NIL thoughts

[alathIN]

I agree that NIL is having detrimental effects on college sports but I don't see what can be done to fix it.

Making it all go away is a fantasy. The courts have ruled - correctly I believe - that you can't arbitrarily prohibit the value producing talent of a mega -jillion$ industry from being paid their market value. And don't try to snow me with talk about the value of a scholarship. If a booster is willing to pay six or seven figures to ensure a top talent plays for their school, that is irrefutable evidence that the player's market value vastly exceeds the value of the scholarship.

The pro sports leagues have all decided that unrestricted bidding for players is bad for their product (the entertainment value of their sport). Ultimately if all the money is concentrated in the Yankees and they win every game all season long, NLB as a whole loses value as a product. So they all have salary caps and mechanisms to help the lower teams get better.

In theory college sports could try something like this. But the root problem is - and always has been - that Alabama and UT etc have wealthy alums who are rabid fans willing to spend big money to get recruits to come to their schools. Used to be illegal but obviously big money will always find a way to get where it wants to go. Now it's out in the open and unregulated. But if you try to impose a salary cap, that money will still be there and it will find its way into the pockets of 5 star recruits to ensure they go to the school the money wants them to go to.

Nor do I think Vanderbilt can compete in the NIL market. Yes we have a lot of wealthy alums, but they are scattered all over the world and they have varied interests. The Alabama grad who's a senior partner of the biggest law firm in Birmingham is steeped in Bama football. He's got a motor coach painted Crimson with elephant graphics. He's very likely to put his disposable income into the Bama NIL collective. All the wealthiest grads in his class fit the same basic profile.
The equivalent Vanderbilt grad owns a shipping company in Antwerp and donates to the Belgian national ballet. He vaguely remembers going to an American football match when he was in college and all he remembers is that Vanderbilt got stomped by a some school from Alabama.

I don't see any value in bemoaning the changes. The former order was built on extremely shaky legal grounds and it isn't coming back.
I don't see any workable way to regulate NIL and I don't see any way Vanderbilt can compete with the sports obsessed alums of the rest of the SEC.
Ultimately I think the big boys will wind up in a professional sports league branded under the names of colleges and everyone else will be in conferences more akin to the Ivy League.
And honestly that could be better.
I am not sure Vanderbilt will want to give up the big league TV revenues. But I'm pretty sure we will be even more of a doormat if we try to stay in with the big boys.

Please convince me I'm wrong.
It will take some convincing.

[Labradore]

I don’t find your explanation of why it can’t be changed compelling at all. The players do not have inherent value without the name on their jersey, money making leagues to play in, and tv contracts to get their name, image, and likeness known… the players are partners in profit with the schools and completely unrestricted free agency doesn’t exist in virtually any labor market.

There are a multitude of viable reforms. Making the acceptance of an initial NIL deal equate to a 4 year commitment & only allowing grad transfers and transfers in the event of head coaching changes. Adopting a baseball style arrangement of being able to go directly to a pro minor league if school is truly not an interest (the idea that the scholarship and benefits directed to athletes are not already pay is ridiculous). A system that promotes parity must be found or the quality of the presented product will diminish… as will the value of all those who play college sports.

[alathIN]

I don’t find your explanation of why it can’t be changed compelling at all. The players do not have inherent value without the name on their jersey, money making leagues to play in, and tv contracts to get their name, image, and likeness known… the players are partners in profit with the schools and completely unrestricted free agency doesn’t exist in virtually any labor market.

There are a multitude of viable reforms. Making the acceptance of an initial NIL deal equate to a 4 year commitment & only allowing grad transfers and transfers in the event of head coaching changes. Adopting a baseball style arrangement of being able to go directly to a pro minor league if school is truly not an interest (the idea that the scholarship and benefits directed to athletes are not already pay is ridiculous). A system that promotes parity must be found or the quality of the presented product will diminish… as will the value of all those who play college sports.

You're addressing the portal and transfers, which I wasn't addressing at all. Sure, you can make staying at the same school part of the NIL deal.
But I don't think that solves the problem.
Do you still plan for the amount of the NIL payouts to be unrestricted? That will certainly lead to imbalanced competitiveness.
Going to restrict NIL payouts? OK, now you have to figure out a way to prevent booster $ over the limit mysteriously finding their way into 5 star recruits' pockets. Past efforts to stop this has not been resoundingly successful.

The transfers aren't the main problem. There are really only 2 kinds of transfers:
1) not good enough for the league they're in - transferring down to get more playing time rather than sit at the end of the bench. I don't hear a lot of grumbling about this. And if the player isn't an SEC talent, I don't see any reason to prevent them going to the MAC.
2) under-rated recruits who turn out to be good and get poached off to a school with more NIL money. This is the one that bothers people. This seems to me to be fundamentally a problem of unrestricted NIL money. If not for the six figure NIL deal, Tyrin Lawrence probably stays at Vanderbilt. Probably the same for the cornerback we just lost too.

Re, unrestricted free agency - 100% locked down you-can-never-leave restrictions are very rare outside the military. Usually it amounts to a financial penalty or a buy out. Not a barrier if enough booster money is on tap.

The point about needing a league to have any value is true, but trivially so. Almost every job requires a market and an infrastructure. If you're arguing that only jobs performed independently with no outside resources have any value, you've got a lot more 'splainin to do.

I agree most college players don't have much if any brand value and I made this point above. Whoever paid Lawrence to go elsewhere isn't buying "Tyrin Lawrence Superstar." They aren't buying his signature look or the value of his face on a billboard. They're buying the commodity "Upper Quartile SEC Starting 2 Guard." That commodity demonstrably has market value. When NIL collectives are lining up to pay big money for college players, trying to argue that they have no monetary value is an argument you've already lost.

[alathIN]

(the idea that the scholarship and benefits directed to athletes are not already pay is ridiculous)

It would be ridiculous if that's what I said.
What I said was that the value of the scholarship is much less than the full market value of the player's services.
Collectives lining up to pay big money in addition to the scholarships is irrefutable proof of this.