Is MAC Commissioner Jon Steinbrecher already caving on this?

Posted on the main realignment board ...

https://abcnews.go.com/Sports/wireStory/...-105388728

Note the last few paragraphs, posted here for those who can't get it via link, or want a short read ...

"Mid-American Conference Commissioner Jon Steinbrecher said Baker’s proposal merely defines what already exists: The power conference schools have separated themselves financially, already provide greater benefits to athletes and have some autonomy in the NCAA legislative process.

“I think probably a lot of people are saying this is the precursor of the great breakaway (of power conferences from the NCAA),” Steinbrecher said. “I would suggest to you it’s exactly the opposite. It’s taking the pressure valve off.” "

My question would be, WHO is the pressure coming off?

(12-05-2023 10:45 PM)Polish Hammer Wrote:  

(12-05-2023 05:17 PM)mufanatehc Wrote:  

(12-05-2023 02:53 PM)Garden_KC Wrote:  If the cost is going to be 30,000 per athlete an you have to give it to half your athletes both men/women and you have 300 athletes.

150 x 30,000

4.5 million dollars.

MAC schools wouldn't love it but I think they can handle it.

If you don't do it your program is effectively low major.

It doesn't require big donor money. An institution is permitted to pay the amount directly through a trust fund, which I assume can also be invested and endowed.

I don't know what happens in some of these mid tier basketball conferences like the MVC or the A10 where they have very different institutions in them.

300 student athletes is a very low number. Most mid majors hover around 450 - 500 or so, and larger programs can have around 600.

Ball State currently has approx. 460 student athletes. Therefore, they would be looking at $6.9M per year. I cannot see Ball St, nor any other university in the conference taking on that additional cost. Covering that added cost would raise Ball St's athletics budget by more than 25%.

And I thought the total scholarships average is more like 225-250, with the mandated minimum at 210. Ball State has 460 student athletes or 460 student athletes on scholarship? I’m guessing their use of “countable athlete” is for those on scholarship.

Quote: Entry into the subdivision requires a school to invest, at minimum, $30,000 per year per athlete into what is termed an “enhanced educational trust fund” for at least half of a school’s countable athletes.

Everything I've read just mentions "student-athletes", not "scholarship student athletes".

There is currently no definition of what a "countable athlete" is, unless you've found it in something I haven't seen.

(12-06-2023 03:07 PM)mufanatehc Wrote:  

(12-05-2023 10:45 PM)Polish Hammer Wrote:  

(12-05-2023 05:17 PM)mufanatehc Wrote:  

(12-05-2023 02:53 PM)Garden_KC Wrote:  If the cost is going to be 30,000 per athlete an you have to give it to half your athletes both men/women and you have 300 athletes.

150 x 30,000

4.5 million dollars.

MAC schools wouldn't love it but I think they can handle it.

If you don't do it your program is effectively low major.

It doesn't require big donor money. An institution is permitted to pay the amount directly through a trust fund, which I assume can also be invested and endowed.

I don't know what happens in some of these mid tier basketball conferences like the MVC or the A10 where they have very different institutions in them.

300 student athletes is a very low number. Most mid majors hover around 450 - 500 or so, and larger programs can have around 600.

Ball State currently has approx. 460 student athletes. Therefore, they would be looking at $6.9M per year. I cannot see Ball St, nor any other university in the conference taking on that additional cost. Covering that added cost would raise Ball St's athletics budget by more than 25%.

And I thought the total scholarships average is more like 225-250, with the mandated minimum at 210. Ball State has 460 student athletes or 460 student athletes on scholarship? I’m guessing their use of “countable athlete” is for those on scholarship.

Quote: Entry into the subdivision requires a school to invest, at minimum, $30,000 per year per athlete into what is termed an “enhanced educational trust fund” for at least half of a school’s countable athletes.

Everything I've read just mentions "student-athletes", not "scholarship student athletes".

There is currently no definition of what a "countable athlete" is, unless you've found it in something I haven't seen.

It's an already established NCAA term:

Quote:15.02.3 Counter. A "counter" includes any individual who is receiving institutional financial aid that is countable against the aid limitations in a sport. Unless an exception is satisfied, once a student-athlete becomes a counter, the student-athlete remains a counter for the entire academic year. Further, an undergraduate four-year transfer awarded athletically related financial aid shall be a counter for the period of the award (see Bylaw 15.3.3.3) unless a provision of Bylaw 15.5.1.2.1 is met. (Revised: 11/14/22)

SO it's a head-count of students who receive financial aid, not a "Full-Time-Equivalent" count ... three baseball players, one on a half ride and the other two on quarter rides are 1 FTE, but they are three counters. That means the number of bigger than the "scholarships" which, outside of FB and basketball can be sliced and diced and handed in fractional pieces to student-athletes ... but smaller than the count including all walk-ons and practice players.

It is, of course, not unusual for sports journalists to avoid jargon that would then need a boring explanation that a majority of their readers have no interest in reading.

Thanks Bruce.

A ? ... if "counters" means all student-athletes, and a program has e.g. 400, and 400 x $30,000 = $12 million per year, how many MAC members will opt out of the new highest level? Or am I reading something wrong here?

And if that does happen, is there some whay a program that loses those people to the new P6/5/4/3/2, can they get compensated? Yeah, longshot, but since the P6/5/4/3/2 did not pay for their recruitment, training, education, housing etc., game experience ... .

(12-06-2023 08:01 PM)pvk75 Wrote:  Thanks Bruce.

A ? ... if "counters" means all student-athletes, ...

It means all student-athletes with an athletic scholarship.

Quote: and a program has e.g. 400, and 400 x $30,000 = $12 million per year, how many MAC members will opt out of the new highest level? Or am I reading something wrong here?

It normally can't be all student athletes, since for Title IX reasons, Go5 schools will have a number of walk-ons on their Men's teams in particular. SO if 200 scholarships and 400 student-athletes, maybe 300 counters, $9m. If there are 200 scholarships and they are all full rides, $6m.

Given the budgets of many MAC schools, CUSA schools and a lot of the Sunbelt Schools, it wouldn't be surprising if all three ended up being opt-out conferences. The MWC and most of the AAC have budgets more around the level where they might be opting-in.

Note, however, that the $30,000 is a minimum, not an average. From what I just heard on a podcast, it takes about $12m in NIL to keep the Buckeyes roster together year to year, which is aside from the money to pull a star signing off of the portal.

Quote: And if that does happen, is there some whay a program that loses those people to the new P6/5/4/3/2, can they get compensated? Yeah, longshot, but since the P6/5/4/3/2 did not pay for their recruitment, training, education, housing etc., game experience ... .

Doesn't seem likely ... freedom for student athletes to transfer and ability to require a payment for a student-athletes "contract" are in direct opposition to each other.

Cleveland.com weighs in. Akron's AD sounds positive about it for some reason.

https://www.cleveland.com/osu/2023/12/th...grams.html

(12-09-2023 10:05 AM)Schadenfreude Wrote:  Cleveland.com weighs in. Akron's AD sounds positive about it for some reason.

https://www.cleveland.com/osu/2023/12/th...grams.html

Akron is OK with how football is since they don't compete anyway. They're more concerned with the NCAA basketball tournament and he likely thinks this division will not change anything. I don't think basketball will remain untouched.

(12-09-2023 11:37 AM)WesternDave Wrote:  

(12-09-2023 10:05 AM)Schadenfreude Wrote:  Cleveland.com weighs in. Akron's AD sounds positive about it for some reason.

https://www.cleveland.com/osu/2023/12/th...grams.html

Akron is OK with how football is since they don't compete anyway. They're more concerned with the NCAA basketball tournament and he likely thinks this division will not change anything. I don't think basketball will remain untouched.

The non-DACS side says that Division 1 schools that aren't in the DAC Subdivision still are allowed to pay direct NIL compensation.

In part, this may be laying the groundwork for a settlement of the House litigation, where claimants are suing on the basis that media contracts are 75% football, 15% MBB, 5% WBB and 5% everything else, and that student athletes are owed for the NIL component of that value, which they claim is 10%, so 7.5% of media revenue are owed to the FB players, 1.5% to the MBB players, 0.5% to the WBB players, and 0.5% to everyone else.

For a big money conference with a $500m media contract, that's around $30,000 per FB player, $40,000 per MBB player, $14m per WBB player and substantially less for everyone else. The DAC subdivision is then setting things up to pay a $30,000 "minimum wage" into a trust fund for half of scholarship athletes, and easily allows topping up the MBB (and WBB, for TitleIX compliance) to $40,000 through NIL.

The big risk of the DAC Subdivision for non DACS conference schools is that they will hog all of the good players in every sport. The way that the proposal is set up, for DACs schools there is a "luxury tax" of $15,000 for every student added to scholarship in any break-even or subsidy sport, and when get beyond the really rich big stadium P4 schools into the mid-tier and bottom-tier P4 schools, that is a brake that discourages them from going hog wild with the scholarship offers they make in break-even and subsidy sports.

It should also be kept in mind that changes are coming via court and legislative action, so the assessment of any proposal is not whether it is better than what we have already, but how it compares to the other possible future systems, because the one thing we know is that it's not going to be possible to keep doing what we have been doing up to this point.

(12-09-2023 10:05 AM)Schadenfreude Wrote:  Cleveland.com weighs in. Akron's AD sounds positive about it for some reason.

https://www.cleveland.com/osu/2023/12/th...grams.html

Ohio State is saying this is going to cost them an additional 15 million dollars beyond the 6 million they are already paying for the 5,800 tuition stipend they are paying athletes since they have 1,000 of them.

There is no way OSU is going to agree to upping the minimum in a few years to 90,000 which would cost them 42 million a year. Cutting too much into profit margins when the B1G TV deal is only worth 60 mil per school.

30k if it becomes the standard would stay for a great while IMO.

(12-11-2023 09:09 AM)Garden_KC Wrote:  

(12-09-2023 10:05 AM)Schadenfreude Wrote:  Cleveland.com weighs in. Akron's AD sounds positive about it for some reason.

https://www.cleveland.com/osu/2023/12/th...grams.html

Ohio State is saying this is going to cost them an additional 15 million dollars beyond the 6 million they are already paying for the 5,800 tuition stipend they are paying athletes since they have 1,000 of them.

Note that if NIL collectives come in house, the $12m that the NIL collective(s) spend on keeping the OSU football roster together could also be donations to the school-managed NIL fund, so not all of the $15m has to come out of the existing budget.

However, smaller stadium schools in the Big Ten will be under more budget pressure. So one thing that this system would do would be to reduce the arms race on coaching salaries.

(12-05-2023 07:30 PM)Jerry Weaver Wrote:  

(12-05-2023 05:59 PM)NIU007 Wrote:  

(12-05-2023 05:27 PM)AllBronco Wrote:  

(12-05-2023 10:44 AM)Polish Hammer Wrote:  Always thought the haves and have nots would eventually separate as we're all supposedly fighting for the same prize under vastly different resources, so this is an interesting way to do it.

https://sports.yahoo.com/ncaa-proposing-...51537.html

This and NIL is the kind of sh@t that is causing me to lose interest in college sports.

Yep, me too. I'll wait and see what happens but I don't like how it's going.

Guys, did we EVER start a football or basketball season actually thinking a MAC team could actually win a National championship? This new division will undoubtedly suck up the big TV money, but we are still going to have fun football to watch in the MAC.

I live within walking distance from the Big House in Ann Arbor. A game ticket there costs more than my season ticket 6 miles west in Ypsilanti and I cannot fathom how many people pay $70 just to park around U-M stadium.

MAC stadiums have good football, I have seen Josh Allen, Maxx Crosby, Kareem Hunt and Sky Moore play in Ypsilanti as well as many others. Let the BIG BOYS spend all the money and gouge their fans, we will be just fine. Just my opinion.

Could we start an Uber-like service to get folks to the game,, not any game but one of those UofM parking spots which cost $70 games??

(12-11-2023 12:52 PM)BruceMcF Wrote:  

(12-11-2023 09:09 AM)Garden_KC Wrote:  

(12-09-2023 10:05 AM)Schadenfreude Wrote:  Cleveland.com weighs in. Akron's AD sounds positive about it for some reason.

https://www.cleveland.com/osu/2023/12/th...grams.html

Ohio State is saying this is going to cost them an additional 15 million dollars beyond the 6 million they are already paying for the 5,800 tuition stipend they are paying athletes since they have 1,000 of them.

Note that if NIL collectives come in house, the $12m that the NIL collective(s) spend on keeping the OSU football roster together could also be donations to the school-managed NIL fund, so not all of the $15m has to come out of the existing budget.

However, smaller stadium schools in the Big Ten will be under more budget pressure. So one thing that this system would do would be to reduce the arms race on coaching salaries.

That 12m for football can help with the FB counters but in OSUs case not a very high percentage of the overall counters.

If this will hurt the smaller programs in the B1G while a drop in the bucket for OSU the B1G commissioner will feel pressure not to escalate the minimum requirement on the sake of its weaker members.

Its very early on this concept. I wouldn't be surprised if what passes is more watered down in terms of the spending requirement or has limits on trust fund usage.

(12-11-2023 03:33 PM)Garden_KC Wrote:  

(12-11-2023 12:52 PM)BruceMcF Wrote:  

(12-11-2023 09:09 AM)Garden_KC Wrote:  

(12-09-2023 10:05 AM)Schadenfreude Wrote:  Cleveland.com weighs in. Akron's AD sounds positive about it for some reason.

https://www.cleveland.com/osu/2023/12/th...grams.html

Ohio State is saying this is going to cost them an additional 15 million dollars beyond the 6 million they are already paying for the 5,800 tuition stipend they are paying athletes since they have 1,000 of them.

Note that if NIL collectives come in house, the $12m that the NIL collective(s) spend on keeping the OSU football roster together could also be donations to the school-managed NIL fund, so not all of the $15m has to come out of the existing budget.

However, smaller stadium schools in the Big Ten will be under more budget pressure. So one thing that this system would do would be to reduce the arms race on coaching salaries.

That 12m for football can help with the FB counters but in OSUs case not a very high percentage of the overall counters. ...

Yeah, before making "not very high percentage" claims, it helps to do the math.

85 FB scholarships and 13 MBB scholarships among, say, 300-500 students on scholarship, and therefore 150-250 students that have to be on trust funds would be 40%-67% of the total ... so $5m-$9m that has to come out of the existing budget, with the balance already being funded by contributions to NIL collectives that are going to be coming to the school once more.

The Big Ten and SEC schools can pay that increment out of the incremental media revenue that is already set to be showing up. I would be guessing the ACC/Big12 can do that with some or all of the increment, and if they have to pull some of their existing budgets, it's clearly a routine budgeting shift.

For Go5 schools, which much smaller media revenues meaning much smaller dollar value from their contract escalators, they would have to squeeze much more of it out of existing revenue streams. The $80m-$100m budget Go5 schools seem like they would be able to do it, for the $50m and less budget Go5 schools, it's a lot less likely.