Players moving around from team to team, unconstrained, lured away by NIL awards, is wrecking college sports. The current state of musical chairs is rapidly eroding viewer interest, and therefore future sport revenue.
The kids want money, so let’s go all the way. Let’s have high school kids, supported by agents, sign binding four-year incentivized compensation contracts and impose salary caps to be determined by each conference.
Unfortunate, and not ideal, but a heck of a lot better than what we have today.
Peter B.
I think this is the way this has to evolve.
Contracts: I can see kids being signed to one-, two-, three- and four-year deals, depending on what both sides would want to negotiate.
Then, there would be no more yearly transfers; also, the kids actually get paid.
The holdup: the cost to the schools.
I’m still working out the numbers on this, but a good approximation is what players, in the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL make as a share of overall league revenues.
Generally, it’s between 52 and 57 percent, from my memory of each of their last labor agreements.
Using that as the baseline, schools would need to basically double their athletics budgets.
In real-money terms, UVA, which spent $162 million on its athletics budget last year, would have to be able to spend $324 million.
What ends up happening here, realistically, is a number of non-revenue sports end up getting the axe, and even then, salaries for FB and MBB coaches have to come way, way down to get things in balance.
The NCAA is fighting this tooth and nail.
Chris G.
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Chris Graham
