SEC leaving the NCAA

[Hotshoe]

This, I’ve said the same thing before. Create minor league football and get college sports back to college sports.

Then why have so many attempts failed? There have been 6 attempts at this. Only the old AFL was successful. After the 2 leagues were formed, the WFL, USFL, and the XFL all folded. Today we have the UFL, and it has mixed reviews at best. Average attendance is 10k. 10k at Beaver Stadium would be an absolute joke. It would be a joke at the majority of college campuses.

 

[Hotshoe]

The problem is this will make college football far less competitive, so people will not pack stadiums, pay thousands of dollars for tickets and then television will not pay billions for the product so no college will ever go along with the plan.

Spot on.

 

[Moogy]

I partly don’t agree. Recruits took “majors” and academics into account right up until NIL. Even when it was just “cost of attendance”. Coaches have said that’s not the question from families anymore. The first thing they want to know about is the money. I warned against pay for play from the beginning of my time on sports message boards. It’s far worse than even what I thought it would be. I still say athletes were receiving many advantages that the rest of the students didn’t have access to. Again, most of these athletes aren’t going to be going pro.

"Coaches have said" ... coaches will say these things because the "new recruiting schema" takes away a lot of their power of persuasion, as they used to be grown men who convinced kids to come play for them and make the coaches gobs of money ... oh, and attend college, of course. They don't like it, so they'll portray it in a negative light. Now it's just more of "money talks."

The large majority of players weren't actually qualified to attend those colleges they attended, and when they did, they were mostly in throwaway majors (advertising, criminal justice, sports mgmt, etc.) if they ever declared majors at all (the new thing was to create a generic major - that went by different names at different institutions - that was "customizable" - it's a way to cover up a guy not actually having a focus toward graduation).

The coaches oft times sold these kids a bill of goods to feed into the kids' dreams. In exchange for that, the kids had a more-than full-time job as a football player (or insert sport here - even DIII field hockey players with no financial aid had to dedicate ridiculous amounts of time toward their craft), and "free stuff," like an education they likely wouldn't be able to take advantage of, some swag and "elite training" in a sport they weren't likely to pursue beyond their graduation.

Meanwhile, folks were making billions off their efforts.

Sure, there were success stories of kids who didn't take school seriously before college, and turned it around ... or kids who were able to complete real majors and do real positive things with that knowledge and experience post-graduation, but the system was set up to mostly disregard the academic portion of the student-athlete.

It's roughly the same now ... most of these kids are making some money, but not anything near life-changing money. Their education is just as important (or not important) as it was before NIL ... they're just driving a Tesla around school now, and have a few extra bucks in their pocket.

 

[JWolf74]

The NCAA and schools could have fixed this decades ago by simply giving the student athletes a small cut of the revenue and let them make a little extra doing local autograph signings and the like. Now the pendulum has swung way too far the other way and I'm not sure if it's gonna swing back.

I don't know what the answer is at this point. Have a salary floor and cap for power 4 programs so things are fairer? I do think they should limit transferring to once without penalty, sit out a year if you transfer again. This yearly "transfer to the highest bidder" is terrible. I also agree with the 5 years total eligibility with very limited exceptions.

 

[Hotshoe]

So why are people still watching college football now then? These guys are getting paid millions and they are far less competitive than NFL players and some of these college players are getting paid more than NFL players.
id be more willing to go watch a guy play that isn’t being paid millions than a low end NFL quality player making way more money than he should.
id rather support a guy getting an education than a guy that will most likely blow all his money in a few years and have nothing when he doesn’t make the nfl.

Only 1-2% of college players make what NFL players make. Although I agree with you regarding watching those players, it's not a recipe for success. You're simply not packing 90k plus stadiums with those players.

Furthermore, to a post above. NCAA football at the very highest level is not remotely a cash cow for universities. Most don't even get close to $100 million in profit per year. That's a drop in the bucket for universities in the P4. That money simply pays for the other NCAA sports on campus.

 

[Hotshoe]

football and baseball are completely different due to physicality of the two sports

That’s the biggest reason other attempts to create another professional football league fail

Again, spot on.

 

[r_desihawk]

Three straight years without a single team reaching the championship game and now they want to take their football and go home.

if they go the amount of talent available for the picking by the non blue blood b1g schools will certainly make life very difficult for osu and or

 

[Gibbs_dontbanmetom]

Then why have so many attempts failed? There have been 6 attempts at this. Only the old AFL was successful. After the 2 leagues were formed, the WFL, USFL, and the XFL all folded. Today we have the UFL, and it has mixed reviews at best. Average attendance is 10k. 10k at Beaver Stadium would be an absolute joke. It would be a joke at the majority of college campuses.

I already mentioned it in a previous post but I’ll do it again.
all the other leagues are getting players that can’t make it in the nfl. If you had a minor league team, you’d potentially get top college prospects that would have high nfl potential. Basically you’d be watching college football, pretty sure college football doesn’t fail.
of course college football would drop down from what it is today if that happened. But I’m pretty sure people still watch fcs and d2 and d3 games. Plus, I’d probably got to a college game again where players want to be at that university and playing for them. Not solely there for the paycheck.

Edit: QCHawks failed to respond when I told him the difference football and baseball minor leagues and other football leagues. Maybe you can.

 

[Hotshoe]

The other professional football leagues didn’t pay much and also had guys not making it in the nfl. What is being talked about is having young college aged men that most like will make it to the nfl in a few years. There is a huge difference between having guys in your league that have potential and washed up guys with no potential. You’re comparing apples and oranges.

That's simply not true. From Red Grange to Herschel Walker, they had major players.

 

[r_desihawk]

The problem is this will make college football far less competitive, so people will not pack stadiums, pay thousands of dollars for tickets and then television will not pay billions for the product so no college will ever go along with the plan.

i personally don’t believe so. we americans are generally very engrossed in local interests far more so than in expanded happenings. i am certainly like that. for instance a b1g title and the struggles for iowa to get to there supercede anything the playoffs will ever offer. superbowl trophy outweighs any world championship. and so on. i give zero effs if sec folds, and most folks will behave similarly.

 

[Hotshoe]

Who cares if television money goes away. College fans will still show up.

No they won't. It's precisely why 10k show up to the UFL. Folks need to realize, there are only so many spots in the NFL with 30 teams. Just getting on a practice squad is one hell of an accomplishment. Only 23k show up for the XFL games.

Penn State is currently renovating Beaver Stadium at the cost of $700 million dollars. It averages well over 100k per game. Largest attendance ever was 111,034 just 2 years ago against tOSU. Imagine only 30k showing up? Not going to happen.

 

[Hotshoe]

MLB created their farm programs as a feeder system because they had to,... NFL and NBA rode on the college system because they were able to...

Very true, and they're in small areas without much else. Exactly why the Durham Bulls are so successful. North Carolina alone, has three minor league teams.

 

[Hotshoe]

HAS there been a "great Iowa basketball player?" I can't think of even one. At least not one on the mens' side.

Wow. Really? So you never heard of Luka Garza? Iowa has put no less than 53 drafted into the NBA, and 34 directly into the NBA. Iowa has always had a proper NCAA program.

 

[Tom Paris]

"Coaches have said" ... coaches will say these things because the "new recruiting schema" takes away a lot of their power of persuasion, as they used to be grown men who convinced kids to come play for them and make the coaches gobs of money ... oh, and attend college, of course. They don't like it, so they'll portray it in a negative light. Now it's just more of "money talks."

The large majority of players weren't actually qualified to attend those colleges they attended, and when they did, they were mostly in throwaway majors (advertising, criminal justice, sports mgmt, etc.) if they ever declared majors at all (the new thing was to create a generic major - that went by different names at different institutions - that was "customizable" - it's a way to cover up a guy not actually having a focus toward graduation).

The coaches oft times sold these kids a bill of goods to feed into the kids' dreams. In exchange for that, the kids had a more-than full-time job as a football player (or insert sport here - even DIII field hockey players with no financial aid had to dedicate ridiculous amounts of time toward their craft), and "free stuff," like an education they likely wouldn't be able to take advantage of, some swag and "elite training" in a sport they weren't likely to pursue beyond their graduation.

Meanwhile, folks were making billions off their efforts.

Sure, there were success stories of kids who didn't take school seriously before college, and turned it around ... or kids who were able to complete real majors and do real positive things with that knowledge and experience post-graduation, but the system was set up to mostly disregard the academic portion of the student-athlete.

It's roughly the same now ... most of these kids are making some money, but not anything near life-changing money. Their education is just as important (or not important) as it was before NIL ... they're just driving a Tesla around school now, and have a few extra bucks in their pocket.

I don’t agree and I don’t care that coaches and schools made money. I care that society is backwards and that kids who are kind of good at sports are making more money than most people in America. Ball in hoop gets more pay than cancer researchers. Totally backwards.

 

[Gibbs_dontbanmetom]

That's simply not true. From Red Grange to Herschel Walker, they had major players.

I guess I was talking about the more recent ones. Not one from 40 years ago. Also interesting fact is that Herschel Walker and others played in the usfl in the spring and then in the nfl in the fall. Imaging today’s players doing this lol.

 

[JWolf74]

Very true, and they're in small areas without much else. Exactly why the Durham Bulls are so successful. North Carolina alone, has three minor league teams.

9*. 2 triple A and 7 high/low A.

 

[Moogy]

I don’t agree and I don’t care that coaches and schools made money. I care that society is backwards and that kids who are kind of good at sports are making more money than most people in America. Ball in hoop gets more pay than cancer researchers. Totally backwards.

Before, your argument seemed to center around the fact that players used to care about academics, but now, due to NIL, they don't. That's different than whether or not athletes should get paid a lot, at least compared to other occupations.

The fact that coaches and schools (and other stakeholders, especially) made money is quite important, because only one set of stakeholders, who were largely responsible for the money rolling in, weren't making much money - the players. So, regardless of whether or not you think folks should be throwing money at watching and following athletic pursuits, it was happening. It's just that the "workers" themselves weren't profiting off it, as much as they should be.

Should people be funneling their money toward helping causes that help society? Sure. But people want to see kids run around with, and throw and catch a ball while other kids hit each other.

 

[Hotshoe]

You would be shocked at the value high-visibility, successful sports teams have on things like admissions.

It is extremely financially helpful to universities to have thriving, high-performing athletic departments.

It's called the Flutie effect.

 

[Hotshoe]

But isn't the other side of that coin that there are high-end students that aren't applying to Bama because of "Roll Tide"? That these students don't want to be seen as having gone to a "football school"?

Like THE OSU when Cardale Jones came out and said he didn't go there to play school. And Andy Katzenmoyer when he was epitomizing the "dumb jock". You think that didn't harm OSU's academic reputation, and that there weren't good students that thought about that when applying to schools?

The "brand" only matters if prospective students care about that brand. I think there are a lot of kids who want the best school, not the hottest football team, and the US News ranking matters more than the CFP ranking.

No, and not remotely close. US News is not remotely a proper ranking of schools. Admissions are way up at tOSU.

 

[Hotshoe]

I can see that it would help a school like Bama, that's US News ranking is 169th. They get kids applying because of the name more than the academic reputation. Not sure how much it helps the higher-ranked academic schools though.

Like Stanford isn't Stanford because Andrew Luck or Christian McCaffrey went there. Cal-Berkeley isn't ranked highly because of Aaron Rodgers or Jared Goff. But I could see that Bama is Bama because of Bear Bryant and Saban and the success they had.

Maybe I'm off though. I'm for people being able to make what they're worth if they want to. But I hate that we can't really root for players on our favorite team any more, because there's a decent chance they're transferring multiple times while they're in college. Used to you could get excited by a big recruit, then watch them develop for the next 3-5 years and have that connection with them. Now if your school signs someone good, they're gone after a year if they're not a starter or doesn't think they're getting enough touches, or just if they can make a bigger check somewhere else.

This is not why students apply to Bama. They actively seek National Merit students. Their nursing, engineering, aerospace, and business programs are very good. Southern universities give by far, the best bang for your buck.

 

[Moogy]

This is not why students apply to Bama. They actively seek National Merit students. Their nursing, engineering, aerospace, and business programs are very good. Southern universities give by far, the best bang for your buck.

Of course it's a large portion of the reason students apply to Bama. Hell, we had 3 kids from our high school go to Clemson. Clemson. It's a trash school. But people know about it because of the football program. And Bama was smart, like a lot of southern schools, in that they saw an opportunity, and started throwing cash at out of staters ... so, they take the visibility from sports, and couple it with cheapness and warm weather and ... boom ... you get middle of the road students from the North coming to your school. Hell, we had one kid who is going to Ole Miss. Ole Miss! That's an absolutely horrific school. No one would have thought of applying there, from here, up until very recently ... now we had a number of kids do so ... the reason? Visibility from football. You're a mediocre student up here, you apply there and get into the honors program and get money thrown your way ... but you never would have thought about it until Jaxson Dart was running around throwing TDs.

 

[Hotshoe]

I think people found out that the average ASU female student was 10x hotter than anyone they could ever see in their hometown. No one knew that when the world was smaller. It was a simpler time...

When I did my Masters in History at ASU, my professors were The creme de la creme. Most were from Harvard, Yale, Northeastern, U Penn, or USC. The very top of history programs. Furthermore, I had the very top researchers regarding the West, Religion, Women studies, from USC, and Mexican studies, Gilbert Cruz. They literally wrote many of the books taught today in Universities. I had the same at Penn State.

I actually studied under Gary Gallagher at Penn State before I left for Arizona. At ASU, I studied under both, John Corrigan, who wrote the book studied in every university, Religion in America. I studied under Gilbert Cruz, who wrote the book, Let their Be Towns. Also, my advisor on the West and the Civil War, was Thomas Cutrer. By far, the most studied and researched historian on the Civil War in the West. His latest book is, Theater of a Separate War. Also, The Mexican War Diary of George B. McClellan. Also, Ben Mcculloch and the Frontier Military Tradition (Civil War America). Doris Miller, Pearl Harbor, and the Birth of the Civil Rights Movement. Trouble, Trials, and Vexations: The Journal and Correspondence of Rachel Perry Moores, Texas Plantation Mistress. The Folly and the Madness: The Civil War Letters of Captain Orlando S. Palmer, Fifteenth Arkansas Infantry. Longstreet's Aide: The Civil War Letters of Major Thomas J Goree (A Nation Divided: Studies in the Civil War Era). My favorite book he's ever written because it was real correspondence under Long Street. The English Texans (TEXIANS AND THE TEXANS)

I could go on for days, but the bottom line is simply this. You get what you get from universities if you put in the effort. Also, sometimes you get very fortunate to study under great professors, and don't get indoctrinated.