Another thread on this forum links to a list of "NIL Collectives" in FBS. The very term NIL Collective is an oxymoron. It can't be both NIL and a collective at the same time. Instead these are just ways to pay athletes to play for specific schools without leaving the university's fingerprints on the checks.

SCOTUS essentially declared the longstanding fig leaf of amateurism in college sports to be dead, but they didn't suggest a better construct. In its ineptitude, the NCAA has made virtually no attempt to establish a new model that reflects the political and economic realities of 2022. So other stakeholders are rushing to fill that void, and because the NCAA itself isn't quite dead yet, those stakeholders are still trying to fit square pegs into round holes.

Even worse, self serving politicians (are there other kinds?) are hastily inserting themselves into the process, and how confident should any of us be that they will find a good solution for college sports? We don't need tweaking of old ideas. We need to blow up the system and start from scratch.

Further complicating things is the question of what the proper relationship is/should be between athletes and the schools they represent. Are they employees? Contractors? Something else? Whichever they are, should all athletes and sports be looked at through a single lens, and treated/compensated equally, or should some get a bigger share of the pie commensurate with their role in baking it?

We need to start that process of fixing this mess by recognizing that college sports at the highest levels are only marginally related to the tax-exempt educational missions of the schools they benefit. Most fans and even administrators now agree that athletes responsible for generating obscene amounts of revenue should benefit from that. They can't agree which athletes those are and how much of those revenues should rightly go to them.

Here's your chance to suggest a big picture solution by thinking outside the box.

(08-07-2022 12:12 PM)ken d Wrote:  Another thread on this forum links to a list of "NIL Collectives" in FBS. The very term NIL Collective is an oxymoron. It can't be both NIL and a collective at the same time. Instead these are just ways to pay athletes to play for specific schools without leaving the university's fingerprints on the checks.

SCOTUS essentially declared the longstanding fig leaf of amateurism in college sports to be dead, but they didn't suggest a better construct. In its ineptitude, the NCAA has made virtually no attempt to establish a new model that reflects the political and economic realities of 2022. So other stakeholders are rushing to fill that void, and because the NCAA itself isn't quite dead yet, those stakeholders are still trying to fit square pegs into round holes.

Even worse, self serving politicians (are there other kinds?) are hastily inserting themselves into the process, and how confident should any of us be that they will find a good solution for college sports? We don't need tweaking of old ideas. We need to blow up the system and start from scratch.

Further complicating things is the question of what the proper relationship is/should be between athletes and the schools they represent. Are they employees? Contractors? Something else? Whichever they are, should all athletes and sports be looked at through a single lens, and treated/compensated equally, or should some get a bigger share of the pie commensurate with their role in baking it?

We need to start that process of fixing this mess by recognizing that college sports at the highest levels are only marginally related to the tax-exempt educational missions of the schools they benefit. Most fans and even administrators now agree that athletes responsible for generating obscene amounts of revenue should benefit from that. They can't agree which athletes those are and how much of those revenues should rightly go to them.

Here's your chance to suggest a big picture solution by thinking outside the box.

JRsec would be a good one to answer this, IMO.

For many years the NCAA has focused its compliance efforts with the intent of preventing boosters from giving their school an unfair recruiting advantage. I get that they have good intentions on that score. Unlike MLB, the NFL and NBA the NCAA does not have the ability to impose a talent draft or salary caps or luxury taxes in order to impose some semblance of competition that professional leagues understand are critical to keeping fan bases engaged and playoff races viable deep into regular season play.

Now, SCOTUS seems to have blown the NCAA's efforts out of the water. Maybe, the NCAA should concede defeat and just let conferences police themselves. Just accept that schools with rich boosters will compete with each other to buy the best talent they can afford. That's always been the case anyway. And salary caps and luxury taxes and free agency haven't kept teams like the Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers and a handful of others from dominating MLB any more than NCAA policies have kept a small number of schools like Alabama, Ohio State, USC, Michigan, Oklahoma, etc. from dominating football championships.

Everybody believes that football players and men's basketball players- especially P5 players - should get a fair share of the revenue they generate from their efforts and skills. Some believe they already are getting a fair share through scholarships.
Some believe all scholarship athletes should be treated the same no matter what sport they play. IMO, we need to first resolve those differences of opinion before designing a system that gets athletes fair - not necessarily equal - compensation for the contribution they make toward the success of their schools and conferences.