(02-10-2020 10:59 AM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(02-10-2020 10:01 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(02-10-2020 09:30 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(02-09-2020 08:23 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(02-09-2020 07:58 PM)bullet Wrote:  I don't think there is much sympathy for the NCAA. A lot of people (probably a large majority) think college athletes are exploited. So I just don't think they would get votes for an exemption.

Its not about sympathy. The NCAA is seen as wrong in the pay for play dispute---but by and large---the NCAA has a pretty positive image among the public. Its college football---smiling athletes---March Madness---traditional football games on Saturdays--athletic sportsmanship---scholarships for hard working athletes and achievers. Nobody is endearing themselves to voters by damaging that or making it go away.

The idea is to figure out how to make it work better for all involved. An anittrust exemption makes the NCAA function exactly how they want it. They want it to provide free athletic scholarship opportunities for women. They want the athletes to share in the revenue. They want the current competitive balance to be relatively unchanged. They want to keep the expense side of the equation under control for public institutions. They want the kids to get an education.

An anti-trust exemption is probably the only way for it to survive in a form that's anything even remotely similar to what currently exists. There is no real desire among the public to destroy the NCAA and the educational opportunities and traditional events it offers. The public just wants the NCAA to be more fair to its student athletes...lol...oh, and they dont want have their public institutions getting in bidding wars for players and coaches. I dont know how you do that without an antitrust exemption. Hard to say its not in the public interest when you consider tax dollars are either directly or indirectly footing much of the bill.

I think federal involvement is likely, but unlikely to take the form of an anti-trust exemption in some blanket sense. As I indicated, such an exemption could empower the NCAA to regain control of football media rights, something the Power conferences would never allow.

More likely, a law will be passed to create uniformity in pay-for-play across the states, maybe just for name and likeness, maybe for paying players directly as well. But that's all it will address. This law, merely by having been passed at a later date, would naturally supersede any anti-trust provisions that would conflict with it, but otherwise leave the NCAA subject to anti-trust in other areas.

Again, there's no reason to think Title IX will factor in to this, as neither congress nor the courts would ever allow any school to use the "need" to bid for players as an excuse to shirk their T9 responsibilities, any more than they allow the "need" to bid on coaches to do the same now.

The likely effect of all this will be to just make things harder on the "middle guys", not the little guys, because FCS and below aren't going to get involved in bidding for players anyway. The "middle guys", the G5 types that are already running big structural deficits funded by student fees and institutional transfers will be squeezed even more as they strive to ante-up to chase the quixotic dream. Because part of their package-of-persuasion to lure that 3* quarterback will now have to involved some more money on top of the scholarship.

I believe that's all correct. It's an excellent point that the Power 5 actually benefit from the NCAA *not* having an antitrust exemption. I also think that there's pretty much no political willpower to give the NCAA any type of antitrust exemption: conservatives and liberals both love using the NCAA as a punching bag equally. True pay for play directly from the schools could cause Title IX issues, but that's not going to be the case for third party compensation for likenesses (which is largely what we're dealing with in the new state laws that are being passed).

It's really not that complicated: the most likely outcome is that there's a national law that allows for athletes to be compensated for their likenesses similar to the California law that was passed. No more and no less. There seems to be this hope from some fans that the federal government will somehow use this issue to intervene further into other areas of college sports and I don't think that will be the case at all. I can't emphasize this enough: the NCAA is a true bipartisan unifying issue... in that both parties can't stand the NCAA. There's little evidence that Congress is going to help them out one bit on even a single issue, much less granting them an antitrust exemption.

Except that the Olympic model won’t work for college sports, doesn’t stop the runaway coaches salaries some politicians have attacked, and probably won’t funnel a dime to 90% of student athletes (thus doesn’t really solve the problem the public would like solved). An antitrust exemption with salary caps and revenue sharing is the only thing thats going to actually solve the problem. It’s the only thing that allows the athletes to share in the revenues, protect title 9 opportunities, while providing some sort of effective cost controls (which is clearly in the public interests—certainly for the public funded institutions). It also does this while avoiding damaging the end product (college football and basketball) which the general public is quite fond of. Most any other solution likely destroys the game as Americans have come to know it. It’s also worth noting that any “solution” that would likley result in a reduction in the number of scholarship opportunities is likely a non-starter.

I don't think you can put the genie back in the bottle on coaches salaries. Plus, boosters can find away around salary caps for coaches pretty easily. They already pay the salary at some schools.

With salary cap for players you still have the incentive to cheat, just like now.