Name, Image, Likeness
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NYBri
Member
It is what it is.Warms the heart to see a kid choose the home team strictly for theof money.
It really does. The rumors are that Kelly showing he was not able to compete at a National Championship level at LSU, and his recent screaming fit on the sidelines, had nothing to do with Underwood's decision. But they sure might make him feel better about having made it.Warms the heart to see a kid choose the home team strictly for the
Mike Petrik
Member
Yes, getting anything through Congress would be a heavy lift. That said, I do think many SEC schools would support some type of cap system.
I also think each conference could probably adopt its own cap system without running afoul of antitrust laws, since in essence each is a joint venture competing with other conferences for talent, audience and dough. Since disparate caps would formalize pecking orders in very uncomfortable ways, the likelihood would be that the SEC or B1G would be a leader which the other Power 4 would more or less voluntarily follow without any agreement or communication. This kind of "tacit collusion" is generally regarded as permissible.
CrazyNotCrazie
Member
I went to the Duke alumni event in NY Monday night and there was a panel about the future of sports with Vincent Price, Nina King, Adam Silver and Eddy Cue. Apparently Ted Cruz recently made a comment about wanting to do something about college sports and there is some home that with a unified government in Washington something might get done - Silver was the one who primarily brought this up, and King confirmed that the role of Washington in this is definitely on her radar.
I do not want to turn this into a political thread and I ask others not to do so, so I am not opining on that plan, other than to say that I am glad that high ranking people are well aware that the system is broken and needs to be fixed.
Rich
Member
I attended the same event (CNC, sorry we didn't talk about meeting up) and found this recent article to support the discussion. Politics makes for strange bedfellows, but there seems to be good reason that something might happen given the makeup of next year's Congress.
Ted Cruz Vows to Push NCAA Reform in Next Congress
The Texas senator, who will take over the Senate Commerce Committee in 2025, reiterated his promise to prioritize college sports reform.
www.sportico.com
Is there any legal precedent for a cap on NIL? This doesn’t exist anywhere in pro sports. I’m not a lawyer but how do you cap an individual player’s endorsements with a team cap? So player A can’t get anymore endorsements because player B already put the team over cap? This seems problematic to me.
sagegrouse
Member
"Politics" on sports legislation by the U.S. Congress should be not only OK but also a prime topic on DBR.
NYBri
Member
My hives are acting up just on the suggestion of such a thread.
scottdude8
Moderator, front page and podcast contributor
FWIW, there are a handful of so-called Michigan "insiders" who have said that the largest of the $ figures floating around are heavily inflated. My best guess to the reality is that Michigan got things together so that their NIL offer was on-par or slightly better than that of an SEC power like LSU, not double or triple like people are speculating. Not that that diminishes the ick factor of all of this, which I feel (alongside my obvious excitement) as a Michigan fan.Warms the heart to see a kid choose the home team strictly for the
It's worth remembering that Michigan was perhaps the slowest major college athletic department to adjust to the new era with NIL. A major reason why the last three years of football dominance didn't translate into recruiting wins (and in turn this year's mess of a squad) was because Michigan was so far behind in NIL. That was also a major factor in Juwan Howard's downfall (beyond his many self-inflicted wounds), particularly Hunter Dickinson's departure. So them just getting back up to the expectation is such a big turnaround that it might explain why some of the stories around this have become so sensationalized.
Now, it seems like Michigan is all-in on the new era in both basketball (where Dusty May created a team almost entirely from scratch from the portal, with very encouraging early returns) and football (not only with Underwood, but the rest of a very solid 2025 recruiting class from Sherrone Moore). If that's the case, look out. U of M has one of the largest alumni bases in the world to go along with a lot of high-worth donors. If they've been mobilized to fire up the NIL money cannon as it appears, I wouldn't be shocked to see Michigan being more and more competitive for 5* basketball recruits in the coming years.
MChambers
Member
Count me as skeptical. I'm far from convinced that there is anything close to a consensus on the legislative "solution".I attended the same event (CNC, sorry we didn't talk about meeting up) and found this recent article to support the discussion. Politics makes for strange bedfellows, but there seems to be good reason that something might happen given the makeup of next year's Congress.
Ted Cruz Vows to Push NCAA Reform in Next Congress
The Texas senator, who will take over the Senate Commerce Committee in 2025, reiterated his promise to prioritize college sports reform.
Duke79UNLV77
Member
But, most NIL money now actually has very little to do with endorsements. It's more directly pay to play at my school (i.e., what the NIL rules said would not be allowed). I've actually been surprised that I haven't seen more high-level endorsement commercials from collegiate athletes.
MChambers
Member
The precedent would be the NCAA's prior ban on NIL. Legislation would have to restore (or create) the NCAA's authority to limit NIL. Presumably all NIL payments would be subject to school approval.
But I agree it would be a mess.
Voluntarily follow? You think places like Oklahoma State in the Big 12 and Florida State and Clemson in the ACC would be fine with having their NIL spending capped at a level lower than the SEC and Big 10? They'd be suing their own conferences before the ink was dry.
Mike Petrik
Member
Sure, my point was simply that each conference's decision on whether to follow would be a function of its choice rather than a function of any agreement with other conferences. Yes, they would likely all end up in the same place via conscious parallelism.
JasonEvans
Host, The Duke Basketball Roundup
Just about anything the NCAA tries to do to rein in NIL is going to be subject to a legal challenge and the NCAA's lawyers are something like 0-for-a-million in court battles. IANAL, but any talk of limiting NIL feels a lot like restraint of trade.
The NCAA would be far better off allowing players to unionize and then collectively bargain some kind of rules.
The NCAA would be far better off allowing players to unionize and then collectively bargain some kind of rules.
Phredd3
Member
On the assumption that doing so does not jeopardize their non-profit status with the IRS. If it were easy, they'd have already done it.
SkyBrickey
Member
There is the big court settlement coming down the pike next year that authorizes the schools to share a percentage of their revenue up to $21M directly with the athletes. I don't know if that can be enforced as a hard cap. And I expect that can still be supplemented by NIL endorsements including booster-pay-to-play.
Yes, it's in addition to NIL as the settlement before was void by the judge after plaintiffs thought the agreement would likely reduce NIL earnings so they went back to the drawing board to come up with something else.
The long and short of it is a roster cap but no scholarship caps. So, football can now pay for full rides for 105 guys instead of the 85 or whatever today, but sports like golf/swimming are having coaches having to rescind roster spots for next year because no more space due to absolute roster limits. Overall, number of athletes going to decrease at most schools but scholarship numbers might go up, particular for revenue sports. Although roster spots for football are actually decreasing so RIP walk-ons, but can have more players on full scholarship. No partial scholarships anymore in any sport (well schools can do it, but it still counts as 1 roster spot).
In other news, the Michigan collective released a statement about the Underwood flip where they thanked Larry Ellison for his financial commitment to make it possible:
NIL collective Champions Circle releases statement after Michigan flips five-star QB Bryce Underwood
Landing the commitment of 2025 five-star QB Bryce Underwood would not have been possible without Michigan’s NIL collective, Champions Circle. Following the big news, the collective released a statement
www.maizenbrew.com
I personally find all this ... Kinda gross.
They are professionals. Just make it official, get contracts, salary caps and stop the farce.
I won’t complain about how the donor class spends their money but it doesn’t make sense to me. I imagine making a sizable NIL contribution, then watching a 2-8 team with happy players, all getting paid and happy school administrators raking in the conference payouts. Something doesn’t add up.