Hey NCAA, ahhhhh seeee ya!

[Atlanta Duke]

This may sound crazy, but I think a new organization with new rules would actually be a good thing for compliance and perhaps academics. This new "Division 4" is going to be awash in cash from its new playoff structure and the fact that it won't have to share nearly as much money with the little sisters in old Division 1.

Plus, they would almost certainly start paying players ($5-$10k per year is tossed around a lot), which would make it harder and a lot more expensive for boosters and runners to get their claws into players. I am not saying it would not happen, but the guy threatening your eligibility by offering you a $500 handshake (or a ride in a rental car) is a lot less interesting if you are getting a paycheck from the school too.

-Jason "I can hope for something better... can't I?" Evans

This response might fit better in the paying players thread but it is pertinent to the big 5 conferences potentially bolting from the NCAA.

The elephant in the room regarding these discussions is the O'Bannon lawsuit. Plaintiffs, which now include current players, are seeking class action status for a share of not just video game revenue but TV revenue. The schools may not be awash in cash if plaintiffs prevail.

Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby, speaking in Dallas on Monday, denounced the NCAA process and talked openly about the big-time football schools breaking away in their own division, claiming “unanimity” among his BCS-conference peers. A breakaway has been much whispered and debated, but this was a rare moment where someone in a position to make it happen endorsed the idea.

It all goes back to O’Bannon. That’s the fulcrum. Everyone is watching and waiting, from the bowls to the TV networks to the schools themselves, the powerful and the powerless alike.

http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/07/...t-looming.html

If players prevail against the NCAA you can bet a similar lawsuit would be filed against the 5 mega-conferences if they picked up their footballs and left the NCAA (although the antitrust underpinnings for the O'Bannon litigation presumably could be impacted by the mega-conferences being only a subset of schools playing football)

Plaintiff's expert in the O'Bannon case is Roger Noll, professor emeritus of economics at Stanford. The O'Bannon lawsuit is not his first rodeo with regard to providing expert testimony in antitrust cases and sports licensing cases. In his declaration filed in support of plaintiffs' request for class certification, Noll proposes the players receive 50% of TV revenues received by each conference (that obviously is a bargaining chip, but as Noll states at pp. 101 - 104 of his linked declaration, that is in accordance with the players share of NFL TV rights)

http://i.cdn.turner.com/si/.element/.../130318.03.pdf

In his declaration Noll provided a hypothetical breakdown of how the players share of revenue would be allocated equally among members of the SEC and PAC-12football and men's basketball teams. Basketball players would receive higher payments than football players because of the lesser number of team members on the basketball teams among whom a share of broadcast revenues would be allocated.

Under Noll's methodology (which is discussed in greater detail in the article linked below)

• Per-athlete damages for an SEC football player on a 2009-10 roster vary from $46,627 to $66,610.

• Per-athlete damages for a Pac-10 football player on a 2009-10 roster vary from $26,253 to $44,497.

• Per-athlete damages for an SEC basketball player on a 2009-10 roster vary from $177,860 to $295,475.

• Per-athlete damages for a Pac-10 basketball player on a 2009-10 roster vary from $171,547 to $253,171....

Lots of issues spin off from this, including a potential way to address the Title IX issues of only paying revenue sports players - the payment would be tied to a share of the broadcast revenue generated through using the players' likenesses, which results in higher payments to football and men's basketball players than to the women's lacrosse team.

In addition, there is the issue of how the value of a scholarship would be factored in to the payments received for players attending more expensive private schools

In many instances, a BCS football player’s live broadcast damages would not even be equal to the value of his athletic scholarship. For example, the per-athlete number for Stanford’s 2009-10 football team is $36,463. The value of a full athletic scholarship at Stanford in 2009-10 was over $50,000.

http://businessofcollegesports.com/2...-obannon-case/

While schools in the big 5 conferences may talk about how to be magnanimous and provide some $$ to the players after they no longer need to share football revenues with the Northern Iowas of the world, it may not be their decision to make.

[TexHawk]

I suspect they are perfectly happy with the way college basketball is run and won't mess with that system.

Whoa... I have to strenuously disagree. The NCAA bankrolls a lot of what they do with the nearly $1 billion per year that CBS/Turner give them for the NCAA tournament. The conference heads are licking their chops to get at that.

On the down side, if this new "Power 5" cracks that egg, a lot of that billion dollars helps the NCAA run non-CBB/non-CFB sports. If they have to start sharing that, those sports could suffer. And what of Gonzaga, Butler, Philly hoops schools?

On the bright side, as fans of teams with less-than-powerhouse football teams, this new BIG WHATEVER will not go forward without hoops bluebloods like KU/Duke/Kentucky, because nobody sane would run their own spin-off NCAA tournament without those teams. This is why I have never been *scared* of realignment as a KU fan. The football dollars have to stop going up at some point, and the next logical place for more revenue is hoops. In that scenario, the KUs and Dukes of the world become a lot more valuable.

[SupaDave]

Whoa... I have to strenuously disagree. The NCAA bankrolls a lot of what they do with the nearly $1 billion per year that CBS/Turner give them for the NCAA tournament. The conference heads are licking their chops to get at that.

On the down side, if this new "Power 5" cracks that egg, a lot of that billion dollars helps the NCAA run non-CBB/non-CFB sports. If they have to start sharing that, those sports could suffer. And what of Gonzaga, Butler, Philly hoops schools?

On the bright side, as fans of teams with less-than-powerhouse football teams, this new BIG WHATEVER will not go forward without hoops bluebloods like KU/Duke/Kentucky, because nobody sane would run their own spin-off NCAA tournament without those teams. This is why I have never been *scared* of realignment as a KU fan. The football dollars have to stop going up at some point, and the next logical place for more revenue is hoops. In that scenario, the KUs and Dukes of the world become a lot more valuable.

Very good point. This is something I've wondered since the SEC and the Big 10 were (and still are) having stadium wars. Some may not recall but I remember there being much debate in the 90s about who had the "biggest" stadium (tee hee - that's rich). But anyway, what makes the football bubble go pop? 5 year olds are already playing at advanced levels now - so will it eventually be the players?

[Olympic Fan]

Let's be clear -- there are two proposals gaining momentum -- one is to let the five power conferences form their own division within the NCAA ... the other is for the five power conferences to break off and form a separate organization.

Of the two proposals, I much prefer the first option. I think the second option would be a disaster. I'll tell you why.

I am a basketball guy. I like and follow college football, but I live and die with college basketball. I glory in Duke's basketball history -- our four national -- read NCAA! -- championships. Our 15 Final Fours, the best NCAA Tournament winning percentage of any program.

You want to leave that behind and be part of the new College Football Association basketball tournament. So we'll have schools for the five power "football" conferences competing for one national championship. We'll have such traditional powers as St. John's, Villanova, Gonzaga, Cincinnati, Butler, Temple ... etc left to compete in the NCAA Tournament.

With two competing national tournaments, we'll never get a real champion. I'd be skeptical about how much money this would bring from the TV Networks -- CBS certainly wouldn't like losing all the power conference schools -- Duke, Kentucky, North Carolina, Michigan, UCLA, Louisville ... but the new CFA couldn't command top dollars without the drama of the Cinderellas-- the Butler's the VCU's, the Florida Gulf Coasts.

I'm sure that doesn't matter to the administrators. This -- like the ACC's 2004 expansion -- is all football driven. Basketball is an afterthought. But the sport will never be the same if this happens. Remember the AIAW that used to determine the women's national title. Our NCAA legacy would go the way of Old Dominion or Immaculata's AIAW legacies. This would be a basketball; reboot.

Oh, we'd still have our NCAA banners in the rafters, but imagine the future when schools start mix and matching their nation titles -- let's see, we have one Helms title, five NCAA titles, two CFA's titles ...

I also think that if the power football conferences break away, you're going to see a lowering -- a drastic lowering -- of academic standards. It's going to be the lowest common denominator.

Any body who thinks playing players will prevent corruption is living in a fool's world. In the first place, payments are going to limited somewhat for Title IX requirements (for even dollar you give a male athlete, you have to give a dollar to a female athlete -- that's not an NCAA rule, that's federal law). In the second place, even if kids are paid $10,000, many will have their hands out to boosters for another $10,000 or free rental cars or bling. If it's $20K or $50K, it's the same ... greed never sleeps.

I'm glad I'm an old guy. I'd hate to see this landscape change in my lifetime.

[Duvall]

Whoa... I have to strenuously disagree. The NCAA bankrolls a lot of what they do with the nearly $1 billion per year that CBS/Turner give them for the NCAA tournament. The conference heads are licking their chops to get at that.

Are they? To my knowledge no one has proposed that, or suggested that it would be a good idea. Certainly the conference commissioners have yet to suggest that taking all of their sports out of the NCAA would be a good idea. I think it's much more likely that the power conferences will want to eat their cake and have it by ensuring that the new rules and administrative structure apply only to football.

On the bright side, as fans of teams with less-than-powerhouse football teams, this new BIG WHATEVER will not go forward without hoops bluebloods like KU/Duke/Kentucky, because nobody sane would run their own spin-off NCAA tournament without those teams. This is why I have never been *scared* of realignment as a KU fan. The football dollars have to stop going up at some point, and the next logical place for more revenue is hoops. In that scenario, the KUs and Dukes of the world become a lot more valuable.

But if there's no spin-off tournament, that doesn't help.

[TexHawk]

Are they? To my knowledge no one has proposed that, or suggested that it would be a good idea. Certainly the conference commissioners have yet to suggest that taking all of their sports out of the NCAA would be a good idea. I think it's much more likely that the power conferences will want to eat their cake and have it by ensuring that the new rules and administrative structure apply only to football.

There are whispers that a "Power 5 only" hoops tournament is the inevitable/logical next step after football breaks away. As far as I know, publicly, no conference commissioners have proposed it. It makes sense from their point-of-view, those guys could not care less about Butler, they care about more money. In fact, CBS/Turner is in the same boat, as a Sweet 16 with Kentucky has much higher ratings than one with Florida Gulf Coast. Why divide ~$1 billion if you don't have to?

[wilko]

And this will be my exit stop if not handled properly..
If it becomes like NASCAR where only the wealthy teams will compete at the top and players advertise on their unis - Im done.
They will have rendered me indifferent.

[lotusland]

This all seems silly to me. I think they are killing the golden goose or pooping in the ice cream - pick your metaphor. There is a reason minor league athletics don't make as much money or garner the same attention as amateur college athletics. Why do you want to make college like minor league pro ball? It will just kill it.

Besides that football already reached it's zenith and is on the way down. How much longer can institutions of higher learning afford to sponsor a sport that causes permanent brain damage at an alarming rate? The NFL lawsuit, when settled, will determine a lot but it is well known now that multiple concussions are very dangerous. So when Junior High, HS and College players accumulate a couple of concussions now either their career is over or someone is taking a huge liability by continuing to play them. How many kids make it to the pros without ever getting a concussion? The money is little to no factor in the Junior High Schools so it will start there with schools cutting football. Kids make their choices about what sport specialize in well before then. HS football will suffer then college and on up the chain. Meanwhile there will continue to be rule changes to protect players that essentially ruin the game.

It feels like I'm watching the major conferences sink a bunch of money into 1990 .com companies just before the bubble popped or lining up to flip houses in 2008. This is going to end badly and smart people are going to wonder how they sucked into this crapper.

[Jim3k]

Let's step back for a second and ask the bigger question.

What earthly sense does it make for universities to be paying a multi-hundred-million-dollar subsidy to the NFL, by providing it with a youth development scheme for no financial consideration whatsoever?

Let the NFL build, run, and pay for its own academy system. Let's have actual students, not mercenaries, play college sports.

Luddite!!!

[matt1]

There are whispers that a "Power 5 only" hoops tournament is the inevitable/logical next step after football breaks away. As far as I know, publicly, no conference commissioners have proposed it. It makes sense from their point-of-view, those guys could not care less about Butler, they care about more money. In fact, CBS/Turner is in the same boat, as a Sweet 16 with Kentucky has much higher ratings than one with Florida Gulf Coast. Why divide ~$1 billion if you don't have to?

I would imagine that the new Big East would also be included for basketball. Also, all of this is a major sign of disrespect to the Mountain West, which is on par with the other conferences.

[Bluedog]

I would imagine that the new Big East would also be included for basketball. Also, all of this is a major sign of disrespect to the Mountain West, which is on par with the other conferences.

It may be on par from an on-the-field competitive standpoint, but is not on par when it comes its current TV deals and how much revenue they generate. And money is driving it.

[Capn Poptart]

What would this mean for rules and academic enforcement? Will there be such a thing as cheating? Academic requirements? If so, who will enforce them? Do we really expect that the big football factories will want to create rules that will impede their desire for a college NFL?

What I am concerned about is that the football-firsters will create an academics-free zone. Schools like Duke, Vandy, NU, Stanford etc. would probably choose to maintain their standards, but schools where that is not an institutional priority (read: most of them) would be bringing guns to our knife fight.

I am in the minority, I'd say, but I'm against stipends for players. I think I need to pick a D-3 league to follow.

[Bluedog]

It's also worth noting that if something like Noll's proposal of "per athlete damages" were to be put into practice, costly schools like Duke would be at a disadvantage because the scholarship amount would be deducted from the total. That is, if somebody's compensation is calculated as $60,000 and the Duke full ride is worth $54,000, the football player "only" gets paid $6,000/yr whereas if they went to a state school, they'd get paid significantly more, perhaps as much as $50,000 conceivably. That's major incentive not to go to Duke. On top of that, Noll has differing amounts per conference, meaning athletes would again be more likely to choose the high paying conferences like the SEC. It gets overly complicated in a hurry. Although I find it very hard to believe that the "pay the players" methodology would ever go as far as Noll suggests. I sure hope not.

[Atlanta Duke]

Although I find it very hard to believe that the "pay the players" methodology would ever go as far as Noll suggests. I sure hope not.

Agreed there are a lot of issues to work through. Since all Duke (and Stanford, Vandy, and Northwestern) athletes have higher per player scholarship costs than the state schools, I suppose a settlement could pay equal amounts of damages to players having different scholarship costs since the "use of likenesses" damages would be the same for all players regardless of the cost of a scholarship. I bet Duke and the other high cost schools would insist on that to avoid being placed at a further competitive disadvantage.

But if payments to players in the revenue sports are regarded as inevitable, the question is how to structure the payments. As I posted earlier, the potential benefit of paying the players in only revenue sports anything above the value of their scholarships, as a fee for licensing their images for use in the TV contracts, is it arguably provides a way to avoid violating the Title IX requirement that universities provide equal amounts of financial assistance to male and female athletes. One commentator contends:

On the NCAA level, the Supreme Court, in NCAA v. Smith, held that Title IX does not apply to the NCAA despite the fact that the NCAA receives dues from federally funded intercollegiate athletic programs that fall under the scope of Title IX. As a result, if the NCAA established a trust fund, or other such licensing program, to disperse compensation to former college athletes, it probably would not violate Title IX because the NCAA would be the entity distributing the funds, not the member institutions.

http://winthropintelligence.com/2012...-the-elements/

Given the potential impact of licensing fee payments, this article from last December raised the question that may be answered by the current drift of the big time sports schools into their own affiliation separate from the NCAA

And if recruiting is driven by trust payouts to student-athletes, will schools realign around the group which can yield the highest rights fees possible? Will this group become its own division, separate from the vast majority of other schools?

http://winthropintelligence.com/2012...te-trust-fund/

Interesting days for big time college sports

[DukeHLM'13]

Are college sports really so messed up that everything needs to be completely reworked. I agree that there are problems with the the NCAA that need to be addressed, but I just don't see this working. I'm far from a legal expert, but I don't see how with Title IX it would be possible to pay players in profitable sports (men's football and basketball) and no one else, and I don't think that paying them in right anyways. And besides, are they not being compensated by receiving scholarships to play sports at their schools? I don't see how this continues to be overlooked?

I think that some sort of stipend, i.e. ROTC, which has been mentioned before on here, could be a good idea. But outright paying the players will only ensure that the good get better and the others have no chance. If this new system were to come in to place a story the emergence of Boise State from would never happen again.

There are problems that need to be fixed, but paying players is not going to fix them, and there'd a distinct possibility that it could make the problems that already exist even worse.

[snowdenscold]

This all seems silly to me. I think they are killing the golden goose or pooping in the ice cream - pick your metaphor. There is a reason minor league athletics don't make as much money or garner the same attention as amateur college athletics. Why do you want to make college like minor league pro ball? It will just kill it.

Besides that football already reached it's zenith and is on the way down. How much longer can institutions of higher learning afford to sponsor a sport that causes permanent brain damage at an alarming rate? The NFL lawsuit, when settled, will determine a lot but it is well known now that multiple concussions are very dangerous. So when Junior High, HS and College players accumulate a couple of concussions now either their career is over or someone is taking a huge liability by continuing to play them. How many kids make it to the pros without ever getting a concussion? The money is little to no factor in the Junior High Schools so it will start there with schools cutting football. Kids make their choices about what sport specialize in well before then. HS football will suffer then college and on up the chain. Meanwhile there will continue to be rule changes to protect players that essentially ruin the game.

It feels like I'm watching the major conferences sink a bunch of money into 1990 .com companies just before the bubble popped or lining up to flip houses in 2008. This is going to end badly and smart people are going to wonder how they sucked into this crapper.

I found your post here particularly interesting because it hits a lot of issues I've been musing over for awhile now. We like college athletics vis-a-vis minor league sports for a combination of reasons - alumni/heritage, big game days at schools with built-in fan bases, and the attempt to cling to some notion of amateurism of a bygone era (no matter the cognitive dissonance that occurs as a result of the latter). Will the diminishing (or complete removal) of amateurism produce a negative effect on the excitement that college sports bring?* You can argue this has already been happening for many decades now, but such a sudden change could produce an unintended backfire. Or perhaps not. Hard to say at this point, but it remains a possibility.

* Unlike the situation with the Olympics, where we are now watching the best athletes, there remains another tier of skill at the NFL level

And in regards to the injuries and talent pipline issue - it's been brought up on other threads before, but never seems to gain that much traction. Are we really at the zenith, or is this just another hype that will end up having negligible effect in the long-term? I find it hard to believe there won't be some sort of tangible repercussions of the whole injury/concussion concern as more studies are done. One comparison that comes to mind is smoking - a steady stream of evidence has emerged over the past 50+ years, yet it's taken quite a long time for the public to change (recognizing the addictive nature of nicotine makes a true analogy difficult). In fact, there's still a shockingly large percentage of the US population who smokes - many of them starting after the research was overwhelming! Perhaps in the same vein there will always continue to be a large enough segment of the population interested in seeing boys play football that the pipeline won't be significantly affected? Again, hard to say, and that's before addressing the issues of "game-ruining" rules changes which you note.

But if you're correct, I will definitely join you in being completely frustrated at the destruction we've wrought upon the college athletics landscape for something that only ever had a shelf life of a couple more decades.

[burnspbesq]

Luddite!!!

And proud of it!

If college football were to disappear tomorrow, Duke would unquestionably be one of the two or three biggest winners when the dust settled. It's a marquee program, in the marquee conference, in every other college sport that gets any meaningful amount of fan and media attention.

[burnspbesq]

What would this mean for rules and academic enforcement? Will there be such a thing as cheating? Academic requirements? If so, who will enforce them? Do we really expect that the big football factories will want to create rules that will impede their desire for a college NFL?

What I am concerned about is that the football-firsters will create an academics-free zone. Schools like Duke, Vandy, NU, Stanford etc. would probably choose to maintain their standards, but schools where that is not an institutional priority (read: most of them) would be bringing guns to our knife fight.

I am in the minority, I'd say, but I'm against stipends for players. I think I need to pick a D-3 league to follow.

Try the Liberty League. Union and RPI are even closer geographically than Duke and Carolina, and the rivalry has been nasty since the 1890s.

If you want to know what big-time college football would look like, post-apocalypse, in terms of its relationship to the sponsoring universities, look to Mexico City and Guadalajara. The model is UNAM Pumas and Tecos UAG. Fully professional teams affiliated with universities, but it's been years (if not decades) since an actual student suited up for either club.

[dukeofcalabash]

Blah, blah, blah, money, money, money. So boring. Let those who want to get paid go pro immediately, do not pass Go, do not pass College, do not even look for an education. Leave college for college kids and let the teams become what they may. Much as I love sports, I hate to see academics taking hits to allow athletes to take easy courses, earn (or not) worthless degrees they will never earn. Separate the jock from the nerd and let 'em play in different arenas. Do not continue down the road to ruin for college sports and academics in order to make the fans happy.

[lotusland]

I found your post here particularly interesting because it hits a lot of issues I've been musing over for awhile now. We like college athletics vis-a-vis minor league sports for a combination of reasons - alumni/heritage, big game days at schools with built-in fan bases, and the attempt to cling to some notion of amateurism of a bygone era (no matter the cognitive dissonance that occurs as a result of the latter). Will the diminishing (or complete removal) of amateurism produce a negative effect on the excitement that college sports bring?* You can argue this has already been happening for many decades now, but such a sudden change could produce an unintended backfire. Or perhaps not. Hard to say at this point, but it remains a possibility.

* Unlike the situation with the Olympics, where we are now watching the best athletes, there remains another tier of skill at the NFL level

And in regards to the injuries and talent pipline issue - it's been brought up on other threads before, but never seems to gain that much traction. Are we really at the zenith, or is this just another hype that will end up having negligible effect in the long-term? I find it hard to believe there won't be some sort of tangible repercussions of the whole injury/concussion concern as more studies are done. One comparison that comes to mind is smoking - a steady stream of evidence has emerged over the past 50+ years, yet it's taken quite a long time for the public to change (recognizing the addictive nature of nicotine makes a true analogy difficult). In fact, there's still a shockingly large percentage of the US population who smokes - many of them starting after the research was overwhelming! Perhaps in the same vein there will always continue to be a large enough segment of the population interested in seeing boys play football that the pipeline won't be significantly affected? Again, hard to say, and that's before addressing the issues of "game-ruining" rules changes which you note.

But if you're correct, I will definitely join you in being completely frustrated at the destruction we've wrought upon the college athletics landscape for something that only ever had a shelf life of a couple more decades.

Well it seems you never recognize the summit until you are half way down the other side. When I was in HS there was a "smoking area" where students could smoke but now that would be unheard of. Schools weren't sponsoring the smoking they just allowed it because it was customary I guess. How long will public education continue to sponsor a sport that causes permanent brain damage? If you are the #1 ranked QB in the country going in to your junior year and pick up a couple of concussions before college you are practically done. Pickup one more in college and kiss your chance at a pro career goodbye. So the object is to play as hard as you can to earn a shot but you better not get hurt. It is an unsustainable catch-22 IMO. Changing the rules so Clowney's hit earns an ejection might reduce liability but it won't fill the seats or turn on televisions.
My neighbor is a Clemson grad and a diehard Clemson football fan. When his kids younger they played Pop Warner football and the whole family traveled to Clemson 3 or 4times a year for games. Around middle school they got seriously into soccer and gave up football completely. I watched the Clemson bowl game on TV with my neighbor and his kids were upstairs watching soccer with their friends. I can't remember the last time I saw kids playing a pickup game of tackle football. Those kids playing soccer may go to college and support their school's teams but are they going to continue to donate to the programs as alumni and take their families to games the way my generation does? They just don't seem to have the same connection to it IMO. So college football may earn more dollars than ever over the next several years but the decline is already underway with the alumni of tomorrow.
Meanwhile the conferences are trashing the NCAA and creating conferences that don't any make sense geographically or academically for future dollars that won't be there in the long term anyway.