04-07-2022, 05:08 PM
First, the troubles within the PAC over how to adjust to the Alston ruling:
https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/04/07/p...nds-alone/
Wilner doesn't seem positive that the PAC could weather the transition to NIL and, possibly, pay-for-play as a collective.
Excerpt:
https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/04/06/a...ing-trail/
Wow.
Quote:Falling: Pac-12 presidents and chancellors
Yet more evidence has surfaced this week to suggest conference leadership is hesitant to plunge into the world of compensation for athletes.
Last June, the Supreme Court ruled in Alston vs. NCAA that universities could provide up to $5,980 annually in academic-related compensation. This could come in the form of equipment and supplies or payments in exchange for classroom achievement.
Within months, the SEC presidents voted to allow schools to determine their methods for providing academic rewards; the conference then went public with the collective show of support.
Thus far, the Pac-12 has remained quiet. A conference source said the presidents, as a group, are wary of following the SEC’s path.
“(Commissioner George) Kliavkoff is doing as good a job as anyone could do under the circumstances,” the source said, “but it didn’t have the support.”
More details on the topic surfaced this week, when ESPN published a list of schools that have “plans in place” to provide academic bonuses this year.
Only three Pac-12 schools are committed to the process of rewarding players for classroom achievement, per ESPN: Colorado, Washington and Oregon.
Over in the SEC, there are 10. (If you include Oklahoma and Texas, which are set the join the league in a few years, the total rises to 12 of 16 schools.)
“We’re limiting ourselves,” the Pac-12 source said.
College athletics entered a new era last summer with the legalization of compensation to athletes for academic performance (via the Alston case) and through promotional opportunities in the private sector (name, image and likeness).
Both carry massive recruiting implications even if they aren’t supposed to be used as recruiting inducements.
In each case, Pac-12 campuses are moving more deliberately than many peers:
Only three schools reportedly are set to make cash payments for academic achievement, and several lack the donor collectives that underpin NIL endeavors.
For both matters, the willpower begins at the top, with the presidents and chancellors.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/04/07/p...nds-alone/
Wilner doesn't seem positive that the PAC could weather the transition to NIL and, possibly, pay-for-play as a collective.
Excerpt:
Quote:In the world of NIL, the rules of engagement are blurred, NCAA oversight is non-existent, and the cheating that used to occur under the table is now in plain sight — inevitable, unstoppable and, it appears, perfectly acceptable.
NIL opportunities weren’t supposed to be dangled as recruiting inducements for transfers or high school players but … wouldn’t you know it … are being dangled as recruiting inducements for transfers and high school players.
In fact, that has quickly become their primary purpose.
And at the highest levels of Pac-12 power, there are questions about the path forward — and if there should even be a path forward.
Should the schools become immersed in aspects of NIL that contradict the spirit of amateurism still alive in Ivory Towers across the conference?
“Some schools want to pursue football and basketball at the highest level,’’ a source said. “Other schools think that approach is destructive.”
If NIL remains unchecked for years to come — the NCAA has asked Congress for help regulating the marketplace — the Pac-12 eventually could cease to exist as we know it.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/04/06/a...ing-trail/
Wow.