NIL, Transfers, and Stratospheric Salaries. What Is the Future of GT Football and College Football in General?

[RonJohn]

Ga Tech has 9,500 employees (1,300 academic, 8,100 admin) with a $2.1B budget - just going off of Wikipedia.
So, what if Tech did just pay it's SA's? The revenue programs would have 100-150 players, secondary would be another 400? This would be an increase of 5% over current payroll, assuming they would average being paid the average institution salary. Top revenue players get paid a higher cut but overall couldn't be higher than overall salary budget I would think.
Just throwing this out there that it isn't a huge change in budget.

The athletic budget was about $86 million in 2021. State regulations in Georgia require that the budgets be separate, and limit how much funding the school can provide to the athletic budget. If the athletic department were to pay players, by regulation the school could not provide the funding for that. The athletic association will have to raise the money separately from the school.

 

[ChristoGT]

The athletic budget was about $86 million in 2021. State regulations in Georgia require that the budgets be separate, and limit how much funding the school can provide to the athletic budget. If the athletic department were to pay players, by regulation the school could not provide the funding for that. The athletic association will have to raise the money separately from the school.

Tx, and understand splitting budgets under current methods/models/rules, but yeah I was going along the previous threads that the schools pay the players' salaries since they are no longer SA's but instead they are employees.

 

[RonJohn]

I completely agree athletes had many restrictions 10, 15, 20 years ago; however, things are vastly different today and it’s today’s parameters that need to be modified, not yesterday’s parameters. Moreover, NIL is a new variable that wasn’t even in the equation before.

With my suggestion of sitting out a year, the previous school is not preventing anyone from transferring. The previous school is not preventing the student athlete from participating in any club, organization, intramurals, etc (that a regular student could do). The previous school is not preventing anyone from making money. The student athlete is being treated identically as a regular student. If a student athlete is thinking about transferring, he simply needs to weigh the pros and cons of sitting out a year. I don’t understand why that is perceived as such a hardship.

IF college athletics were normal college students competing against normal college students from other schools, then it wouldn't make any difference whether a player transferred or not. Club sports is exactly that. If you transfer from GT to FSU, you could immediately join the rugby team and potentially play against the guys you used to play with at GT. Restricting transfers is treating the student-athletes as if they are employees that can be controlled. That goes completely idea that the athletes are not employees. The point I am making is that NCAA athletics DO NOT treat athletes as if they were actual college students doing actual college student things. That makes the NCAA's arguments about being an amateur organization seem disingenuous at best.

Requiring the athletes to be enrolled in school promotes amateurism. Requiring the athletes to make progress towards a degree promotes amateurism. Requiring an athlete to sit out a year if they change schools does not promote amateurism, the only effect is to protect the athletic coaches and associations. The NCAA should have been acting purely as an amateur organization 50 years ago. They have been acting as a professional organization with non-paid employees and it finally came to head. Even after court decisions and legislation, they have buried their heads in the sand and haven't really done anything. They should organize as regular students competing against regular students from other schools, or they should organize as professional athletes competing against professional athletes from other schools. For far too long, they have been trying to get the advantages of both while accepting the disadvantages of neither.

 

[RonJohn]

Tx, and understand splitting budgets under current methods/models/rules, but yeah I was going along the previous threads that the schools pay the players' salaries since they are no longer SA's but instead they are employees.

But they would be employees of the athletic association. The school doesn't pay the salaries of the coaches or the athletic association employees. The athletic association does that.

 

[senoiajacket]

Not saying you are, but that sounds like the attitude of people who believe that blame all of their failures on others. In my experience, most successful people do put their best interest ahead of other things. Most successful people do things on their own to achieve their success, and don't wait for others or blame others for failure. However, most have taken advantage or mentoring from people who knew things that they didn't. And most are eager to mentor and teach others. It is very personally satisfying to see other people grow professionally, financially, and spiritually after you have been offering advice to them. I have heard plenty of former college athletes describe how their coaches helped them to become respectable men. I have heard several college coaches describe that they get more satisfaction from seeing the players be successful later in life than they do from the results of games. I believe that many people that work at universities are there because they want to be a part of mentoring and guiding the next generation of college graduates.

You do have to be careful and watch out for yourself. However, I believe that being part of a community in which you contribute at least as much as you receive is crucial to being happy, and critical to being successful.

Total Person Program, anyone?

 

[JacketFan137]

Amateurism is dead. FBS football and D1 basketball (and who knows what else) are just the pro sports’ minor leagues now. It’s all about the Benjamins. Go big or go home

is this new information though? can go back decades and people were having the same conversation

 

[roadkill]

A few comments in response to various posters…

First – Mods, should we merge this thread with the one I started a few months ago? I’m ok with keeping it separate but it seems we are rehashing a lot of the same discussion that took place as recently as last month in another thread. https://gtswarm.com/threads/nil-tra...otball-and-college-football-in-general.26262/

NIL will “level the playing field.” Actually, it simply moves the playing field to a different sort of “unlevelness”. Some of the traditional powers that got there by being better at under-the-table payments and bending the academic rules will remain there with NIL, while others may fall by the wayside as the “haves” will be those with the most deep-pocketed boosters. When Saban complains about NIL, you know the traditional power hierarchy is threatened. The best players going to the highest bidder will not result in a level playing field.

Transfers with eligibility restrictions – this restriction is common in employment contracts today. Enforceability may be questionable, but again this is not something that has applied just to S-As. I for one am in favor of a return to the old rule that required sitting out a season. This makes poaching GT's best players less attractive to the blue-bloods.

 

[RonJohn]

Transfers with eligibility restrictions – this restriction is common in employment contracts today. Enforceability may be questionable, but again this is not something that has applied just to S-As. I for one am in favor of a return to the old rule that required sitting out a season. This makes poaching GT's best players less attractive to the blue-bloods.

I highlighted a portion of your post. The SAa are not officially employees of the athletic associations. If NCAA schools want to make them employees, then they can try non-compete clauses in their contracts. (However, the FTC is currently trying to ban non-compete clauses for employment contracts.) If an NIL collective wants to attempt to impose a non-compete with respect to the sports team, they can try but I seriously doubt it will hold up in court. Also, it would go directly against what NCAA rules there are about collectives.

Imagine a student-athlete who took many AP classes in high school and started college as a sophomore. He wanted to become a lawyer. After his first law classes beginning in his second year of college, he changed his mind and wants to study pre-med. If he transferred from a school with a very highly rated pre-law program to a different school with a highly rated pre-med program, he was punished for making purely academic decisions. I remember one athlete who wanted to transfer because a parent was terminally ill, and the closest D1 school was slightly outside of the mileage limits that the NCAA imposed for such transfers. His decision to transfer was to spend more time with his parent before she died. The old NCAA rules meant that he had to decide between staying away from a dying parent or losing a year of athletic eligibility.

Think about the previous transfer restrictions without fanboy type reactions. It didn't prevent the poaching and playing time transfers as it was intended. However, it prevented actual student-athletes from making genuine personal and/or academic decisions without extra consequences. Those rules didn't solve the issues they were intended to solve, but they did cause issues for student-athletes who were trying to do the right things for their lives and for their families.

 

[roadkill]

I highlighted a portion of your post. The SAa are not officially employees of the athletic associations. If NCAA schools want to make them employees, then they can try non-compete clauses in their contracts. (However, the FTC is currently trying to ban non-compete clauses for employment contracts.) If an NIL collective wants to attempt to impose a non-compete with respect to the sports team, they can try but I seriously doubt it will hold up in court. Also, it would go directly against what NCAA rules there are about collectives.

Imagine a student-athlete who took many AP classes in high school and started college as a sophomore. He wanted to become a lawyer. After his first law classes beginning in his second year of college, he changed his mind and wants to study pre-med. If he transferred from a school with a very highly rated pre-law program to a different school with a highly rated pre-med program, he was punished for making purely academic decisions. I remember one athlete who wanted to transfer because a parent was terminally ill, and the closest D1 school was slightly outside of the mileage limits that the NCAA imposed for such transfers. His decision to transfer was to spend more time with his parent before she died. The old NCAA rules meant that he had to decide between staying away from a dying parent or losing a year of athletic eligibility.

Think about the previous transfer restrictions without fanboy type reactions. It didn't prevent the poaching and playing time transfers as it was intended. However, it prevented actual student-athletes from making genuine personal and/or academic decisions without extra consequences. Those rules didn't solve the issues they were intended to solve, but they did cause issues for student-athletes who were trying to do the right things for their lives and for their families.

Thanks for your insightful response. I was thinking that the transfer rule was conceptually no different than a non-compete clause, but the similarity is somewhat broken by the employee vs S-A comparison.

In terms of the example you gave, couldn't a hardship waiver apply for such instances? While the old rule may not have completely eliminated poaching, if you examine the transfer rate before and after the NCAA threw out the rule, I think you would find that transfers (and the associated poaching) increased tremendously after the rule change. This speaks to the old rule making transfers less attractive as poaching targets.

 

[MidtownJacket]

A few comments in response to various posters…

First – Mods, should we merge this thread with the one I started a few months ago? I’m ok with keeping it separate but it seems we are rehashing a lot of the same discussion that took place as recently as last month in another thread. https://gtswarm.com/threads/nil-tra...otball-and-college-football-in-general.26262/

NIL will “level the playing field.” Actually, it simply moves the playing field to a different sort of “unlevelness”. Some of the traditional powers that got there by being better at under-the-table payments and bending the academic rules will remain there with NIL, while others may fall by the wayside as the “haves” will be those with the most deep-pocketed boosters. When Saban complains about NIL, you know the traditional power hierarchy is threatened. The best players going to the highest bidder will not result in a level playing field.

Transfers with eligibility restrictions – this restriction is common in employment contracts today. Enforceability may be questionable, but again this is not something that has applied just to S-As. I for one am in favor of a return to the old rule that required sitting out a season. This makes poaching GT's best players less attractive to the blue-bloods.

Good call..

 

[RonJohn]

Thanks for your insightful response. I was thinking that the transfer rule was conceptually no different than a non-compete clause, but the similarity is somewhat broken by the employee vs S-A comparison.

In terms of the example you gave, couldn't a hardship waiver apply for such instances? While the old rule may not have completely eliminated poaching, if you examine the transfer rate before and after the NCAA threw out the rule, I think you would find that transfers (and the associated poaching) increased tremendously after the rule change. This speaks to the old rule making transfers less attractive as poaching targets.

I tried to look up the cancer case the I wrote about. I couldn't find that one, but I did find another that was similar. In this one, there were other schools within the 100 mile limit. Brock Hoffman transferred from Coastal Carolina to Virginia Tech to be closer to his mother who had a brain tumor removed after he had started playing college football. Justin Fields was approved to play immediately after transferring to Ohio State for playing time reasons. Hoffman was denied immediate eligibility after transferring to be closer to his mother because his mother lived 5 miles further than the hardship waiver requirements. A rule that was put in place to prevent players being poached or leaving for playing time allowed an athlete to have immediate eligibility after he couldn't get the starting job for the mutts, but denied immediate eligibility for a player who wanted to be closer to his sick and possibly dying mother.

'I was in shock:' NCAA denies player's eligibility request after transfer to be closer to sick mother

Brock Hoffman played his first two years at Coastal Carolina. But during that time, his mom had to have a brain tumor removed.

www.wcnc.com

 

[UgaBlows]

The court ruling struck out amateurism, and said “you can’t have your cake and eat it too”. The schools can’t both say “we won’t pay you hourly wages or a salary” and “plus you can’t take money from elsewhere”. In fact, the original NIL was that schools made money selling the players’ names and stats to a video game company and gave nothing to the players. If the schools compensate the players, then they can restrict outside income.

There’s a non-legislative path out of this; the NCAA just doesn’t want it.

The NCAA has no teeth or apparent will to even try to enforce their own rules, federal laws on the other-hand with consequences would change the current landscape and bring order if done fairly and thoughtfully. Thats the big IF of course, could anything get done in today’s political landscape? I personally think it’s possible since this isn’t really a politically charged issue like say abortion or gun control.

 

[Root4GT]

Thanks for your insightful response. I was thinking that the transfer rule was conceptually no different than a non-compete clause, but the similarity is somewhat broken by the employee vs S-A comparison.

In terms of the example you gave, couldn't a hardship waiver apply for such instances? While the old rule may not have completely eliminated poaching, if you examine the transfer rate before and after the NCAA threw out the rule, I think you would find that transfers (and the associated poaching) increased tremendously after the rule change. This speaks to the old rule making transfers less attractive as poaching targets.

In large part the NCAA dropped the hardship waiver as they were getting overwhelmed with requests and were not staffed to properly address the requests resulting in very arbitrary rulings that made no logical sense. In typical NCAA fasion they threw their hands up and said we quit, do whatever you want regarding transferring!

 

[roadkill]

In large part the NCAA dropped the hardship waiver as they were getting overwhelmed with requests and were not staffed to properly address the requests resulting in very arbitrary rulings that made no logical sense. In typical NCAA fasion they threw their hands up and said we quit, do whatever you want regarding transferring!

This. And the eligibility rule is not likely to come back in any form that requires a waiver process, for the same reason.

 

[roadkill]

I tried to look up the cancer case the I wrote about. I couldn't find that one, but I did find another that was similar. In this one, there were other schools within the 100 mile limit. Brock Hoffman transferred from Coastal Carolina to Virginia Tech to be closer to his mother who had a brain tumor removed after he had started playing college football. Justin Fields was approved to play immediately after transferring to Ohio State for playing time reasons. Hoffman was denied immediate eligibility after transferring to be closer to his mother because his mother lived 5 miles further than the hardship waiver requirements. A rule that was put in place to prevent players being poached or leaving for playing time allowed an athlete to have immediate eligibility after he couldn't get the starting job for the mutts, but denied immediate eligibility for a player who wanted to be closer to his sick and possibly dying mother.

'I was in shock:' NCAA denies player's eligibility request after transfer to be closer to sick mother

Brock Hoffman played his first two years at Coastal Carolina. But during that time, his mom had to have a brain tumor removed.

www.wcnc.com

Yeah, granting the Fields waiver, which was ostensibly granted due to racial slurs (not playing time, wink-wink) certainly undermined the 100-mile concept as well as the entire waiver process. But that doesn't mean that there could not have been a fairly enforced rule and waiver process. I think @Root4GT nailed the actual reason for the rule's demise.

 

[Richard7125]

I tried to look up the cancer case the I wrote about. I couldn't find that one, but I did find another that was similar. In this one, there were other schools within the 100 mile limit. Brock Hoffman transferred from Coastal Carolina to Virginia Tech to be closer to his mother who had a brain tumor removed after he had started playing college football. Justin Fields was approved to play immediately after transferring to Ohio State for playing time reasons. Hoffman was denied immediate eligibility after transferring to be closer to his mother because his mother lived 5 miles further than the hardship waiver requirements. A rule that was put in place to prevent players being poached or leaving for playing time allowed an athlete to have immediate eligibility after he couldn't get the starting job for the mutts, but denied immediate eligibility for a player who wanted to be closer to his sick and possibly dying mother.

'I was in shock:' NCAA denies player's eligibility request after transfer to be closer to sick mother

Brock Hoffman played his first two years at Coastal Carolina. But during that time, his mom had to have a brain tumor removed.

www.wcnc.com

I like this discussion. Just so you know I’m coming from the perspective of student-athlete versus athlete-student (ie you are a student first and college athlete second). I’m not saying that is the only way to consider it, but that’s where I’m coming from.

I’ve read the stories of athletes wanting to transfer to be closer to a dying/sick parent, relative, etc. I know some of these are real, but I also think the majority are embellished to enable a transfer to be immediately eligible to play. At one time that was the only way for schools to get transfers to play immediately.

Secondly, if a person really wants to be home with the sick/dying relative, do they really need the extra demands of college football/basketball in addition to regular school and exams? Most people when they have sick/dying relatives usually need to reduce time-consuming extracurriculars to spend more time with the sick/dying loved ones. I simply don’t buy that sitting out a year is an egregious hardship in these situations. Some might argue it's cathartic to play, but it's certainly not some disenfranchisement that people want to suggest

 

[RamblinRed]

It looks like the NCAA is trying to make some subtle changes to the transfer rules - specifically for undergraduate transfers.

https://www.si.com/fannation/college/cfb-hq/ncaa-football/college-football-transfer-portal-rule-change-ncaa

Basically a player gets 1 'free' transfer, but if you transfer a second time you are likely to have to sit a year.
Note this would not apply to graduate transfers.

 

[CEB]

It looks like the NCAA is trying to make some subtle changes to the transfer rules - specifically for undergraduate transfers.

https://www.si.com/fannation/college/cfb-hq/ncaa-football/college-football-transfer-portal-rule-change-ncaa

Basically a player gets 1 'free' transfer, but if you transfer a second time you are likely to have to sit a year.
Note this would not apply to graduate transfers.

In honor of JT Daniels...

Seriously, this makes a lot of sense. Not the ultimate solution, but it’s a start.

I hate the Wild West aspect of all of this but I am also struggling with the notion of empowering / enabling the schools over the individuals. I know we want to protect our GT sports programs but those same protections then also apply to the factory schools...

prohibiting kids from moving or trying to cap earnings is punitive to the kids and probably doesn’t solve the problem.
Wild West approach is free market to the kids but punitive to all but the biggest, wealthiest programs... and it doesn’t solve the problem.
Doodling in the margins doesn’t solve the problem and the wholesale changes they made exacerbated the problem.

I guess the best we can hope for is that leaders make measured, responsible tweaks like this and evaluate the implications. It’s harder to walk back changes...

I wish I were smart enough to solve it, but if I were, I would just be upset that no one will listen to my solutions.

Edit to add; now really reading the reasons for exemption, I realize that little has changed. Almost none of the elements noted in their three reasons for exception are quantifiable. I fully expect more Justin Fields types of waivers to be approved while less noteworthy transfers have to fight the fight and likely get denied because rhere is no spotlight on their situation. Call me a cynic, but I see business as usual.

 

[roadkill]

In honor of JT Daniels...

Seriously, this makes a lot of sense. Not the ultimate solution, but it’s a start.

I hate the Wild West aspect of all of this but I am also struggling with the notion of empowering / enabling the schools over the individuals. I know we want to protect our GT sports programs but those same protections then also apply to the factory schools...

prohibiting kids from moving or trying to cap earnings is punitive to the kids and probably doesn’t solve the problem.
Wild West approach is free market to the kids but punitive to all but the biggest, wealthiest programs... and it doesn’t solve the problem.
Doodling in the margins doesn’t solve the problem and the wholesale changes they made exacerbated the problem.

I guess the best we can hope for is that leaders make measured, responsible tweaks like this and evaluate the implications. It’s harder to walk back changes...

I wish I were smart enough to solve it, but if I were, I would just be upset that no one will listen to my solutions.

Edit to add; now really reading the reasons for exemption, I realize that little has changed. Almost none of the elements noted in their three reasons for exception are quantifiable. I fully expect more Justin Fields types of waivers to be approved while less noteworthy transfers have to fight the fight and likely get denied because rhere is no spotlight on their situation. Call me a cynic, but I see business as usual.

Let me see if I got this right…

NCAA makes rule restricting transfers.

People complain it’s too strict.

NCAA amends rule to allow exceptions.

People complain it’s too arbitrary.

NCAA eliminates rule.

People complain it’s the Wild West.

NCAA amends rule to make it more strict.

 

[CEB]

Let me see if I got this right…

NCAA makes rule restricting transfers.

People complain it’s too strict.

NCAA amends rule to allow exceptions.

People complain it’s too arbitrary.

NCAA eliminates rule.

People complain it’s the Wild West.

NCAA amends rule to make it more strict.