If the college football ranks are turning pro can it be set up as a pro league?

College Football has been ruined.

It should be like European soccer. NFL teams recruit HS kids from age 14/15, put them into an "academy" and play against the academies of other NFL teams.


Let the physical freaks play in their own league while the average joes can play each other.

Universities being attached to the current NIL world is a joke.

1. If the top 50 teams are tied to a school then Title IX issues will impact any sort of revenue sharing. As in the schools will not be able to pay the star QB $6M per year and the backup SS on the softball team $600.00 per year. It's almost a certainty the salaries will have to be "equal"...even though football if the only sport that brings in enough revenue to pay for everything.

2. Any sort of revenue sharing, salary caps, etc MUST be agreed upon through collective bargaining. That means a players union. The NFL, MLB, NBA are actually monopolies that violate anti-trust laws in the purest sense. They are able to lawfully exists in their monopolistic form because of collective bargaining I.e. the players' unions and owners agree to the terms of business. D-1 college football is likewise a "monopoly" in the college football industry. The NCAA or any other organization cannot lawfully impose a salary cap or revenue sharing.

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Upon being drafted you have to serve 3 years for the team. You can be cut at any point but you then go to free agency and a team can pick you up. If you aren’t picked up you can try your hand at mid majors.

After you serve your 3 year contract, you then have options— nfl, resign for remaining two years with current team, transfer out and hope someone wants you.


If you have the ability to make money outside the college via podcasting, autographs, or product spokesman then go for it… but you are tied to your school indefinitely.

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This would require the players being deemed "employees" of the school because what you are proposing is "employment" contracts.

It is a tangled mess because you are dealing with both federal law applicable to colleges (something the pro leagues don't have to deal with) and employment law. The easiest path to what you a proposing would be to essentially eliminate all college sports except football and men's basketball. Then again, I don't know if that is even possible with Title IX.

The irony is that if the players started their own "minor league" it would likely fail as a business. The goodwill of the industry is inextricably tied into the 100+ year relationship between the sport and schools. A game between the "Baton Rouge Tigers" v. "Ann Arbor Wolverines" would barely fill up a 30k seat stadium. Same players. Same location. But no century of goodwill tied to a school. It would be no different than minor league baseball or XFL football which, if you have been to one of those games, you know aren't terribly well attended.

Nobody would watch that shite.

I mean, yeah some would but it wouldn't get nearly the ratings as CFB today.

Pageantry, tradition and student interest would die, which is what makes CFB great.

All of this bullshite because people were crying about a player not getting money for autographs and such.

The fact that revenue sports are essentially marketing arms of universities hasn't changed. That's why they exist. To bring in alumni donations, out of state students to public schools and all students to private schools.

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I know it'll probably never happen, but seems like the only way to save college sports is for Congress to do pass something so the courts can't keep slapping the NCAA around. Give the NCAA an anti-trust exemption, make it to where the NCAA can legally prohibit schools from giving direct cash to players, and allow the NCAA to setup some sort of enforceable framework for NIL deals that still allow players to make money doing commercials, autograph signings, youth camps, etc....but prohibits all the shite we're seeing now with behind the scenes bidding wars from collectives and boosters for high school recruits.

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That’s impossible though. With NIL it is now the right of the player to market themself as they see fit.

If portnoy wants to give a guy 10 mil to come on his podcast once a week for 4 years he can do that… with the understanding being that there will be no money or podcast if he doesn’t go to Michigan.