Pantherlair men and women, and I hope this is shared on the main board by someone like @DT_PITT I became aware that Will Jeffress is the ONLY panther without some sort of NIL. Even Aiden Fisch has something. So my idea is to have a panther lair NIL fund for him. Even if it’s a couple hundred a month would be cool to have a sponsored player, maybe could give Will some much needed confidence and support one of the Panthers. Thoughts and ideas?
Will Jeffress - NIL
- Thread starter BballinsiderfromPitt
- Start date
His mom is a doctor and his dad is a professor. It is unnecessary to go through these lengths to get the kid $250/month.
No one said it was necessary to just get the kid money. I think it is necessary for a variety of reasons
1) he’s the only kid without any NIL
2) it could be a free meal once a week at a restaurant for a tweet
3) boost some confidence
4) it would be cool to have a Pantherlair sponsored player
If you don’t want to participate or have ideas, fine. Hop out of the thread then. I am not even a fan of his game but I’m hoping he gets the confidence to take a giant leap forward
Would you say the same thing if Jordan Addison's parents where making big money?
I hope this is just your attempt to get SMF riled up. I know this is a Pitt Basketball forum but to ask people to donate to a NIL fund so a kid can hopeful make a couple of jump shots is pretty absurb.
May I suggest that if you have extra money laying around there are legitimate funds out there offering support for the victims of the Robb Elementary shooting, Buffalo grocery store shooting and aid to the Ukranians to name a few.
That has nothing to do with it. If there's anyone on the Pitt team that deserves an extra kick-in of money to help with his education, it's Will. His parents' money and how much they make is irrelevant.
Why not fund a buyout instead?
I'm asking SMF, he seems to oppose it, I'm just wondering if he opposes it because of his parent's wealth or because he's not a great player? Myself, I oppose the whole NIL thing, I'd be good if all college football/basketball just became D3 at this point, not even scholarships.
No because Jordan Addison is worth several million dollars to his football team. Jeffress is not. He is not an ACC level player and providing a couple free meals seems pretty stupid since he comes from a wealthy family.
I oppose NIL as well. I thought these were amateurs who don't get paid to play, except they have scholarships to attend college and get a degree. Yeah, right! I doubt 10% of scholarship football and basketball players ever get their degrees and graduate. College sports, especially football and basketball, are a farce.
The graduate rate is actually 89% for FBS football players and 84% for D1 basketball players, respectively. It’s very easy information to look up.
Artificially inflated, of course. The point is the term "student-athlete" is farcical and should be eliminated. Very few of these kids playing major D-1 sports are students. At least not in the way it was intended. Yes, they go to "class". And yes, many may "graduate". But most never did the work. Those graduation rates you cited are meaningless.
So you don’t actually care about whether they graduate. You’ve decided that they don’t meet whatever definition you’ve created for whatever you’ve decided it means to be a “student-athlete.”
So if that’s the case, why did you use graduation as your metric, and why’d you create that 10% number out of thin air?
To be fair, a large number of athletes are passed through. I'm not against that or anything, just saying that they HAVE to graduate or the team is banned from the post-season so they make sure they graduate
Of course I care whether they graduate. The point that you're obviously missing is that in any other scenario, they wouldn't graduate if it weren't for athletics. Most of them, with some exceptions, couldn't do the work successfully in a true academic program and make the grades to graduate. But somehow, they do graduate. That's why I said the numbers you gave are artificial.
How many of them would graduate if they had to pass courses in Economics, basic Algebra, Physics, Biology, Psychology, Literature, or many academic courses? Very few. They're too busy playing sports, practicing, lifting, and studying playbooks.
I don't expect you to agree with me. The myopia of D-1 sports is mind-numbing. It's just what college sports has turned into now.
True. That's why graduation rates, if you can call them that, are artificially high. If they weren't, there wouldn't be many schools in the post-season. But that's D-1 college sports.
Last I checked, university general education requirements apply to every student, athlete or non-athlete. At Pitt, that includes (but is not limited to) one literature class, two math classes including algebra, one social science class (which could be psychology) and three natural science classes. Seems like we’ve checked off pretty much every course you listed, except for economics. And, if it isn’t obvious, you do need to pass all of those classes to graduate.
Get real! Except in possibly schools like Stanford and ND (and even they are suspect of shenanigans), academic requirements are lenient and not enforced. Courses are taken in each category that are automatic pass classes. These primadonna athletes are treated with kid gloves because the schools have to force their graduation or they don't go to the post season.
But you keep believing what you want to believe. You're nieve if you do.
The more I read discussions of NIL the more I want to see Universities either drop all sports or go D3, play schools within a 50 mile radius, pay the coaches high school gym teacher money, call it a voluntary activity and give zero athletic scholarships.
Sorry, I misspelled it, oh board spelling police.
Naive. There, is that better? Petty stuff.
I think its somewhere in the middle of your and pittchaggs argument.
Many of the athletes are given a bit of special privilege. Some are passed thru.
But i think that's actually rarer and most kids have to put in the work and do because they aren't going pro.
And some that are going pro are just really bright kids who want to do the work
For comparison, the 6 year graduation rate for public institutions is 58%, and for private institutions, it is 65%. Even if the rate is inflated for athletes, it is in the range of all students.
It’s “inflated “ because athletes get a bunch of extra academic support other students don’t
to make sure they make grades -
They aren’t passed through , that’s nonsense .
Hey, to be fair if you are trying to make a point it's a lot easier to just make stuff up than to actually check the facts.
Facts can be scary sometimes.
Does Will even want NIL? Seems like the kid who is focused on education and hoops. Everything we want in a student athlete. Maybe he thinks NIL is a waste of what little time he has?
And to be fair, given the number of hours they are expected to devote to their sport, the academic support programs are essential.
There are a hell of a lot of kids who don't really need that are getting it.
I won't donate because
I am not in favor of the
whole NIL concept in
general. However I
feel the OP's original
suggestion is a good
thought especially the
idea of getting behind
a player and supporting
him. Supporting him (not
financial) and helping him
gain "some much needed
confidence" is a good
thing.
Just my 2 cents.
I am not in favor of the
whole NIL concept in
general. However I
feel the OP's original
suggestion is a good
thought especially the
idea of getting behind
a player and supporting
him. Supporting him (not
financial) and helping him
gain "some much needed
confidence" is a good
thing.
Just my 2 cents.
Why shouldn’t student athletes be able to benefit from their name image and likeness?
Nothing really, until it got to the point that they can leave and go somewhere else the split second any random person offers them 10 cents more.
