Dugan15 said:

There has been a lot of discussion here and in broader media about teams (particularly around coaching changes) and their “NIL”.

Not being snarky, but is there any reason the word shouldn’t be “payroll”?

I presume, just like “student-athlete”, Universities are perfectly happy to go along with a silly term, “NIL”, to avoid using the patently obvious words that we all use in our day to day life.

Can someone make “NIL” make sense in its 2025 actual usage? Thanks in advance.0

Click to expand...

rwhitney014 said:

Name, image, and likeness is a concept within the law of right of publicity. It’s a quasi-intellectual property right that we all have.

The argument goes that NCAA institutions were acting in concert (i.e., conspiring) to prevent students who are athletes from making monetary use of their own rights of publicity, since the standard grant in aid that provides athletic scholarships required those students and only those students not to be able to monetize their rights of publicity. Those contracts were not negotiable on an individual basis: you want your scholarship, you only get it on our terms. And the “our” was all the schools, the conferences, and the NCAA acting as one when they should be competing to provide better terms to get better athletes.

As such, those contracts - “contracts of adhesion”! - violated the antitrust laws. Other professional athletes can legally bargain away those individual rights of publicity through a collective bargaining agreement as permitted by the labor laws, but the NCAA wasn’t allowing that either. So now we’re violating that area too.

Untangle all of it - the lack of a CBA, the should-be-unenforceable contracts of adhesion, the antitrust violations, and the schools’ interest in not labeling these students as employees - and the way you can compensate athletes without creating unintentional issues with all of that is simply to allow them to earn compensation via an individual right that is untethered to their labor. That would be for those individuals whose name, image and likeness have commercial value - their rights of publicity.

Everybody wins! (So the argument goes.)

Click to expand...

1830sherman said:

And they don't even have an AD to clean it up. This might be just the job for Graggoyle.

from the Mercury News:

What hasn’t gone wrong for Stanford lately?

— The football program is coming off back-to-back 3-9 seasons under Taylor and faces a slew of challenges just to attain an acceptable level of mediocrity.

— The men’s basketball program, while led by a first-rate coach in Kyle Smith, hasn’t participated in the NCAA Tournament since March 2014.

— The women’s basketball program just experienced its worst season since 1987.

— The Cardinal’s new home, the ACC, is implementing a revenue distribution model that seemingly will make it more difficult for Stanford to compete in the major sports.

— The situation is no better financially, largely due to revenue woes. In the 2024 fiscal year, the Cardinal needed a $47 million subsidy from campus in order to balance their books, according to Stanford’s annual report.

— There is no athletic director, no interim athletic director and no timeline for naming a permanent athletic director.

— Meanwhile, president Jonathan Levin, who has been on the job since August, just implemented a hiring freeze and is undoubtedly preoccupied with the potential loss of hundreds of millions in federal funding.

(Regrets if this is paywalled)

Click to expand...

eastbaycat99 said:

Over the last 2 years (so far) the SEC is 16-14, while the BIG is 18-6.

Click to expand...

Secho99 said:

To some extent impressive, but all 8 teams were favored to win so really just none of the 8 got tripped up. The test is the next round.

In general, I don’t think a single-elimination tournament tells us all that much about leagues, so many things can go right or wrong and so much is about the matchups and who gets hot or runs cold.

Click to expand...

No Chores said:

I saw it live and that game was really fun. The 1962 team was terrific, and I got lots of inside scoop because one of my fraternity roommates was All American guard Jack Cvercko. I'm still in touch with Jack and see him on average about once a year when he travels from Florida to his wife's hometown in Maine.

Click to expand...

Catreporter said:

And that could have been the Cats, if not for the devastating injuries. Oh well! Also shows that November-December results really matter.

Click to expand...

CatManTrue said:

Chumbley’s in the Final Four (157 lbs):

Login to view embedded media

Click to expand...