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Don't forget the high school gym in Las Vegas for that tournament we all went to in the early 2000s. Young Bill Self coaching Illinois in the game in front of us.

I haven't read that article, but I don't think it's much of an advantage. Teams can still funnel money to players through NIL, in addition to the revenue sharing. So if Alabama only wants to contribute $3mm to revenue sharing but boosters have another $12mm to donate through NIL they can still pay their players $15mm. St. Johns and Villanova can theoretically spend $15mm on paying their basketball players but 1) they don't have that much money to spend because they don't have nearly the same tv deals that the football schools do, and 2) even if they spend $15mm it's no different than the $15mm that Alabama spends through revenue sharing and NIL combined. Money is relatively fungible and other than the tax deductibility of paying players through revenue sharing instead of NIL, there's really nothing to see here. The football schools still have far more money overall and that's all that matters these days.

I know. Getting older stinks and trying to not embarrass yourself in front of the kids is tough. But Friday may be a return to the old days...

Any money donated to the Billiken Club is tax deductible. The BC can spend it on whatever they want including Travis Ford's buyout, paying players, whatever. The IRS absolutely should shut this down but they don't/won't and Chris May is quoted in the article as talking about how these deductions are now tax deductible.

Key concept is that the Billiken Victory Fund will go away and payments to the players can come from the school itself. Those that donated to the BVF can now donate to the school and get a tax deduction. That's right, in 2025 donating to your school so that they can pay $250k for an 18 year old to play basketball is tax deductible...

I think there is too much hand-wringing over schedule strength these days. Back when the RPI was king and a 1 point win was the same as a 30 point win, schedule strength had an outsized importance. With the NET you can play a weak team and as long as you beat them handily it's the equivalent of beating a middle of the road team by a small margin. Some theory on scheduling, as pointed out by Wiz's post above, suggests you SHOULD schedule weak and try to run up the score as much as possible to trick the NET rankings. I'm not sure if the A10 is good or not, but I don't look as SOS as the determiner of that. As it stands right now, the A10 as a conference is ranked 7th in the NET (one higher than last year) has 7 teams in the top 101 of the NET rankings. The key to the only real question that matters of how many NCAA bids does the conference get isn't SOS but rather can 2 or 3 teams separate from the pack. If the teams cannibalize themselves then we'll get 1 or 2 only.

Such a ridiculous post. The Beast has won 4 of the last 8 National Championships. I guess they really do have nothing to boast about other than a storied (recent) history!

Pretty sure there is a lot of information I could use about the football games this weekend if you care to share your sports almanac.

Taking the optimistic view, hopefully he wasn't in a position to effect the result of Oregon State getting demoted (I'm not sure God himself could have saved Oregon State and Washington State once the dominos started falling) but maybe he was able to observe through the demotion just how important athletics are to the soul and prestige of a University and will do everything in his power to help SLU.

University was founded in 1818.

Agreed. The simple explanation is that Dan Caesar thought the Billikens were in the MVC, nobody caught it when it was published and someone figured it out at some point and edited it. Good old Post Dispatch.

Saw this note in Dan Caesar's column today. Not sure I fully understand what it really means: https://www.stltoday.com/sports/column/media-views/chiefs-off-to-big-start-in-st-louis-tv-ratings-but-no-match-for-presidential/article_2713cdfe-6c91-11ef-aa17-533a32661e90.html#tracking-source=home-top-story Billikens move to Matrix The Missouri Valley Conference is moving the portion of its TV package of men’s and women’s basketball telecasts that in the St. Louis market had been shown on Bally Sports Midwest to Matrix Midwest. That’s the recently rebranded outlet owned by KMOV (Channel 4) parent company Gray Media that is being pointed toward become a sports hub. It recently began carrying several programs about Missouri football, and management would like to eventually air Cardinals and/or Blues games. St. Louis University is affected by the development, although the schedule of its games that will be shown on Matrix has not yet been announced. Although Matrix has even more cable/satellite distribution problems than does Bally Sports Midwest — the only such operation carrying Matrix is Spectrum/Charter, on Channel 182 — unlike BSM it is also available over-the-air (on Channel 32). The deal covers stations in 22 markets Gray is in across Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Iowa and Tennessee and also some third-party outlets outside Gray’s coverage area. “In the ever-changing landscape of live-event production and distribution, the Missouri Valley Conference remains committed to navigating the best path to reach college basketball fans, and this partnership with Gray does just that,” MVC commissioner Jeff Jackson said in a statement.

There are no guarantees in anything, but I do like the hard cap on NIL that we are willing to offer an incoming freshman because I think it fits in well with the goal of keeping the freshmen that you like down the road. If $ are all that matters to a kid coming out of high school he probably won't end up at SLU given the NIL cap we are offering. So the freshmen that do come likely aren't complete mercenaries which will lead to you have a better opportunity to retain him than the average player. Put differently, by putting a cap on the NIL you are willing to pay a player as a freshman you've self selected a group that worries more about fit than $. It's a good approach.

Because that basketball only conference comprised of catholic schools and Butler already exists and is called the Big East. If UConn leaves the Big East they are basically back to where they were a handful of years ago when they didn't have UConn. Their TV partners may ask for some money back given their premier team left, but I don't think that opens the floodgates to them bringing in a bunch of other teams. Don't forget these schools are all greedy and for more than a decade now have been unwilling to share their wealth with anyone else. Not sure why UConn leaving changes that at all. It feels like this thread has been on repeat for like 10 years now...

Agree on 64, but if it has to expand I'd strongly favor a structure that provides advantages to those teams that do the best during the regular season. You have to figure out a way to keep the regular season somewhat meaningful. At 128, it's pretty much any team that can dribble and chew gum will get into the tourney. Seeding matters, but only so much. But at 96 you could have 32 teams with a first round bye and 64 teams that have to play the extra game. It would create a fair amount of drama for those teams in the 25-40 range to see who gets the bye and who doesn't. Anything that strengthens the value of the regular season is the way I'd push.

The NCAA tourney will never allow small conferences the ability to send both the regular season and conference tourney winners an auto-bid. It would basically double the number of auto-bids as the teams that win the regular season won't have any real incentive to win the conference tourney. In fact they'd likely prefer to lose so that their conference gets two bids and more revenue. Something similar seems to happen in the A-10 every year with at least one team guaranteed an at large but they rarely win the conference tourney.

I don't think so at all. Half of the current bids go to non-power conference teams because most are automatic bids. The real question is what percent of at large bids go to Power vs. non power teams and that'll be the percentage breakdown I'd expect on the next 8 teams expanded into the dance.

So basically there is free agency every year, revenue sharing and NIL Pay for Play, and it's nearly impossible to be ruled academically ineligible once you are initially cleared. And the SEC wants to expand the NCAA tournament so that the regular season becomes even less important. If it weren't for the Bills hopefully having a resurgent season my interest would be at an all-time low.

Let’s say I was rich and told SLU I wanted to donate $100k to the athletic department. I could have a conversation with Chris May or Matt Hayden and ask them how much they want me to contribute to SLU directly and how much they’d like me to donate to the NIL. if SLU knew that the NIL was short money they could tell me to donate it all to NIL. If the NIL was healthy and they needed money for the tennis team, they say give it to the school. I’m certain this is already happening to some extent.

Money is fungible. Whether Centene gives money directly to the SLU Athletic Department or gives it to an NIL is kind of a moot point. If SLU had more than enough coming into the Athletic Department, they could easily tell a few key boosters to cut their contributions to SLU and increase their contributions to NIL. There are some tax games to be played, but as long as they can find some donors willing to do the NIL route it should be fine. The big question, which many have already touched on, is whether this new requirement of having a large NIL base is going to come from additional donations to SLU/NIL or whether the net funds will be the same and cuts will have to be made in facilities and other sports because the Athletic Department now has a shortage. I suspect the net amount be contributed is somewhat higher, but cuts are coming.

I think cgelmacher's point is that at some point someone will sue and say they should be able to play college basketball as long as they want. If I or you can go to school as long as I want, why can't I also play basketball as long as I want? How dare the NCAA limit me to only 4 seasons. They can't limit me from transferring or getting paid or anything like that, so why are they limiting me from playing more than 4 years will be the argument. As to whether people would want to play basketball at the college level indefinitely, of course they would. It's a far more attractive option for a 25 year old to play college basketball in the U.S. than to go over to some Eastern European country and play for $50k. Take a few classes for free, call yourself a "student athlete" and you can make $300k playing in the U.S. College basketball would be full of 25-30 year olds if allowed.

Not every team is going to get a 25X increase. If you are a relative nobody team and all of a sudden become a top 25 team, you can expect a large increase. Same goes for individual players. A player may be getting $20k a year somewhere, have a breakout season and be offered $500k somewhere else the next season. Of course the opposite could be true...a player may have a 200k deal then play poorly or get hurt and next year he is told he'll only be getting 50k or that he should hit the portal. There is a downside for players that don't perform as free agency every year for every player doesn't work out so well if you don't perform up to your contract. The real question is how much will the entire pot of NIL funds grow each year. That's the true test of sustainability.

I feel like there is maybe a little creative over-emphasizing on the uncertainty he had regarding SLU at the beginning and the value that he got out of him and May talking every day for the next few weeks. It's a smart thing to do because it makes him look like there was a larger chance he was going back to ISU and it makes Chris May look good. It's a win/win for him to cast it this way and all coaches are good salesmen. I'm more inclined to believe that when Trilly and all the national media guys said it was close to a done deal shortly after they didn't make the dance, it was really done at that point.

Would he bring cousin Greg with him? That dude was quite tall.

I have no inside info, but I'd be surprised if he still comes. An NLI signed in the fall under a different coach means pretty much nothing in today's world of portals and changing NIL offers (using NLI and NIL in one sentence is dangerous).