Hey NCAA, ahhhhh seeee ya!

[Newton_14]

I would suspect this will be the end of many of the smaller conferences trying to compete at all with the Big 5, especially in football.

I would expect some schools to try to stick it out -- like some of the more successful former Big East or CUSA football schools (UConn, Memphis, Navy, and perhaps ECU and/or SFla) and a few others who have made a splash on the big stage over the years and have some equity in being a big time football school (Boise St, BYU, perhaps a couple others) -- but much of the MAC , CUSA, Sun Belt, and Mountain West are likely to realize that fielding a Division 1 football program is just not worth the money it will cost.

In basketball, I bet there isn't quite as much fallout as you are only talking about making extra payments to 12 or 13 scholarship athletes versus 70 or 80+ in football. But the football landscape has completely changed in the past 24 hours. Truly remarkable.

-Jason "I have no problem with this -- it actually may serve to level the playing field a bit more and make more games more competitive" Evans

I caught Wes Durham on the radio yesterday giving his thoughts. Like you, he felt this will be more positive than negative in the end, but also thought it will be a gradual change, not a sudden change. I also agree it will have a much bigger impact on Football than Basketball. As long as they don't screw with the Big Dance, I can live with it I guess. Mrs Newton_14 is a Southern Miss grad and loves her Football. We are both nervous to see how this impacts them. They have tried really hard for years to get into the SEC, but twas not to be, and before Fedora screwed them over, they were a solid FB program capable of competing with most schools in the Big 5, sort of like ECU, and the other schools your mentioned.
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The smaller D1 schools are toast in Football though. (Looking at you App State, gosh I wish you had stayed put) as recruits will try like heck to get into the Big 5. Wake Forest losing recruits to ECU, Middle Tenn St, etc, just ended. That goes out the window. That started happening with the invention of the BCS years back, but this move will end it once an for all.

[arnie]

In basketball, I bet there isn't quite as much fallout as you are only talking about making extra payments to 12 or 13 scholarship athletes versus 70 or 80+ in football. But the football landscape has completely changed in the past 24 hours. Truly remarkable.

-Jason Evans

I must have missed the ruling that women's sports are exempt from the extra payments. Are you assuming the smaller schools have a "two tier" system and ignore Title IX?

[Jarhead]

I must have missed the ruling that women's sports are exempt from the extra payments. Are you assuming the smaller schools have a "two tier" system and ignore Title IX?

From what I have read, and as Jason explained, the ruling seems to be very narrow, applying only to football and basketball. Furthermore, it makes no mention of the Big Five conferences. My guess is that higher courts will have to weigh in and maybe even throw it out. Let's wait, and see.

[lotusland]

There are still a lot of moving pieces in the larger saga but I have a strong suspicion that big money college football is about to be hoisted upon it's own petard.

[OldPhiKap]

So -- does this mean that Norte Dame is likely to become an ACC football program?

[Duvall]

So -- does this mean that Norte Dame is likely to become an ACC football program?

No, at least at any time in next 12 years. Why would it?

[wilko]

The machine that IS college sports is perilously close to making me lose interest completely...

Bottom line - It cant cost me more.

[greybeard]

Well hedge fund managers may be willing to waste money for the sake of their egos but no one is going to watch those games including the hedge fund managers. The same people who pay $10-$20K a year for good tailgate spot near the stadium entrance for their favorite college team just aren't going to do that for a minor league team. It's been tried every way possible and it just doesn't work. What that tells me is that those players who are not ready for the pros just don't have much inherent "market value" outside their university affiliation. Those few who are ready to play professionally should be allowed to but that won't be accomplished by changing college sports. BTW looks like Mudiay is doing OK without college - will others follow? You have to think Wiggins and Parker could have gotten as much or more.

This seems to be the crux of it, but also to me reveals the false dichotomy. Apple is enormous; Amazon, enormous; Dell, chopped liver? Big Time College Sports is at the vortex of a multi, multi billion dollar affinity marketing, media bursting, vertically integrated chain of separate industries that produces enormous incomes for scores upon scores of people except for the people who actually put on the show and their bodies on the line every day for what is now a 365 day cycle. Those people get cut if they have to get cut (literally) or if somebody better who comes along.

To say that they are not pros because they cannot make it in the NBA sounds nice but for the fact that it makes no sense. The notion that they are not pros is belied by who is on Cable and who is not, and how many people watch when they are and how many don't when those who play for schools that can only make it onto obscure cable. Tom Brady was no less a professional when he kicked aside the best quarterback recruit Michigan ever had than he was the next season when he effectively did the same thing to the best quarterback that the Patriots ever had. The only difference was, when he was at Michigan he was playing before 100,000 plus every home and many away games instead of half that or less when he went to the pros? Football go to classes (do they go to classes), what 15-20 hours a week, heck, they can go on line lying in bed; they practice and train god knows how many hours 5-6 days a week for the entire year. They produce billions.

Your argument would be like saying that you were only worth getting paid the big bucks if you work for Apple or Amazon rather than the hundreds of other companies in Silicon Valley, that you need to be good enough to land a job in one of the real pro companies before you want to be paid like a pro. You do know where this is going, but, on the very rare chance that you don't, it seems that in the "Valley," they don't need no stinkin' false dichotomies or front organization like the NCAA to provide cover for getting rich off the players without giving them anything approaching their economic worth. They just needed to decide among themselves, decide that is after Steve, as in Jobs, let it be known that there would be no stealing his valued assets away by the offer of better paying jobs or the offerer of those jobs would soon have no jobs to offer, that Mr. Jobs said was the law. And, once Amazon's "leader" decided that hey, it would be oh so much more lucrative to join him then fight him, the peace was made--everybody would keep their cotton-pickin' hands off everybody else's bodies or the everybody that didn't would be the body that would bew buried. (Oy). All this would have gone uncovered if they hadn't manned cigars and such schemes were still hatched and transmitted in smoke filed back rooms. Only smart as that dirtball Steve (sorry-Mr. President-none-of-those-jobs-will-be-coming-back-because-they'll-work 20-hour-days-for-next-to-nothing-and-we-won't) Jobs was, he was too in love with his own toys to be stupid enough to put it all in cyberspace in the form of e-mails.

The class action lawsuits presented actual damages in the 3 billion range, but Jobs (before he kicked) and the other honchos weren't worried, they'd pay the suits off by making a piddling settlement offer, in comparison to what the case was actually worth, which the lawyers would press their clients to accept because the case could last forever, yadayadayada. Well, that because was the BS that the lawyers would tell their clients and actually did, enough of them that is, to get the settlement accepted. The real because was/is that the 1/3 the lawyers would collect, would be enormous for a few hours of work along with paying a service who specializes in such matters to go through the tricky process of putting together a plaintiff class that could be certified under the federal rules.

The only problem was that they drew a judge who was not only bright and ethical way beyond your average bear, way, way beyond, but who also understood that someone, somewhere had to put a stop to this type nonsense. Untied States District Court Lucy H. Koh sent a shot heard round the world. She looked at the e-mails and saw that the case was a lock for the plaintiffs, looked at the $324 million settlement the handful of class action lawyers had pushed through, and went well beyond the judge that held up the travesty of a settlement that the NFL had tried to ramrod through (the judge let an only slightly smaller hot poker to be ramrodded through after the Commissioner greased the skids some). Nope, Judge Koh told the lawyers that they were trying their case in her court, trying it, not settling it, which means that if the jury rules as anyone who can read will have to, and agrees that actual damages are in the range plead $3 bill, you will recall, treble damages makes that recovery 9 large. Of course, the lawyers will have to hire real lawyers who actually know something about trying a case, or, heaven forbid, try it themselves (I doubt that they could if they would).

Back to big time college sports, the lawsuit, the weak and near fraudulent attempt at damage control that the big 5 are about to try to pull off, something like, we'll withdraw, each of us will agree on parameters for paying players on our own, just like the oil companies do with oil prices, and the peace will be made, at .5 cents on the dollar. They just might get away with it. And, you know what, big deal. The big deal is health costs, not just for the time in school, but for a lifetime. That is the BIG COST, THE HUGH COST, and damned if we are not all paying for it, accept if, the farce that the watered down health care law goes down, we will all be paying more in more ways than just dough. Let the games begin. Can't wait to read the next day's paper and see who was injured, and how, and when they are expected back. Tell me that that is not what determines the odds. And, then tell me, over, and over, and over again, my friends, that there is any reason to care about whether these guys get paid. Well, there's the principle of it, I suppose. Yeah, the principle, that counts for something.