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ND AD gives take on where he thinks College Sports is headed


slu72

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Notre Dame AD Reveals Major College Sports Prediction (msn.com)     

Interesting take on where collegiate athletics may be headed. If I read it right, he's saying SEC and Big10 schools, and I would assume the ACC and PAC 12 as well, will license their names to basically what becomes Minor League professional teams. He just mentions FSB, but would also assume he thinks hoops will follow suit. Sounds like the end of the Student Athlete era might be in the cards. Of course, it's all about the Benjamins, but this guy assumes since the SEC and B10 are garnering the biggest paydays they might go for it. After all, they wouldn't have to worry about the NCAA coming in with their penny ante investigations and possible suspensions, which never seem to impact the biggies anyways, see UNC and Kansas for examples. 

After giving it some thought, I think I'd like to see it happen this way. We don't have much of anything in common with these behemoths anyways. They typically dominate the HS recruiting scene and are doing the same with this crazy portal/NIL stuff as well. Also, in most cases, the HS all stars they get are more interested in pursuing their professional sports dreams than a degree. Such a set up would finally rip the cover off the hypocrisy of today's situation in college sports. 

Such a setup might also provide a more even playing field for the schools that decide not to compete at the professional level. Let them set up a new governing body to run championships and provide actual governance over it's member schools. I doubt this body could do away with the NIL, since that's now the law in most states, but it certainly should make the payments within reach for it's member schools. Of course, such a setup takes away the David v Goliath aspect of the NCAA, but when you look at the tourney realistically David's never gonna win the whole thing. Yeah, the occasional Loyola, Butler, or VCU makes it to the final weekend, but that's it. Why kid ourselves by thinking, make that dreaming, a mid could really pull off the ultimate miracle on hardwood.  I'd much rather watch a real collegiate championship tournament than one where we're schools like SLU are being matched against professionals. 

I think this guy's onto something, and it ain't all bad. In fact, it sounds pretty damn good. 

 

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This scenario would be bad for SLU and like programs in the long run.  No matter how much more honest or lure it may feel. While there is certainly a world of haves and have-nots in the current setup, programs like SLU still have the potential for the significant revenues that come with being part of the overall D1 landscape.

A world like he described, where programs like SLU are essentially in an FCS level situation would likely severely cut back the potential for TV revenue and March Madness participation. Without the NCAA making them do it, do you really think the big boys will even let the student-athlete programs take part?

If you can't raise the revenues to help fund your other sports, and gain national marketing exposure through TV and sports coverage.....(I'll say it) What's the point then?

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I respectfully disagree with, ARon. Most fans would know there is a dividing line between the big time pro college licensed teams and the real college student athlete teams. TV revenues are already impacted as the bigs get the big contracts, eg SEC, B10, and ACC and their own networks. But there would still be a market for the real college teams as streaming and networks need content. As for tourney money it would be there. Maybe not as big, but I think the nationwide interest would be enough to make it pay off nicely. 
Look, you make some good points, but it seems college sports are headed in this direction regardless. SLU is never gonna be able to match the large state schools donor base. Why kid ourselves. But we should be able to hold our own with like minded institutions. 

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Sorry ARon, what you say is essentially correct but it has one major flaw. Where is the money going to come from to pay for professional NILs? We had a poll in this board and the majority of voting members, including myself, are not about to contribute anything to NIL schemes. Unless SLU fans can find the money somewhere, we are out of the top level game. We might as well adjust and live with this reality. We are plainly not going to be the powerhouse a lot of people think and hope we are.

Slu72 I fully agree that SLU is never going to be able to match the large state schools donor base. There is no use in kidding ourselves.

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43 minutes ago, ARon said:

This scenario would be bad for SLU and like programs in the long run.  No matter how much more honest or lure it may feel. While there is certainly a world of haves and have-nots in the current setup, programs like SLU still have the potential for the significant revenues that come with being part of the overall D1 landscape.

A world like he described, where programs like SLU are essentially in an FCS level situation would likely severely cut back the potential for TV revenue and March Madness participation. Without the NCAA making them do it, do you really think the big boys will even let the student-athlete programs take part?

If you can't raise the revenues to help fund your other sports, and gain national marketing exposure through TV and sports coverage.....(I'll say it) What's the point then?

Maybe. Maybe not. Could work out great for SLU. The argument has always been that fans will not follow sports into a for-profit, pseudo minor league arena. In that scenario, the disaffected fan has to have somewhere to go. We will see. Can fans ignore reality and pretend players are actually students in their free-time, and do they care?

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I agree with Slu72 and Old Guy.  As many different streaming services and cable networks as there are, there is still a market for the mid-majors to get contracts with companies who want original programming to sell advertising with for the foreseeable future. Will it be as much as now? Maybe, maybe it will be less, but it will be something. Maybe the A-10 and other mid-majors will have to get creative and hustle more, but that seems the way things are going, and the only thing to do is adjust to reality.

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24 minutes ago, Old guy said:

Sorry ARon, what you say is essentially correct but it has one major flaw. Where is the money going to come from to pay for professional NILs? We had a poll in this board and the majority of voting members, including myself, are not about to contribute anything to NIL schemes. Unless SLU fans can find the money somewhere, we are out of the top level game. We might as well adjust and live with this reality. We are plainly not going to be the powerhouse a lot of people think and hope we are.

Slu72 I fully agree that SLU is never going to be able to match the large state schools donor base. There is no use in kidding ourselves.

I was one that said I would pay because I consider it part of my entertainment budget. I know others may not feel the same but both opinions are valid.

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Ultimately I think the average fan wants to see the best players. Yes there will always be a core group who want the purity of watching student-athletes. But the majority of the fans, the eyeballs, and the $$ will follow the best players whether they are student-athletes, paid state-owned minor league (which less face it, is what we are taking about with the big boys), G-League, or any forthcoming other XFL-for-basketball leagues.

 I'm not offering up an opinion of what SLU can or should do under such a scenario. Just saying that in a world where the major conferences are gone, and potentially March Madness has been NIT'd by whatever they create to replace it, the distinction between what's left and D2 is pretty meager.

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Once they start paying players large sums of NIL $’s thru bidding wars for the top 100 or so HS/AAU stars they run the risk of alienating their fan base.  They may in fact have to go to a salary system. Ticket prices go up, fans get upset that 18 year olds are making big bucks, and suddenly fans develop the apathy that exists in pro sports these days. There may indeed be a market to watch the have nots playing simply for school pride. 

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5 hours ago, ARon said:

Ultimately I think the average fan wants to see the best players. Yes there will always be a core group who want the purity of watching student-athletes. But the majority of the fans, the eyeballs, and the $$ will follow the best players whether they are student-athletes, paid state-owned minor league (which less face it, is what we are taking about with the big boys), G-League, or any forthcoming other XFL-for-basketball leagues.

 I'm not offering up an opinion of what SLU can or should do under such a scenario. Just saying that in a world where the major conferences are gone, and potentially March Madness has been NIT'd by whatever they create to replace it, the distinction between what's left and D2 is pretty meager.

Respectfully what I think you are missing is the amount fans for the remaining schools fan base is greater than the total fan base of the schools that will be a pro minor league for the NBA.

I figure 300 schools will remain in Division 1 basketball and 50 will be in the pro minor league.

How popular is minor league games compared to college games?

There will be competition between the minor league and division 1 basketball so the minor league will never have as many people watching as what the current division 1 already has.

As it all unfolds it will be interesting to watch what happens.

I will be at Chaifetz enjoying real college basketball student athletes that stay 4 years and get their degrees.

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8 hours ago, slu72 said:

Notre Dame AD Reveals Major College Sports Prediction (msn.com)     

Interesting take on where collegiate athletics may be headed. If I read it right, he's saying SEC and Big10 schools, and I would assume the ACC and PAC 12 as well, will license their names to basically what becomes Minor League professional teams. He just mentions FSB, but would also assume he thinks hoops will follow suit. Sounds like the end of the Student Athlete era might be in the cards. Of course, it's all about the Benjamins, but this guy assumes since the SEC and B10 are garnering the biggest paydays they might go for it. After all, they wouldn't have to worry about the NCAA coming in with their penny ante investigations and possible suspensions, which never seem to impact the biggies anyways, see UNC and Kansas for examples. 

After giving it some thought, I think I'd like to see it happen this way. We don't have much of anything in common with these behemoths anyways. They typically dominate the HS recruiting scene and are doing the same with this crazy portal/NIL stuff as well. Also, in most cases, the HS all stars they get are more interested in pursuing their professional sports dreams than a degree. Such a set up would finally rip the cover off the hypocrisy of today's situation in college sports. 

Such a setup might also provide a more even playing field for the schools that decide not to compete at the professional level. Let them set up a new governing body to run championships and provide actual governance over it's member schools. I doubt this body could do away with the NIL, since that's now the law in most states, but it certainly should make the payments within reach for it's member schools. Of course, such a setup takes away the David v Goliath aspect of the NCAA, but when you look at the tourney realistically David's never gonna win the whole thing. Yeah, the occasional Loyola, Butler, or VCU makes it to the final weekend, but that's it. Why kid ourselves by thinking, make that dreaming, a mid could really pull off the ultimate miracle on hardwood.  I'd much rather watch a real collegiate championship tournament than one where we're schools like SLU are being matched against professionals. 

I think this guy's onto something, and it ain't all bad. In fact, it sounds pretty damn good. 

 

Read shortly after Oklahoma AD was whining about NIL that OU football players will be receiving at least $50K starting this season. 

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One way to field a more competitive product in an environment where to top 50 have formed their own super league and SLU is left behind with the 300 other Division 1 schools is to get better players from a source that is currently being ignored. The pool of high school players who want to get paid playing basketball far exceeds the actual number of players who actually get paid, whether it’s in the NBA, G-league, or overseas. Every year players who aren’t good enough to make it there, but who’ve taken pro money, have no other choice but to get a job elsewhere. If there was a change to the rules to allow those players to still have college eligibility, a scholarship and a college degree might look a lot more attractive. And in the NIL world, where kids are paid tons of money, who really cares if they got paid for playing. This might be a way to allow the schools who aren’t in the top 50 to field better quality teams, hopefully increasing the revenue to them.

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9 minutes ago, Schasz said:

Read shortly after Oklahoma AD was whining about NIL that OU football players will be receiving at least $50K starting this season. 

Are u saying that if SLU found enough NiL contributors we’d have to come up with $650k a year to fund a hoops team?  That’s $50k x 13 players. Granted the distribution wouldn’t be equal across the board. 

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That’s football. A school like OU probably had 80 players on the team minimum, so that’s 4 mil a year on NIL for those players. Then you add on basketball. It’s hard to think that all that money going for NIL won’t have a negative impact on money available for other athletic fundraising.

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My apologies, I just went to the OU athletics website, and I counted 100 players on their roster for football. If their coach is saying the average per player is 50k a year in NIL deals, then that’s 5 million per year for the players, and this is just getting started. It has to level off at some point.

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You may not understand this, this but when everyone is being payed $50,000/year, which is a nice amount of money for most people, that amount becomes next to nothing since everyone is getting that amount, and a few get more. If you (plural) want an inflationary spiral in this new NIL business all you have to do is to pay every new player a fixed amount. I thnik we may be much better off with players that desire a degree and want to come to SLU for whatever reason they may have other than money.

We should know already that Yuri will probably go out looking for money again at the end of the coming season, and the same drama will repeat itself with or without a happy ending.

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2 hours ago, slu72 said:

Are u saying that if SLU found enough NiL contributors we’d have to come up with $650k a year to fund a hoops team?  That’s $50k x 13 players. Granted the distribution wouldn’t be equal across the board. 

No, I was mentioning something I saw about Oklahoma's football team. For the P-5 conferences football pretty much runs their athletic department. Those schools will spend crazy money to compete with NIL instead of trying to get away with cheating as it used to be.

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14 minutes ago, Old guy said:

You may not understand this, this but when everyone is being payed $50,000/year, which is a nice amount of money for most people, that amount becomes nest to nothing since everyone is getting that amount, and a few get more. If you (plural) want an inflationary spiral in this new NIL business all you have to do is to pay every new player a fixed amount. I thnik we may be much better off with players that desire a degree and want to come to SLU for whatever reason they may have other than money.

We should know already that Yuri will probably go out looking for money again at the end of the coming season, and the same drama will repeat itself with or without a happy ending.

That would be end of 4 years if things were normal. He's paid in full come April in my book. If we get another year icing on the cake

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Colleges, even the big ones, aren't going to want to start directly paying athletes.  That opens them up to all kinds of employment law issues and Title IX issues.  Like how do you limit years of eligibility if it becomes employment, do you have to spend the same amount on players for women's sports because of Title IX and how can a player under contract to a college join the NFL/NBA if that players contract with the college has not expired.   That is a can of worms they don't want to open. 

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1 minute ago, brianstl said:

Colleges, even the big ones, aren't going to want to start directly paying athletes.  That opens them up to all kinds of employment law issues and Title IX issues.  Like how do you limit years of eligibility if it becomes employment, do you have to spend the same amount on players for women's sports because of Title IX and how can a player under contract to a college join the NFL/NBA if that players contract with the college has not expired.   That is a can of worms they don't want to open. 

I would also add that the schools would fight over a union being formed, as employees can form unions.  Schools hate when grad students do it; they'll especially hate it if a player strike is a possibility.  A school's union contract with basketball players could have appeal to a player deciding where to go.  

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13 minutes ago, someoneelse said:

I would also add that the schools would fight over a union being formed, as employees can form unions.  Schools hate when grad students do it; they'll especially hate it if a player strike is a possibility.  A school's union contract with basketball players could have appeal to a player deciding where to go.  

Plus, it would provide a possible opening for people to challenge the non-profit status of any school that would decide to go that route.

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