NCAA President to propose New Division

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I'm all for a system that creates parity. The NFL has it figured out. Smaller roster limits, a salary cap with freedom for teams to allocate to their players how they use their cap, draft positioning, player contractual obligations and sort of guaranteed regional representation in the tournament. CFB could emulate the NFL but seems to be trending away from what makes the NFL more successful. Players move freely with no obligation to the school. Conference are no longer regional and there are vast swaths of the country from which there will never be a national champion again. The NIL system guarantees the haves will have more and the have nots will have less. The lousy teams have little to no hope of improving with influx of talent.

I don't know how CFB could institute anything like a draft. I don't see the schools as being willing to eliminate a student athlete's choice of institution either as a freshman or any year thereafter. NIL will always be a problem. Advertisers hire NFL talent to endorse their products on the basis of a reasonable business decision. Except for a few collegiate athletes, NIL is based in home team sycophancy. But CFB could return to regionalization although it won't at this point. It could devote resources to teams commensurate with revenue to play players and establish roster caps. That would disburse the talent.

The equity crowd would squeal but the revenue ought to be allocated to the sports that earn it. CFB should be getting the lion's share of the revenue and 1/2 of that should go to the players. Let the coach decide how much to throw at each player (like NAIA). Those would be real dollars and while a Minnesota won't have the NIL to supplement, it would get a foot in the door with good players and from their, traditional recruiting would find its way back to the game, i.e., coach, academics, etc.

What's being proposed does nothing for a Minnesota. So $30,000 goes to each athlete. Good for the athletes although if I'm a football player, I wonder then as I would now, why is my skull being used to pay a softball player or a rower.
 


@Pompous Elitist while I don’t disagree with your post, the announced plan today is perfectly congruent with what the NCAA’s core mission is: to treat all varsity participants merely as regular students who decided to do athletics in their spare time, 100% in the tradition of amateurism.

Allowing so-called “full cost of attendance” valuations of scholarships and for money to be placed in a trust that is available to the S-A only after their academic career is finished, is perfectly congruent with that point of view.


Yeah, it’s a laughably irrelevant point of view, at this point.

Like putting on your boots and stepping out with a flashlight and laundry bag after the cat escaped three weeks ago. “Here, kitty kitty!”
 

@Polski nailed it! Out of the park!

Can you imagine if NFL teams setup NIL collectives to ask fans to give away their money in order to supplement the primary incomes of the players??? The gall it would take to do that??

That’s exactly what’s going on here.

Sure, I commend the creative efforts to do glorified bake sales to pump up the coffers. Worth a shot.


But think about it:
- beverage business is cutthroat competitive, with razor thin margins
- these are for-profit businesses that are first and foremost looking to get a boost in sales by coupling their brand to the Gopher NIL effort
- say they net $0.50 on a whatever-pack of Duck beer (might be generous), what can they realistically afford to peel off and donate to DTA out of that? $0.10 per pack?
- so to buy one player for one year at $50k, means you need to sell 500k packs that year.

For one player, for one year, and $50k is really not that much in NIL. Not going to be a game changer.


You quickly see how in football, the numbers do not add up.

In basketball on the other hand, maybe.
 

@swede2 another outstanding post

IF a P5 (or whatever) Player’s Union agreed to it, there could be a draft. I don’t know why players would want that, though. I think they’d have to be convinced that that is what maximizes the value of the product. Not sure these kids have that kind of foresight.
 


Really not enough info to fully understand and evaluate this, but it sounds like a non-starter...wonder how much it is tied to the four power conference leaders coming forward as a group to ask the Feds to step in.
 

Looks like Pink Floyd got it right...


Money, get away
Get a good job with good pay and you're okay
Money, it's a gas
Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash
New car, caviar, four star daydream
Think I'll buy me a football team
 

Whytetale said:
I know our chances at another football natty are slim and none, but there was always a slice of unrealistic hope. This proposal, if adopted, dashes my perspective of athletics at the U of MN. We now become a basketball or hockey school with a 50,000-seat stadium for concerts. Slim has left the building.

ps. Panthadad, MNVCGUY, Fred, Texan Gopher, please talk me off the ledge.

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The chances were slim and remain slim. I would say that at worst, the increased odds of making a 12 team play-off offset the more difficult NIL world we play in and our net odds remain about the same. The only way we would ever have made a 4 team play-off is if we went undefeated and perhaps not even then.
 

disco said:
And nothing about this will stop the pay for play disguised as NIL. Let's be honest here. If rich Cletus Pennybags wants to drop six figures to buy a wide receiver for Bama, he's still going to do that.
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Yes but he may be less inclined to do so if the school's already doing it. MN was never going to have enough rich donors to compete, at least this lets them divert some BTN/CBS/NBC $$ to NIL.
 



At what point will they start letting players play longer than the 4 years or eligibility? That'll be the next big step.
 

The bagmen mindset is far too engrained in CFB culture to ever go away.

Even if Bama has a $50M payroll just for football … there will still be assholes thinking “they matter” because they give $100k NIL deals on top. That they were the enablers.

It’s all ego and pride for these nuts.
 

Lots of details needed, but here’s how I’m reading this:
  1. “Rich” schools (AKA, most of P5) form their own division for ALL sports (not just FB).
  2. Schools can opt-in or out. Those who opt-out would presumably stick with current rules.
  3. Opt-in means a few things:
    1. Schools can pay students NIL directly - no need for collectives.
    2. That money can come from anywhere (TV, donations, fundraisers, etc.)
    3. Schools must set aside at least $30k in a trust fund for half their student athletes. You’d think most of the FB team, all of men’s and women’s bball, men’s and women’s hockey at UM, and a few more women’s sports for parity. Note the “AT LEAST”. Likely to be far higher at most schools.
    4. Must be parity between men’s and women’s NIL funding. As such, being a women’s BB player would be WAY more lucrative in a couple years.
  4. Schools who opt-in will create their own rules surrounding NIL (maybe salary caps?), recruiting, transfers (portal changes? Contracts?), policing of NIL, etc.
 

Stuff said:
At what point will they start letting players play longer than the 4 years or eligibility? That'll be the next big step.
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At what point do we drop the pretext of academics and simply license the school name, mascot and traditions to sports operational entities?
 



MGGopher said:
Lots of details needed, but here’s how I’m reading this:
  1. “Rich” schools (AKA, most of P5) form their own division for ALL sports (not just FB).
  2. Schools can opt-in or out. Those who opt-out would presumably stick with current rules.
  3. Opt-in means a few things:
    1. Schools can pay students NIL directly - no need for collectives.
    2. That money can come from anywhere (TV, donations, fundraisers, etc.)
    3. Schools must set aside at least $30k in a trust fund for half their student athletes. You’d think most of the FB team, all of men’s and women’s bball, men’s and women’s hockey at UM, and a few more women’s sports for parity. Note the “AT LEAST”. Likely to be far higher at most schools.
    4. Must be parity between men’s and women’s NIL funding. As such, being a women’s BB player would be WAY more lucrative in a couple years.
  4. Schools who opt-in will create their own rules surrounding NIL (maybe salary caps?), recruiting, transfers (portal changes? Contracts?), policing of NIL, etc.
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This was my interpretation too, but it may be wrong. Give the schools in that subdivision the power to either try to equal the playing field themselves, or let it run rampant.
 

The teams should get smart at some point and band together more so than they are now (whether that's through the NCAA or on their own). If they're paying players, now they're employees, and they should be demanding some things for their payments.

It used to be that the institutions/coaches held most of the power (players weren't getting paid, you had to sit out a year to move, etc). Then it quickly flipped in the players have all the power (free transfer rule, additional grad transfer rule, NIL payments, etc.). As with most things, if they're smart and don't want to kill the golden goose, the solution lies somewhere in between. This likely means there should be a players union and group representing the institutions so they can collectively bargain these things.
 

Literally for a cap to be put in place, there has to be collective bargaining. Otherwise it's an anti-trust issue.
 

fmlizard said:
If they stopped using money from the football program and TV contract to subsidize a bunch of non-profitable sports Minnesota is a top 25 resource football program and can definitely afford to buy lots of expensive football players

This is really where it’s heading. Winner take all, like everything else in America. In this case football wins over all other sports. Sports are just about the only place left where America deeply cares about competitive balance but that too will fade.
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Not sure on legalities of Title IX but I don’t understand why per article posted up thread at least half of athletes should receive the non educational trust money.

Eat what you kill. The non-revs deserve nothing, unless they can get reclassified as employees. The women athletes certainly are not entitled to the player’s TV broadcast NIL money.

I’ll say it again, this proposal is a pittance and fundamentally unfair and insulting to the football players. Now that they started the NIL fiasco take it to its natural conclusion and retake the broadcast publicity NIL rights you are extorted or coerced to sign away. Lobby congress. Make public statements..
 

MaxyJR1 said:
Some of the teeth is in the Title IX aspects of the schools controlling NIL and other aspects. Female sports are not going to sit idle and let the men take all the dough when the schools control it.

This allows the top 64 or so schools to play by their own rules. What that looks like we don't know.
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Re: title 9. Isn't the only requirement for compliance that they are given the same "opportunity" - I don't think it requires the same result. So if they take football revenue and distribute it among football players and rowing revenue and distribute it among the female rowers, that's fair. Both have the opportunity to access as much money as their sport can earn.
 

fmlizard said:
This is really where it’s heading. Winner take all, like everything else in America. In this case football wins over all other sports. Sports are just about the only place left where America deeply cares about competitive balance but that too will fade.
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Depends how you define competitive balance. I'd like competitive balance among the college football teams. I don't give a crap if the non-revenue sports get the same attention as football. They've been living off of football revenue for decades now and I don't think they've said "thanks" even once.
 

GopherTheJugular said:
Re: title 9. Isn't the only requirement for compliance that they are given the same "opportunity" - I don't think it requires the same result. So if they take football revenue and distribute it among football players and rowing revenue and distribute it among the female rowers, that's fair. Both have the opportunity to access as much money as their sport can earn.
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That gets tricky because I assume the universities are treated as one pool of revenue and the opportunity isn't divided by sport.

So if a school has to give 1/2 their athletes at lease $30,000, not sure they can get around 1/2 female and 1/2 male.
 

swede2 said:
At what point do we drop the pretext of academics and simply license the school name, mascot and traditions to sports operational entities?
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That would be one way to get around title 9 and keep the football revenue for the football team.
 

Title IX has multiple ways to show compliance. One hypothetical way is you could simply survey the female student body and ask them if they feel that their opportunities to participate in athletics at the recreational, intramural, club, and varsity levels is satisfactory. Not sure if that has ever been attempted, but the language is there in the letter of the law.

If you gave the same number of scholarships proportional to the male:female ratio of the student body, that was automatically considered compliant, I thought.

So the half and half with the money is the natural extension of that, regardless how fair.

But there have been lawsuits or at least public complaints about dissimilar budgets, coaching salaries, facilities, and overall benefits (commercial vs charters, etc).
 


PhiloVance said:
Does this mean further division of conferences? Conference of haves and conference for have not?
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I think it will lead to a P2 with up to 64 teams that agree to the same rules. If you want to be in the B1G or SEC you must be part of it.

Will be interesting to see what happens to basketball schools that don't have football. What will the standard be for those schools?
 

@Pompous Elitist two additional bits:

1 - again it appears that the NCAA is almost going verbatim according to the recipe of what was spelled out by Judge Wilkes in her judgements against the NCAA. You’re very familiar with these and cite them here frequently. That is, precisely: money put in trusts for “educational” expenses. And voila, that is almost exactly how they’re framing the trust money bit.

2 - I overlooked (because it was missing in the OP tweet) that, apparently, the NCAA letter also contains this: (from Dellenger’s Yahoo article)

The proposal is short on details and specifics on the NIL concept, only saying “rules should change for any Division I school, at their choice, to enter into name, image and likeness licensing opportunities with their student-athletes.”


If they really mean the school giving a player a NIL contract (for doing/endorsing what???) and paying out of the Athletic Dept coffers, then that is far more significant than the trust funds IMO. And probably far more costly. This is 100% defacto pay for play. In all but name.

Yet again though, allows the school and NCAA to maintain the appearance of amateurism. After all, Olympians are allowed to make big bucks off NIL.
 

I wonder if that bit was more so meant to mean that the schools could directly setup NIL deals on behalf of their athletes.
 

I still lean towards this all getting worked out mostly rationally in a way that makes sense from a free markets perspective. The old way that made completely no sense where football PLAYERS provided the majority of the value, but got almost none of the revenue is dead. We are currently in the phase in free markets called competitive turbulence.

"We define high competitive turbulence as an environment with an ongoing elevated level of change caused by competition (D'Aveni, 1994; Siggelkow and Rivkin, 2005); specifically, change that is radical, frequent, ongoing, and unpredictable."

Thank God the bureaucracy is getting blown up and something new gets to emerge. I think this means:

1) "Major college football", whatever that ends up being, spins off from other college sports and stops providing them with welfare.
2) Players get paid based on a percent of TV revenue that partially levels the playing field. NIL proves to be a temporary, major, stupid, but necessary element that diminishes in importance as competitive turbulence wanes.
3) The U of M as a major university in one of the largest US metropolitan areas with a lot of football viewing eyeballs gets included in the spin off.
 

Even out the playing field some….hope it get adopted.
 

Looking at the Ross Dellenger article on Yahoo Sports. a few noteworthy excerpts:

The model “gives the educational institutions with the most visibility, the most financial resources and the biggest brands an opportunity to choose to operate with a different set of rules that more accurately reflect their scale and their operating model,” he writes.......

While all schools are eligible to join the subdivision, the proposal would likely force a formal split within the Football Bowl Subdivision of the Power Five, soon-to-be Power Four, conferences: the SEC, Big Ten, ACC and Big 12.......

The model is introduced as the NCAA and major conference schools are in the midst of settlement negotiations over what could be one of the most costly and impactful antitrust cases in college sports history. House v. NCAA, seeking as much as $3 billion in retroactive NIL and broadcasting revenue payments, is the latest lawsuit expected to chip away at the NCAA’s bedrock of amateurism.......

Even within the FBS, there are vast differences among athletic departments. For example, Ohio State reported an athletic budget of $251 million this year. Ohio University’s athletic budget is $29 million......

By 2032, the Knight Commission estimates that the 54 public Power Five schools will spend nearly as much on football coaching salaries ($1.363 billion) as they do on all athletic scholarships ($1.372 billion)........

59 DI schools spend more than $100 million on athletics; another 32 DI schools spend over $50 million; and a whopping 259 spend less than $50 million, with half of those spending less than $25 million......

Revenue generated from the elite programs in college sports — from the CFP, NCAA men’s basketball tournament, etc. — is disseminated to other schools in Division I, Division II and Division III. It makes any complete separation or split complex.......
 

SeaBee_Gopher said:
I still lean towards this all getting worked out mostly rationally in a way that makes sense from a free markets perspective. The old way that made completely no sense where football PLAYERS provided the majority of the value, but got almost none of the revenue is dead. We are currently in the phase in free markets called competitive turbulence.

"We define high competitive turbulence as an environment with an ongoing elevated level of change caused by competition (D'Aveni, 1994; Siggelkow and Rivkin, 2005); specifically, change that is radical, frequent, ongoing, and unpredictable."

Thank God the bureaucracy is getting blown up and something new gets to emerge. I think this means:

1) "Major college football", whatever that ends up being, spins off from other college sports and stops providing them with welfare.
2) Players get paid based on a percent of TV revenue that partially levels the playing field. NIL proves to be a temporary, major, stupid, but necessary element that diminishes in importance as competitive turbulence wanes.
3) The U of M as a major university in one of the largest US metropolitan areas with a lot of football viewing eyeballs gets included in the spin off.
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This thing will get out of control. Once you open Pandora’s box, oh boy. Good luck restraining a race to the bottom and attendant carnage and wailing from non-rev.
 

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