College Football Oversight & Compensation

[Pagoda]

9 hours ago, Old Friend said:

No it hasn't.  Stop.   Every business in the world makes money off of its employees. (and yes, I know college athletes weren't employees until recently.  Save it) There is study after study which shows people with a college degree earn over $1.1M more over a lifetime than those who don't.  College athletes get that education for free.  They eat free.  They get free tutoring.  They get preferred housing.  They have always received stipends.  If you focus on the < 1% of kids who go on to play professionally, they may lose out.  No one else does.

Listening to the demands of children is a bad recipe and no one can tell me what's happening right now is good for college sports, even if Indiana fans are seeing great benefit from it.  Nobody has "taken advantage" of kids.  Want to do a study over the last, say 75 years how many kids have been "taken advantage of" vs how many have received an opportunity they otherwise wouldn't have had?    Then we can do one on the number of athletes who are making money now vs. 5 years ago.  Yep.  The top tier are doing just fine.  What are the tennis players making?  Gymnasts?   

In any case, there is no reasonable argument for kids who are both on scholarship AND being paid being allowed to quit without penalty.

No, as much as the don't pay players crowd wants to put huge values on full rides and merch, the fact is that's worth ~$25-75K per year.  We can argue the exact number, but it ain't much, especially when one considers the lower marginal cost to the university to provide it.  And it's way, way less than what P4 football players are worth.  That's why we've seen P4 CFB rosters get paid $15-40M plus full rides and merch after the House Settlement -- that's their market value.

These aren't children.  They're adults.  Adults with very rare, unique, and valuable skills.  And in the United States of America people are allowed to negotiate employment terms, compensation, and get paid if people what to pay them. 

I don't like the opt-outs, but I recognize the economic incentive and rationale that leads to it.  A player is not going to risk playing a game with little meaning and put their athletic earnings potential of hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars at risk.  Some of these games are so meaningless the program itself opts out.  This year 10 teams did, some examples are Notre Dame, Kansas State, and Iowa State.  

Agreed to employment terms includes opt-outs.  If schools don't like the opt-outs, they have to negotiate with the players.  Just like in every other employment scenario.  I've read some rev share deals have an opt-out penalty.  One thing I won't do is demand players risk their careers to play in the Nobody Cares Bowl so I can have a sliver of extra entertainment during the holidays.

[Rico]

On 12/28/2025 at 8:19 PM, Scotty R said:

It is getting close to that point for me. I just hate that they have really messed up the sport I use to love for years. All sports are getting harder to actually watch and enjoy the product. I rarely watch the NBA except for the Pacers and this year they are hard to watch. I have watched less NFL this year than I have in the past.

Count your blessings there is YouTube.  You can spend countless hours under your rock watching the classics from the 80's.  

[Home Jersey]

Baylor's Scott Drew defends James Nnaji signing amid criticism

"I'm a little surprised," Izzo told reporters. "I've got a call in to Scott. I'm anxious to see what he tells me. Not saying we're holier than thou or anybody should not do this or that, but if we're dipping into that one, if it's like I'm reading or hearing ... and now we're taking guys that were drafted in the NBA. If that's what we're gonna do, shame on the NCAA. Shame on the coaches, too. But shame on the NCAA. Because coaches are going to do what they've got to do, I guess.”

Drew said Sunday that he spoke to Izzo and defended his decision to sign Nnaji.

"Coach Izzo and I are friends. I've got a lot of respect for him. Great conversation," Drew told reporters. "As he said, most coaches are 99% aligned on things that we would like to see done with our game. At the same time, from my knowledge, until we get to collective bargaining, I don't think we can come up with rules that are agreeable or enforceable. Until that, I think all of us have got to be ready to adjust and adapt to what's out there.

"Early on, when it first came out with G League players, I wasn't in favor of that either. But again, we don't make the rules and as we find out about things, we're always going to adapt to put our program in the best position to be successful, because that's what we get paid to do."

[Scotty R]

3 hours ago, Rico said:

Count your blessings there is YouTube.  You can spend countless hours under your rock watching the classics from the 80's.  

I sure do, in the last two weeks I watched the 81 final 4 and the 76 championship game

[ALASKA HOOSIER]

No one has an answer for it. I sure don't! So, i'm just going to concentrate on what i can control and get my butt ready for the Rose Bowl Game! 

[Hardwood83]

Late to this party, but my thoughts are even though the traditional system was flawed it was: A) successful B) not compulsory. So the position that college (or Olympic) athletes "were taken advantage of" is exteremly hard for me to accept. Sincere question: Can there be willing amatuers in anything? Aren't blood donors getting screwed? My kids sold candy as a fund-raiser and got squat, are they owed a piece of the action? Everyone is gonna put the line somewhere and some of you think that since college sports are popular and make money, that it must be shared with the players. Ok, I'm 100% pro free market too......but we already have professional sports. If players don't want to "donate" their time & talents to a college they can go play for the NBA, NFL, MLB, in Europe, etc. Colleges don't owe them the right play. So, I reject the argument that amatuer sports can't exist because someone, somewhere is making money. Also, there are tons of ethical issues, like why are state run education institutions sponsoring professional entertainment?   

Practially, none of that matters since the cat is out of the bag and not likely it's going back. I played college football and it was a sacrifice, but I still love college sports and am sad they are disappearing. 

[Home Jersey]

2 hours ago, Hardwood83 said:

Late to this party, but my thoughts are even though the traditional system was flawed it was: A) successful B) not compulsory. So the position that college (or Olympic) athletes "were taken advantage of" is exteremly hard for me to accept. Sincere question: Can there be willing amatuers in anything? Aren't blood donors getting screwed? My kids sold candy as a fund-raiser and got squat, are they owed a piece of the action? Everyone is gonna put the line somewhere and some of you think that since college sports are popular and make money, that it must be shared with the players. Ok, I'm 100% pro free market too......but we already have professional sports. If players don't want to "donate" their time & talents to a college they can go play for the NBA, NFL, MLB, in Europe, etc. Colleges don't owe them the right play. So, I reject the argument that amatuer sports can't exist because someone, somewhere is making money. Also, there are tons of ethical issues, like why are state run education institutions sponsoring professional entertainment?   

Practially, none of that matters since the cat is out of the bag and not likely it's going back. I played college football and it was a sacrifice, but I still love college sports and am sad they are disappearing. 

"Taken advantage of" has a connotation that makes people uncomfortable. Nobody is saying the old way is the most horrible unjust thing ever.

Simply recognizing one major part of the equation was leaving money on the table that they are directly responsible for generating. The brands are also important but they require good talent to win and draw support. If that weren't the case, the schools wouldn't be paying talented players.

Right now, every player has to navigate the market for themselves with a lot of ambiguity. Collective bargaining is needed to establish guardrails for the market. The takeaway IMO is not to be 100% pro free market, it's that markets are only as good as their regulation.

From a legislative perspective there's very little that can be accomplished IMO. Hence the need for a CBA. How we get there from here, not sure, but I'm confident eventually some investors will work with administrators to find a way. I also am sad that the golden days of collegiate athletics are behind us. 

RE: the part in bold, HS sports doesn't pay athletes (the ones who are paid are examples of real NIL). They don't get paid because HS sports don't generate enough interest. Largely because the players aren't that good. Colleges need to pay good players to compete. 

[Pagoda]

I definitely get people missing the pre-NIL days, even though many players were getting paid under the table.  Especially pre-2000 before the media deals got really big.  As Home Jersey said pre-NIL wasn't the worst travesty ever, there are much bigger problems in the world.  I guess I just can't expect players to forgo making money so CFB feels extra pure to the fans.

A tough part of this is there isn't an alternative to CFB.  No foreign league can support thousands of graduating high school football players, plus that's an unreasonable ask for high school players to leave the US.  High school grads are too young and not ready for the NFL, and only a small percentage (~2%) of CFB players go pro.  For many, CFB is the pinnacle of their football career.

With P4 athletic depts generating $120-300M of revenue and ~75-80% of that coming from football, it's just very hard to justify telling anyone who wants to play in the only football league available to players three years post-high school you cannot make money or else you're ineligible.  

Maybe it would work if the whole thing were really amateur.  That would be volunteer coaching staffs, $5 ticket prices to just cover stadium costs, and small media deals only for distribution with games also streamed for free on YouTube.  But in reality everything is highly professional already and asking only the players to be amateurs is inconsistent. 

I'm not even sure players getting paid is much of a problem.  The bigger issue is the lack of strong and logical governance around the game.  That's wreaking havoc on CBB now, but the cause of that is the NCAA and its member institutions.

[Scotty R]

58 minutes ago, Pagoda said:

I definitely get people missing the pre-NIL days, even though many players were getting paid under the table.  Especially pre-2000 before the media deals got really big.  As Home Jersey said pre-NIL wasn't the worst travesty ever, there are much bigger problems in the world.  I guess I just can't expect players to forgo making money so CFB feels extra pure to the fans.

A tough part of this is there isn't an alternative to CFB.  No foreign league can support thousands of graduating high school football players, plus that's an unreasonable ask for high school players to leave the US.  High school grads are too young and not ready for the NFL, and only a small percentage (~2%) of CFB players go pro.  For many, CFB is the pinnacle of their football career.

With P4 athletic depts generating $120-300M of revenue and ~75-80% of that coming from football, it's just very hard to justify telling anyone who wants to play in the only football league available to players three years post-high school you cannot make money or else you're ineligible.  

Maybe it would work if the whole thing were really amateur.  That would be volunteer coaching staffs, $5 ticket prices to just cover stadium costs, and small media deals only for distribution with games also streamed for free on YouTube.  But in reality everything is highly professional already and asking only the players to be amateurs is inconsistent. 

I'm not even sure players getting paid is much of a problem.  The bigger issue is the lack of strong and logical governance around the game.  That's wreaking havoc on CBB now, but the cause of that is the NCAA and its member institutions.

Even though I don't like pay for play the biggest problem right now is the transfer portal. You have to stop the multiple years of transferring without any penalties.

[Pagoda]

Yea, I’d like to see pro (NFL, NBA) style multi-year contracts.  Would cut down on the transfers, which are especially bad in CBB.

Transfers aren’t as bad in CFB, but real contracts would be good there too.

Need a CBA for this I’d assume.  I don’t know.

[Demo]

Oh look, the President of the NCAA has popped his head out of his hole to emphatically assert……basically nothing at all.

What an inspiring leader. 

[str8baller]

21 hours ago, Hardwood83 said:

Also, there are tons of ethical issues, like why are state run education institutions sponsoring professional entertainment?   

 

They have been for a hundred years. It’s always funny to me that none of you guys complained when Davis, Crean, Archie, Cameron, Lynch, Allen, etc… all made hundreds of millions of dollars collectively off of IU. Where was the outrage and calls to pay them a small stipend along with fixed housing?  None of the “amateurism” folks ever demand anyone (coaches, ADs, announcers, TV executives, ushers, concession services, etc…) work for free except the players. 
 

Also, if your kids went out and sold $175,000,000  worth of candy for a corporation and you didn’t demand a cut for them, I wouldn’t think of you as an amateur. I would question your sanity, though. 

[Hardwood83]

10 hours ago, str8baller said:

They have been for a hundred years. It’s always funny to me that none of you guys complained when Davis, Crean, Archie, Cameron, Lynch, Allen, etc… all made hundreds of millions of dollars collectively off of IU. Where was the outrage and calls to pay them a small stipend along with fixed housing?  None of the “amateurism” folks ever demand anyone (coaches, ADs, announcers, TV executives, ushers, concession services, etc…) work for free except the players. 
 

Also, if your kids went out and sold $175,000,000  worth of candy for a corporation and you didn’t demand a cut for them, I wouldn’t think of you as an amateur. I would question your sanity, though. 

I'm not demanding anybody do anything for free or otherwise. No one has a gun to their head, do they? No? Then you have no point. No one is making them play ball. I think it's funny that none of you "professional" guys boycotted NCAA sports 25yrs ago because of your moral outrage over the gross financial inequity either, right? So drop the righteous indiignation, we're all hypocrites. You still didn't answer my question- can amatuerism exist?  

[str8baller]

11 hours ago, Hardwood83 said:

You still didn't answer my question- can amatuerism exist?  

Amateurism is a made up concept for Victorian England meant to specifically exclude the lower classes from competing with the upper classes in matters of sport. So my guess is “no,” that can’t exist today. 
 

The NCAA adopted this language early in the 20th Century (pre WW2) to bar players from getting paid. Again, that can’t exist today due to various legal challenges and the NCAA itself blessing the paying of players.  
 

So you would actually have to define what you consider amateurism to be in order to answer the question, but both historical forms that we know of have been dispensed with as unfair intrusions by the upper, academic classes upon largely the lower class as unfair prohibitions in the lower class members being able to share in the money they generate.  In the NCAAs case they went well beyond prohibiting an athlete from being paid to play and exercised almost complete veto authority over an athletes economic activity outside their sport including profiting from their own likeness* and profiting from other sports they might play (unless specifically cleared by the NCAA). 
 

Again, have you ever called for any coaches, ADs, TV execs, or any other participants to not get paid in the name of amateurism? It would be helpful to know so I can get a more refined sense of what “amateurism” means to you.  
 

 

 

*I’m sure older Hoosier fans fondly and warmly remember the NCAA saving the universe from the evils of professionalism when they suspended Alford for having the gall to lend his image to a sorority for the low-down dirty business of a charity calendar. 

[Hardwood83]

There is a lot wrong with what you wrote. You seem confused that there is a right to play organized sports. Also, "amatuerism" is merely non-professional, not that made up commie sounding stuff you copied from wikipedia. According to you we should all pay our wives for marital relations, since EVERYTHING has to be a professional relationship... I disagree, but I'm still charging you $50 for replying to this nonsense. Again, did you refuse to watch the Olympics or college sports in the before time? No, of course you didn't. So you don't even believe what you are stating. It's ok, no reason to bicker anymore, we're not changing anyone's mind and IU's professional students won the Rose Bowl, so let's enjoy that.  

[RaceToTheTop]

8 hours ago, Hardwood83 said:

There is a lot wrong with what you wrote. You seem confused that there is a right to play organized sports. Also, "amatuerism" is merely non-professional, not that made up commie sounding stuff you copied from wikipedia. According to you we should all pay our wives for marital relations, since EVERYTHING has to be a professional relationship... I disagree, but I'm still charging you $50 for replying to this nonsense. Again, did you refuse to watch the Olympics or college sports in the before time? No, of course you didn't. So you don't even believe what you are stating. It's ok, no reason to bicker anymore, we're not changing anyone's mind and IU's professional students won the Rose Bowl, so let's enjoy that.  

The line ‘made up commie stuff’ is hypocritical since receiving pay for play is the very definition of playing in a capitalistic free market.

[str8baller]

14 hours ago, Hardwood83 said:

There is a lot wrong with what you wrote. You seem confused that there is a right to play organized sports. Also, "amatuerism" is merely non-professional, not that made up commie sounding stuff you copied from wikipedia. According to you we should all pay our wives for marital relations, since EVERYTHING has to be a professional relationship... I disagree, but I'm still charging you $50 for replying to this nonsense. Again, did you refuse to watch the Olympics or college sports in the before time? No, of course you didn't. So you don't even believe what you are stating. It's ok, no reason to bicker anymore, we're not changing anyone's mind and IU's professional students won the Rose Bowl, so let's enjoy that.  

 

If you want to engage in good faith discussion, I’m happy to continue. For example, your example of the Olympics is nonsensical since I remember as a little kid watching the greatest team ever assembled, aptly named the Dream Team, go demolish everyone in the ‘92 Olympics. They were highly paid professionals in basketball.  College kids today make significantly less than Olympians and Olympians never had to sign away the ability to make money on their own image.  
 

So again, please give us your definition of “amateur” that you can live with to  continue watching IU with a good conscience.  It’s certainly not the Olympic model. 

[str8baller]

6 hours ago, RaceToTheTop said:

The line ‘made up commie stuff’ is hypocritical since receiving pay for play is the very definition of playing in a capitalistic free market.

And the definition of communism would be pretty close to, “workers working for a state-run entity where all economic benefit flows back to the state-run entity and a few high level commissars while the workers get free housing and the glory of representing the motherlan…err, alma mater!”    
 

I wasn’t going to touch that comment—or the amateur marital relations one—but since you did…