The destruction of non-power 5 sports via the portal and NIL reserves

Listening to some coaches out there, they are asking for mandatory payouts for football players, coming to around $4-$5M per team. At small schools, that might be the budget for about 75% of the sports, combined. At bigger schools that will cover at least 2 sports. I think that LSU's gymnastics budget is $2.5M / yr, for example. If this continues, what's going to happen to these non-revenue sports? We lost hundreds of programs for men's sports due to Title IX - I wonder what sorts of damage might be done by NIL and the portal.

In addition to recruiting high school and transfer players, you essentially have to recruit the players on your own roster year round.

It’s why Nick Saban called it quits. The constant roster turnover has to be a massive headache for college coaches

Sonny Cumbie playing 4D chess at Louisiana Tech

Schools can’t steal your talent if you don’t have any

I'm pretty sure they are still paying Skip's buyout, and a public G5 school in Louisiana doesn't have the institutional support and athletic fees to pay three HC's (2 buyouts and 1 active) a competitive salary. Especially when they struggle to retain alumnus donations because LSU is preached as the school for that kind of discretionary spending. ULL, ULM, and LTU have passionate fans, but the majority of their alumnus spend the money to see and be seen in BR. These schools can't have the support from the university their peers get, in a poor state, and are fighting a losing battle for entertainment and donation dollars because no matter what school most Louisianans attend, once they have discretionary spending they push that to Baton Rouge.

The NCAA and its member organizations fricked this up so royally. NIL is a good thing, the transfer portal is what is killing the sports.


How would I structure it to fix it?
Every sport should be like baseball, eligible to go pro after HS, but a 3 year commitment if going to a college.

NIL is negotiated directly through the schools’ via their athletic departments and/or collectives and NIL payouts can be tied directly to attendance of said school AND have up to 3 year commitment clauses where if the player transfers before year 3, the prior payments must be relayed to the school.

NIL payments should be listed as outside the jurisdiction of Title IX. (This is the part that is the trickiest when tying it to schools)

Additionally, transfers can occur any year, but each transfer must redshirt the first year at a new school unless the student has graduated.

NIL funds CANNOT come from state or federal tax dollars and MUST come from private donations.

No limits on NIL amounts, if you can raise the funds and pay it, good for your school.

There will be different divisions

A lot of the smaller sports will become club sports

Do I think players should be able to transfer? Yes.
Do I think there should be limits or consequences for that transfer? Also yes. Same goes for coaches.

There has got to be some structure for this - the limitless transferring and roster flipping is doing more harm than good. First transfer is free, second transfer and beyond carries one year of ineligibility.

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The NCAA and its member organizations fricked this up so royally. NIL is a good thing, the transfer portal is what is killing the sports.

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NIL, as indented in its most basic form is a right and good thing. ALL of us onw our name, image and likeness, and we should be compensated by someone/entity that wants to use it for their personal gain. Not surprisingly, it quickly became largely unregulated "pay for play". I don't blame the players at all. If you are a great football player and someone wants to pay you $100k, $200k, $1M because of it who am I to say you shouldn't seek it? But you are right, the transfer largely created the "free agency" aspect. Chalk it up as one of the countless examples of a ridiculous overreaction to the "pandemic" with zero forethought as to what negative effects it may create later on.

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Every sport should be like baseball, eligible to go pro after HS, but a 3 year commitment if going to a college

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The NCAA has ZERO say in that decision. The professional leagues (MLB, NBA, NFL) set those eligibility rules.

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NIL is negotiated directly through the schools’ via their athletic departments and/or collectives and NIL payouts can be tied directly to attendance of said school AND have up to 3 year commitment clauses where if the player transfers before year 3, the prior payments must be relayed to the school.

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You are likely wading into some anti-trust violations there. Or, at least, acknowledging players are "employees".

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Additionally, transfers can occur any year, but each transfer must redshirt the first year at a new school unless the student has graduated.

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Will get struck down in court as an anti-trust violation. That's why the NCAA changed the 2x transfer rule. They saw the inevitable conclusion in the wake of the West Virginia court ruling.

First of all, people have to change there perspective of college football and men's basketball. They LONG stopped being academic extracurriculars and have become a multi-billion dollar entertainment business not all that dis-similar from the NFL and NBA. The NBA and NFL have multi-billion dollar media rights deals...so do the major college conferences (largely centered on the broadcasting of college football and basketball games). College football stadiums have luxury suites. Season ticket prices well exceed $1,000. The school generate tremendous revenue through ads, licensing deals, etc. It's a "business". ALL similar to the NFL and NBA. But college football/basketball is business where they key components technically aren't "employees" (unlike professional sports)

The pathway to some sort of regulation is accepting that FACT and creating a system where the players are considered as quasi-employees. That would allow the conferences/NCAA to collectively bargain with a players union for set rules that would not be in violation of anti-trust laws. For example, the NFL is a monopoly that violates anti-trust laws on the surface. The way the NFL gets around that is collective bargaining between the employer (franchises) and the employees (players). So until there is some sort of collective bargaining with respect to college football/basketball, the NCAA is going to continue to have little ability to restrict "commerce". They will continue to lose anti-trust lawsuits.

The NCAA did, or at least should have, saw the NIL ruling coming from a mile away. However, they, the schools, the conferences, were brining in millions in revenue without the burden of having to distribute much of that to the players. Instead of being proactive, they decided to ride the gravy train all the way to the inevitable crash at the end. Then they stupidly decided to change the transfer rules (something the players weren't fighting all that strongly) because if you DIDN'T overreact in 2020 you ran the risk of bad PR.

They allowed Pandora's box to be opened. So now they either have to accept the reality of what college football/basketball is...an entertainment business...and adapt accordingly. OR, let things play out as they are and simply accept that is the new landscape.

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the transfer portal is what is killing the sports.

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Really? What killed the Pac-12?

Grown-ups arguing over money. To the degree that it blew up a power-5 conference that had been here for 100 years and at the speed of light.

And we should expect this unregulated greed from NIL is going to work just fine?