Probably for the same reason the major professional sports leagues have a draft - otherwise, you end up with a handful of haves keeping the have-nots out of the spotlight.
“You mean, like how it works now?”
There are 65 schools in the Power 5 conferences and Notre Dame. You want it reduced to something like 20?
One problem is, even without the schools being involved, enough schools have enough alumni money that there’s no real way to stop a bidding war.
Wild Wild West in terms of things like “cattle rustling” - and there will be plenty of player poaching if the money is there…and again, short of putting restrictions on player income, there isn’t much that anyone will be able to do about it even with the new rules the NCAA is starting to adopt in Divisions II and III.
Sorry; not interested in helping out the teams with keeping their costs low and their monopoly intact.
I don’t care. I don’t care if there are 165 or 6.5 as long as the players are free to market themselves and their abilities like any other person in any other profession.
Welcome to capitalism.
The very fact that you call it “player poaching” exposes the notion at the very heart of the NCAA’s model: that the players are property and are rightly owned by the schools.
What Bo said. If the schools don’t want a wild west, or what everyone else in the country considers “normal business,” then they can help the athletes unionize and negotiate terms with them. Until then they can stick their wage fixing cartel where the sun don’t shine.
Mark Emmert is under the impression that the athletes are students first and employees of the school second. You seem to be under the impression that it should be the other way around - if, in fact, they should even have to be students. The minute this is the case, it stops being “college” football.
If it was up to me, there really would be, say, 15 teams that play a single round-robin with a playoff system, that was totally separated from the schools; this would not only remove the players from any compensation restrictions, but the teams wouldn’t have to worry about Title IX. Of course, the other schools would whine because their TV money would dry up, but that’s their problem.
No he’s not. He just has to say that in public and pretend to believe it.
Mark Emmert is well aware that the players are currently considered property, that any crack in the system is probably fatal, and that his job his to try to prevent that from happening lest he lose his cushy job*.
Worth somewhere between $2.7 and $4 million annually depending on the year. He apparently has generously accepted a pay cut this year because COVID.
Zak already gave you one good point of refutation, but I’ll give you more because you have my position all wrong. The athletes are people first, with all the rights that people have, including the right to market themselves and their abilities to the employer of their choice: that’s my position.
Whether or not they want to be students is up to them. Frankly, I think I’d rather make a shitload of money at 18 and then have plenty of dough to go back to school in ten or twelve years after my athletic career was over but every athlete should be able to make their own choices.
And no, I don’t give a flying fuck about “college football” as an institution anymore than I would give a fuck about any other institution that was built on the exploited backs of a vulnerable population.
The schools can certainly require that the athletic programs are restricted to participation only by students. They should not, however, be allowed to restrict their students’ incomes when they participate in extracurricular activities. That’s the only relevant issue here.
If someone is still opposed to college athletes enjoying the same economic liberties that every other American enjoys, then someone needs to take a good look at their own belief systems.
Here’s the “quick version” of the Gonzalez Name/Image/Likeness bill introduced in the House of Representatives on 9/24:
No school or athletic organization (e.g. NCAA) can ban someone from participating in college sports just because they have endorsement deals or have hired an agent to handle their endorsement deals. (Apparently, hiring an agent to deal with pro sports teams would still not be allowed.) However, the athlete can be banned by the school or organization from endorsing any of the following: tobacco, vaping/E-cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana (including dispensaries), “adult services,” and gambling sites/sportsbooks/casinos. Also, the athlete can be prevented from wearing any logo of an endorsed item/service while actually in a game or “university-sponsored event.”
No state may make or enforce its own name/image/likeness laws.
Schools are banned from paying their own athletes for endorsement deals, but at the same time, they cannot threaten to remove or reduce the scholarship of any athlete that accepts an endorsement deal from anyone.
A “booster” (defined as a person or organization that “provides substantial financial assistance or services” to the school or promotes the team “for its own financial interest”) may not offer any athlete or recruit anything of value in order to get the athlete to go to/stay at the school.
There’s something about a 13-member panel appointed by Congress, but it doesn’t seem to do very much other than make reports that suggest, among other things, more categories of banned items for endorsements.
I don’t think this is going to get out of committee; there just isn’t time (it would have to be passed by both the House and Senate by January 2). However, Sports Illustrated reports that there are a number of other bills being worked on; I am guessing these will be introduced when the new Congress starts in early January. Somebody feels that something needs to be done before Florida’s law takes effect on July 1.
Cory Booker (and some other Congressfolk) has a bad idea:
My first and strongest objection: you do not “grant” what someone already has. Doing so would dilute whatever structure the players might demand, negotiate and agree to and would effectively remove them from their own bargaining/negotiations. Not cool. Sen. Booker, I think you are an okay guy but you should back away from this; no new laws are necessary or wanted except by the NCAA.
The current shitty oppressive exploitative state of affairs came about largely because lawmakers stuck their noses into this in the first place; do everyone a favor and get the fuck out of a situation where y’all have no business.
With little help coming from the Supreme Court and various state legislations threatening its aim of maintaining amateurism, the NCAA has been pinning its hopes on a friendly Congress granting the schools a limited anti-trust exemption. Said exemption would allow the schools to continue colluding to deny scholarship athletes income generating opportunities.
Instead the association found disinterest at best and vigorous disagreement at worst. Sens. Booker and Blumenthal took strong stands for athletes’ liberties. The NCAA is not going to get its anti-trust protection and some state laws allowing NIL rights are scheduled to take effect this summer.
The schools have been running clock since the O’Bannon decision and they’re about out of time.
So what happens when Florida’s law takes effect in July of this year? Are our guys gonna be ruled ineligible if they take advantage of it? Or does it take effect and we (the state as a whole) have a recruiting advantage until the NCAA acts and/or other state laws take effect? Do we end up with a legislative arms race?
The NCAA says that anybody who accepts name/image/likeness money is ineligible. This does not stop quite a few athletes from going to Florida and accepting money anyway.
Any attempt by the NCAA to declare someone eligible immediately is shot down by a court that says that the athlete has the right to the NCAA’s own appeals process.
If the NCAA eventually does declare someone on, say, the CFP football or NCAA men’s basketball championship ineligible, the ineligible players will just show off their championship rings, and the eligible players will get to keep their rings and retain their eligiblity - and if the school gets hit with a postseason ban, they can transfer without having to sit out a year, even if the NCAA doesn’t get rid of the one-year sit-out rule on its own first.
I am assuming that basketball “one-and-dones” would be the first to flock to Florida for a quick cash grab before turning pro.
