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As Mr. Burns says about his money, "I'd trade it all in...for a little more."

There are still about 800-900 players in the portal. I can't imagine NU is done. While the nice guy in me says to give Smith the scholarship and be done with it, the greedy NU fan in me thinks we should try to get anybody that can be a rotation piece next year. There are plenty of people still available who fit that bill.

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zeek55 said:

Nobody is thinking about 2027 let alone anything beyond that.

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I can imagine a scenario where 2 years from now this conversation takes place...

Consultant: "Gentlemen, we're here to discuss the state of Northwestern athletics. As you know, we've taken a significant financial hit on the Fitzgerald payout. Eating that contract was bad, but the punitive damages exceeded our expectations."
Schill: "One second, I don't believe I've met everyone at the table."
Consultant: "This man is your Athletic Director, Doctor Gragg."
Schill: "Oh yes. My apologies. You grew a beard?"
Gragg: "It helps with avoiding... well anyway"
Consultant: "Okay. Well, the new stadium is still coming along and of course ticket revenue declined sharply for the two seasons on the landfill. I mean lakefill. And we're a few million over budget, but the trend of the overages is flattening"
Gragg: "That wasn't my fault!"
Schill: "That wasn't my fault. Jinx!"
Consultant: "Okay gentlemen... So, with the athletes salaries north of $15 million, we're still not competitive in attracting players and that is showing up in the records of our men's football and basketball teams.
Schill: (giggles) "Ha, Ha. You meant coaches salaries. You said "athletes!"
Consultant: "No, Doctor Schill. Thats the player's salaries."
Schill: "We're paying the players? Since when?"
Consultant: "Okay, why don't we break for lunch?"

zeek55 said:

So which is it, is our leadership the 3 stooges that can't figure out where the football team is going to play this year or are they chess masterminds scheming 10 years ahead?

I feel reasonably confident that these guys are just trying to get this AD through the day-to-day business of the rebuild while preparing for the inevitable payment of Fitz's settlement and having to apportion a huge chunk of the AD's revenue to athletes in the next 2 years.

Nobody is thinking about 2027 let alone anything beyond that. The next 2 years already has so much upheaval to plan for...

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If that is true it is a remarkable condemnation of executive leadership of a major university.

I think DG is little more than a figurehead and is not involved in big decisions. He has been provided his small autonomous zone which prioritized getting the stadium deal through the city council in partnership with Davis.

I must believe Schill, a guy who led U of Nike for seven years, is laser focused on the future of big time college sports which will be among the top three forces affecting the place he presumes to work for the next decade. He’s not a dumb guy. He’s made some dumb decisions in the heat of battle which maybe indicates his skill lies in longer term planning.

My question is who at NU owns the Learfield relationship. I think that is a key driver of much of the thinking behind various decisions.

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So which is it, is our leadership the 3 stooges that can't figure out where the football team is going to play this year or are they chess masterminds scheming 10 years ahead?

I feel reasonably confident that these guys are just trying to get this AD through the day-to-day business of the rebuild while preparing for the inevitable payment of Fitz's settlement and having to apportion a huge chunk of the AD's revenue to athletes in the next 2 years.

Nobody is thinking about 2027 let alone anything beyond that. The next 2 years already has so much upheaval to plan for...

Just Gary said:

There is a good argument to not giving him a schollie and to use NIL money to give him an equivalent, but only if we can land someone in the portal that will get significant playing time. Of course that means we need NIL money and I’m not sure we are at that point

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The right thing to do, on a human level, is to give him a scholarship.
Thats what running a classy program is all about. Little stuff like that.

However, Smith is a bit of an unusual case. Most, if not all, of the other guys on the team would not have been admitted to NU without the basketball credential. Blake Smith got in on his own. He chose NU for the college diploma and campus life. His parents are paying his tuition, or part of it. My guess is they paid full tuition and housing, but maybe they got some financial aid. (Parents seem successful)

So it is possible that the parents are wealthy saints and that the tuition money means nothing to them. I doubt it. Its $320,000 or so for 4 years.

My guess is that any kind of financial offset would be appreciated. It is definitely deserved. And thats where you have to be careful, or risk alienating the parents (and the player).

CMcCat said:

I live 20 minutes away on the north side of Chicago and have highly valued the ease of access and in-and-out of the stadium. I have had seats right near an east side second level portico for over 25 years. I can leave the stadium after the 3rd quarter and watch the finish in my living room. (I don’t do that often and, regretfully, I did so for the Minny game last fall). I like natural grass. I like the sun and open, bowl-esque nature of RF. I am not real high on spending money - I don’t experience visceral pain in doing so like my born-in-the-depression father did but the apple fell reasonably close to the tree. I don’t attend many big concerts.

I hope you see where I am going. Pat Ryan’s money and NU’s contingency planning for its post-B1G future don’t quite drive me wild.

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You’re way too focused on “post-B1G.” Gragg could barely plan for a home venue in 2024 and 2025, he isn’t working that far ahead.

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The 40 years not 4 is hardly unique to NU. 320, You are an Alum right? I think Alum have a completely different perspective than most incoming HS players AND their parents. Every school can point to a bevy of rich multi-millionaires that graduated from their institution. Success is a byproduct of the individual and their work ethic more than the school they attend.

The prestige helps, but IMO nowhere near as much as many on here think. I was a first generation college student, I didn’t have parental pressure to pick the highest ranked school. My parents, didn’t know better. I think they were happy that I took the best financial deal. The extent of my academic research was how is my particular major was viewed by the business community. I suspect most of the people trumping the 40 not 4 mantra are Alum or highly educated successful folks. Unfortunately for NU, the parents of most kids we recruit don’t always fit that description. Play consistent winning football and you get better recruits.

NUCat320 said:

1. NU wants to maintain a home field advantage against Wisconsin; or
2. DG got jittery and didn’t realize the NFL release was the same exact day


I’d like to imagine it’s 1, but we can be almost certain that DG just never called the Bears to see if they could share even a few details.

I’d imagine your single-game profitability is significantly higher with four months to promote a Soldier Field game.

I prefer on-campus anyway.

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Hmm. I don’t think the crowd at WRECK in any possible composition and configuration will have even the most remote influence on the game, at least based on the preliminary end zone seating laden plan that was released previously. We are not talking about 50,000 people making noise but some small fraction of that dispersed from one another.

If your concern is that a game at Soldier Field would become a Wisconsin home game, NU has not indicated concerns of that type in the past. I was in the 10% or less of fans at Wrigley last fall who did not root for Iowa.

I have to think the revenue loss of playing at WRECK vs SF is astronomical. At least 50,000 tickets difference.

Amazing to me this wasn’t buttoned up to happen if the NFL calendar would accommodate it. Which it clearly did.

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Purple Pile Driver said:

“Think” is the key word. I would argue that many are here to play football and also get a degree.

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The literal pitch is “40 years not 4.” This is what they’re signing up for. The students NU is fortunate to sign are those that value the degree — or were *strongly encouraged* to value the degree by their parents.

Just Gary said:

Goal accomplished for them, not for us. Our goal is to win games and those grad students would help us do that. In this new age of NIL, what is expected has evolved. These are paid employees and expectation has change.

I realize that I am not fully explaining my view. I think it is time to get rid of the 85 scholarship limit and go to a 120 roster limit where all players are employees. Instead of a national letter of intent, they sign a 4-year employment contract with an optional 5th year. If they leave to go to another college program without consent of the University, they must payback a certain portion of any benefit they have received (which I assume they will get from the new school so it is compensation). They can quit or leave for the NFL without penalty but cannot join another college team without the penalty being paid. The base would be partial or full tuition, medical, 401K, and an hourly rate for time spent with team. Pay increases with performance and whether they make the 2-deep. Bonuses are paid for the team making a bowl or playoff. As a full-time employee, all outside income would need to be approved by the University to prevent conflict of interest. Of course there would be clauses for special situation and an employee review board for appeals or to renegotiate a contract.

I expect people to tear my plan apart, but I see no other way out of this quagmire that would be fair to the school and the athlete.

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I don’t totally disagree. It’s quite interesting tho — a decadeish ago, the B1G was unique in offering four-year scholarships. NU couldn’t just kick guys off the team without penalty, and the players had no power because they had to sit out a year. Things are completely reversed now — the programs sign players for four years, except the players can bail without penalty. (Except, again, for that degree.)

Again, everything we’re seeing now is simply symptomatic of the NCAA’s three decades of inaction when money started becoming just toooo huge to ignore.

Frankly, tho, even though I agree that a contract would be nice, I think the draft entry/renouncing eligibility *or* a defree would be reasonable opt-outs. (The grad transfer program is a very good concept.) And coach changes. And position coach changes. And maybe other things.

It’s all whackadoodle. Imagine if the NCAA had just approved a maximum $50k a year stipend 15 years ago. Literally nothing would have changed, except perhaps a little bit less cash under the table. What idiots.

(Seriously, it all fell apart when the NCAA approved recruiting-only staffers. Suddenly you had 30-plus individuals responsible for to recruiting unpaid players.)

At least every major college’s facilities are better than the NFL teams’. Ha!

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