Yes, I blame the court decisions primarily. Yes, college programs have snuck money under the table for years. Cam Newton’s dad was offered $200K back in what, 2009 or so? Anybody recall?
I was thinking the same thing! At this point I’d be fine with a Camaro, or whatever it was Reggie Bush got.Yes, I blame the court decisions primarily. Yes, college programs have snuck money under the table for years. Cam Newton’s dad was offered $200K back in what, 2009 or so? Anybody recall?
Inflation has been pretty bad, so maybe that’s the ticket now.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
And $50k isn’t all so unreasonable.
Which would you prefer – GT possibly left behind in the future because we can’t keep up, or left behind today because we won’t play the NIL game? I’ll take us failing after giving it our best shot over failing because we didn’t try.
I know you’re not saying this, and I’m not ascribing this to you, but the ends justifies the means has been used to allow a lot of bad stuff.
Paying people is not immoral or bad. What exactly is so 'ends justify the means' about NIL other than old folks jealousy about kids making a lot of money?
If you have to ask the question, discussing with you is useless. Here's a clue though: "...kids making a lot of money."
Absolutely useless.
FYI - the NFL players association and owners realized paying absurd salaries to 1st round draft choices was stupid and in 2011 they jointly established a salary scale/cap for all rookie contracts. There are no more JeMarcus Russell like contracts. At some point college football will need to come to grips with the same reality. It took the NFL decades to come to that realization, I don't see it happening soon in College Football.
It will happen as soon as the power 2 decide their players should unionize. The NFL owners and the player’s union altered the payment terms for first round draft picks in 2011 through collective bargaining.
Ohio State, the biggest NIL spender currently has 9 top 100 players committed and 3 of the top 6. I guess NIL gives the smaller schools a legitimate chance to get a big name player every once in a while but no, its not creating anything close to parity.
Doubt NIL will bring parity but it could help create a new tier of schools with a multitude of blue-chip players. Watch out for SMU.
That’s right now. We are literally in the infancy of the NIL era. How long did it take for most schools to adopt a full offense of throwing the ball when that was made legal? Answer - decades. Many schools are just now getting their NIL system up and running, so of course, schools that have had an under the table payment system are ahead at this point. But little ole GT just got one and we‘ll get more each year just like a lot of teams in the middle pile of mediocrity today. Let’s check back with each other in 15 years and see if the top 10 schools are the same like they have been. Something tells me with money being equal players will leave a lot of rural middle of nowhere schools high and dry because would you rather Oxford, Starkville, Columbia, or Atlanta if you are a 19 year old black male and the money is equal?
The problem is your scenarios, while I would love to have those options, will never exist because coaches and fans want to win. People will ALWAYS fInd a way to cheat. And if you don’t think the Ivies recruiting isn’t cut throat with under the table “educements” then you are crazy. You can have whatever arbitrary threshold you want and someone will always have an extra dollar to offer.Ok so this is meant to be entirely tongue in cheek, but all this discussion about huge NIL amounts got me thinking. Perhaps we should have a poll for the pain threshold at which each of us thinks an elite recruit or player’s total compensation is out of line with the sustainability of CFB.
My proposed poll thresholds:
- Zero – and we should follow the Ivy League’s example in not granting scholarships either. Let them pay for the privilege of getting a great education, just like I did.
- A Grant-in-Aid of the value of a scholarship, with perhaps a small cost of attendance stipend. Players must be unpaid amateurs, and they are amateurs because they don’t get paid (NCAA's argument to Supreme Court).
- $10k annually. Probably below minimum wage on an hourly basis, but they should be thankful they’re getting a great education for free.
- $50k annually. Now we’re talking. They can help Mom/Dad make that down payment on a new home.
- $100k annually. Wait, that’s more than the average graduate’s initial salary!
- $500k annually. Better hope that we have a positive ROI on these mega-stars via improved ticket sales!
- Unlimited, as long as it’s less than our head coach’s salary. After all, our football coaches’ salary pool is only around $12M annually, not counting the $3M+ annually we are paying a coach not to coach.
Stinger, I hear you, but CFB isn’t on the verge of a chaotic system, it’s been a chaotic system for 50 years. Did you not see Georgia Tech get out on probation and lose a conference title while Auburn bought Cam Newton and UGA enrolls players who can barely read? The last 50 years has been a total joke with winners and losers being created by the NCAA’s enforcement branch. They gave SMU the death penalty, yet Barry Switzer, Jimmy Johnson, Dooley, Schembechler, Tarkanian, etc all were buying titles. Thats was chaos and that entire era has an asterisk. NIL strips all that away so if school A buys a title and school B doesn’t then that’s on school B who had equal access. Imagine if GT had done what Dooley did with bringing in illiterates and having fake majors, the NCAA would have given us the death penalty too because our own BOR and Governor would have turned us in.
My hypothetical "poll" wasn't intended to reflect reality - just a gauge of where different fans view their personal pain points for player compensation. And it was sort of a joke.
A very small tier but yes, maybe a row… or two. And yes, SMU will be one to recon with.
