Iowa will reportedly pay it's ENTIRE ROSTER around $12M.
Just when you think this pay for play bullsheet can't get any more crazy....
Just when you think this pay for play bullsheet can't get any more crazy....
Thomas Haugh of Florida has a One Year deal reportedly close to $10 million.
- Thread starter Franisdaman
- Start date
At this point it is all crap and I hate say it but if we want to save the pageantry, tradition and integrity of College athletics... it needs to be done now and if political legislation is what it takes then so be it, the pussies at the NCAA obviously don't care. If you want to be a professional and get paid go play in a pro league. If you want to get a FREE college education as an amateur and get the perks that come with that, then do that. The notion any of these are college athletes are struggling(free clothes, free housing, gifts and stipends) or starving(free gourmet meals that would make an African village gush) is an absolute joke and isn't happening. A college athlete lives a better life than 98% of the population. We can thank our own rich snobby boy JBo for a lot of the mess we are in with college athletics. I hope that NCAA rug he stole was worth it...
Can't say I'm surprised at how quickly this is all getting nuts.
* Go to Google
* Type this: Thomas Haugh of Florida has a One Year deal reportedly close to $10 million
* Hit ENTER & let me know what is listed first
I saw some sources that said 4 million? It wasn’t really clear….If that is the price tag on players now the sport is in dire straights. At some point you hit diminishing returns. Anybody with any business sense knows that. We are getting close if guys are taking 10 million dollar bags.* Go to Google
* Type this: Thomas Haugh of Florida has a One Year deal reportedly close to $10 million
* Hit ENTER & let me know what is listed first
Name one thing that Bohannon did that created the current NIL system.
Exactly what do you think the NCAA can do?
They fumbled the ball when all of this first started and now I don't think there is any way to stop it. Unreal when a player can get more cash by staying in college instead of going pro ( where he might not make the team). Don't go to class, at least in person, make exorbent amount of money etc. This is amature athletics??
The info that pops up says the deal is close to $10M.
Thomas Haugh averaged 33 min, 17.1 pts, 6.1 rebs, 2.1 assists, 1.1 steals and 1.0 blocks. He shot 46% from the floor, 33% from three and 77% from the FT line.
What's a player like this going to be worth 2 years from now? 5 years? 10 years?
Thomas Haugh - Florida Gators Forward - ESPN
View the profile of Florida Gators Forward Thomas Haugh on ESPN. Get the latest news, live stats and game highlights.
www.espn.com
Yeah, I don't know how you fix it.
I have said it before: the so called experts think the only way for a solution to this madness is for a collective bargaining agreement between athletes and the NCAA. The problem? Why would the athletes want to sit down and lose anything that they are getting right now?
How would you even unionize the athletes? They are not employees of the universities which would be required.
Say somehow you made the employees. Now many are employed by the state. States like Texas have laws that prevent public employees from entering into a CBA.
As long as there are people who take satisfaction in paying money to see players suit up for their favorite team, this isn’t going anywhere. It’s not complicated -- it’s basic economics.
And that means both the deep-pocketed donors and the average joes giving to collectives are culpable in this mess -- each reinforcing the same system in their own way.
Complain all you want, but the market is only doing what so many fans are paying it to do.
And that means both the deep-pocketed donors and the average joes giving to collectives are culpable in this mess -- each reinforcing the same system in their own way.
Complain all you want, but the market is only doing what so many fans are paying it to do.
Professional sports leagues have challenged existing antitrust laws and received carve outs arguing that cooperative rules are necessary to maintain competitive balance. I can't see why the NCAA couldn't do the same.
Everybody who has signed on to the NCAA has signed on to abide by rules.
U
Until I hear credible sources confirm it I wont believe any of these NIL reports. I need more proof then just reported.
Its on the internet so it must be true.* Go to Google
* Type this: Thomas Haugh of Florida has a One Year deal reportedly close to $10 million
* Hit ENTER & let me know what is listed first
Until I hear credible sources confirm it I wont believe any of these NIL reports. I need more proof then just reported.
Where did you see the athletes would have to be employees in order to collective bargain?
I think we can all agree on one thing: If this were easy to fix, it would have been done already.
From a google search:
Collective bargaining for Division I athletes would create a legally binding, pro-style labor system, replacing the current patchwork of Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) rules with standardized contracts, revenue sharing, and guaranteed rights. Athletes would form unions to negotiate directly with schools or conferences on compensation, health benefits, and safety.
I don’t think there is anything anybody could have done or could do in the future to stop this.
anything tried would lose in court.
these payments are no different than an NBA player doing a McDonald’s commercial in the eyes of the legal system. People may not think the entity doing the paying is getting “good value” for their payment but that is just an opinion.
there will be no player union. The players don’t want it and they are not in college long enough to worry about it. You think a guy making millions wants to share with a kid playing for Drake? You think the Iowa basketball player wants to share with the Iowa track guy?
the schools could stop their $22.5 million dollar payments but that would be committing competitive suicide against the schools that have huge NIL collectives.
Once I was driving buy the Iowa State practice facility about the time players where leaving. Seeing them rip out of the parking lot in very expensive cars. lol, no way would I ever consider contributing to a collective. Those are for people with generational wealth.
contributions should be given to those less fortunate. I am not about to contribute to a fund to make millionaires.
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The easiest solution is decouple athletics from academic institutions, the way they do this in Europe. In many ways the concept of a “student athlete” in football or basketball at a D1 school is bogus anymore anyway. You’ve had well respected schools like North Carolina risking their academic reputation just to keep players eligible.
Drop the connection between the school and the teams and you’ll see a bunch of teams die as the school was keeping them alive. The ones that are left can be their own professional league where players are employees, have a union with collective bargaining, and rules around salary caps can exist to ensure some form of competitive balance.
This has the double benefit of schools not having to dump money towards athletic programs where they can instead re-invest that money into academics, while also not needing to worry about Title IX requirements for athletics and the amount of money spent on programs that only exist to balance out football scholarships. Schools can keep intramural sports, but the idea would be that rules need to be put into place to prevent those from just evolving back into what we have today.
Drop the connection between the school and the teams and you’ll see a bunch of teams die as the school was keeping them alive. The ones that are left can be their own professional league where players are employees, have a union with collective bargaining, and rules around salary caps can exist to ensure some form of competitive balance.
This has the double benefit of schools not having to dump money towards athletic programs where they can instead re-invest that money into academics, while also not needing to worry about Title IX requirements for athletics and the amount of money spent on programs that only exist to balance out football scholarships. Schools can keep intramural sports, but the idea would be that rules need to be put into place to prevent those from just evolving back into what we have today.
I also think it would drop the cost of college. Probably enrollment also.
The athletes are considered independent contractors right now.
From a quick Google search.
Independent contractors can organize and form associations to advocate for better pay and conditions, but they generally cannot form unions under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Because true independent contractors are considered self-employed businesses rather than employees, they are excluded from federal protections that allow for collective bargaining.
Key Aspects of Independent Contractor Organizing:
- Legal Exclusion: The 1948 Taft-Hartley amendments to the NLRA explicitly excluded independent contractors from the definition of "employee".
- Misclassification Loophole: If independent contractors are misclassified and should legally be employees, they can file charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to gain organizing rights.
- Alternative Organizing: Independent contractors can form guilds, associations, or professional networks to advocate for better treatment, even if they cannot bargain collectively in the legal sense.
- Antitrust Concerns: True independent contractors—as business owners—could potentially violate the Sherman Anti-Trust Act if they engage in price-fixing, which is why they are generally prohibited from typical collective bargaining.
Support your local D3/NAIA program.
Story from 4 months ago:
Dan Murphy
ESPN.com
Dec 9, 2025,
After another week of frustrating setbacks, at the end of a frustrating year trying to bring stability to their industry, a growing number of college athletic directors say they are interested in exploring a once-unthinkable option: collective bargaining with their players.
Dozens of athletic directors will gather in Las Vegas over the next few days for an annual conference. They had hoped to be raising toasts to the U.S. House of Representatives. But for the second time in three months, House members balked last week at voting on a bill that would give the NCAA protection from antitrust lawsuits and employment threats. So instead, they will be greeted by one of the Strip's specialties: the cold-slap realization of needing a better plan.
"I'm not sure I can sit back today and say I'm really proud of what we've become," Boise State athletic director Jeramiah Dickey told ESPN late last week. "There is a solution. We just have to work together to find it, and maybe collective bargaining is it."
Athletic directors see only two paths to a future in which the college sports industry can enforce rules and defend them in court: Either Congress grants them an exemption from antitrust laws, or they collectively bargain with athletes. As Dickey said, and others have echoed quietly in the past several days, it has become irresponsible to continue to hope for an antitrust bailout without at least fully kicking the tires on the other option.
"If Congress ends up solving it for us, and it ends up being a healthy solution I'll be the first one to do cartwheels down the street," said Tennessee athletic director Danny White when speaking to ESPN about his interest in collective bargaining months ago. "But what are the chances they get it right when the NCAA couldn't even get it right? We should be solving it ourselves."
Some athletic directors thought they had solved their era of relative lawlessness back in July. The NCAA and its schools agreed to pay $2.8 billion in the House settlement to purchase a very expensive set of guardrails meant to put a cap on how much teams could spend to acquire players. The schools also agreed to fund the College Sports Commission, a new agency created by the settlement to police those restrictions.
But without an antitrust exemption, any school or player who doesn't like a punishment they receive for bursting through those guardrails can file a lawsuit and give themselves a pretty good chance of wiggling out of a penalty. The CSC's plan -- crafted largely by leaders of the Power 4 conferences -- to enforce those rules without an antitrust exemption was to get all their schools to sign a promise that they wouldn't file any such lawsuits. On the same day that Congress' attempt crumbled last week, seven state attorneys general angrily encouraged their schools not to sign the CSC's proposed agreement.
In the wake of the attorneys general's opposition, a loose deadline to sign the agreement came and went, with many schools declining to participate. So, college football is steamrolling toward another transfer portal season without any sheriff that has the legal backing to police how teams spend money on building their rosters.
That's why college sports fans have heard head football coaches like Lane Kiffin openly describe how they negotiated for the biggest player payroll possible in a system where all teams are supposed to be capped at the same $20.5 million limit. Right now, the rules aren't real. The stability promised as part of the House settlement doesn't appear to be imminent. Meanwhile, the tab for potential damages in future antitrust lawsuits continues to grow larger with each passing day.
Collective bargaining isn't easy, either. Under the current law, players would need to be employees to negotiate a legally binding deal. The NCAA and most campus leaders are adamantly opposed to turning athletes into employees for several reasons, including the added costs and infrastructure it would require. The industry would need to make tough decisions about which college athletes should be able to bargain and how to divide them into logical groups. Should the players be divided by conference? Should all football players negotiate together? What entity would sit across from them at the bargaining table?
On Monday, Athletes.Org, a group that has been working for two years to become college sports' version of a players' union, published a 35-page proposal for what an agreement might look like. Their goal was to show it is possible to answer the thorny, in-the-weeds questions that have led many leaders in college sports to quickly dismiss collective bargaining as a viable option.
Multiple athletic directors and a sitting university president are taking the propoal seriously-- a milestone for one of the several upstart entities working to gain credibility as a representative for college athletes. Syracuse chancellor and president Kent Syverud said Monday that he has long felt the best way forward for college sports is a negotiation where athletes have "a real collective voice in setting the rules."
"[This template] is an important step toward that kind of partnership-based framework," he said in a statement released with AO's plan. "... I'm encouraged to see this conversation happening more openly, so everyone can fully understand what's at stake."
White, the Tennessee athletic director, has also spent years working with lawyers to craft a collective bargaining option. In his plan, the top brands in college football would form a single private company, which could then employ players. He says that would provide a solution in states where employees of public institutions are not legally allowed to unionize.
"I don't understand why everyone's so afraid of employment status," White said. "We have kids all over our campus that have jobs. ... We have kids in our athletic department that are also students here that work in our equipment room, and they have employee status. How that became a dirty word, I don't get it."
White said athletes could be split into groups by sport to negotiate for a percentage of the revenue they help to generate.
The result could be expensive for schools. Then again, paying lawyers and lobbyists isn't cheap either. The NCAA and the four power conferences combined to spend more than $9 million on lobbyists between 2021 and 2024, the latest year where public data is available. That's a relatively small figure compared to the fees and penalties they could face if they continue to lose antitrust cases in federal court.
"I'm not smart enough to say [collective bargaining] is the only answer or the best answer," Dickey said. "But I think the onus is on us to at least curiously question: How do you set something up that can be sustainable? What currently is happening is not."
Players and coaches are frustrated with the current system, wanting to negotiate salaries and build rosters with a clear idea of what rules will actually be enforced. Dickey says fans are frustrated as they invest energy and money into their favorite teams without understanding what the future holds. And athletic directors, who want to plan a yearly budget and help direct their employees, are frustrated too.
"It has been very difficult on campus. I can't emphasize that enough," White said. "It's been brutal in a lot of ways. It continues to be as we try to navigate these waters without a clear-cut solution."
This week White and Dickey won't be alone in their frustration. They'll be among a growing group of peers who are pushing to explore a new solution.
www.espn.com
College ADs consider collective bargaining amid setbacks
Dan Murphy
ESPN.com
Dec 9, 2025,
After another week of frustrating setbacks, at the end of a frustrating year trying to bring stability to their industry, a growing number of college athletic directors say they are interested in exploring a once-unthinkable option: collective bargaining with their players.
Dozens of athletic directors will gather in Las Vegas over the next few days for an annual conference. They had hoped to be raising toasts to the U.S. House of Representatives. But for the second time in three months, House members balked last week at voting on a bill that would give the NCAA protection from antitrust lawsuits and employment threats. So instead, they will be greeted by one of the Strip's specialties: the cold-slap realization of needing a better plan.
"I'm not sure I can sit back today and say I'm really proud of what we've become," Boise State athletic director Jeramiah Dickey told ESPN late last week. "There is a solution. We just have to work together to find it, and maybe collective bargaining is it."
Athletic directors see only two paths to a future in which the college sports industry can enforce rules and defend them in court: Either Congress grants them an exemption from antitrust laws, or they collectively bargain with athletes. As Dickey said, and others have echoed quietly in the past several days, it has become irresponsible to continue to hope for an antitrust bailout without at least fully kicking the tires on the other option.
"If Congress ends up solving it for us, and it ends up being a healthy solution I'll be the first one to do cartwheels down the street," said Tennessee athletic director Danny White when speaking to ESPN about his interest in collective bargaining months ago. "But what are the chances they get it right when the NCAA couldn't even get it right? We should be solving it ourselves."
Some athletic directors thought they had solved their era of relative lawlessness back in July. The NCAA and its schools agreed to pay $2.8 billion in the House settlement to purchase a very expensive set of guardrails meant to put a cap on how much teams could spend to acquire players. The schools also agreed to fund the College Sports Commission, a new agency created by the settlement to police those restrictions.
But without an antitrust exemption, any school or player who doesn't like a punishment they receive for bursting through those guardrails can file a lawsuit and give themselves a pretty good chance of wiggling out of a penalty. The CSC's plan -- crafted largely by leaders of the Power 4 conferences -- to enforce those rules without an antitrust exemption was to get all their schools to sign a promise that they wouldn't file any such lawsuits. On the same day that Congress' attempt crumbled last week, seven state attorneys general angrily encouraged their schools not to sign the CSC's proposed agreement.
In the wake of the attorneys general's opposition, a loose deadline to sign the agreement came and went, with many schools declining to participate. So, college football is steamrolling toward another transfer portal season without any sheriff that has the legal backing to police how teams spend money on building their rosters.
That's why college sports fans have heard head football coaches like Lane Kiffin openly describe how they negotiated for the biggest player payroll possible in a system where all teams are supposed to be capped at the same $20.5 million limit. Right now, the rules aren't real. The stability promised as part of the House settlement doesn't appear to be imminent. Meanwhile, the tab for potential damages in future antitrust lawsuits continues to grow larger with each passing day.
Collective bargaining isn't easy, either. Under the current law, players would need to be employees to negotiate a legally binding deal. The NCAA and most campus leaders are adamantly opposed to turning athletes into employees for several reasons, including the added costs and infrastructure it would require. The industry would need to make tough decisions about which college athletes should be able to bargain and how to divide them into logical groups. Should the players be divided by conference? Should all football players negotiate together? What entity would sit across from them at the bargaining table?
On Monday, Athletes.Org, a group that has been working for two years to become college sports' version of a players' union, published a 35-page proposal for what an agreement might look like. Their goal was to show it is possible to answer the thorny, in-the-weeds questions that have led many leaders in college sports to quickly dismiss collective bargaining as a viable option.
Multiple athletic directors and a sitting university president are taking the propoal seriously-- a milestone for one of the several upstart entities working to gain credibility as a representative for college athletes. Syracuse chancellor and president Kent Syverud said Monday that he has long felt the best way forward for college sports is a negotiation where athletes have "a real collective voice in setting the rules."
"[This template] is an important step toward that kind of partnership-based framework," he said in a statement released with AO's plan. "... I'm encouraged to see this conversation happening more openly, so everyone can fully understand what's at stake."
White, the Tennessee athletic director, has also spent years working with lawyers to craft a collective bargaining option. In his plan, the top brands in college football would form a single private company, which could then employ players. He says that would provide a solution in states where employees of public institutions are not legally allowed to unionize.
"I don't understand why everyone's so afraid of employment status," White said. "We have kids all over our campus that have jobs. ... We have kids in our athletic department that are also students here that work in our equipment room, and they have employee status. How that became a dirty word, I don't get it."
White said athletes could be split into groups by sport to negotiate for a percentage of the revenue they help to generate.
The result could be expensive for schools. Then again, paying lawyers and lobbyists isn't cheap either. The NCAA and the four power conferences combined to spend more than $9 million on lobbyists between 2021 and 2024, the latest year where public data is available. That's a relatively small figure compared to the fees and penalties they could face if they continue to lose antitrust cases in federal court.
"I'm not smart enough to say [collective bargaining] is the only answer or the best answer," Dickey said. "But I think the onus is on us to at least curiously question: How do you set something up that can be sustainable? What currently is happening is not."
Players and coaches are frustrated with the current system, wanting to negotiate salaries and build rosters with a clear idea of what rules will actually be enforced. Dickey says fans are frustrated as they invest energy and money into their favorite teams without understanding what the future holds. And athletic directors, who want to plan a yearly budget and help direct their employees, are frustrated too.
"It has been very difficult on campus. I can't emphasize that enough," White said. "It's been brutal in a lot of ways. It continues to be as we try to navigate these waters without a clear-cut solution."
This week White and Dickey won't be alone in their frustration. They'll be among a growing group of peers who are pushing to explore a new solution.
College ADs consider collective bargaining amid setbacks
A growing number of athletic directors say they are interested in exploring a once-unthinkable option.
www.espn.com
This whole GD mess is exactly why you need good coaching to navigate this new bat s h ! t crazy world of college athetics.
you need to pay McCollum and let him cook. Beth nailed the hire and I'm confident Ben is the guy to find the diamonds in the rough.
I stand by my thought that the greed and jealousy in some of these locker rooms will end up being fast growing cancers.
Eventually this whole system of play for pay in college will come crashing down.
you need to pay McCollum and let him cook. Beth nailed the hire and I'm confident Ben is the guy to find the diamonds in the rough.
I stand by my thought that the greed and jealousy in some of these locker rooms will end up being fast growing cancers.
Eventually this whole system of play for pay in college will come crashing down.
Comrades:
Support Wartburg or <fill in the blank> at the D3/NAIA level instead.
Pure football/basketball/etc.
Support Wartburg or <fill in the blank> at the D3/NAIA level instead.
Pure football/basketball/etc.
Probably a business expense that we all are help paying for through a service or product.
They enforce the 5 year rule otherwise why wouldn't the player go to school for the rest of his life. Surprised no one has sued for saying they can't play in college anymore.
I don't need to use Google to find out about something that didn't happen.
JBo isn't to blame, nor are any other college athletes. All they ever asked for was reasonable and fair compensation based on the fact that others--including their coaches, TV networks, conferences, the NCAA--were raking in millions off their performance. But the NCAA stuck its head in the sand, ignored reality, and kept raking in the millions and millions and millions. Had they set up a reasonable NIL system instead, maybe the top players would be getting $100,000 a year based on the use of their name, image, and likeness.
The current situation, as most people know, is an overreaction, unsustainable, and undermines the nature of college athletics. But make no mistake about who to blame: the NCAA.
Back in the day, a scholarship and perks were reasonable and fair compensation. But as the money from TV and tournaments and merchandising kept piling up, that was no longer the case. When one side of an equation changes, the other side is gonna change too. And that's what has happened. Why the arrogant, incompetent, unapologetic NCAA is still in existence is one of the great questions in sports.
They enforce (somewhat) the five year rule, check.
Everything has or is being litigated. With the Supreme Court bringing in the Sherman Act in the unanimous decision that started all this ..the lower courts are all now testing the NCAA rules to the Sherman Act and it has not been pretty for the NCAA.
Kentucky supposedly had a loaded $22M roster last season but they barely got out the round of 64 and fell in the round of 32. I guess an attempt at buying national championships also requires good coaching, selflessness and amazing culture. Imagine that.
You would think it would all come crashing down because the payments to players are only going to increase. That $20.5M that Iowa and most high major schools paid out last year to athletes is only going to increase each year.
This means they have 5 total years (no more 6th or 7th year players).
No more redshirts, as well.
No more redshirts, as well.
This would make it easier for Tavion Banks to come back and it potentially would allow Bennett Stirtz to come back as well.
Bohannon was the biggest victim baby... it must have been rough for him growing up in a million house and being coddled his whole life, poor college athlete!
Crashing down ?Kentucky supposedly had a loaded $22M roster last season but they barely got out the round of 64 and fell in the round of 32. I guess an attempt at buying national championships also requires good coaching, selflessness and amazing culture. Imagine that.
You would think it would all come crashing down because the payments to players are only going to increase. That $20.5M that Iowa and most high major schools paid out last year to athletes is only going to increase each year.
what exactly does that mean? Sure some schools will pay more and some will pay less and even the amount an individual school pays will vary from year to year.
what won’t change is, somebody will be willing to a kid more than other schools and on average that’ll were the kids will go.
this system is here to stay and the amount spent will go up over time if you add up all payments to all players.
it’s pro sports for the big conferences. The mid majors are the minor leagues. You only stay at a mid major if you are not good enough.
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