Tennessee will add a 10% "talent fee" on all football tickets, starting next season. This fee will go to the players, helping fund the proposed revenue share w/the players. UT estimates per-seat price increase averaging 4.5% for entire stadium— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) September 17, 2024
Just when you thought the arms race couldn't get any worse, now they're going to start taxing fans at the gate to pay for players.
Have to imagine its only a matter of time before everyone else implements something similar. And of course this won't stop any of the fundraising, no they still need that money, too.
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I'm pretty impressed with how innovative Tennessee has been in the talent compensation space. 5 years ago they were giving guys cash in McDonald's bags. 3 years ago, they created/invented the idea of a collective. Now they're introducing a new fee on tickets.
Ugh. How many cards can we stack before this all falls down. I just don't see the return on investment remaining intact through much more of this for the average fan. What is the true value of a college football player?
I love Virginia Tech. And I want them to do well on the football field, as this is one of the things that brings me back to the University and provides me an outlet for my passion. Sadly, the ties I have continue to be influenced and stretched by things that had nothing to do with their creation.
This is the wrong question. The right question is 'what is the true value of college football success?'
Paying players has nothing to do with paying them; it's about paying for wins.
That's part of my problem though. Does it equal wins? On the average the more you spend I assume the more wins you get. But what we're being asked to fund is a largely unknown quality of employee for our favored institution. And the starting bid gets higher and higher. I just don't see this landing cleanly without a comprehensive plan with adequate oversight. And what we end up with will likely be a lopsided product that alienates a large portion of the market.
It's kinda like giving to a political campaign - it doesn't guarantee a win, but there's a relationship between funding and successful outcomes (I know... there's a lot of studies suggesting that the relationship is inverse and winning candidates attract donors... but pretend that's not true for this analogy)
A single college player? Value?- Little to nothing. aTm sells out every game long post Johnny Manziel. VT football has been a dumpster fire for years and Michael Vick is wayyyy in the rear view, and we are selling out this year. Michael Jordan last played for UNC 40 years ago... their brand is worth more than ever and the dean dome is still sold out. The greatest college coach ever just left Bama- they sell out every game. An individual college player is "worth" very little. When Drones leaves VT, there will be zero impact to fan interest. None. Lane will be sold out. Now people will argue that if all 85 of your players are D3 level, well you won't sell out etc... but that is a false premise because VT is why Drones came here- we aren't D3... he needs VT much more than we need him. I will die on this hill. Everyone claimed that Maurice Clarett was too good for college, sued to leave early, etc generational talent. How is OSU football doing these days? better than ever. How about USC without Caleb Williams? are they selling any tickets? These players are interchangeable and cycle out every 7-8 years now. Their individual "value"? in reality? not much more than joe physics major.
https://www.on3.com/nil/rankings/player/nil-100/
The 2024 UFL season averaged 850K total viewers per game.... lower than friends re-runs, little league world series, 10 year old forensic files. These are better players than are on VT's team. Why are their TV ratings much lower and attendance basically NIL, you ask? Because nobody gives 2 fucks about the San Antonio Brahmas. If pro players had value on their own, the UFL would have a pulse. The value is on the front of the jersey.
in 2023 the UFL and like got better coverage from ESPN with you being able to look up games and stats. Last year, ESPN reported total scores only. It might have done better with some support from the media.
I admire the candor and transparency. Frankly it's what all college programs should be doing. Only don't call it a "talent fee," just raise prices and say you're doing it to pay players.
Add a salary cap and multi-year contracts, and ban any outside money, and just maybe college football survives as a legitimate sport.
Can you imagine the Dallas Cowboys or Los Angeles Dodgers hitting up people for donations?
Yup. This "halfway-in" mindset we find ourselves in wrt professionalism leads to almost all the problems we're seeing: NIL & transfer portal abuse, conference realignment, members suing conferences.
Have the courage to call college football (and maybe hoops?) a pro sport and be done with it.
You like their transparency but then you knock them for not being transparent? In any case, I think they are perfectly fine in calling it a talent fee and saying it is going to the players. That's what they are doing, after all. They aren't paying talent-less players.
They're being totally honest about what they're doing. They're just being mush-mouthed about what they call it.
Agreed. Prime aint hiding it. anOSU is flaunting their $20mil roster. Everyone knows what Manning is pulling down.
If you're in the $EC, this is the way the "game" is played.
I am waiting with baited breath to hear the takes on this...
Edit: I did indeed mean bated. Let the gifs flow...
Hopefully- you meant 'BATED breath'-(unless you are eating worms or minnows etc.)
Eagerly or anxiously, as in We waited for the announcement of the winner with bated breath . This expression literally means "holding one's breath" ( bate means "restrain"). Today it is also used somewhat ironically, indicating one is not all that eager or anxious. [Late 1500s]
Stop asking for donations then. Let the value of your product be valued by media companies for your TV rights. Then pass on the extra costs/revenue potential to fans via merchandise and tickets.
Don't boost costs and still ask for "donations".
I thought the point of all of this was that the players were going to get a cut of the supposed panacea of TV money that these universities are nearly drowning in?You know, the same money that they use to.fund nearly every other sport than CFB and MensBB.
Sure seems like cost of doing NIL business is being passed onto the consumer.
I'm shocked.
Its almost like rich TV Executives have no interest whatsoever in sharing money with college athletes and the idea that they were going to willingly enter into a collective bargaining agreement with them was a fallacy and a pipe dream.
I believe that I can say, with impunity, that rich TV executives have no interest in sharing money with anyone, lol
CFB is currently at the rumbling stage of the onset of an avalanche. We're all essentially looking around thinking "What the hell?", and very soon the (mostly) true competitive sport we've loved for decades is going to quickly get swept away into a complete mess of a professional sport. The cost will absolutely be passed on to the consumer...that has mostly been the case as we've been asked to donate to the programs so that they could make their program the most attractive to the best talent. Now, it is a lot more blunt, in our faces, and the cost is going to blow up in our faces with absolutely no guarantee of ROI (see F$U or TA&M). As others have stated, they should have proposed the changes to the model they wanted to (and have) made, but then looked at it from the perspective of a willing-to-bend-the-rules institution. Ask themselves "how could this new framework be abused?" Then rethink their new model to account for those things. Where would they have probably ended up? A framework like most professional sports where money is everything, but money is also capped and heavily audited. But no, we've got this hermaphrodite version of an amateur sport trying to be a professional sport but not really willing to admit to being either anymore.
Well and here's the obvious next step to this...once fans balk at higher ticket prices and stadiums aren't full, then you add more and more TV paywalls to make the TV product more difficult to access.
Sell games to Amazon, Apple TV, Netflix, whoever. So that in order to watch all your team's games, you need $300 in subscriptions. And if that doesn't work, Blackouts!! MLB style-because that has worked wonders for their media awareness and profit.
Completely screws the consumer, but now we get to see Quinn Ewers stammer nearly incoherently thru Dr Pepper commercials so all is well.
Okay, so I'll take the contrary view. This is an excellent way to do it. The people who are really interested in the activity pay for it. The people who have no interest in football do not have to pay for it. Much better than asking someone at TN to pay a general fee or hit up donors that are interested in funding the library or chem lab or whatnot to pay for it. People who use the service pay and people who don't use it don't have to.
And if everyone does this and it causes the whole system to collapse ... good. The arms race CFB has become needs to be blown up. Let the professional teams be professional in Alabama and Ohio State. Other schools can actually be schools with football teams, not football teams with ancillary schools attached to them.
This is my thought as well
My question will be its effect on ticket sales.
I don't hate the way TN is doing it...aside from the goofy euphamism that "talent fee" is, at least its upfront and honest.
As a consumer, I would rather this approach than simply jacking up ticket prices and leaving me to guess where the money is going.
Obviously, there will be a slew of copycats to follow, but I think quite a few Programs are going to find waning interest in paying more vs. sitting at home watching in 1080p (obviously not on ESPN+). Attendance is an issue even at successful Programs..
The broader issue I have here is that the argument for the necessity or justification for NIL has been that these athletes are generating huge, windfall profits for Universities (that no one has ever to my knowledge actually produced hard, verified evidence of--at least not revenue after costs) and they deserve a share of it.
Those goalposts have rapidly been moved to blatantly buying recruits that have never stepped foot on a college playing field (and thus never generated any profit) and leaning on fans to donate to "Collectives" and imposing increased fees (as here) to access the product. As someone above noted, none of this has any ROI whatsoever associated with it...there is just zero logic for anyone who values their money to get involved in this.
The only money I spend on college football is my annual subscription to TKP.
While helpful, it's worth considering a donation to the Hokie Club as well.
TKP, Hokie Club, Tech Football, Hulu+ Live
Hey guys, I'm selling football scout cookies; every season ticket holder has to sell 100 boxes in order to keep their seating priority. Can you please help me fulfill my obligation and buy some cookies so that i may keep my current seating plan???
This is a good idea. I should start a GoFundMe.
"I have a Beard. I like football. Give me money."
My only real thoughts on this are as follows...
You want to do this, fine, go ahead. At least its a lot more transparent in terms of being able to acquire funding to run your day to day and gives some actual accountability for your spending. If you're going to ask me to pay more to attend the games so you can buy the best players, then you better win.
At the same time, if you're going to tax me on going to games and make my active involvement in viewing college athletics a direct payment to players, then you can go fuck yourself if you even think about asking me for a donation. Choose one lane.
But we all know this is not what is going to happen. They're going to gouge us for donations just to be able to have the right spot in some mythical queue and tell us if we don't donate x thousands of dollars per year we won't be able to have the honor of seeing VT play in person only to turn around and jack ticket prices up by 10-20%, all in the name of paying players. Players who, mind you, already get a 6 figure education for no cost just because they're good at a sport.
Seems to me the answer is "all of the above", as it's the collective funding that counts.
Can't wait for the multi logoed unis and naming rights all the way down to bluechew jock straps!
I would totally buy a bluechew jock strap.
But should it be edible?
Tennessee Athletic Director Danny White
Revenue sharing ...now playing as Expense sharing
CFB Socialism
yet we all hate when the FSUs and Clemsons and Texases and Oklahomas push for asymmetric/merit-based distribution model
Yeah why don't they share that fucking revenue with the Chemistry major that Biden had to "forgive" the loan of with our tax dollars? Why don't those Tennessee students get a share of the "revenue"? And don't give me some bullshit that Joe student doesn't bring in revenue to the school. Kick everyone out of Tennessee except the ballers, and see where their ranking is, research dollars are with a student body of 800 SAT scores.
I'll be the contrarian here and say this is complete BS. This is a way to say "it's not us raising prices, it's these players"
Costs have been going up for decades and now THIS is the specific expense they choose to call out
so do the players still have to be students, or...?? i think i am just joking about that, but i am honestly not sure...
I think that is the next step.
If you all are honest- you know this is a fucking farce of the highest order. A fucking joke. There is no pretense of competitive balance or college athletics anymore. It's over. TV money killed conferences, killed the sport. It's done. A major university- in the open - with a straight face is asking fans to pay for their players. SMU got the death penalty for that not too long ago. Now, Tennessee is asking its fans to pay player salaries- in the open. Fucking joke on all levels- and all of you know it. There are families in Neyland stadium that saved, sacrified, put money for for their kids college, that can't run fast or throw a ball. They aren't the kids that are entitled to this tax, nah they are normal kids that will go on to be doctors, lawyers, etc. But they aren't entitled to taxes for money until they get their degree and get a real job. The punter though- he is entitled to those families money. Fucking joke. And I have said on here many times. Barring actual federal laws, etc... within 5 years, these players won't be students or enrolled at these universities. They will be pro players wearing that awful fucking tennnessee orange. They will be a much shittier less talented version of the Dallas Fucking Cowboys- a multi billion dollar operation you can watch on Sunday. Now you get a bullshit farce of the same thing on Saturday. Congrats America- you wanted this shit.
Logically, in any professional sport, a certain percentage of each ticket sold goes to the players.
They just need to make P4 college football a professional enterprise and remove the NIL tag on player payments. But also, set up a real league that's interested in competitive balance.
This seems like it's still just the beginning of asking for more money for college sports.
They are going to keep ratcheting it up until the fans stop paying.
Unless Tech makes a bowl that might be me, and I have had season tickets for 20 years.