re: Does Anyone Actually Like College Football More with NIL and Unlimited Portal?

I like NIL because it’s evened the playing field more. Portal needs to be curtailed some. Let’s be honest, players were getting paid under the table for years anyway especially by the “blue bloods” now it’s just public.

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Tbh I love the transfer portal. I definitely think that made college football even better. At the same time, I hate what NIL has became. It's probably impossible to go back to what once was at this point, but they do need to put some much stricter restrictions in place.

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I think it's a lot like when they restricted the number of scholarships. You had a few teams dominating because they had 150 kids on scholarship. The talent dispersed a lot more.

I think that the product has only gotten better. I agree with the fact that it is a soulless corporation know but that is what it has always been unfortunately. IT was just the top 15 or so schools stacking all of the chips in their favor. Now you truly have a level playing field and teams who never dreamed of winning have a shot.

Guard rails? What does that even mean? No one will pay any attention to guard rails, salary caps, or really any rule.

Up until a few years ago it was AGAINST the NCAA rules to pay a player or “induce” him. But it was still done for the past 50 years.

What many if you long for are the days where your team could cheat while being protected by the NCAA which allowed a handful of schools to dominate on the field. It was all a rigged system.

Now that it’s available to all programs suddenly the sport is horrible and “corporate”. Come on now. I can’t wait until a lot of these also ran programs with big time money start buying wins and Natties. We are just at the infancy stages of this new era but we all know there is a lot of deep money out there that will eventually buy wins. It’s gonna be fun to watch.

Which players and their families? All? Most? A select few? Which sports? All sports? Revenue producing ones only?

At every step of the way, the proponents of player compensation have appealed to emotion aka "won't somebody please think of the children." It was the central tenet of the pressure campaign in the marketplace of ideas and to motivate the legislators. But the proponents weren't honest and forthright.

As it currently stands, player compensation is an extreme pareto distribution along the lines of Onlyfans, i.e., a small percentage of the players are making nearly all of the money. This has resulted in a system where a Carson Beck can afford to purchase a frivolity like a $300k lambo and UGA can throw millions at players in the transfer portal; meanwhile, there are players lettering in football at UGA that will never see a dime. Also a safe bet that a lot of Georgia Bulldog student athletes in non-revenue producing sports won't see any NIL money either.

Mind you, I'm not here to advocate that the fourth string punter or someone on the track team must receive an equal amount to a Carson Beck or Trevor Etienne. The free market is the free market, and sources of NIL funds will ultimately pay only whom they want to, or they won't pay at all.

I'm concerned that the excess amounts of money being spent today via "NIL" coupled with all the changes that the NCAA settlements will wrought will make it unsustainable for most if not all schools to be involved in intercollegiate athletics. Which players and their families will ultimately benefit if the Louisiana Christian University's of the world are the only schools left that sponsor intercollegiate athletics?

As for Saban, he was akin to a CEO of a large company. Under his leadership, his programs earned millions of dollars for LSU and Alabama. A lot of people and their families depended on the program for their livelihoods. That's an astronomical amount of pressure. What non-football responsibilities did a Barrett Jones take on that should have earned him "leverage?"

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The “‘middle class” Power 4 teams are doing much better with the new rules. Like there’s no way Indiana would be 10-0 in the pre-portal era. They’ve been very successful because they were able to poach a lot of really good players from successful G5 programs.

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That's why most of the crying and handwringing is coming from fans of the bluebloods.

Their little insulated fifedoms are being challenged.

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NIL

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Have zero issue with this.

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Unlimited Portal?

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This is the problem. Let’s not act like schools weren’t taking care of players all along. But the portal is what’s ruining the sport.

Easy fix. Give the kids one free transfer, then you sit out a year. That gives some flexibility if they end up in a bad situation but doesn’t allow every kid to bolt the second they don’t get what they want.

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As for Saban, he was akin to a CEO of a large company. Under his leadership, his programs earned millions of dollars for LSU and Alabama.

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The brand of the university and the talent of the players are way more important than the coaches.

No one would watch Saban coach a bunch of washed up players for the Birmingham Stallions at Protective Stadium. They would, however, still watch the 5 stars from major universities if they were all coached by high school staffs.

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That's an astronomical amount of pressure.

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Is it? If you get fired you get more money than all of us combined will see in a lifetime. Big deal. If the everyday person gets fired, he has to figure out how to pay the mortgage.

The fans have warped the importance of college football, and the players are taking advantage of it.

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What non-football responsibilities did a Barrett Jones take on that should have earned him "leverage?"

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Since people are obviously willing to pay the best players millions to play for their program, it seems what they do on the field is quite important to the operation of the machine.

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there are players lettering in football at UGA that will never see a dime

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The lowest rated kid on UGA likely gets paid well north on a $100k/yr. Walk ons maybe not, but some got paid to take that walk on status.

Let’s say it’s $65k/yr. Everything else is payed for. I think of it as simply removing them off of the parent’s dime. My son can fly and go get the training he needs to try and go pro…and I don’t have to pay for it. That’s empowering for him…and he’s a 3 star.

It’s helping all players…not just the ones who can afford a Lambo.

The playoffs are going to be awesome, just saying.

It’ll be just like the regular season used to be, where every game counted, but condensed into a handful of games.