Everyone is thinking about it but it seems like the national media doesn’t want to talk about it much. College football is a money making machine and it’s high time the players got paid for their part. There are lots of arguments for and against this idea. The arguments against it are largely retrograde meritless boomer-speak jive. This post is about how it could and should become a reality and how it could positively remake the sport and the culture surrounding it. I’ll outline some basic thoughts swirling around the interwebz and then look at some specific coaches and sports personalities' thoughts on the situation. Per usual, this is real talk. Don’t bring your whining and crying, just bring the facts.
Say what you will about the current staff at the NYT but they are still the standard in good journalism. Read this article and understand it before spouting off at the mouth with your opinion. In a nutshell, the supreme court is about to tell the NCAA to grow up. Compensation for athletes is going to expand dramatically and they should end up with the right to license their likenesses. This doesn’t open the door to outright paying players but it definitely provides an avenue for proponents of paying players to move forward and make their case.
Here is an article from the WSJ that goes into significantly more detail about what is happening at the state level to provide athletes with more opportunities to profit from their efforts. In California they want to let athletes get paid by third parties if they are good enough to do so. The NCAA is caving on this issue and good for them. Welcome to the 21st century. Simply put, this will allow athletes to get paid to do just about anything. Boosters could pay athletes for being in commercials for their businesses or big brands could license an athlete’s name, image, or likeness for a product or design. This is a pandora’s box of sorts but, in the end, it is not only fair and the right thing to do, but it will create parity in college football and basketball. The NCAA should focus on what the regulation of this will look like. How can it be used to make sports better for athletes and fans alike?
Federal legislation could also pave the way for universities to pay athletes directly. This is the answer. Let players make a base salary relative to their tenure on a team. Regulate that across divisions and cap it. Then, apply a performance based bonus structure with set amounts for certain things (like a sack, a dunk, or an interception) and no upper limit on the total amount you can make for ballin’ out. Within 5 years, this would level the playing field across the power 5 conferences and make college football as entertaining (almost) to watch as the NFL in terms of the on-the-field product. Players are going to go where they can immediately play and make money. This will eliminate the hyper-depth at the few top schools and allow the traditionally non-competitive teams to actually compete. It would also allow for a more expansive playoff system that could generate hundreds of millions of dollars in increased revenue when compared to the current bowl system. This idea and competing ideas is a lot to tackle in written form but here is a great piece from Bleacher Report on the subject. Dan Levy does a great job here thinking through how it might work. Keep in mind, this is an older article (2013) and a lot has changed in the 7 years since it was written.
How do coaches feel about this? Well, we know Dabo don’t like it one durn bit! He even threatened to quit over it. This makes sense though. He makes millions a year under the current system and is a classic example of the change-is-bad mentality that is pervasive in every facet of American life. He’s known for being ridiculous (just look at the whole ranking OSU #11 and then getting destroyed by them in the Sugar Bowl debacle). What about other big name coaches? Saban’s stance has been consistently vanilla. He tends to just defer to the NCAA. Brian Kelly is similarly bland about it. Spurrier has been vocal about paying players for a long time. Anyone who has ever heard Steve Spurrier speak knows he is one of the sharpest guys to ever work in the business of football. His idea is fairly simple; pay the players generating the revenue.
I asked Chris Clark earlier this week on the Insider’s Forum if he had the scoop on Shane Beamer’s thoughts on this. Hopefully the guys will dig into that soon. It is my hope that HBC Shane falls in the progressive camp on this. Not only is it simply a good thing for athletes, it would give Carolina an advantage in the arms race of college football.
I have had this debate with a number of people over the last few years. The thinking on this subject generally falls into two camps. The first is the logical folks who see it as inevitable and a big positive. These people generally acknowledge that D1 football and basketball are basically minor league sports with a deeply connected fanbase. Amateurism is a joke in the 21st century. Let’s make sports better and more fun. The second camp is the retrograde “they get paid a college education der der der duhhhh in my day we had to drink our beer out of bowls and they kept the women where they belong; in dresses” bad attitude group who survive by gulping from the urinal of nostalgia. Kidding aside, I would challenge anyone who disagrees with paying players to provide an articulate reasoning for it. The only articulate responses I can find stem from the idea that it would bankrupt smaller schools. This makes no sense. Schools could ultimately choose who to pay, if they want to pay anyone at all. Then, the players can decide where they want to go play based on the myriad of factors that go into that decision. That’s this new concept called the free market.
Real talk. Come at me.
Say what you will about the current staff at the NYT but they are still the standard in good journalism. Read this article and understand it before spouting off at the mouth with your opinion. In a nutshell, the supreme court is about to tell the NCAA to grow up. Compensation for athletes is going to expand dramatically and they should end up with the right to license their likenesses. This doesn’t open the door to outright paying players but it definitely provides an avenue for proponents of paying players to move forward and make their case.
Here is an article from the WSJ that goes into significantly more detail about what is happening at the state level to provide athletes with more opportunities to profit from their efforts. In California they want to let athletes get paid by third parties if they are good enough to do so. The NCAA is caving on this issue and good for them. Welcome to the 21st century. Simply put, this will allow athletes to get paid to do just about anything. Boosters could pay athletes for being in commercials for their businesses or big brands could license an athlete’s name, image, or likeness for a product or design. This is a pandora’s box of sorts but, in the end, it is not only fair and the right thing to do, but it will create parity in college football and basketball. The NCAA should focus on what the regulation of this will look like. How can it be used to make sports better for athletes and fans alike?
Federal legislation could also pave the way for universities to pay athletes directly. This is the answer. Let players make a base salary relative to their tenure on a team. Regulate that across divisions and cap it. Then, apply a performance based bonus structure with set amounts for certain things (like a sack, a dunk, or an interception) and no upper limit on the total amount you can make for ballin’ out. Within 5 years, this would level the playing field across the power 5 conferences and make college football as entertaining (almost) to watch as the NFL in terms of the on-the-field product. Players are going to go where they can immediately play and make money. This will eliminate the hyper-depth at the few top schools and allow the traditionally non-competitive teams to actually compete. It would also allow for a more expansive playoff system that could generate hundreds of millions of dollars in increased revenue when compared to the current bowl system. This idea and competing ideas is a lot to tackle in written form but here is a great piece from Bleacher Report on the subject. Dan Levy does a great job here thinking through how it might work. Keep in mind, this is an older article (2013) and a lot has changed in the 7 years since it was written.
How do coaches feel about this? Well, we know Dabo don’t like it one durn bit! He even threatened to quit over it. This makes sense though. He makes millions a year under the current system and is a classic example of the change-is-bad mentality that is pervasive in every facet of American life. He’s known for being ridiculous (just look at the whole ranking OSU #11 and then getting destroyed by them in the Sugar Bowl debacle). What about other big name coaches? Saban’s stance has been consistently vanilla. He tends to just defer to the NCAA. Brian Kelly is similarly bland about it. Spurrier has been vocal about paying players for a long time. Anyone who has ever heard Steve Spurrier speak knows he is one of the sharpest guys to ever work in the business of football. His idea is fairly simple; pay the players generating the revenue.
I asked Chris Clark earlier this week on the Insider’s Forum if he had the scoop on Shane Beamer’s thoughts on this. Hopefully the guys will dig into that soon. It is my hope that HBC Shane falls in the progressive camp on this. Not only is it simply a good thing for athletes, it would give Carolina an advantage in the arms race of college football.
I have had this debate with a number of people over the last few years. The thinking on this subject generally falls into two camps. The first is the logical folks who see it as inevitable and a big positive. These people generally acknowledge that D1 football and basketball are basically minor league sports with a deeply connected fanbase. Amateurism is a joke in the 21st century. Let’s make sports better and more fun. The second camp is the retrograde “they get paid a college education der der der duhhhh in my day we had to drink our beer out of bowls and they kept the women where they belong; in dresses” bad attitude group who survive by gulping from the urinal of nostalgia. Kidding aside, I would challenge anyone who disagrees with paying players to provide an articulate reasoning for it. The only articulate responses I can find stem from the idea that it would bankrupt smaller schools. This makes no sense. Schools could ultimately choose who to pay, if they want to pay anyone at all. Then, the players can decide where they want to go play based on the myriad of factors that go into that decision. That’s this new concept called the free market.
Real talk. Come at me.
