Here Is Your Chance - Solve the College Sports 'Quasi-Pro' Problem!

[Demo]

11 minutes ago, BGleas said:

I get the issues are kind of tied together, but I think the bigger issue is the transfer portal and transfer policy. 

That's a bigger issue than NIL or players getting paid. 

The problem is that we essentially have free agency for every player every season. It's absolutely ridiculous when we have guys that have played 5 seasons at 4-5 different schools. 

That's the problem with college basketball. Way bigger negative for the sport than players getting paid. 

But again they're sort of tied together. Seems the only/best way to fix that is to have multi-year contracts or something?

Baylor just did that with one of their kids. Signed Isaac Williams, whio’s a Soph, to a 2 year deal. Can’t imagine that’s not gonna evolve into a really common practice. At some point coaches/GM’s have to be able to make recruiting/portal decisions based on at least some reasonable roster assumptions. 

[Stuhoo]

28 minutes ago, BGleas said:

I get the issues are kind of tied together, but I think the bigger issue is the transfer portal and transfer policy. 

That's a bigger issue than NIL or players getting paid. 

The problem is that we essentially have free agency for every player every season. It's absolutely ridiculous when we have guys that have played 5 seasons at 4-5 different schools. 

That's the problem with college basketball. Way bigger negative for the sport than players getting paid. 

But again they're sort of tied together. Seems the only/best way to fix that is to have multi-year contracts or something?

Guessing that the issue with eliminating multiple transfers is that they'd be carving out a special class of college students that are not allowed to transfer as many times as they want.

A court will be presented with the proposal that a college student that plays basketball cannot transfer to a new university and keep playing basketball, but a college student that is an accounting major can transfer as many times as they want. Or maybe that accounting major would be barred from certain extra-curricular university activities upon transferring academically.

Eliminating multiple transfers would be good, but it will be challenged..

[Home Jersey]

5 years to play 5

Industry standard becomes 2 year contracts with a transfer fee clause... de facto way of limiting transfers but still allowing for quicker rebuilds in the portal. And make it more feasible for kids to actually get a degree from somewhere. 

[BGleas]

1 hour ago, Stuhoo said:

Guessing that the issue with eliminating multiple transfers is that they'd be carving out a special class of college students that are not allowed to transfer as many times as they want.

A court will be presented with the proposal that a college student that plays basketball cannot transfer to a new university and keep playing basketball, but a college student that is an accounting major can transfer as many times as they want. Or maybe that accounting major would be barred from certain extra-curricular university activities upon transferring academically.

Eliminating multiple transfers would be good, but it will be challenged..

Yeah, complicated issue but one that needs to be figured out. 

Like I said IMO, the transfer thing is a much bigger problem than players getting paid. But also realize both issues are sort tied together a bit. 

It's just ridiculous seeing these players transfer essentially every year, and I think that's hurting the product much more than players getting paid. 

[str8baller]

2 hours ago, Stuhoo said:

Guessing that the issue with eliminating multiple transfers is that they'd be carving out a special class of college students that are not allowed to transfer as many times as they want.

A court will be presented with the proposal that a college student that plays basketball cannot transfer to a new university and keep playing basketball, but a college student that is an accounting major can transfer as many times as they want. Or maybe that accounting major would be barred from certain extra-curricular university activities upon transferring academically.

Eliminating multiple transfers would be good, but it will be challenged..

 

2 hours ago, Home Jersey said:

5 years to play 5

Industry standard becomes 2 year contracts with a transfer fee clause... de facto way of limiting transfers but still allowing for quicker rebuilds in the portal. And make it more feasible for kids to actually get a degree from somewhere. 

I would tie the transfer issue back to regular college kids getting a degree. To Home Jerseys point, They shouldn’t dump that paradigm. So in that context, how realistic is it for a non-athlete kid to graduate in 4-5 years if they transfer every year? Not very likely. But we all understand the kid who goes to juco to get their grades up and transfers into a 4 year institution. Or one that got homesick and transferred back to the state school at home. There’s little intrusion to the path to get a degree.  
 

The NCAA can maintain that the kids rightfully deserve to share in some of the giant revenue streams but that their central purpose is to educate 18-22 year old “kids.”  
 

Thus players can transfer as many times as they want, just like the old days. But you have to sit out and sacrifice a year of eligibility after your second transfer. Essentially you get one free transfer. 

[Golfman25]

At the end of the day, it will take Congressional approval.  Under the heading of "Education" and "student athlete" they can bring back true college sports.  There will be reasonable limitations on transfers and NIL/Revenue sharing structures.  Essentially the "old model" with payments on the table instead of under the table. 

Otherwise the courts get involved and we get what we got now.  Courts can only look at money and are really bad at deciding what is actually best for the athletes -- which is probably a combination of money and education.  

[go iu bb]

22 hours ago, Golfman25 said:

A fundamental problem is the athletes need to be treated no worse than the regular student.  The regular dude can work, transfer, etc.  So you can't penalize them for that. There are zero good answers.  The money and "free agency" will eventually ruin college sports as it has done professional sports.  We'll all have to find something better to do.   

 

This is the hole (grave) the NCAA has created for themselves. They spent decades shouting for everyone to hear that they're just students who happen to also play a sport. They even made a term to get that point across, "student-athlete." Yet at the same time they wanted to be able to treat some students differently than others. Obviously, the courts didn't go for that. The first thing that needs to change is that the athletes need to be considered different from other students, they probably need to be classified as employees of some sort.

[Home Jersey]

1 hour ago, go iu bb said:

. The first thing that needs to change is that the athletes need to be considered different from other students, they probably need to be classified as employees of some sort.

And that's the crux of it really... the sole purpose of NCAA and "amateur student-athlete" branding is basically to fight tooth and nail against the idea they should be classified as employees. It's probably not financially feasible for a majority of schools?

IMO if that's the route things go it's surely because the big money schools are breaking off and doing their own league. Who knows what that looks like. Probably very lucrative for some people. Maybe that would also set the stage for a more true form of amateur college sports to exist. Maybe...

[AZ Hoosier]

30 minutes ago, Home Jersey said:

And that's the crux of it really... the sole purpose of NCAA and "amateur student-athlete" branding is basically to fight tooth and nail against the idea they should be classified as employees. It's probably not financially feasible for a majority of schools?

IMO if that's the route things go it's surely because the big money schools are breaking off and doing their own league. Who knows what that looks like. Probably very lucrative for some people. Maybe that would also set the stage for a more true form of amateur college sports to exist. Maybe...

One can only hope. Not sure what we have these days, but it's not amateur in any way, shape or form.

[Home Jersey]

3 minutes ago, AZ Hoosier said:

One can only hope. Not sure what we have these days, but it's not amateur in any way, shape or form.

Yeah. I am not a lawyer or banker by any stretch, just a guy who likes to riff on the Internet a little too much (lol)... if I were to spitball a bit, specifically about basketball in a vacuum (football is top dog and probably make things too complicated, but for the sake of discussion)

Everybody tends to agree a change is needed to the landscape but I'm not sure there's any catalyst forcing that on the horizon (again I could be totally ignorant to something already in the courts)

I don't think any sort of Congressional action is politically viable. My guess shooting from the hip?

Some group of investors with NBA connections get together with the idea of creating a G-league that people actually care about.

The how would obviously need workshopping but a 50,000 foot view specific to basketball might involve something like a new league entity being formed, the schools license their branding to the teams in that league and lease out their facilities. Maybe the endowment fund gets a small equity stake in the new league entity or something. If the jerseys and courts/stadiums are the same, I'd wager most fans would still watch even though they aren't students. Then maybe the NBA acquires that entity and treats it like an MLB farm system. In that scenario, I think the new "amateur college athletics" would probably be more similar to a club sports with regional conferences. 

Seems like anything could happen. I'm sure a lot of what I just ranted about is not viable for a bunch of reasons, not least of which is that only like 20-25 schools have profitable athletic departments and the obvious being, football is gonna drive the school's decision making before basketball.

Whatever happens it would be nice to see Indiana basketball winning again. 

[AZ Hoosier]

2 hours ago, Home Jersey said:

Yeah. I am not a lawyer or banker by any stretch, just a guy who likes to riff on the Internet a little too much (lol)... if I were to spitball a bit, specifically about basketball in a vacuum (football is top dog and probably make things too complicated, but for the sake of discussion)

Everybody tends to agree a change is needed to the landscape but I'm not sure there's any catalyst forcing that on the horizon (again I could be totally ignorant to something already in the courts)

I don't think any sort of Congressional action is politically viable. My guess shooting from the hip?

Some group of investors with NBA connections get together with the idea of creating a G-league that people actually care about.

The how would obviously need workshopping but a 50,000 foot view specific to basketball might involve something like a new league entity being formed, the schools license their branding to the teams in that league and lease out their facilities. Maybe the endowment fund gets a small equity stake in the new league entity or something. If the jerseys and courts/stadiums are the same, I'd wager most fans would still watch even though they aren't students. Then maybe the NBA acquires that entity and treats it like an MLB farm system. In that scenario, I think the new "amateur college athletics" would probably be more similar to a club sports with regional conferences. 

Seems like anything could happen. I'm sure a lot of what I just ranted about is not viable for a bunch of reasons, not least of which is that only like 20-25 schools have profitable athletic departments and the obvious being, football is gonna drive the school's decision making before basketball.

Whatever happens it would be nice to see Indiana basketball winning again. 

Agreed. It's a hot mess, and I don't know how to fix it.

The NBA attempts at a development league have failed out of the gate because, IMO, no one cares. The teams have no following, and the players are "almost" NBA caliber guys - not quite good enough (yet) to make an NBA roster. The pay is a joke, and is significantly less than current NIL payouts, based on some of the NIL numbers I've seen floated about. So it's in the player's best interest to stay in (or try to go back to) college for a payday.

The NIL genie is out of the bottle, and I don't see anybody (NBA, colleges, congress) able to put it back in the bottle. The concept of NIL is sound - you want to use my face and name to pimp your widget, sure, go ahead, but you have to pay me for the privilege.

However, paying a kid $2M/year for NIL when he does zero promotional work is a completely different matter, and it is a scam at best. Plain and simple, it's pay for play. And that goes against the basic tenet of amateurism. These kids should not, IMO, be paid to play. They should be allowed to earn income for every legal endeavor outside of "pay for play" - you can earn money walking dogs, washing cars, being a spokesperson for a local business, etc... but NOT for playing ball.

But what do I know? I'm old, cranky and tired of seeing Indiana basketball's best efforts putting them in the "first 4 out". Now, get off my lawn.

[Golfman25]

2 hours ago, Home Jersey said:

Yeah. I am not a lawyer or banker by any stretch, just a guy who likes to riff on the Internet a little too much (lol)... if I were to spitball a bit, specifically about basketball in a vacuum (football is top dog and probably make things too complicated, but for the sake of discussion)

Everybody tends to agree a change is needed to the landscape but I'm not sure there's any catalyst forcing that on the horizon (again I could be totally ignorant to something already in the courts)

I don't think any sort of Congressional action is politically viable. My guess shooting from the hip?

Some group of investors with NBA connections get together with the idea of creating a G-league that people actually care about.

The how would obviously need workshopping but a 50,000 foot view specific to basketball might involve something like a new league entity being formed, the schools license their branding to the teams in that league and lease out their facilities. Maybe the endowment fund gets a small equity stake in the new league entity or something. If the jerseys and courts/stadiums are the same, I'd wager most fans would still watch even though they aren't students. Then maybe the NBA acquires that entity and treats it like an MLB farm system. In that scenario, I think the new "amateur college athletics" would probably be more similar to a club sports with regional conferences. 

Seems like anything could happen. I'm sure a lot of what I just ranted about is not viable for a bunch of reasons, not least of which is that only like 20-25 schools have profitable athletic departments and the obvious being, football is gonna drive the school's decision making before basketball.

Whatever happens it would be nice to see Indiana basketball winning again. 

As it gets further away from actual student athletes, it will die a slow death.  What makes college sports great isn't the talent (the best talent goes pro ASAP) as much as it is teamwork, tradition, and the fact they often hang with the other students.  Hell, in the old days they were actually in your class.  :{ 

[Pagoda]

15 hours ago, AZ Hoosier said:

However, paying a kid $2M/year for NIL when he does zero promotional work is a completely different matter, and it is a scam at best. Plain and simple, it's pay for play. And that goes against the basic tenet of amateurism. These kids should not, IMO, be paid to play. They should be allowed to earn income for every legal endeavor outside of "pay for play" - you can earn money walking dogs, washing cars, being a spokesperson for a local business, etc... but NOT for playing ball.

I just don't follow this.  Amateurism is great, but it needs to be the athlete's decision to be an am or a pro, and not forced on them.  

P4 athletic depts generate $120-300M+ in revenue per year from media rights, ticket sales, sponsors, etc.  There is nothing amateur about these operations -- head coaches are making $4-13M/yr, coordinators $1-3M/yr, etc.  FB and MBB players play a large role in generating all this revenue.  How can you justify not paying them? 

Rev share and NIL (which is absolutely pay for play) is currently valuing P4 FB and MBB players at $250K to $5M+ per year.  These are elite athletes the market values and you're telling me they should get $0 to play?  That's very unfair, and the courts agreed.  Sorry Fernando, nice 16-0 title run with all those sold out stadiums and huge TV viewership, but you shouldn't have been paid $2M for that, you've got to be an amateur. 

And little side deals doing marketing work doesn't make up for stopping players from getting paid to play.

And at the end of the day, it's harmless.  Roster payrolls are mostly funded by rich donors.  Athletic depts usually take nothing from the schools, and if they do it's usually de minimis.  So we've got rich people paying generally working and middle class kids money to play sports.  I'm not seeing anything wrong with that.

[Stuhoo]

4 minutes ago, Pagoda said:

I just don't follow this.  Amateurism is great, but it needs to be the athlete's decision to be an am or a pro, and not forced on them.  

P4 athletic depts generate $120-300M+ in revenue per year from media rights, ticket sales, sponsors, etc.  There is nothing amateur about these operations -- head coaches are making $4-13M/yr, coordinators $1-3M/yr, etc.  FB and MBB players play a large role in generating all this revenue.  How can you justify not paying them? 

Rev share and NIL (which is absolutely pay for play) is currently valuing P4 FB and MBB players at $250K to $5M+ per year.  These are elite athletes the market values and you're telling me they should get $0 to play?  That's very unfair, and the courts agreed.  Sorry Fernando, nice 16-0 title run with all those sold out stadiums and huge TV viewership, but you shouldn't have been paid $2M for that, you've got to be an amateur. 

And little side deals doing marketing work doesn't make up for stopping players from getting paid.

And at the end of the day, it's harmless.  Roster payrolls are mostly funded by rich donors.  Athletic depts usually take nothing from the schools, and if they do it's usually de minimis.  So we've got rich people paying generally working and middle class kids money to play sports.  That's a good thing.

If we're going to have college sports be amateur sports, make it that way for both the players and the team stakeholders.

In other words, ticket prices that reflect solely the cost of keeping the lights on, volunteer coaches, and open free access for anyone to broadcast the games. In that scenario the players won't have a case to be paid.