House settlement approved
- Thread starter phatcat
- Start date
Now that money issue has settled can a suit be far off challenging the four year eligibility rule. Can NCÀA arbitrarily cap a players ability to earn mone by limiting how long they can play? Stay tuned as College sports enter Never-Never Land
What does that mean? Does a school that opts out need to contribute to the $2.8 billion in back pay or whatever it is?
The new NU AD has already said very clearly that we will be fully funding the $20.5M. At an event I was at. We won’t be opting out. Go Cats.
I have no idea what is possible, but the NBA and NFL both have age limit rules. Could colleges do something like that as an upper limit?
Only if they engage in collective bargaining, as do the NBA and NFL. Which would mean Unionization.
Many other sports leagues that don't have unionization or player compensation have age restrictions. Not all of them are for children, too, like U19 leagues. So I could see a path here. IMO they need an age cap on top of the eligibility cap asap, 29 year old TEs at Miami who have had a half dozen years of medical waivers and 23 year old European pro basketball players as college freshmen is a little silly. It can even be something like 25 years old, but it's something.
Amen. Al Bundy never asked for money when he scored four touchdowns in one half. Sure, it may have been high school, and he had a lucrative career thereafter. But still.
Death wish? Didn’t UChicago make a similar decision after being a conference member for 50 years?
I would say staying in is more likely a death wish as NU is not going to make it to the end of this game of musical chairs and could be putting its tax-exempt status at risk under this administration.
Are you being intentionally obtuse? I was referring to the athletic program, as this is a football board.
And UChicago dropped to D3 in 1973, when the financial situation was absurdly different.
No school with the intention of staying in the B1G would ever opt out. And NU has no interest in leaving the B1G.
I think schools not named Ohio State, Michigan, USC, and Oregon are in the fight of their lives over the next ~5 years (maybe less!) to remain in the P2 (whatever it’s called next…) when the next round of power consolidation takes place.
Teams will be leaving the Big Ten whether they have interest or not (or rather, they’ll remain in whatever is left of the Big Ten, while a new super league forms with the most valuable products in the NCAA).
I was referring to the University, of which the athletic program is but a part…
…was but a part? Perhaps you are correct that one cannot anymore conceive of Northwestern University without its revenue-generating athletic program.
And it’ll be going to the programs that matter
At this point, what is stopping HS kids from getting paid too?Amen. Al Bundy never asked for money when he scored four touchdowns in one half. Sure, it may have been high school, and he had a lucrative career thereafter. But still.
I saw this blurb about high school (and even middle school) kids/athletes "reclassifying" so that they don't enter college until they are 19 or 20. Crazy
I'm fairly optimistic about the future, but I think the parens in your final sentence are the most likely complete NCAA meltdown option. A breakaway super league of some 24 or so programs leaves at a strategic moment when contracts are up (ie, so the existing conferences don't own all the money).
And, to be honest, that outcome would be FINE. Northwestern isn't gettin gin the super league, but neither are most or any of Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin, etc. Ohio State, Michigan, Oregon, Alabama, etc get to play their blue chip football while the rest of us just go back to... playing Big Ten West style, traditional midwestern college football games against each other. I can think of far worse fates.
Yeah I'd be fine with an aptly named "rump" organization of remaining B1G teams if the top 4- 6 go to the super league. I don't care about Oregon and USC, and OSU scUM and PSU can F@#% off
The issue is how to unwind. Once the “final arrangement” is made with the super league (that I still argue will be an NFL affiliation), how do the relegated programs fund themselves? They will still have their new tradition of many employee-athletes to pay. Will B1G Network receipts in this scenario be sufficient to fund this?
If getting relegated is your fate, is the short-term upside of riding things to the end enough to offset what will be a more difficult relegation that impacts the entire athletic department.
I don’t understand the downside risk of actually trying to succeed. Every programs goal if will be to earn an invitation to the Super League. If the scenario plays out as you describe, there will still be a market for the non-Super League schools. Yes, the payout’s for players will be much less for these programs because the revenues will be less. The best players will play in the Super League, but there will be competitive football being played with teams that basically are playing by similar rules than NU.
It’s a great question. Culture eats strategy for lunch, as they say. What does “trying to succeed” do to the institution? To the fabric of the University.
I went to NU in the 1980s, pre-Barnett. The current iteration is, in many ways, completely unrecognizable to me. There was a slow evolution of the institution. The NRF project is a very clear signal of a more radical change.
Can NU really go back when the music stops and they are standing around with Iowa and Michigan State, hooked on TV dollars that have professionalized its field hockey and lacrosse programs? We’ll see.
They already are in some places where state law or state athletic rules don't prohibit it
Seems to me a super league wouldn't be big enough to feed the demand for college football games on a weekly basis. The obvious question would be how do the broadcasters split up the pie and schedule the games. There are still many many fans who will watch their college team play on Saturday afternoons, so there is still plenty of money to be made.
I think to keep interest at the level it is now, the Super League would have to include a relegation. School like Iowa, Michigan State, Illinois, Nebraska, and their counterparts elsewhere, all see themselves as future playoff teams. Take that away, and I expect some of their own fans fall off if it appears they can’t ever play for anything. I think that would happen even more with our peers Duke, Stanford, Cal, etc. that don’t draw great now and need paydays when the soon-to-be-Super Leaguers are playing them. By the same token, we don’t recruit a JJ, Thorson or Skoronski if we don’t play a big-time schedule so the quality of our own players would decline - as will the quality ot the other Iowas etc. if they don’t play Super Leaguers. I think the possibility of playing for something really matters.
I also think the Super League is somewhat reductive and results in a smaller pie... but a smaller pie split only 24 ways instead of 60 may still result in bigger pieces.
That seems possible, even probable. At the same time, what kind of cost increases will they see in payroll when hiring their teams? Do you think the salary for a starting QB at Penn State or Alabama stay the same when they transition to the super league? I'd expect players being recruited for that new tier would demand (and receive) commensurately higher paychecks.
I expect they could make more money with a super league, I also expect it would come with much higher costs and be very challenging to get off the ground and take several years to get running properly. I'm personally very risk averse and I'm probably projecting here when I say I don't see it happening unless something something stuff I don't know about.
I expect they could make more money with a super league, I also expect it would come with much higher costs and be very challenging to get off the ground and take several years to get running properly. I'm personally very risk averse and I'm probably projecting here when I say I don't see it happening unless something something stuff I don't know about.
This is the obvious path. I think NU"s nonprofit model will be successful too. Payments for attending fundraising events/galas, being part of advertising and fundraising campaigns, etc.
Also, fair market value is going to be fuzzy as shit, it's gonna be anything you can remotely justify.
I think most big ten schools use the same nonprofit model to get NIL enticement payments into the hands of athletes without feeling like they’re buying hookers.
On a related note, Clearinghouse approval is required for individual deals over $600. That’s on a per deal basis, not a cumulative limit for an individual.
Additionally, the only thing cleared is the deal value and the (above the table) payment. Actual completion of the contracted deliverable isn’t checked by the clearing house.
So, If an individual can secure 1,000 deals each worth $600 or less, none of that has to go through a clearinghouse. And they can no-show on most of those deals and still receive payment, as long as the enforcement agency doesn’t hear about it.
Variations of this scheme is how many schools are planning to get around NIL limits. Total compensation for rosters isn’t going down. It will be under the table (or around the technicalities of the rules) in the short term. Long term, I think the NIL caps will fail as part of anti trust lawsuits. If athletes can sue and show that (on the record) compensation has gone down year over year because it’s being capped, they will stand a good chance of forcing the removal of the cap or becoming employees.
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