFL better wake up.

 

[ibeattetris]

Don't most universities have rules about the minimum number of credits that they will accept from another school? Or the minimum number that must be earned at that school to earn a degree to be awarded a degree from that faculty?

Stetson Bennet was at UGA 5 years and didn't graduate. Does it really matter how many transferable credits the player has if it doesn't matter if they are on track to graduate anyways?

 

[ibeattetris]

You don’t need an antitrust exemption to have a pro league with a collective bargaining agreement, though.

Wouldn't collective bargaining be hard in a profession where you are guaranteed to have 100% turnover every 5 years? Not saying it isn't possible, but I don't really know how easy it would be to collectively bargain across all NCAA athletes (which I assume football can't be bargained separately from others due to title 9 limitations??)

 

[JacketOff]

In practice probably the NCAA is too big, and there’s too much of a range of schools involved and also everybody is terrified of admitting players are pros vs just paying them under the table or quasi-above-the-table now for PR reasons.

The big reason for this is because if they classify the players as pros, it severs the ties of the athletic departments from the schools. Those in charge are worried fan interest (aka $$$$) dips if the school affiliation is no longer attached. Admitting the players are pros with no more quasi-amateurism will significantly hinder the funds, and limit the control the big money people in the sport and around college athletics have. Once you have power, it’s very hard to let it go.

 

[Techster]

 

[IM79]

They tried but as usual they were inconsistent on allowing waivers. Case in point is Tez Walker at UNC who had the NC Governor and attorney General threatening the NCAA so he could play and which he ultimately did. I enjoyed the big hit he took in our game that was a fumble we recovered. Helped us win.

Yeah, North Carolina is one of the states involved in the suit filed in the West Virginia Federal Court that issued the TRO

 

[cpf2001]

The big reason for this is because if they classify the players as pros, it severs the ties of the athletic departments from the schools. Those in charge are worried fan interest (aka $$$$) dips if the school affiliation is no longer attached. Admitting the players are pros with no more quasi-amateurism will significantly hinder the funds, and limit the control the big money people in the sport and around college athletics have. Once you have power, it’s very hard to let it go.

I agree they’re afraid of blowback here along those lines but I don’t ageee with it myself. You can be both an employee of the university and a student, it’s easy. And some jobs are reserved for students already.

Some schools already have laughably low correlation between their general academic standards and the ones their athletes are held to, without them getting paid above-the-table, is this really fooling that many fans? How??

 

[ThatGuy]

Well at least this sounds reminiscent of our issue with the ACC Championship. Haven't heard of anyone else dealing with the Schrodinger's Cat effect of the NCAA until now.

(Still infuriating, but hey, misery loves company, I guess?)

 

[roadkill]

I agree they’re afraid of blowback here along those lines but I don’t ageee with it myself. You can be both an employee of the university and a student, it’s easy. And some jobs are reserved for students already.

Some schools already have laughably low correlation between their general academic standards and the ones their athletes are held to, without them getting paid above-the-table, is this really fooling that many fans? How??

The average fan of a factory school (and most schools for that matter) couldn't care less if the "student"-athlete even goes to class, much less actually graduates. As long as there is some connection to the brand, it doesn't matter.
I do think that some erosion of fan support might occur if it became widely known that certain schools paid more than others to field their team.