Why not institute an RFA clause like the pro leagues have. It may not help much, but if everything can get put out into the public and teams could match offers, it could help limit some movement and chaos. Allow for transfer clauses (e.g., if a player plays in less than 5 games in a season), they may transfer.
If college players want to be paid like professionals…
- Thread starter Pitt666
- Start date
I’m sure players might be willing to negotiate that as part of a collective bargaining agreement. The issue is that the schools don’t want to collectively bargain without the legislature saying that they can do that without the players being considered to be employees.
Every issue that we’re experiencing right now in this marketplace can be traced back to the fact that the universities don’t want players to be employees, so everything that’s happened has been this delicate dance to try to do employer/employee things without that relationship.
Every issue that we’re experiencing right now in this marketplace can be traced back to the fact that the universities don’t want players to be employees, so everything that’s happened has been this delicate dance to try to do employer/employee things without that relationship.
Contracts would have to be part of the deal. Otherwise, this whole thing will just recalibrate itself and the same advantages/disadvantages will exist - just at higher dollar amounts.
Now: Pitt offers guy $100,000 in NIL. Michigan offers $200,000. He goes to Michigan.
If schools pay players: Pitt offers $100,000 base salary + $100,000 in NIL. Michigan offers $100,000 in base salary + $200,000 in NIL. He goes to Michigan.
If anything, the disadvantages will only be exacerbated, because Pitt may have to redirect NIL funding to it's general athletic fund (or consolidate them), whereas the BIG/SEC schools should bring in plenty of conference money to cover the "salary cap," and they'll be able to continue to encourage fan donations strictly to NIL.
Of course the other option would be that NIL is somehow wrangled into what it's supposed to be (market value for name, image, and likeness), as opposed to continuing to function as pay for play. But yes - without some form of contracts, I think this whole thing is incredibly stupid.
Now: Pitt offers guy $100,000 in NIL. Michigan offers $200,000. He goes to Michigan.
If schools pay players: Pitt offers $100,000 base salary + $100,000 in NIL. Michigan offers $100,000 in base salary + $200,000 in NIL. He goes to Michigan.
If anything, the disadvantages will only be exacerbated, because Pitt may have to redirect NIL funding to it's general athletic fund (or consolidate them), whereas the BIG/SEC schools should bring in plenty of conference money to cover the "salary cap," and they'll be able to continue to encourage fan donations strictly to NIL.
Of course the other option would be that NIL is somehow wrangled into what it's supposed to be (market value for name, image, and likeness), as opposed to continuing to function as pay for play. But yes - without some form of contracts, I think this whole thing is incredibly stupid.
Because they'd be part of the negotiations in that $24M salary cap deal, or whatever the number was. I'm sure the number of guys making modest/good NIL money right now far outnumbers the mercenaries who are pulling in astronomical deals. This would set a nice floor for them.
But I mean you could be right and we might just see the payers paid by the schools with no contractual obligations attached. That would kind of suck.
Protection. The same way that pro athletes want a multi-year contract - they want guaranteed money over the life of their career and protection from the team dropping them without financial penalty.
pittdan77
Athletic Director
It's fear of the long-term costs, legal issues, and how athletes, as employees, fit into the grand scheme of things at a school.
Because right now, the colleges are getting millions of dollars of free labor. Yes, the kids are getting paid via NIL but this is done by third parties. The colleges only pay for the scholarships, room/board, and other incidentals related to competition.
If the kids are employees, the colleges have to pay them as such. You can't get around your payment obligations to an employee by having a third party pay them instead. And then you also have all kids of legal issues that come with the employer-employee relationship: minimum wage, overtime, tax withholding, benefits, etc.
Football and men's basketball are the best case scenario since at least those mostly make money for schools. But if some student athletes are employees, why not all? Soon you're paying six figures annually in cash and non-cash comp for every kid on the swim team. It would be a huge financial sinkhole for colleges.
If these new changes go through, I don't know that schools wouldn't want to make them employees. I could see why they wouldn't have wanted to in the past, because they didn't have to pay them salaries. But the only reasons I could possibly think of now (with these changes in mind) would be:
1) The ability to unionize would get pretty annoying with kids that age.
2) There might be some type of retroactive ramifications that could open up multiple cans of worms. Although maybe the settlement would nip that in the bud.
But I would guess they will soon be employees, which would probably be better for the schools than having a bunch of independent subcontractors running wild. If you're going to be paying them anyway, might as well be some structure to it.
pittdan77
Athletic Director
I think the other reason is that there are universities that want to stay at the top level of D1 but will step backwards if they had to make athletes employees. There's a hard break point somewhere that it won't make sense.
The schools are tired of not having total control over NIL so it will be coming in house in the next year and the collectives will still be important but they will be diminished.
I'm sure it will also lead to some fun backlash when the 3rd string WDE is making more than most of the tenured professors
Is that sustainable, some crappy bench warmer college football player who never sees the field making 6 figures, will the schools still make a profit? If not, I wouldn't do it.I'm sure it will also lead to some fun backlash when the 3rd string WDE is making more than most of the professors
And?
There is no putting the horse back in the barn on this one and schools are just trying to make the best of it.
There will probably be some consolidations efforts. But the salary cap is what it is, so schools can only pay up to that amount. They'll still need the collectives to exist to go above and beyond it. It probably won't matter as much for the non big boys, because they'll have enough trouble just getting up to that salary cap.
Football will be profitable. The question is what will happen to other sports but IMO it is not football or basketball's job to worry about that.
NIL is going to be the loophole to the salary cap and schools are already planning on how to make it work.
Yeah, I think we're saying the same thing.
It's just that some schools won't even have to worry about finding loopholes because they won't even be able to max out the salary cap, let alone go beyond it.
Everything will be run through the school and even collectives will start to coordinate with the athletic department. Schools are already hiring people to fill the roles but are giving them creative titles till everything becomes legal.
Each school is going to have to decide what sports they want to prioritize and what sports they want to be good at. The nut of it is football is the money maker so it will be tough seeing schools at least not trying to maximize the investment. I know that if I worked in college athletics and I could not describe my job and duties in a few words I would updating my resume and looking for a new job.
They are not employees yet and wont be until a few lawsuits from now. So the wild west of pay for play NIL will continue.
How has that worked for coaches ? Who are actually contracted and are professionals?
The schools and the NCAA have spent so much time crying to the legislature to declare that student-athletes aren’t employees, that they’ve missed the opportunity to create the natural and sensible framework and compromise: the legislature declares that football and basketball players - and only those athletes - are employees, but that the remainder of a school’s student athletes are not employees, but can receive compensation via NIL.
The fact that they haven’t pretty much proves how dead set the schools are to thwart any attempt at employee declaration. The schools’ position is totally absurd, and will likely be their downfall.
How could they exclude other athletes and be compliant with title 9 ?
Lots of regulatory and legislative hurdles to enact your concept
I hear you. But they’re asking the legislature to fix this with new legislation. Title IX is a piece of legislation. I would assume that this new piece of legislation would also amend (or add an exemption) to Title IX that resolves the contradiction. There are already a host of exemptions in Title IX (permitting single-sex fraternities and sororities, etc.). No doubt that there are a ton of hurdles.
The ncaa doesn’t want to “fix “ anything
They want to keep leeching their piece of the pie while adding absolutely zero value .
pittdan77
Athletic Director
I'm pretty certain that Title IX applies to employees. I'm not sure how you carve out an exemption without a ton of unintended consequences.
What about Title IX? Is that out the window? Won't they have to pay for some women's sports?
Women's sports will continue the same way they are now and the revenue sharing part of Title IX is going to be settled in the courts shortly and it sounds like schools are gearing up to share the majority of the $22 million with the revenue generating sports. The House settlement is a great example with roughly 90% after attorneys fees going to D1 football and D1 men's basketball players.
The original intent of Title IX was about women academics and pay. It certainly does apply to employees.
When they become employees in a few years, there will be a CBA and a salary cap.
"Pay for play" NIL will count towards the cap so you wont see any pay for play NIL. If a player signs a legit real marketing deal, then that wont count towards the cap. Who will decide what is legit and what isnt? A 2nd grader because its obvious.
The NFL has rules against skirting the salary cap these ways. The NCAA will do the same.
Do the NFL rules only prevent a team from paying the players and calling it advertising, or do they include these random yokel collectives? If the TB12 thing was able to thrive, I can't imagine they have some list of airtight commandments.
The language says something like non-salary pay from the team or team representatives counts towards the cap. Now, lets say a Steeler fan collective, which isnt officially affiliated with the team starts paying players to stay instead of leaving for better offers in free agency....it seems pretty obvious that the other owners would consider them team representatives and disallow it. There's a reason fans dont pay players directly in the pros. The CBA's wont allow it.
I don't know that it would be officially disallowed, though. I think people don't do it because it seems silly to give large quantities of money to people who already have tens of millions banked. But you could be right.
