https://gigemgazette.com/2022/01/06/texas-am-football-paying-price-2022-...
This article alleges that A&M spent between $25-30mil in "NIL" to get the top recruiting class for '22 and possibly all time with 6 5* and 19 4*. Just goes to show that NCAA f@#ked the dog by not getting ahead of NIL in the first place and allowing the wild west to reign supreme. When these kinds of things are allowed it's pretty clear that there will be those programs with mega-donors that will pull this kind of shit and then everyone else. I don't think that there's any football program in the ACC (except Clemson) that would pull something similar to this.
Edit: as noted by Joey25, the source of this is somewhat suspicious. That said, A&Ms '21 ranking was #8 and their '20 ranking was #6 with composite rankings of .9170 and .9111 vs .9461 in '22. Not much of a leap to figure out that something is fishy.
Comments
1) This is coming from a non-Texas A&M message board, so it has to be taken with a huge grain of salt.
2) The money going to players in NIL from boosters would probably just be going directly to the schools to pay coaches, or for facilities like we've seen before NIL. Nothing wrong with the players getting a fair shake if people are willing to pay them. I don't think these kind of payments (if true) will become the norm, but the gap in money was there before NIL. It's just going to different places now.
It will be much more efficient at getting top players when it isnt being used for buildings/water slides and is going straight to the players. Is it bad for the players to be getting paid? I dont think so, but I am also not interested in being the Oakland As
Yeah, that's the big problem. The fact is that certain schools can/will spend a lot more money (in whatever manner) investing in football than other schools. So, can you level the playing field by putting a limit on what schools can spend? How do you even do that in a way that either doesn't hurt players (limiting scholarships per school, capping NIL), hasn't already been ruled illegal (coaching salary caps), or just looks unsavory? And even if you can figure out a way to level the spending playing field, won't players still go to the schools that are better at getting guys to the NFL?
I think I keep coming back to the fact that, the differences in the interest/willingness to invest for all FBS schools is so different between an Alabama, and say a Kent State, or even between us, and Alabama, that I don't know if there's really an answer to having a true level playing field between the FBS, or just the group of 5. Professional sports can only do it with a salary cap, and that's only going to happen if the schools make the players professional, which they won't, and even then you've still got the NFL issue, since that's where the real money will be made. It's a difficult thing.
The NFL is the actual problem. The NFL needs to cut the crap of using college like it's minors and make an actual minor league. Then teams draft kids out of high school and put them in the minors. It solves all the issues. Some kids who want to develop more and value their education will go to college and the mega elite go get paid.
If the most significant money is NFL contracts, why not allow players to sign with an NFL (or NBA) team through the regular amateur draft and allow the pro teams to loan the players back to college (to the college of the player's choosing) to allow them to continue developing (personally and professionally). Once you play in a NFL or NBA game, you can not be loaned back to the college level.
This already happens in the NHL (without the $$s).
This would work too. There needs to be a system where the kids are getting paid by the NFL to develop. Colleges can't afford to do it and shouldn't be doing it. At the end of the day the magic of CFB is they still go to school.
This is also the reason why it won't happen. The NFL is perfectly happy to let players develop on someone else's dime 🤷♂️
Yep, NFL very much likes this arrangement. They are the real issue. No other sport has this issue.
Kinda like how some students go to schools that are better at putting graduates into high-paying jobs with premier employers? Why shouldn't they?
They definitely should. I'm just saying, if you think the imbalance amongst FBS is a problem that needs solving, then that's probably something you'd have to figure out.
I say let the free market do what it does best. I don't want a bunch of bureaucrats in Indianapolis (or worse, DC) "fixing" this problem because inevitably they'll create an even bigger one, with loopholes designed by, and for the benefit of, the elites.
A free market has many benefits, but two that I think are relevant to this discussion are accountability to the customer and equality. Free markets are ultimately customer-driven, so they will (eventually) deliver what customers want, be that parity across all D1A teams, an expanded playoff, etc. The market will also deliver the most equitable outcome, with results driven primarily by the willingness and ability of each organization to prioritize, fund, and execute.
The key is that it has to be truly free. Today, while coaches, administrators, and institutions are free to negotiate as they see fit, players have had most of their rights stripped away by administrative fiat. They go along with this for two reasons: for many, the free education is worth it, and for those with legitimate NFL aspirations, CFB is the sole path to a pro career. A system that gives players full control over their own destiny, including the right to pick the school that they think is best for whatever reasons matter most to them is not a negative outcome that needs to be managed by some (theoretically) beneficent overseer like the NCAA.
With respect the big NIL deals we're hearing about, one of two things is going to happen. The people putting up all this money are going to consider it money well spent, or they are going to conclude that there's no ROI and they are going to stop doing it. In either case, the outcome is correct, because it's determined by free choice, not because some lawyer/NCAA bureaucrat/legislator said so.
Again. I agree, I was just addressing what you could do if you think the gap is a problem.
A couple issues with this
1) Players can't choose any school they want. So are you suggesting removing scholarships limits?
2) You assume people spend money logically, I think this is a bad assumption. Maybe I am reading to much into your statement about well spent or not worth ROI, because you're right, that's the two outcomes, I just think logic won't be driving that.
3) Its tough to really define customers in this sense, so saying let the free market fix it might make everything worse. ESPN is the biggest customer of college football. They are paying the money. They are buying. Fans aren't really customers of college football as much as they are the schools themselves and customers of whomever has the broadcast rights. Largely SEC teams have the most fans so they get catered too because that's where the money is. Thats why ND has a sweet heart deal, more fans = more money. ESPN wants to buy what they can sell, colleges want donations. So as long as the SEC is selling, which it will for a long time because that's where the fans are, nothing will change. It doesn't benefit anyone to change anything because there isn't competition. It's basically one product designed for the largest common fan base. They semi final games had the largest share of ratings this year (though low ratings due to New years eve, also saw dip in 2015). The last non-football sport to have more viewers than this year's orange bowl was the 2019 world series.
Looking at the ratings, the highest rated NC games involve Texas, the highest rated NC games are ones that involve a Florida school (with the exception of FSU-AUB). So really giving the fans what they want, Texas vs UF/UM/FSU.
This isn't the NFL where its highly regulated and really the complete opposite of the free market. It has more parity than every other major sport.
I really don't see what college football is even competing against that there is a free market solution. It knows its not the NFL, it's so much more lucrative than other pro sports, so like all those terrible transformers movies, they're making money, maybe not MCU money, but they make foreign box office bank, so they aren't made for the US box office and people watch both.
The one issue with this statement is that the "customer" in the age of NIL is the booster with a lot of money to spend, not the average college football fan. Which pretty much throws any chance of "equity" out the window.
Couldn't a potential way to somewhat (not completely) level the playing field be to just pay the players? Right now NIL gets them a bag but from outside of the school, none of the money they make for the school itself winds up in their pockets. VT in particular is in a situation where the players make the school money but with Blacksburg being a remote, small town, there aren't really any big corporations who benefit financially from a VT football gameday which puts us at a disadvantage in the current NIL landscape.
For instance right now all the blue chip recruits are going to the big schools because even if they don't play they might get an NIL bag. But if there was some kind of definitive pay structure to get players who actually play and produce paid in an official capacity by the school, they might be incentivized a bit more to go somewhere else where they have a chance to start. NIL was a Pandora's box that will keep the absolute top at the top, but a lot of the second tier of recruits which should be VT's bread and butter anyway could be spread out a bit more with something like that.
You would definitely have to have a national regulation on how to do it. I've actually thought for years that D1 athletics should be a work-study program. Paying an hourly wage for practice and flat rate for games, maybe with performance incentives. You don't need it to be that much, but a low wage work-study program would allow kids who need to to send some money home to do so. It would raise the $ value of a student-athlete by $30,000/yr or so.
I still think NIL should exist, but because only the top athletes are getting any money even though all the players are helping to bring in revenue, they should get something more than what they get currently.
That's not a bad idea, I mean there are already kids who work at the dining hall or whatever to help subsidize school. These players are working hard and the school benefits from it. Why not compensate them (equally) with performance incentives like the coaches get.
Technically, it is a work study
Deion Sanders just got another high quality blue chip player to commit to Jackson St.
He's doing it without NIL money, although it'll come to JSU with the top recruits coming.
And no, HBCUs are downright poor right now. I think NC A&T is the one that's doing okay financially, and they've left the HBCU conferences.
Getting Deion hired, and getting more live games on tv has done some real good for the SWAC and MEAC.
Meanwhile, ESPN is making the CFP Final all about the SEC. That's where the NIL, recruiting, etc changes the game. When people are watching, who's being advertised?
Here's an article written back in April that kind of summarizes what's happening at Jackson State. Obviously, a lot has taken place since then (both with the surprise commits and with NLI deals which likely have inflated this number quite a bit):
A&T is still in the MEAC. Hampton left the MEAC I believe 2yrs ago... But A&T is still playing in a all HBCU conference.
NC A&T Leaving for Big South
uh, wasn't that 5-star CB lined up with a Bar Stool Sports NIL deal for going to Deion's program?
The deal yes. But it wasn't just for going to JSU. He could and would've gotten that for attending colleges outside of Coach Prime University as it turns out.
I think if we could just get a WhataBurger in B-Burg we could up our NIL coupon game and get back in the top rungs of P5. Hardee's is good, just not top shelf. Gotta pay to play.
I say In and Out....being (to my knowledge) the only one on the east coast could create quite the opportunity.
I have a long debate with my friend that In-N-Out is supremely overrated.
I've only ever had it once, but it was drunk in Vegas. But if it doesn't blow my socks off in that condition, it isn't that good to begin with.
I live on the west coast and have gotten food from at least 3 different In-N-Outs and I don't understand the hype. The burgers are average at best and the fries are soggy and limp.
That's what she said.
The thing about in and out is that everyone compares them to five guys or whataburger, but price point wise they are compared to McDonald's, and their burgers and shakes kick McDonald's ass. Now their fries I have no clue how they could make them so bad, get them animal style and hope for the best.
I'm lactose-intolerant so I can't comment on the quality of their shakes, but I'll take a Hardee's/Carl's Jr burger over In-N-Out any day of the week.
Gatekeeping basically, Five Guys was like that at one point. That "hah we got it (its not amazing but whatever) and you don't its sooooo good"
Tbh no fast food is gonna knock you off your feet. Its fast food.
Raising Canes sauce is knock your socks off. Their chicken fries toast and sweet tea are really good, added to that sauce and it's a winner. (The ones in Virginia don't count because they are run by Aramark under an old contract they tried when they first expanded)
Apparently that doesn't stop the entire town of HooVille from descending on the one @ 29 and 250 and screwing up traffic.
God the urban planning in this town is shit. I didn't believe those who said that when I first said I was moving here, but damn is this "city" unimpressive to say the least.
It's gatekeeping, nostalgia, and the secret menu. Most natives here in Cali love In-N-Out because they grew up on it. People also love that they have their own specialized order off the secret menu.
Overall, it's a good burger, but does not live up to the hype. I also find that I really only like my specialized order: double-double, grilled onions, with chilies and a Neapolitan shake.
In and Out sucks. Why not Five Guys, a burger chain that started in Virginia?
Yea, i'll pass. FiveGuys is nothing special and way overpriced. Give me a WhiteCastle any day.
WhiteCastle burgers are made from rat meat.
Oh yeah?
FiveGuys burgers are soy
Oh hey, another cult-like obsession with average food that is waaaaaay overhyped
Before Hardee's changed their burgers recently, I thought they had the best gig in town....
But they did change them, so now Wendy's has been clinging the ranks of best fast food burger.
5 guys is delicious, but they aren't fast food and $13 combos is just dumb. Unfortunately people get tricked by their gimmick of loading the bag with fries and thinking they're getting some sort of deal.
Five guys 15 years ago yes...now? pass
This is definitely true. I loved Five Guys in HS (and later when it first opened in Blacksburg while at VT). During my HS years, we would drive 20 mins to the nearest one in Springfield or Alexandria. As it franchised, the quality was severely diluted in my opinion. I have also realized that eating 2000 calories in one sitting is also pretty disgusting.
The Burg just needs a real dive that has insanely good burgers to open and rake in the cash.
RIP Mike's :(
One day we'll get the dive we don't deserve but need.
Losing Mike's was worse than losing to ODU. Sometimes I'd get a calzone but usually it was the half-pound cheeseburger with everything, fries and a half pitcher. Never been anywhere else that sold a half pitcher! We would hit it in the 45 minutes between Marching Virginian's practice and orchestra rehearsal. The bun was just crisp on the edges and that slab of onion stayed with your soul for the rest of the evening.
I still have my maroon Mike's t-shirt for all the happy memories. First time I ate there, circa 1983, was when my eyes were opened to what a cheeseburger should actually taste like. Then when I tried the calzone I became instantly addicted. Such a great small-town college restaurant, losing it was like losing a dear friend from college. Gone but never forgotten.
WhataBurger really is excellent, especially for the price
I would put WhataBurger over In-N-Out based on my experiences visiting Texas.
For taste, I agree. I think in n out is good, but overrated .. but phenomenal for the price point. If that makes sense.
Whataburger is very overrated- I can walk to one and never do
Pal's. End of discussion.
Let's not pretend this wasn't already happening, now it's just out in the open so the #'s are higher.
18-year-old YouTube stars are making more than doctors these days, no reason why college football players should be getting access to endorsement dealls.
I, for one, think it's hilarious that a bunch of oil barons are paying 18-year olds millions of dollars to play for their team with no legal obligation to actually follow through (see: Ewers, Quinn). If that's worth it to them, i'd rather the players get it than the athletic department for a water slide, or more realistically another couple million in their kids' trust funds.
Just wait until the IRS comes after these oil barons, who didn't realize that NIL payments aren't a tax write off, unlike donations to a university.
Pretty sure they changed the rules about donations to athletic departments so that you can't deduct your donations if you gain some sort of tangible benefit from them, like priority points towards selecting seats for season tickets.
I mean it's an operational expense for a business, and I do not have indepth knowledge of business taxes but if a business gives out NIL until its balance is zero I would think the taxes are quite low.
Were they a tax write-off when passed in bags under the table?
I feel like an "oil baron" has a team of CPAs to handle the taxes. He's not incurring liability making errors with TurboTax and bourbon on the evening of April 14th.
A solution I see to "even" the playing field is for all the other conferences to kick out the SEC. If they want to be an NFL minor league, fine. The other conferences, and the NCAA (I know, I know), should make football an NCAA championship sport. Have an 8-12 team tournament at the end of the season, but no team from the SEC is eligible. The other conferences shouldn't even play them, or at least the 4 major ones. Have a "salary cap" for coaches and support staff to level the playing field a bit, and bring some parity back to college football. Let the SEC play each other and Sun Belt teams on ESPN, and be SEC champion. The other power four should get a contract with Fox and play for the national title.
This is what I was hoping would come out of the Texas/OU to SEC move earlier this year. I was hoping that the ACC/PAC/B1G would band together and create a separate league that would institute some caps to try and level things out. Chances are a few (OSU, Michigan, USCw, Oregon) would leave to join the SEC (or whatever its new name would be), but college football would go back to having some sort of parity.
Sadly, that didn't happen and the rat race is getting worse.
If anyone needs to read some tone deaf content to start the morning.
https://www.saturdaydownsouth.com/alabama-football/nick-saban-calls-nil-...
Gee Nick you think? cause you know its totally balanced as it is already.
Yeah, him and Kirby has been on rants about it. It's because A&M bought their first ranked recruiting class (spent like $30M) and clearly they couldn't figure out how to do that. It is all crocodile tears.
Its incredibly rich coming from them and its hilarious to hear people like them and cry baby from clemson moaning about it as well. The NCAA once again has let the cat out the bag with no idea what to do from here and they do need to figure out a more structured approach but saban and kirby worrying about the balance of power in CFB is tone deaf as can be. Cant hurt to have the big dawgs saying it but I feel like it needs to be a more unified approach and a more formal approach with actual ideas on how to combat it would do more good than press conference whining.
When the Haves are crying it means "it's not playing my way" not "it's not working".
the source is suspect given their motivation but clearly not wrong about the impact.
Nick Saban is usually right about this stuff though- yes, there is an imbalance- but Saban has pointed out things before with regard to hurry up no huddle, RPO offenses. He's going to find the advantage and exploit the heck out of it.
I read his response as "Hey, this is probably going to continue to make it worse, and I'm gonna let everyone know and then figure out how to best use this to my advantage over everyone here shortly."
There's really no way to be against NIL or any other way that players get paid without being selfish to your (general "your," not specifically OP) desire that VT doesn't get left behind.
As I see the money involved in paying coaches, buyouts, stadiums, execs, etc. grow so much, I've evolved my position to pretty much be that players should get whatever money they can, and anything that stands in the way of that is a bad thing. Does that mean Virginia Tech won't be able to compete at the highest levels? Probably. But VT doesn't inherently deserve a highly rated recruit more than any other school, and if they can get a bigger bag by going to Texas A&M, more power to them.
There's a lot of handwringing about the integrity of amateur sports and how "it used to be", but that ship sailed a long time ago.
I've got a way. Invested money that is bought out from you without ROI.
Let me at first say, I have no issue with players making money. I do take issue with how NIL is structured right now and if I were a school I would definitely take issue with it. Here's the rub.
All for free market, but it's Pandora's Box. You open it to right one wrong and all the rest of the variables also come out. At the same time, the Portal has allowed for players to transfer more freely. Long overdue. NIL though has allowed for players to be bought from one team to another, except that money is not being paid to the school who invested their money. It is, however, factual that the school has invested serious money into the player's development and rightly should be paid as a return on their money.
Again all for players making money as they do anywhere else in sports but name me one sport where players are bought without the "organization" being paid that money?
You wouldn't apply this to any other profession, would you? Should my current employer get a cut from another company that hires me away for a better salary since they invested in my growth there?
your employer didn't put you through school, house you, feed you, medical and give you free national marketing. If they did (and I have seen it happen), then typically you have a contract with them that states you will work for a certain period of time that defines the return they seek from that investment. If you were to breach that contract then there are clawbacks to the amount invested.
Speaking from experience working in the trades if a company pays your way through say a trade school its very common to have to work some time for them at the minimum. Non unions typically dont but union companies do ask you to stick around. Similarly to the military academies its a "free" education that you pay back with service time post graduation.
The NCAA is going to have to do something eventually to try and either soft cap or salary cap teams amounts they can use otherwise this will continue to go higher and higher. What A&M did is an example that says it can be done and its only a matter of time before other big pocketed schools do it, I'm looking at places like Oregon, Texas, USC etc that have the funds to do it. I'm not trying to fearmonger or anything I just see this getting out of hand to a point where most of the CFB landscape is left behind for good.
Had a thought and felt appropriate to add it here. Maybe set a cap value of what a player can make on NIL deals and do something where as a freshman you can only make for arguments sake up to 300k for your first year. Second year a slight increase to 400k, junior year a bump to 600k, and senior year you could make up to 1.2mil or something exponentially higher. The players who could really use the money are the ones not going pro and stick around 4+ years and if you dip early to the pros thats fine go get paid there and earn money that way. This could atleast slow the throwing unlimited funds at highschoolers and still reward players who stick around even more.
Exactly. I'll add a personal anecdote, when I was in Grad School I was offered a job by a law firm which included them putting me through law school. The offer included an agreement for me to work for 5 years with a payback if I breached the contract within those 5 years that reduced every year. It's a well established precedent.
I guess I will just put this here, considering Easter Michigan would be considered a "Have Not". As long as you have an alumnus willing to pay, the "have nots" can get a leg up in the game as well.
This is still against the rules.
NCAA Q&A
At least Eastern Michigan is being transparent with their intentions
Only if the NCAA is willing to enforce it (i.e. depends on which schools do it).
Charlie Batch probably could have gone about this better if he was serious about it but is this really being policed? Does anybody really believe Quinn Ewers at OSU didn't violate this? Or that whatever happens with Caleb Williams won't violate this? Or Texas A&M's entire class?
If the NCAA actually cracked down on it the NIL stuff might not actually be so crazy, but it's completely clear the big-time deals are pay-for-play and not just being negotiated once the athlete is already at the school.
Seems like all the NIL money should go into a pool, and every NCAA player should get paid the same. Same with TV rights.
You know, if you want some equity.
Like all bubbles- meaning there is no realistic expectation these dollars continue to explode at this rate- this one will burst. When people stop watching college football on TV, these contracts decrease. When these contracts decrease, these coaches budgets get cut, etc. It will slow down eventually, IMO.
I really think you are right DC, the bubble of CFB and all other stadium-based sports empires is going to continue decreasing due to a number of factors. Those would include the rise of e-sports, the pandemic, the high price of attendance, and competition for entertainment in general. Much like the declining world of MLB and NASCAR, the CFB business model is facing some stiff headwinds.
Live sports were killed by high definition TV. The body just hasn't figured out it's dead yet.
Its gonna be a tumultuous time the next few years for sure. Except for the playoffs, that will be some combo of same 4 or 5 teams.
Its hard to see a path forward that achieves parity but preserves some semblance of the collegiate system. All in all im not sure that college football will be around (at least in the form we know and love) for much longer. I mean Im not optimistic VT can ever climb the mountain again. If you don't have some hope, why be super engaged? I think that mindset might become more prevalent for all but a handful of teams.
Mostly because it's a good excuse to hang out with old friends that are now spread around the country. I highly doubt, except from pure lucky situation, that Tech ever wins a natty. But I like annual game with the homies and fun bowl trips. It is just a nice bonding thing and good excuse to get together outside of occasional events like weddings and baby showers.
That to me is where the real magic of CFB is.
people gathering has been a thing longer than football has been a thing...you're not wrong, but also, when football isn't a thing anymore people will still find other excuses to gather. I'm not sure that socializing urges will save the sport. All good things come to an end. I don't think football will come to an end in our lifetime but it's certainly not headed in a very good direction at the moment and I expect, as DC alludes to above, that there will be a natural regression in the sport sooner than later. That regression probably won't kill the sport outright but it will make it much different than what it was at it's prime 15 years ago.