I feel like i'm being particularly dense because all the writeups aren't very clear to me.
Athlete plays in the AAU
Brand pays AAU Coach to steer Athlete to a university they provide apparel for
Brand pays athlete money to commit to said university
Brand pays university coach to steer Athlete towards agents or other service providers that are favorable to the brand?
Presumably there's some other parties, the University or boosters, slipping money to the athlete during this as well.
The bribery charges are coming in in 4 because the coaches work for an institution that's receiving federal funds? The wire fraud is from 2 which defrauds other NCAA schools from recruiting said athlete? The honest services fraud is probably something similar about denying the other universities opportunities?
yeah I don't feel like I've read a good writeup of what the criminal activity actually is alleged to be; I guess it's at the part where actual university coaches receive payments? Most of the coverage so far seems to be focused on the relationships between AAU coaches, agents and merchandise companies though.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Yeah I'm wondering what is actually illegal and what is just breach of contracts.
All of it. Kickbacks and bribes are illegall generally. The law is not simple enough to say conclusively. But besides bribes et al of officials and organizations which receive federal funds the honest services fraud of the wire fraud law 18 USC 1346 generally prohibits kickbacks of any kind.
By all accounts, these were ordinary transactions to anyone who’s studied the history and functions of underground economies, and that’s what college sports at this level have been ever since the NCAA set up shop as the guardians of amateurism, a bastard concept imported from the playing fields of olde England that ultimately has failed everywhere it has been tried in the bustling, capitalist old US of A. The NCAA and its rules became more preposterous as that organization grew fat and prosperous on the backs of what its rules demanded be the unpaid labor of teenagers. The teenagers, being good Americans that they are, looked at the system and asked that most American of economic questions,
“Where’s mine?”
So that undercover economy flourished, and it continues to flourish, and it will flourish into the future because there is supply and there is demand and because people would rather watch (and gamble on) the NCAA tournament than watching (or gambling on) conspicuous moral outrage. Don’t want elite athletes to get paid under the table by agents? Let them have agents above the table. Don’t want them to profit covertly from their work? Let them profit overtly. Stop acting like Prohibition revenooers or the Keystone Kops. That is not going to happen, however, because this is the best damn thing that’s happened to the NCAA in a decade.
...On the surface, the charges seem flatly bizarre. Who was defrauded? Generally, it seems that the players got what they were promised, and so did the coaches, and so did the agents. (If you say the NCAA was the injured party, or the universities, go stand in the corner of Indianapolis until we say you can leave.) Even bribery seems like something of a stretch—especially if we assume, as we must, that almost every shoe company and every university doing business in the collegiate sports-industrial complex does business in pretty much the same way. How is what Adidas is alleged to have done bribery, and not simply very sharp and competitive negotiating? And why is the federal government spending money to chase this particular rabbit down this particular hole in the first place? Nothing good will come of this. The underground economy of college sports will adapt the way it always does. And the aboveground economy will remain the province of the unindicted sharpers who did such a great job with it in 2008.
In this case, I think the larger problem is the NBA's refusal to allow kids straight out of high school to play when obviously there are some who are ready. Forcing them to do a year of college for no reason is dumb.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
The players are the injured party. Steering producing lower contract value.
And again, the heart of that is the NCAA's asinine and illegal policy of not allowing players to have agents.
Not really. The heart of the transaction is that coaches steer players towards agents who are friendly with Adidas thus producing friendly brand deals with Addidas and harming the players.
The players are the injured party. Steering producing lower contract value.
And again, the heart of that is the NCAA's asinine and illegal policy of not allowing players to have agents.
Not really. The heart of the transaction is that coaches steer players towards agents who are friendly with Adidas thus producing friendly brand deals with Addidas and harming the players.
And again, the reason they're able to do this is because the NCAA doesn't allow players to work with agents whatsoever throughout their college careers. In a sane system, that opportunity never happens, because these players had agents from the day they stepped on campus.
No, a sane system doesn't have a bunch of these kids on campus at all.
I do believe that there is room to have popular amateur extramural sports like football and basketball organized by the institutions at a collegiate level, I'm just not sure how to enforce amateurism and make it fair to the students. This isn't a problem for most college sports, just the ones people want to see enough that they're willing to pay.
The current system needs to be jettisoned, and the players should get paid and not be required to enroll.
The answer is farm systems. There isn't (as much) of a problem with baseball because every MLB team runs their own farm system. They're more than happy to pull people out of High School and have them play in their farm system until they're ready for the big show. Because of this the NCAA has no leverage over players like they do in the NFL and NBA. Its also why NCAA baseball isn't as much of a revenue generator
The answer is farm systems. There isn't (as much) of a problem with baseball because every MLB team runs their own farm system. They're more than happy to pull people out of High School and have them play in their farm system until they're ready for the big show. Because of this the NCAA has no leverage over players like they do in the NFL and NBA. Its also why NCAA baseball isn't as much of a revenue generator
There is a D-league for basketball. Though I think the 1 year rule prevents a lot of players from going into it. If the choice is a year of college exposure or 25k bumming around in the D-league, seems like an easy choice.
I'd love to see farm systems for football; cheap games would be great to go watch. I'm not sure it's feasible though.
RingoHe/Hima distinct lack of substanceRegistered Userregular
Yeah, I'm ready to be done with amateurism in college sports all together. If you're good enough to make money at a sport you should have an agent who can help you do that. Same goes for product placement and other revenue streams. If a superstar decides to go back to college and still has eligibility left - fucking let them play.
The NCAA can choke and die, then college sports will find a way to give us a product we can enjoy without ruining lives
There is no need to "enforce" amateurism; athletes should be allowed to realize their net worth in the market (vis collective bargaining in a monopoly scenario) and if that net worth is < $0 then boom, there's your amateurs.
At the very least the NCAA should adopt the Olympic model
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
I'd allow any NCAA program that feels like they could make it to go semi-pro, and i've said this for a while.
Any NCAA program can elect to go semi-pro. To do so they must become a legally separate for-profit entity which is wholly owned by their college-university. After an initial cash infusion and endowment of resources, the university is banned from putting money or using university resources for the benefit of the semi-pro team: in the ownership relationship the only cash flow will be net profits from the team going to benefit the university. Thus the great filter for these programs will be: are they net profitable (or net break-even) that they can survive in a revenue generating environment. The university may, however, provide scholarships to athletes playing for the semi-pro team if those athletes wish to also pursue an education at the same time (unlikely given the demands of being a pro athlete, but you never know. A few manage to pull it off in college).
Semi-pro athletes have full freedom to get paid whatever they can manage, as well as to do sponsorships and such.
Lesser programs can still enforce the rules of amateurism. This means that athletes that aren't good enough to go be semi-pro can still get a subsidized college education if they're good enough to get a scholarship.
Thus the really good programs would go semi-pro to continue to attract top talent (which is going to want to be paid), while the programs that can't make it stay in the normal league. Then you'd just reshuffle how the leagues are organized.
If it would end the utter fiction that (at least in footbaw) all teams are on the same level, then I'd be generally okay with it.
However...
I would also point to something like the English Premier League as what such a future would be like. Generally, for those not quite aware and to quote from Wiki, nearly thirty years ago 'The competition formed as the FA Premier League on 20 February 1992 following the decision of clubs in the Football League First Division to break away from the Football League, which was founded in 1888, and take advantage of a lucrative television rights deal.'
It's almost a 'separate but equal' situation. Even ignoring promotion/relegation aspects, there is a metric assload of cash to be had and spread around in the league. But, unfortunately, it also separates the wheat from the chaff. A handful of teams remain powerful and wealthy and the rest plod along either trying to stay up and get the money or at least not fall far when that fails.
Plus, once you create such a league, the view shifts even more to 'who cares about the lesser anyway?' We already see the split between the so-called power five and group of five. Add in the general disgust with all the bowl games that exist and you'll have a harder time seeing any kind of equality from the schools or conferences jettisoned for the new format. (Anybody remember the Dr. Pepper ads when the CFP had yet to happen and they 'declared' that nothing mattered before?)
Plus, without a concurrent change in recruiting rules, you'll still just see the same teams now as before. Hell, div 1-AA has had a genuine playoff structure for years and nobody really gives a fuck.
Unfortunately, I'd say we would end up seeing a bunch of schools/conferences trying to stay 'up' for a chance at the more lucrative pie. But, like Idaho (or even Cal State Fullerton before them) dropping away under a pile of debt and failure.
On the plus side, at least we'd be able to drop the whole 'student-athlete' fiction once and for all.
There is no need to "enforce" amateurism; athletes should be allowed to realize their net worth in the market (vis collective bargaining in a monopoly scenario) and if that net worth is < $0 then boom, there's your amateurs.
At the very least the NCAA should adopt the Olympic model
That's all well and good until some rich donor for Northwestern decides they'd really like to see their alma mater be awesome and volleyball and donates $Texas to stack their roster. There is never going to be perfect parity in college sports, but it shouldn't come down to which school has the biggest purse.
There is no need to "enforce" amateurism; athletes should be allowed to realize their net worth in the market (vis collective bargaining in a monopoly scenario) and if that net worth is < $0 then boom, there's your amateurs.
At the very least the NCAA should adopt the Olympic model
That's all well and good until some rich donor for Northwestern decides they'd really like to see their alma mater be awesome and volleyball and donates $Texas to stack their roster. There is never going to be perfect parity in college sports, but it shouldn't come down to which school has the biggest purse.
It already does.
Oregon didn't magically get good all of a sudden ten years ago. Same for Ole Miss. The power teams are the power teams because they have more money, currently they spend it on stupid shit like training facilities no one needs and do shit for the players under the table.
Normally I don't really care about the NCAA issue because it doesn't affect me outside of keeping a cursory eye on this thread because I find the situation interesting (I live in a college town and used to work in the stadium from time to time), but I was watching a college game with one of my clients at work today and I just remember commercial after commercial, and then a few times during the game they would (I'm assuming in an attempt to combat people channel surfing to other games during commercials of the game they're primarily watching) just put the game in a smaller corner of the screen and run a commercial over 3/4ths of the screen (including audio) for some fucking mortgage company.
After a while it just sort of hit me, the amount of ad revenue coming in has got to amount to an absolutely obscene amount of money, and the players are getting precisely dick out of it.
Normally I don't really care about the NCAA issue because it doesn't affect me outside of keeping a cursory eye on this thread because I find the situation interesting (I live in a college town and used to work in the stadium from time to time), but I was watching a college game with one of my clients at work today and I just remember commercial after commercial, and then a few times during the game they would (I'm assuming in an attempt to combat people channel surfing to other games during commercials of the game they're primarily watching) just put the game in a smaller corner of the screen and run a commercial over 3/4ths of the screen (including audio) for some fucking mortgage company.
After a while it just sort of hit me, the amount of ad revenue coming in has got to amount to an absolutely obscene amount of money, and the players are getting precisely dick out of it.
They get really extravagant locker rooms and "dorms" that they get to share with a couple lucky regular students to make them not technically extra benefits.
But yeah, actual money would be way better.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
There is no need to "enforce" amateurism; athletes should be allowed to realize their net worth in the market (vis collective bargaining in a monopoly scenario) and if that net worth is < $0 then boom, there's your amateurs.
At the very least the NCAA should adopt the Olympic model
That's all well and good until some rich donor for Northwestern decides they'd really like to see their alma mater be awesome and volleyball and donates $Texas to stack their roster. There is never going to be perfect parity in college sports, but it shouldn't come down to which school has the biggest purse.
It already does.
Oregon didn't magically get good all of a sudden ten years ago. Same for Ole Miss. The power teams are the power teams because they have more money, currently they spend it on stupid shit like training facilities no one needs and do shit for the players under the table.
Put it above board. Have a cap, if that helps.
yeah I mean, if you go back far enough you will discover that basically every 'power' football school has at some point in its history a $texas donor that singlehandedly or with the help of a small group made the program go.
'some donor deciding they want their school's athletics to be really good' is the story of basically every highly successful program, it's just that what most donors care about is football (and to a lesser extent men's basketball)
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
“I think we should pay college athletes,” said Bevin. “I really do. This idea that they’re not professionals is nonsense.”
“They’re not there like normal students and we shouldn’t pretend that they are. Some of them, yes, go to class, but most of them are students differently because they’re there for athletics and not academics.”
As for how they should be paid, Bevin added, “I think we should maybe defer that comp — fair enough, they can defer it – but they and their families should be able to benefit from the sacrifices they make.” Bevin added that everyone else associated with college athletics is getting rich, except for the players who made all of this possible.
“The coaches are making millions of dollars a year,” said Bevin. “Shoe contracts are dictating what happens on our college campuses. Athletics directors and others associated with it that are making exorbitant fees. I don’t begrudge people making a high living. Good for them, and I mean that sincerely. But if that comes at the expense of those that are delivering the athletic prowess on the field, then maybe we should rethink the fact that this is really like the minor leagues for the professional sports associations, and they should be compensated and treated accordingly.”
And Louisville's hopefully soon to be former AD and basketball coach happily bled the school:
One would hope it’s allocated better than the school’s current apparel deal, which as the Courier-Journal reported today, was used almost exclusively to pay Rick Pitino. In fact, 98 percent of the money brought in by the deal went to Pitino, which the contract for new deal attempts to prohibit:
In 2015-16, for example, $1.5 million went to Pitino under his personal services agreement with the apparel company while just $25,000 went to the program, according to a contract obtained by the Courier-Journal under the state public records act.
The year before, Pitino also got $1.5 million, while the department banked just $10,000.
Under the existing and new contracts, any money that Adidas pays to University of Louisville coaches under personal service agreements is deducted from what the company gives to the athletic program.
Earlier this year, a Louisville spokesman made the case that paying Pitino was the same as using the money to help its athletes because Pitino was special enough that his coaching counted as a valuable service:
“Players come here in part because of Coach Pitino. Coaching is part of what we give to student-athletes,” [Louisvile spokesman Kenny] Klein said last month before a bribery scandal prompted the suspensions of Jurich and Pitino.
[Jurich's] total compensation shakes out to quadruple his base pay with the addition of the vesting of a $1.8 million annuity and exorbitant benefits from Louisville. Here’s how Louisville ended up paying him so much, via the Courier-Journal:
Making some compensation tax-free by “grossing” it up, or essentially paying the taxes for him. This was a $1.6 million benefit to him in 2016.
Paying Jurich 160 percent of the cost of his life insurance policy, and allowing him to keep the overage. Employer-paid policies are common for athletic directors, but sweetening the deal is not.
Paying him as much as $30,000 per year to hire financial advisers to help manage his money, as well as paying taxes on that perk.
Providing $12,000 per year to cover the cost of two vehicles. Coaches and ADs commonly get allowances for one car, but not for two.
Buying memberships in two high-end private golf clubs — Hurstbourne and Lake Forest, where membership fees are $28,000 and $25,000, respectively. That’s in addition to membership at the university’s own Cardinal Club course. The university also pays Jurich’s annual club dues and covers his required monthly minimum bar and food bills – an $11,260 benefit in 2015, the most recent year available from the athletic department.
Providing 16 Skye Terrace seats each year for the Kentucky Derby and Oaks. According to the track’s website, eight premium seats would sell for $24,000 per year.
Guaranteeing eight football and basketball season tickets for life — and not just his life. The seats, valued at about $11,500 per year, are property of the Jurich family for the lifetimes of his wife and children, as well
.
Amazing what you can afford when you don't have to pay your workers.
And in Today In Sexual Harassment In College Athletics, Auburn softball:
A Title IX complaint and a subsequent letter from a former player describe Auburn’s softball program under recently retired head coach Clint Myers as one where players were subjected to a pattern of inappropriate, sexualized attention by the coach’s son, according to an ESPNW report.
Myers retired Wednesday, making no mention of the complaint and ongoing investigation, but now it appears that a Title IX sexual discrimination complaint was formally filed against the school earlier this summer, alleging that Corey Myers, the head coach’s son and an assistant coach with the team, had “relations and [pursued] relations with multiple members of the team,” and that, when confronted by his players, Clint Myers and another school official threatened the players who spoke out:
Greenberg’s letter alleges that on March 30, 2017, “several players approached Head Coach Myers with proof in the form of text messages from a student-athlete’s cell phone that Coach Corey was having an inappropriate relationship with one of the student-athletes.”
According to the letter and several players, the team was then “quarantined” for several hours prior to a trip to Georgia. Five players told ESPN that, at that meeting, Auburn executive associate athletic director Meredith Jenkins told the players they were risking arrest for taking the text messages from their teammate’s phone and ordered them to delete the messages.
The Title IX complaint was reportedly filed on May 31 by Alexa Nemeth, a player on Auburn’s softball team last season, four days after the end of Auburn’s softball season. It appears that Corey Myers, in particular, made players on the teem deeply uncomfortable: in addition to the “inappropriate relationship” depicted in text messages, he apparently subjected players on the team to overt commentary on their looks—in one case rating a player’s looks in a team photo via text message—and was part of an environment where players’ looks were “how it was determined if you were liked or not.” Corey Myers’s inappropriate behavior allegedly crossed over to the physical:
Fagan said she had been troubled by Corey Myers’ behavior since her first year on the team, when, after a ground ball fielding drill, “he smacked me on the butt. I looked at him and he said, ‘What?’ and I said, ‘Don’t do that.’”
This is just so depressing with how common it's become.
Before coaching softball at Auburn—where he was accused of subjecting players to sexualized attention from his son—Clint Myers coached the same sport at Arizona State; public records released Friday to Deadspin reveal that Myers’s son, Corey, was the center of an investigation there, too, into his improper involvement in the Sun Devils’ athletic program.
A memo dated Jan. 13, 2011, addressed to Pac-10 associate commissioner Ron Barker, described the situation. At the time, Clint Myers’s other son Casey was a volunteer coach with the team; Corey Myers isn’t mentioned as having that designation in the memo.
Under “penalties/corrective actions,” the memo says “the head coach and his son have been educated about NCAA bylaws pertinent to this matter and the head coach has received a letter of admonishment.” Corey Myers got a “letter of caution.”
At what point do we take sexual harassment seriously?
You’ve got John Jenkins, the asshole Notre Dame president who has gone on the record to proudly say, “I don’t think there’s a compulsion or some demand of justice that we [pay players].”
John Thompson Jr., the Nike board member whose vice grip on Georgetown has choked the life out of a program to the point that they’ve made exactly one tournament in the last four years.
Grant Hill, a former star college and NBA player that has since made a killing in the private business sector.
Mike Montgomery, who ran right up to the line of player abuse when he shoved a player on the sidelines when he was Cal head coach then defended it by pointing to the player’s stats and essentially saying, “It worked didn’t it?”
Kathryn Ruemmler, who was the longest tenured White House counsel under President Obama; she also encouraged him to tighten up on public records requests and dash transparency in the name of candid conversations.
Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith, who just two years ago went on the record with Biz Journal to say, “I don’t believe our student-athletes should be paid. I believe we should give them the resources to help them grow. The majority aren’t going pro and we have to help them grow and become leaders in society.”
Former Florida athletic director James Foley, who told the Denver Post in 2006 that he is, “not in favor of stipends. Too many schools could not afford it. Your pay is you graduate from school. The players have a proper system in place to get help when needed.”
Jeff Hathaway, the AD that was canned at UConn for not playing ball with boosters or Jim Calhoun and then hightailed it for Hofstra; more recently, he had arguably the worst first two months of any of the NCAA’s spineless committee chairs, considering he was named Chair of the NCAA’s Men’s Basketball Oversight Committee in July.
Former Navy and San Antonio Spurs center and current venture capitalist David Robinson’s presence on the commission is the sole beacon of hope, given he told Vice Sports that he doesn’t think getting paid would have taken away from his studies and told CBS he thinks his son’s spot on the Notre Dame football team was “a full-time job.”
I guess that by "fix" they mean "find new ways to justify not paying players".
Massive academic fraud over a period of decades is fine with the NCAA, apparently. UNC gets nothing for their fake African-American studies department on the technicality that all students could get into the courses once the athletes told them about them.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
Massive academic fraud over a period of decades is fine with the NCAA, apparently. UNC gets nothing for their fake African-American studies department on the technicality that all students could get into the courses once the athletes told them about them.
The NCAA set themselves up hoping that they could find proof that linked the AFAM classes directly to the Athletics department. They didn't find it. So either there was no direct link, or the cover-up worked depending on where you stand.
Apparently the shitty House Tax Plan would affect the ability for people to deduct donations given to colleges in exchange for purchasing ultra-exclusive season ticket packages. They are beginning to worry that this will cause their revenue to drop.
Apparently the shitty House Tax Plan would affect the ability for people to deduct donations given to colleges in exchange for purchasing ultra-exclusive season ticket packages. They are beginning to worry that this will cause their revenue to drop.
Oh noes.
It always seemed weird to me that something as valuable as season tickets could be a "gift" for tax-deductable donations. Get a free t-shirt for donating? Sure, whatever. But I feel like there should be a ceiling for valuation of gifts for donations.
You still have to buy the tickets. The donation is to let them sell you those 50-yard line or courtside seats.
This is bizarre. In any other case, charity auctions as an example, you can only claim the difference between fair market value and what you paid as a donation. Seat location definitely affects the value so no sure how they get away with it.
You still have to buy the tickets. The donation is to let them sell you those 50-yard line or courtside seats.
This is bizarre. In any other case, charity auctions as an example, you can only claim the difference between fair market value and what you paid as a donation. Seat location definitely affects the value so no sure how they get away with it.
Because the people who buy them are 'athletic-supporters'.
You still have to buy the tickets. The donation is to let them sell you those 50-yard line or courtside seats.
This is bizarre. In any other case, charity auctions as an example, you can only claim the difference between fair market value and what you paid as a donation. Seat location definitely affects the value so no sure how they get away with it.
Because the people who buy them are 'athletic-supporters'.
Posts
Presumably there's some other parties, the University or boosters, slipping money to the athlete during this as well.
The bribery charges are coming in in 4 because the coaches work for an institution that's receiving federal funds? The wire fraud is from 2 which defrauds other NCAA schools from recruiting said athlete? The honest services fraud is probably something similar about denying the other universities opportunities?
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
All of it. Kickbacks and bribes are illegall generally. The law is not simple enough to say conclusively. But besides bribes et al of officials and organizations which receive federal funds the honest services fraud of the wire fraud law 18 USC 1346 generally prohibits kickbacks of any kind.
And again, the heart of that is the NCAA's asinine and illegal policy of not allowing players to have agents.
Not really. The heart of the transaction is that coaches steer players towards agents who are friendly with Adidas thus producing friendly brand deals with Addidas and harming the players.
And again, the reason they're able to do this is because the NCAA doesn't allow players to work with agents whatsoever throughout their college careers. In a sane system, that opportunity never happens, because these players had agents from the day they stepped on campus.
I do believe that there is room to have popular amateur extramural sports like football and basketball organized by the institutions at a collegiate level, I'm just not sure how to enforce amateurism and make it fair to the students. This isn't a problem for most college sports, just the ones people want to see enough that they're willing to pay.
The current system needs to be jettisoned, and the players should get paid and not be required to enroll.
There is a D-league for basketball. Though I think the 1 year rule prevents a lot of players from going into it. If the choice is a year of college exposure or 25k bumming around in the D-league, seems like an easy choice.
I'd love to see farm systems for football; cheap games would be great to go watch. I'm not sure it's feasible though.
*Except, of course, for those high schools that play in stadiums that might almost rival pro and college venues.
The NCAA can choke and die, then college sports will find a way to give us a product we can enjoy without ruining lives
At the very least the NCAA should adopt the Olympic model
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Any NCAA program can elect to go semi-pro. To do so they must become a legally separate for-profit entity which is wholly owned by their college-university. After an initial cash infusion and endowment of resources, the university is banned from putting money or using university resources for the benefit of the semi-pro team: in the ownership relationship the only cash flow will be net profits from the team going to benefit the university. Thus the great filter for these programs will be: are they net profitable (or net break-even) that they can survive in a revenue generating environment. The university may, however, provide scholarships to athletes playing for the semi-pro team if those athletes wish to also pursue an education at the same time (unlikely given the demands of being a pro athlete, but you never know. A few manage to pull it off in college).
Semi-pro athletes have full freedom to get paid whatever they can manage, as well as to do sponsorships and such.
Lesser programs can still enforce the rules of amateurism. This means that athletes that aren't good enough to go be semi-pro can still get a subsidized college education if they're good enough to get a scholarship.
Thus the really good programs would go semi-pro to continue to attract top talent (which is going to want to be paid), while the programs that can't make it stay in the normal league. Then you'd just reshuffle how the leagues are organized.
However...
I would also point to something like the English Premier League as what such a future would be like. Generally, for those not quite aware and to quote from Wiki, nearly thirty years ago 'The competition formed as the FA Premier League on 20 February 1992 following the decision of clubs in the Football League First Division to break away from the Football League, which was founded in 1888, and take advantage of a lucrative television rights deal.'
It's almost a 'separate but equal' situation. Even ignoring promotion/relegation aspects, there is a metric assload of cash to be had and spread around in the league. But, unfortunately, it also separates the wheat from the chaff. A handful of teams remain powerful and wealthy and the rest plod along either trying to stay up and get the money or at least not fall far when that fails.
Plus, once you create such a league, the view shifts even more to 'who cares about the lesser anyway?' We already see the split between the so-called power five and group of five. Add in the general disgust with all the bowl games that exist and you'll have a harder time seeing any kind of equality from the schools or conferences jettisoned for the new format. (Anybody remember the Dr. Pepper ads when the CFP had yet to happen and they 'declared' that nothing mattered before?)
Plus, without a concurrent change in recruiting rules, you'll still just see the same teams now as before. Hell, div 1-AA has had a genuine playoff structure for years and nobody really gives a fuck.
Unfortunately, I'd say we would end up seeing a bunch of schools/conferences trying to stay 'up' for a chance at the more lucrative pie. But, like Idaho (or even Cal State Fullerton before them) dropping away under a pile of debt and failure.
On the plus side, at least we'd be able to drop the whole 'student-athlete' fiction once and for all.
That's all well and good until some rich donor for Northwestern decides they'd really like to see their alma mater be awesome and volleyball and donates $Texas to stack their roster. There is never going to be perfect parity in college sports, but it shouldn't come down to which school has the biggest purse.
It already does.
Oregon didn't magically get good all of a sudden ten years ago. Same for Ole Miss. The power teams are the power teams because they have more money, currently they spend it on stupid shit like training facilities no one needs and do shit for the players under the table.
Put it above board. Have a cap, if that helps.
After a while it just sort of hit me, the amount of ad revenue coming in has got to amount to an absolutely obscene amount of money, and the players are getting precisely dick out of it.
They get really extravagant locker rooms and "dorms" that they get to share with a couple lucky regular students to make them not technically extra benefits.
But yeah, actual money would be way better.
yeah I mean, if you go back far enough you will discover that basically every 'power' football school has at some point in its history a $texas donor that singlehandedly or with the help of a small group made the program go.
'some donor deciding they want their school's athletics to be really good' is the story of basically every highly successful program, it's just that what most donors care about is football (and to a lesser extent men's basketball)
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Amazing what you can afford when you don't have to pay your workers.
And in followup, apparently Auburn wasn't the first school where the coach let his son harass the players:
At what point do we take sexual harassment seriously?
I guess that by "fix" they mean "find new ways to justify not paying players".
The NCAA set themselves up hoping that they could find proof that linked the AFAM classes directly to the Athletics department. They didn't find it. So either there was no direct link, or the cover-up worked depending on where you stand.
Oh noes.
It always seemed weird to me that something as valuable as season tickets could be a "gift" for tax-deductable donations. Get a free t-shirt for donating? Sure, whatever. But I feel like there should be a ceiling for valuation of gifts for donations.
This is bizarre. In any other case, charity auctions as an example, you can only claim the difference between fair market value and what you paid as a donation. Seat location definitely affects the value so no sure how they get away with it.
Because the people who buy them are 'athletic-supporters'.
They sure are.