OT: These NIL deals in college are getting wild and creating chaos.

[UGAPatsfan]

QB recruit Rashada asks UF for release amid NIL dispute

Rashada is the No. 56 prospect in the 2023 recruiting class and the No. 7 quarterback, per the 247Sports Composite.

theathletic.com

So apparently this kid initially committed to Miami for $$NINE MILLION dollars, then bounced to Florida who’s “NIL collective” offered $13 Million.

Now, he no-showed and asked to be released from scholarship because the $13M promised never actually materialized.

1. I had NO CLUE four stars were getting this kind of $$ thrown at them…that’s wild.

2. What a disaster this system is where the school can’t actually have anything to do with these offers or their legitimacy.

3. Imagine you are a college QB coach making $400K trying to hold an 18YO kid accountable who already has made more as a freshman than you likely will in your career.

This is nuts.

 

[VectorPrime]

Not my problem get that money.

 

[XLIX]

Proving that even a blind squirrel finds the occasional nut.... I totally saw this coming.

The issue is that NIL deals are coming from 3rd parties. You essentially have (1) the athlete, (2) the school and (3) the sponsor. It doesn't take much of an imagination to see that this is going to create a lot of friction between (1) and (2) when (1) and (3) get into some sort of legal argument.

Can a sponsor sign a player to a multi-year deal? What happens to that deal if the school doesn't play (or cuts) the player? What happens to a player's commitment if a sponsor backs out (which seems to be what is going on here)? What happens to an NIL payment if the player transfers?

As a fan, none of this really impacts me. The product on the field is unchanged. But I have a feeling we are going to see a lot of these types of problems going forward.

 

[FreeTedWilliams]

College Football is a multi billon dollar business and up until now, the colleges (and coaches) were the only ones getting any of this money. Hey if you want to pay Jimmy Highschool QB, a coupe of million so he will play for your favorite team, while cutting commercials for your used car lot. None of that will bother me.

You know what does bother me? Colleges not paying taxes! The first thing I would do is get rid of the education and religion exemptions written into the tax code!

 

[Vindicate]

College Football is a multi billon dollar business and up until now, the colleges (and coaches) were the only ones getting any of this money. Hey if you want to pay Jimmy Highschool QB, a coupe of million so he will play for your favorite team, while cutting commercials for your used car lot. None of that will bother me.

You know what does bother me? Colleges not paying taxes! The first thing I would do is get rid of the education and religion exemptions written into the tax code!

Colleges could prolly barely afford to pay taxes at this point given the trend of taking on capital debt from creditors for capital improvement projects. This is why they can barely ever put professors on tenure tracks, rely on student teaching, and have swelled in student body size - most of these loans are contingent on "student income", among many other predatory metrics that ultimately ruin student experience and demolish the prospect of earning a livable wage for most college educators.

 

[203Pat]

Good. I hope NIL money swings the power balance in college football.

 

[NormZauchin]

Colleges could prolly barely afford to pay taxes at this point given the trend of taking on capital debt from creditors for capital improvement projects. This is why they can barely ever put professors on tenure tracks, rely on student teaching, and have swelled in student body size - most of these loans are contingent on "student income", among many other predatory metrics that ultimately ruin student experience and demolish the prospect of earning a livable wage for most college educators.

Colleges also have very bloated administrative staffs who don't teach.

 

[MrBigglesWorth]

Colleges could prolly barely afford to pay taxes at this point given the trend of taking on capital debt from creditors for capital improvement projects. This is why they can barely ever put professors on tenure tracks, rely on student teaching, and have swelled in student body size - most of these loans are contingent on "student income", among many other predatory metrics that ultimately ruin student experience and demolish the prospect of earning a livable wage for most college educators.

Has nothing to do with the top people namely presidents raking in huge salaries. Also make college about education and not country clubs

 

[RIpats88]

Wonder how this will affect the NFL as kids may get paid more to be in college.

 

[1960Pats]

QB recruit Rashada asks UF for release amid NIL dispute

Rashada is the No. 56 prospect in the 2023 recruiting class and the No. 7 quarterback, per the 247Sports Composite.

theathletic.com

So apparently this kid initially committed to Miami for $$NINE MILLION dollars, then bounced to Florida who’s “NIL collective” offered $13 Million.

Now, he no-showed and asked to be released from scholarship because the $13M promised never actually materialized.

1. I had NO CLUE four stars were getting this kind of $$ thrown at them…that’s wild.

2. What a disaster this system is where the school can’t actually have anything to do with these offers or their legitimacy.

3. Imagine you are a college QB coach making $400K trying to hold an 18YO kid accountable who already has made more as a freshman than you likely will in your career.

This is nuts.

If schools are throwing around that kind of money for college prospects then it shows just how much money they're taking in. No wonder it cost me a quarter of a mil or more to send my kids to school. I had to support those school's football teams.

 

[BTTA]

Colleges also have very bloated administrative staffs who don't teach.

Has nothing to do with the top people namely presidents raking in huge salaries. Also make college about education and not country clubs

You guys are declaring truth about all of higher ed based on observations of a very small percentage of colleges. Most don't have any of what you are talking about, the people who work there make small salaries, and they struggle year to year to break even. What happens with the few dozen big schools with big sports programs is inconsequential to the thousands that make up the middle of the bell curve.

And given the distribution of income in the US in the last two decades, most people are going to college with loans, which is threatening the entire business model of higher ed., because fewer and fewer degrees can justify the debt and lifelong financial setback.

 

[BTTA]

Proving that even a blind squirrel finds the occasional nut.... I totally saw this coming.

The issue is that NIL deals are coming from 3rd parties. You essentially have (1) the athlete, (2) the school and (3) the sponsor. It doesn't take much of an imagination to see that this is going to create a lot of friction between (1) and (2) when (1) and (3) get into some sort of legal argument.

Can a sponsor sign a player to a multi-year deal? What happens to that deal if the school doesn't play (or cuts) the player? What happens to a player's commitment if a sponsor backs out (which seems to be what is going on here)? What happens to an NIL payment if the player transfers?

As a fan, none of this really impacts me. The product on the field is unchanged. But I have a feeling we are going to see a lot of these types of problems going forward.

The gap between a handful of big football programs and everyone else is bigger and hardened. Just a decade ago, half of the programs in major conferences could have a legitimate fantasy about winning a football championship. Now, the playoff teams will come from the same 6-8 programs every year, in concentrated geographies, and when someone else makes it (like TCU), it'll be the oddity. That's a very different product than what was on the field just a few years ago.

 

[XLIX]

The gap between a handful of big football programs and everyone else is bigger and hardened. Just a decade ago, half of the programs in major conferences could have a legitimate fantasy about winning a football championship.

You’re joking, right? You cannot possibly be serious. The expanded playoffs gives hopes to far more teams than the old BCS system.

10 years ago, Alabama had just won their second consecutive championship. It was the same number of teams dominating then as are dominating now.

 

[XLIX]

Wonder how this will affect the NFL as kids may get paid more to be in college.

There will probably be a small subset of players doing better in college than they would do in the NFL who will probably stay in college longer. But it is really only a year when it comes to football players.

 

[Vindicate]

Has nothing to do with the top people namely presidents raking in huge salaries. Also make college about education and not country clubs

It actually kinda does - colleges want to pay the folks in the position to market their college to rake in more loans after the state abandoned being the majority funder for education. Presidents rake in the connections and therefore dollars. I went to the University of Cincinnati and we had a president who built his own brand, raised student body size by what felt like 10,000 students per year, increased the university police department's size and authority - to attract developers to make student housing - and more. This is also why colleges put so much money into athletics. It's a huge marketing win.

To your point - make it about education, not a country club. Most boards of advisors/trustees started to become financiers and not educators, leading to decisions to favor what makes money and not in the interest of the student's experience.

I'll stop; don't want to get too off the rails. But this is a topic in particular that drives me nuts.

 

[BTTA]

You’re joking, right? You cannot possibly be serious. The expanded playoffs gives hopes to far more teams than the old BCS system.

10 years ago, Alabama had just won their second consecutive championship. It was the same number of teams dominating then as are dominating now.

It doesn't matter how many teams are in the playoffs if only a handful of them have the $100'sM in local NIL output to create the recruiting stream necessary. Everyone in the SEC not named Alabama, Texas (soon), or Georgia, everyone in the ACC not named Clemson, everyone in all of the Big conferences not named Ohio State or Michigan, and everyone in every other conference is either already sidelined or will be soon. It is the same as big tech stocks: Amazon, Google, Microsoft, or go home.

 

[XLIX]

It doesn't matter how many teams are in the playoffs if only a handful of them have the $100'sM in local NIL output to create the recruiting stream necessary. Everyone in the SEC not named Alabama, Texas (soon), or Georgia, everyone in the ACC not named Clemson, everyone in all of the Big conferences not named Ohio State or Michigan, and everyone in every other conference is either already sidelined or will be soon. It is the same as big tech stocks: Amazon, Google, Microsoft, or go home.

You listed 6 schools who happen to be the top schools right now. It is ridiculous to suggest that only those 6 schools will be competing for national championships in the coming years.

Furthermore, the above picture you paint is no different from the way things were 10 years ago. The notion that 10 years ago "half of the programs in major conferences could have a legitimate fantasy about winning a football championship" is foolhardy. But by all means... name 7 ACC teams who, 10 years ago, could legitimately think about competing for a national championship.

 

[ahmed]

Good for them making money. For years college football was a multi billion dollar business where everyone made money except the athletes responsible for said business (mostly) who had to be "greatful" for the scholarship

 

[VectorPrime]

High end college football, meaning the top 15-25 programs in the FBS, has just about finalized its transition into a completely nationalized (meaning no longer regionalized as it was for basically 60 years) semi-pro league. I know most people don't like that. And it's not all romantized though a lot of it is. It is genuinley no longer about colleges largely representing recruits from their region, playing other schools in that region, and then playing a Big Bowl game against some other national team to cap off the year. The conferences no longer matter, it's a joke. So I understand why people miss that. But it's not just because of how the money has exploded though that's certainly the motivation. Today's media environment, regular media and social media where every high school game can be watched by anyone across the country, every Junior in high school has youtube highlight videos, and all schools everywhere are recruiting NATIONwide for every recruit has changed the entire way college football works. And then money follows. And you can't undo that.

So really the end game is some top tier league split into idk two larger conferences of 30 total teams and thats elite high end college football. And the money explodes as its now a supercharged minor league for the NFL. Maybe they can add some relegation into it to make it interesting so other programs can hope to move up who knows. And really, this is just removing the dumb illusion of "student-athletes" that the NCAA has used for decades to pretend its not a Big Business. Which is probably for the best because in any other context these players are EMPLOYEES and should be paid.

 

[BTTA]

You listed 6 schools who happen to be the top schools right now. It is ridiculous to suggest that only those 6 schools will be competing for national championships in the coming years.

Furthermore, the above picture you paint is no different from the way things were 10 years ago. The notion that 10 years ago "half of the programs in major conferences could have a legitimate fantasy about winning a football championship" is foolhardy. But by all means... name 7 ACC teams who, 10 years ago, could legitimately think about competing for a national championship.

Last post on this.

Yes, NIL has cemented the top schools as the top schools. The turnover we are used to in college football, where different schools comprise top 5 programs and then recede, won't happen anymore if NIL continues as structured and continues to escalate. There's no reason that it should. Recruiting used to have ebbs and flows, but doesn't and won't. It's like the banking system now, but without the risk. Too big to fail.

There was a massive shift in funding in the past three decades that essentially sidelined many schools from every being able to recruit to national contender level: West Virginia, BYU, Virginia Tech, many Big 10, Big 12, and PAC 10 schools that were potential top 5 teams just can't ever get there again, or if they do, it is a massive outlier.

Then NIL created another level and essentially sidelined a bunch of others: Penn State, FSU, Miami, Notre Dame, BYU, the rest of the Pac 10, and everyone in the ACC not named Clemson that the first shift didn't eliminate.

Regarding the ACC, five teams have been ranked in the top 4 or in a bowl game with national championship potential in the past 20 years. None of them is recruiting into the top 5 any more. Even Virginia was #1 for a week in the early 90's. If Clemson has a disaster of a year and loses the ACC championship, the ACC winner won't be in the final four.