Yes, that reminds me of English Soccer a bit. How League 2 or League 1 teams sell their guys to the premier league teams.
College Football is a mess
- Thread starter pittbb80
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Didn't Memphis get probation because an assistant coach gave a player a ride to the airport? Granted, they may have been like getting Capone for tax evasion in Memphis's case, but that is how ridiculous the NCAA rules were. You reap what you sow. And you had assholes like Mark Emmert collecting millions while refusing to bring the NCAA along with the times.
Well even worse...the coaches have contracts. In the NHL, NBA, MLB, if the coach of say the Bears is in the 3rd year of his 6 year deal, and the Cowboys want to double his salary, well he can't just leave like in college where contracts are worthless. Now they can work out a trade ala Gruden, but there is compensation. In college, the coaches held all of the power until now. Now it is the players, which is also not good. Needs to be some structure and it seems like that is a CBA.
It would be fine. Very little would change. Make them employees. Give them multi-year contracts. Require that they take one class a semester. There are 2 colleges in Mexico, UNAM and UANL who have Liga MX soccer teams who use this model though I doubt the players are required to take class. They were once university teams but are now full-time pro teams owned by the schools. So while some LigaMX teams are owned by drug cartels, these are university owned. It works fine. If we can just get the cartels involved in college football, it would be a win win.
Giving athletes some even ground and freedom is a good thing
The portal is all a wash
Some will leave places like pitt for NIL
And others will leave bama and usc for playing time at places like pitt
If they're semi-pros, why do they need scholarships?
They actually have more mobility. They don’t have contracts and buyouts
Yup. Personally I’d prefer watching Pitt play at the lower level. It’s what makes college sports unique. It’s why I like colllege baseball so much more than MLB and enjoy girls softball too
Im with ya, man
I was always a CFB guy first....and passing interest in the NFL
But i found myself this season for the first time ever caring more about a league (NFL) where every team has a window to be competitive. At least giys are contract bound and a salary cap is valuable.
My hope quite frankly....is the CFB model crashes.....but even then i dont care much anymore
Coaches had power because most ADs are idiots and thought they could never find another coach who could have the same success as the current coach so they paid a ton of money with no protections. Some schools are getting smarter and putting in big buyouts if the coach leaves, Oregon would be owed 20 million if Dan Lanning left for another job.
Minor league only in the sense that it isn't the NFL. It isn't minor league in the sense that it is a lower division of pro football.
I don't (and won't) watch D3 nor Academy sports. Most sports fans don't and won't.
That isn't minor league. Its called college sports. It is no different than other college activities as they all are preparing students for their professional careers.
Now that I've read a lot more posts, I'm convinced that no one understand the implications of this. First, why would an institution of higher learning want to invest in a sports team with no ties to the school other than some "affiliation"? Second, without students the players would end up being average age 25 with no or little college and no ties to Pitt. Pitt students would have no interest in these teams because they would be about familiar to them as the Pirates. Without students and future alumni creating interest, it is just another USFL. Speaking of the USFL, can Pitt compete with the Maulers for players? Because that will be the reality. Last, there would be zero interest in HS players excepting maybe the top 50. This kills a choice for HS athletes.
They don’t have students now. Let’s be real. These kids now are mercenaries Secondly Pitt can’t compete now
Why do schools invest now and supposedly lose money. Nil and unrestricted transfer rules have drastically changed the game Regardless of what the actual solution is the current arrangement is not viable long term
Jimbo Fisher and Texas A&M says "hi". Who didn't know the moment that contract was signed, that wouldn't be a disaster.
Texas A&M has never been more than Wisconsin in college football despite as much as they try.
Jimbo Fisher is the most overrated college FB coach ever.
Think about it. COLLEGE presidents. These are supposedly smart people.
Yep. Contract law doesn't differ between the NFL and the NCAA. The only difference is in the contracts themselves. Coaches who are free to move with low or no penalty are the result of badly written contracts from the school's perspective.
Once they become employees, there will be. Why would they only get 1 year contracts? You like a player out of HS? Sign him to a 2, 3, or 4 year contract. If it becomes a true pro sport, this would only make sense and it would eliminate the portal. You are a free agent when your contract is up. There's also going to be unlimited eligibility. Maybe you can sign a HS kid to a 10 year contract with a buyout if he wants to declare for the draft. This is where this is headed. Someone like a Sam Hartman type is going to sue the NCAA claiming they are denying him the right to earn a living by setting an arbitrary 4 year eligibility limit. The NCAA has already set themselves up for this by allowing players to have 8-9 years eligibility due to injuries and pandemics.
College Football is the #2 sport in America. Even with a loose affiliation with Pitt, the football team will draw about as well as it does now. Football players would be required to take a class or 2. Most of the younger ones would probably stay on campus and eat in the cafeterias. Some would take school seriously and you'd see them in class. Again, not a perfect comparison, but there are 2 Mexican universities who own top tier (for this area of the world anyway) pro soccer teams. I cant say I know for sure how popular those teams are with the students but both teams have good fanbases. This isnt something unprecedented. Maybe you wouldn't watch this version of Pitt football anymore but I dont think this version would turn away many more Pitt fans than the current one. We arent getting 30K-40K for home games because the fans are excited that the players are taking 4-5 classes this semester. We root for the blue and gold.
Minor league football in that they have been compensated both over and under the table for decades. And, in most cases it's because they won the genetic lottery and not because of some kind of academic merit. The guise of an athletic scholarship in power 5 football is hypocrisy at it's best. Name the professional industries in the world where a group of people bring millions of dollars into an organization but don't receive but a fraction of it in return.
That's why I say follow D3 or Academy sports if you're looking for the spirit of amateurism.
These guys at the D1 level have been professionals for decades. That's why European athletes look at the NCAA model and scratch their heads.
Even without knowing about the under the table payments, if you asked European soccer players/coaches what do you call an 18-22 American football player who is paid $6000/year (cost of attendance stipend) but gets free college tuition, free housing, free food, and free health insurance, they would say that player is a pro. Are they lucratively paid pros? No. But the 6K + the incredible other free benefits has a lot of real value. Enough that I would have considered them pros even before NIL.
Your first 2 words are the operative phrase. Loose affiliations are no longer "college football" and will be doomed to fail.
First, it hasn't even been the case where most players have been paid for decades. Only the top players were paid under the table. Second, most college players are never going to play pro football. They are in it for the education. How many Pitt players don't graduate?
I've never argued that athletes should not be compensated. It IS unfair that they are the source of big money without benefits. That argument has nothing to do with making them a minor league division of the NFL.
That's the real crime. The guy who truly could find the diamond-in-the-rough, or the guy who really could coach a player up, gets hammered now. It makes it harder for that guy to maintain success and potentially land the bigger job because of it.
Well there is that buyout thingy, but as you said, schools are reluctant to uphold it, in case they want to poach someone or they feel then when they go looking for a coach, then guys will remember they wouldn't let them get out of the contract based on the buyout.
That is why I think both Jimbo Fisher and James Franklin's contracts were so insane. They are so onesided, that both could leave on their own volition with little penalty, and if they got canned, they would get their full amount as we have seen with Fisher. Where either school pays well enough and has enough stature to hire a comparable coach, yet they paint themselves in corners. It is like they are negotiating against themselves. I would love to play poker against college presidents.
They would be charged out of their compensation for the cost of attendance. Contract would define what classes a player needs to take. For now, anyway. I think that would be necessary because other employees also have to pay for classes.
The courts disagree
You can’t restrict trade prohibitively
Those contracts would get rightfully nullified in court
Jimbo doesn’t leave FSU without that guaranteed contract
So guess who actually had leverage in the negotiations ?
The bags of cash have always been there for as long as there has been college sports
It’s just open, transparent , and legal now
Top players at most schools were almost always being given something. Do you want to the difference between SEC football and ACC football? Prior to NIL, it was uncommon for if you weren't getting compensated under the table in the SEC. And, I'm talking backups.
When you say "most" are in it for the education, let me give you a summary of what a coach at West Point told me just 3 years ago. We were talking about the types of kids who make it at West Point and those who struggle in terms of football. He said point blank - "the kids who love the academy and academy life, are usually the kids that don't see the field and are not difference makers." "The kids who saw WP as their best option for football and just want to play football are the ones that are our best player more times then not."
Most kids are not initially picking a school for the "education." They're picking a college because they think they're going to the NFL. One of the most common questions I've seen college coaches ask recruits is what are your goals and most of these D1 kids say "NFL." As a matter of fact, it's a turnoff to coaches if they don't get that response. And, I'm not saying every college is like this. Obviously, schools like Stanford, Vandy, NW, etc are a bit different.
Do you know why PITT and other schools graduate kids at a high clip? Unless the kid is a complete turd - gets in trouble, never shows up to class, etc - it's almost impossible to not graduate. These kids have every damn resource available to them and are often times forced to use them. The majority of power 5 athletes are not majoring in the hard sciences, engineering, pre-med, etc.. Why? Because they have a full time job called sports.
And what if they did eventually make the players employees, and you'd have the school paying the whole roster, and it was a Super League or something, and say a large number of FBS schools INCLUDING YOURS, decide, no we're dropping football or going D3 and not going along with this, do you have interest in this league if your school is done with it, do you pick Bama or Michigan as your team? Do fans and alumni who spent a lifetime rooting for their school, pick some other team to root for? As I've said a million times, me I'm out at that point, I'll follow Pitt still, if they even have a team, I'll watch them play CMU or Muhlenberg instead of buying a Bama sweatshirt and yelling Roll Tide
So you're not really watching Pitt football because it's part of the University of Pittsburgh, but because it's the highest level below NFL?
Every contract has an out and for coaches, that usually is a buyout. The reason you don't see coaches jumping around in the NFL is because the league has rules about tampering. You would have to get the club's permission to speak to a coach. In college, there isn't such a thing. Newer coaches have higher buyouts but those are negotiated. Guys with a lot of leverage may want a smaller buyout and the schools allow it. It's just the nature of the business.
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