The Coming Super Conference

Jerry the Jacket

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I think what will happen, will be a sort of professional minor developmental league for football players between high school and the NFL. A lot of kids have no interest in a college education and literally are taking a college scholarship because it is their route to further development and entre into the NFL if they are fortunate enough to be perceived to be good enough to play at that level. Remember only less than 2% of every man playing college football will ever make it into the NFL.

Basically young men will be given the option to play college football and possibly earn a meager stipend for some promotional duties or go directly into the minor league of professional football and be paid a full salary that they can negotiate with the team based on their perceived value to that organization. This will probably encompass about half of the young men currently participating in college football.

Those that decide their is continued value in the traditional college experience will declare for that and go through the traditional recruiting process. This will preserve the college football system and return it to more of a student athlete endeavor that it was originally intended to be. For sure the quality of play will be lowered but in relative terms the schools should be on as equal a footing as they currently exist and in fact there will be more parity among all schools.

Just what I think will happen.

Go Jackets!
 

stinger 1957

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No way, ESPN etc will never allow this, that is where the money comes from now, way too big "bucks", they want more games, it's where viewership numbers come from thus advertising $. Don't know how the player pay thing is going to play out, but it all will fit together somehow so CFB gets even bigger and even bigger TV coverage. Dollars will dictate how this all comes out, they ain't kicking the gift horse in the mouth.
 

WreckinGT

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I don’t think it will happen simply because there is no incentive to stop playing other teams. Why would they all group together in a smaller league when they could keep beating up on teams with less resources than them? A team like Auburn who may be used to 9+ win seasons now has to look at the very real possibility that they are going 4-8 with the same level of talent. Why would they? It seems like the obvious conclusion is that a small group of teams will basically run college football. They will beat up on everyone and play few games of importance. We will see mostly the same teams in the playoff hunt every year. Frankly I’m not sure we aren’t already there even before players are getting paid.
 

TheSilasSonRising

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Almost sounds like these 20-30 super college semi pro teams will try to compete against the NFL more than against college football. Won’t be the same as watching college football now.

Yeah, good luck with that.

If these teams are that great, let kids declare for the NFL out of high school immediately.

I actually would love to see an 18year old DL go up against a 27 year old NFL OL.

Wonder if they will have regularly scheduled programs for the funerals.
 

RonJohn

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The only fix, I see, is to cut back on the number of scholarships to 60 to 75 total. That would balance the talent across the board. And limit the total roster to about 80.

If players earn money for doing TV/Radio ads and $100 per signature parties, then the number of scholarships won't matter. (This has passed as a law in California and the Georgia legislature is looking to pass a similar law) The biggest schools would be able to guarantee at least $100k to all of the 105 players. If you aren't on scholarship, then just use $20k of that to pay for school. Of course there will be tax implications to the players, but many if not most of them will have more money than they had access to before even after taxes.
 

RonJohn

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I think what will happen, will be a sort of professional minor developmental league for football players between high school and the NFL. A lot of kids have no interest in a college education and literally are taking a college scholarship because it is their route to further development and entre into the NFL if they are fortunate enough to be perceived to be good enough to play at that level. Remember only less than 2% of every man playing college football will ever make it into the NFL.

Basically young men will be given the option to play college football and possibly earn a meager stipend for some promotional duties or go directly into the minor league of professional football and be paid a full salary that they can negotiate with the team based on their perceived value to that organization. This will probably encompass about half of the young men currently participating in college football.

Those that decide their is continued value in the traditional college experience will declare for that and go through the traditional recruiting process. This will preserve the college football system and return it to more of a student athlete endeavor that it was originally intended to be. For sure the quality of play will be lowered but in relative terms the schools should be on as equal a footing as they currently exist and in fact there will be more parity among all schools.

Just what I think will happen.

Go Jackets!

That was attempted this year and the league went bankrupt. The NFL would have to sponsor such a league for it to work, and they are not going to do that as long as the NCAA provides that service for them.
 
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I don’t think it will happen simply because there is no incentive to stop playing other teams. Why would they all group together in a smaller league when they could keep beating up on teams with less resources than them? A team like Auburn who may be used to 9+ win seasons now has to look at the very real possibility that they are going 4-8 with the same level of talent. Why would they? It seems like the obvious conclusion is that a small group of teams will basically run college football. They will beat up on everyone and play few games of importance. We will see mostly the same teams in the playoff hunt every year. Frankly I’m not sure we aren’t already there even before players are getting paid.

Think of Pro Football. You don't have to win 9 games. It becomes 4 divisions of 5 teams. the top 4 get in the playoff with 3 Wild cards. Just win your division. As for ESPN and Tv, can you imagine having 10 games on Saturday that are Alabama vs Georgia, Auburn vs Penn State etc.....
 

TooTall

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Keep in mind, if they start paying football players, they gotta live up to Title IX and pay the womens diving, water polo, equestrian and other olympic teams.
 

WreckinGT

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Think of Pro Football. You don't have to win 9 games. It becomes 4 divisions of 5 teams. the top 4 get in the playoff with 3 Wild cards. Just win your division. As for ESPN and Tv, can you imagine having 10 games on Saturday that are Alabama vs Georgia, Auburn vs Penn State etc.....
I think it would be fun to watch, I just don't think some programs would risk their current position to do it. The 20 teams that move on are not going to be created equal and if there are no spending limits some teams will just be transitioning from a top dog to a bottom dog in a better league. If you look at athletic revenue for 2017-2018 the difference in #1 vs #20 is almost $90 million dollars.
 

Jerry the Jacket

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If you are compensating players it is no longer amatuer athletics. There is no either / or. I know they will attempt to gimmick up a system with elaborate regulations that the NCAA will be unable to enforce, but at the end of the day, it will not work. This will last for a decade or so until the absurdity of the big schools paying players more and more money is exposed and the whole thing comes crashing down. Basically Alabama, Ohio State, Southern Cal, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, Texas, Georgia and LSU will be dominating college football with the highest payrolls they and their alumni can shell out. At some point the whole thing will come crashing down and the professional system I suggest in my earlier post will be implemented.

Go Jackets!
 

Jmonty71

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So I was chatting with someone at the tailgate and we were talking about recruiting and College Football in general. In the discussion he shared with me what he thinks is about to happen to the sport we love. We all know that this paying the players is about to go nationwide and understand, they will be paid for a whole host of things. Shoe deals, likenesses, signing autographs at the car dealership etc. He said once this happens, the Clemson, Alabamas Ohio States of the world are going to be at a semi pro level of being able to recruit. The gap will widen to the point that it will be decided to eliminate the conferences as we know them today. There will be a conference made up of 20 or so teams that will be the new Power conference. There will be no way the GTs, Vandy's, maybe even UVAs of the world will be able to compete.

Even the idea of schemes being able to out do this will vanish, as we have sort of seen the last few years against UGA. We will drop into basically a large division made up of the old conference P5s and G5 teams. Now this may actually make College football better but, the rivalries will be gone. I at first doubted this, but the more I thought about it, I think he I right,
I think once players start getting paid, that will kill the schools that do things right. The bigger football schools will get bigger and the smaller ones will get smaller. The NCAA is all state and purposes will become nothing more than a farm system for the NFL. Kind of like A, AA, AAA baseball. I would like to see one and dones happen, this point. Much like basketball. This way, no one team has all the good talent for multiple years.
 

RonJohn

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Keep in mind, if they start paying football players, they gotta live up to Title IX and pay the womens diving, water polo, equestrian and other olympic teams.

I don't think anyone has discussed the school paying the players directly. What has been under discussion is allowing players to do things like advertisements and charge for signing autographs. Title IX won't come into play if it is a car dealership or Nike paying the players instead of the athletic departments. However, schools with fans that travel really well and spend lots of money will definitely talk about that during recruiting.
 

Jmonty71

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I don't think anyone has discussed the school paying the players directly. What has been under discussion is allowing players to do things like advertisements and charge for signing autographs. Title IX won't come into play if it is a car dealership or Nike paying the players instead of the athletic departments. However, schools with fans that travel really well and spend lots of money will definitely talk about that during recruiting.
Truth be told, players being paid has been happening. Back in the early 90s, I had a friend get recruited by Ole Miss to play basketball. He got paid 500 bucks a month, to turn the lights off after practice. True story. Not to mention, he came from the projects area of Villa Rica. The day after he signed, his mom had a new car and was moving to a new house. Really odd, right??? Point is, this has been going on. Just not in the spotlight.
 
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