NIL and the NCAA

[CrustyCat]

Ole Miss football coach Lane Kiffin: ‘We’re a professional sport’

My instinct is that NIL will effectively destroy college sports as we've known it. That, or it has just brought out into the open that which has been true for quite some time. Either way, college football and basketball for sure are basically nothing more than a minor professional league. It won't be long before schools just hire players with no requirement or expectation that they pursue a degree or go to any classes; they will just be employees who are supposed to generate money for the school and act as marketing tools.

 

[BlueInTheBoro]

I just read the sports illustrated article linked in the above post. Kiffin has a complete and thorough understanding of the system and it's sad so few do. Everything he said in that interview is pretty much 100% correct. I think we are headed for a sad state of college sports.

 

[The-Hack]

it has just brought out into the open that which has been true for quite some time.

This is the best answer.

The fiction of amateur collegiate Athletics was maintained to allow the US a pool of “amateurs” to compete against Nazi’s and Commie country’s “amateur” Olympic athletes.

How do we know that it was all fictional?

Among the hundreds of “oops” moments the last 80 years, from Jesse Owens having to lie and say an anonymous person tossed 40,000 cash into his convertible at the NY Ticker Tape Parade (he got it from The 1936 Republican Presidential candidate), to the 200K that was paid to Cam’s Dad, to our own dozens of indiscretions, how many folks were pursued by the IRS for the cash transactions that were revealed?

None that I know of.

Maybe for several decades, the well-liked Supreme Court Justice, Bryon “Whizzer” White (a collegiate AA running back) made a few phone calls a year reminding the feds how the system worked, and more importantly, how it was supposed to look.

And it served us well: among many US gold-medalists, were the 1948 men’s US basketball team, who shared a Coach and a fabulous group of a starting five with the University of Kentucky.

We’re the Fabulous Five “amateurs?”

Of course they were: they could not have been professionals playing college hoops!!! The NCAA had hundreds of pages of rules to show an Olympic Committee cynic to prove the “amateurism” of America’s finest young athletes.

[Somebody fire up “God Bless America,” and get me TF outta’ here!”].

 

[The-Hack]

E

It won't be long before schools just hire players with no requirement or expectation that they pursue a degree or go to any classes; they will just be employees who are supposed to generate money for the school and act as marketing tools.

The NCAA still has the authority in this realm, though with the North Carolina ruling, I’m not real certain that your fear actually reflects much change from pre-NIL days.

 

[MrHotDice]

It kinda levels the playing but you now have fewer big players. However anyone can be a big player if you have a booster with billions.