There is no "sensible" part of the "four years" which isn't actually 4 years.
Redshirt
Injuries
There are already people playin 5, 6, 7 years under the current "four year" rule.
CBB Needs 2 Year minimum NIL contracts.
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There is no "sensible" part of the "four years" which isn't actually 4 years.
Redshirt
Injuries
There are already people playin 5, 6, 7 years under the current "four year" rule.
The only Congressional legislation (sensible or not) that I'm interested in is an anti-trust exemption for the NCAA and a return right back to the old system that worked fine for a 100 years. The Supreme Court decision was wrongly decided anyway.
You mean that system where schools treated players like property for much of that time, coaches were able to abuse players by forcing them to practice/play through injuries, threaten to throw them off the team if they complained, black ball them if they tried to leave amongst other things? Yeah that system worked great.
Will never happen. Congress hasn’t handed out a new anti-trust exception in over 60 years, and the few that were given previously, Congress continues to whittle down or eliminate. The only path forward is collective bargaining.
And one other point, Congress and the courts have continuously sided with the players in every dispute. The last thing the NCAA should want is to let Congress set the rules, bargaining with a players union will likely arrive at a better outcome.
Collective bargaining will only happen if the NCAA & schools have some sort of leverage. They don't so nothing changes because the players can't be forced to collectively bargain.
Step 1 - B1G and SEC expand again, then unite to form a single entity. Isolate themselves from all other conferences.
Step 2 - Secede from the NCAA. Make their own rules, including player contracts.
Step 3 - Make more money (everyone, including players).
Step 2 - Secede from the NCAA. Make their own rules, including player contracts.
Step 3 - Make more money (everyone, including players).
The players can't collectively bargain unless they are considered employees. That would require changes in state as well as federal law because federal law only reaches private employers. New Jersey law, for instance, controls whether public employees (as the players at Rutgers would be) can collectively bargain.
Maybe Congress can be persuaded to codify the House settlement or something like it. But the House settlement doesn't cover important issues like transferability. And, as I've pointed out above, support from both parties would be needed to pass legislation.
As incompetent as the NCAA has been, the big conferences have been happy to have them out front bearing the brunt of these court proceedings and managing the congressional relations. They don’t seem to have much appetite to step out separately and become a target of the judicial and legislative branches. This is why private equity is salivating over college sports. They believe all of these people are completely out of their depth and have no ability to navigate any of this.
You may be right, the NCAA is viewed as a bad actor by the courts and by Congress. Their best opportunity to change things is to work with a union, but as you suggest, there is a good chance nothing happens.
I'm not at all sure the NCAA would get a better deal from a player's union than from Congress. And, as I said above, bringing about a player's union would be hard.
Congress is also consistently siding with the players and there is no chance they ever give an anti-trust exemption, so while going the union path is difficult, to me it is the only really viable path for stability. Or everyone can just live with the existing system.
I agree that Congress is not going to hand the NCAA a sweeping antitrust exemption. We're not going back to the way things were, although (as you can see) some of our board members favor that. But Congress can write the House settlement into legislation. That would safeguard the NCAA from further litigation claiming that its NIL rules violate the antitrust laws. Maybe Congress would also be willing to wade into the issues about how often players can transfer and about whether the schools can require that contracts be multi-season. But my guess is that Congress will let these issues percolate for a while unless it becomes clear that the present transfer rules (or, rather, non-rules) are diminishing fan interest.
First, there is no indication Congress has any interest in doing that, as I said, other than Tommy Tuberville, they consistently favor the players. And even if they were to try and do so, without an anti-trust exemption, there are various promising avenues for constitutional challenges to such a law.
To follow up on a question I posed earlier, could a non-compete restrict an athlete from competing against their former team for a certain period? You could kind of argue that the player has IP of the former team? Would the risk of a player having to sit a game be incentive enough to get back to the sit rule for transfers?
Codifying the House settlement or making laws about transfers would amount to a partial antitrust exemption. I have no doubt that Congress could constitutionally do that. The bigger question, as you indicate, is whether Congress wants to get involved.
Here's the problem: would a player be willing to accept a non-compete clause as part of his contract? Remember that the schools can't agree among themselves that they will all require a certain kind of clause without risk of antitrust liability. So there will certainly be schools that don't ask for non-compete clauses -- and it seems to me that athletes will prefer to contract with those schools.
In my opinion, the best solution would be for individual coaches to somehow strategically work this out on their end with the initial contracts to incoming frosh. Not the 1 and done types but gradually the other types.
Agreed most are overlooking the employee angle and just think the players are the same as professional athletes.
We’re stuck with the status quo till we’re not. Doesn’t look like we’ll see further changes after the House Settlement for a while.
Kids could sign a multi year contract, then transfer anyway, which they are doing now. A multi year contract doesn’t necessarily bind a kid to a school.
Anything more restrictive won’t hold up in court, imo. If coaches can hop from school to school, why shouldn’t kids be able to do the same?
Kids could sign a multi year contract, then transfer anyway, which they are doing now. A multi year contract doesn’t necessarily bind a kid to a school.
Anything more restrictive won’t hold up in court, imo. If coaches can hop from school to school, why shouldn’t kids be able to do the same?
Do players have buyouts? Maybe they should
I can imagine a player agreeing to a multi-year contract with a buyout. But the school's offer would have to be high enough to make it worthwhile for the player to agree. Keep in mind that, unless Congress grants the NCAA an antitrust exemption, the schools can't agree with each other to only offer such contracts.
Who is saying “only”? The way ahead is for coaches of historically developmental programs to think outside the box with their allocation to create environments that are most likely to result in multi year players in their program. There would obviously be trade offs and situations where teams end up paying a second year for kids who turn out to be busts. The scouting would have to add an element to assess this risk.
Yes, maybe some programs will be able to persuade recruits to be willing to agree to multi-year contracts. My guess is that the first-rank programs like Duke and Connecticut are so desirable to recruits that perhaps the recruits will do that. Every other program will have to, as you say, think outside the box. But all the thinking has to be at that particular school; the school would be exposing itself to antitrust liability and possibly treble damages. by making an agreement with any other school about how to get players to accept multi-year contracts.