Ted Cruz hosting panel on NIL
- Thread starter NYShoreGuy
- Start date
I had oatmeal for breakfast. I'm thinking about a turkey and swiss on rye for lunch.
I'm not a fan of any politician getting involved. While intervention is needed on a grand scale, I don't trust them to regulate properly
This. Colossal waste of time.
Ted Cruz is actually a huge basketball fan and critic of the NIL. Somebody has to stop this madness.
It will not be stopped. I don't get what is so hard to understand about this. Multiple courts have upheld the rights of the players to earn money in this way. It would be like some organizing body limiting your ability to earn money off of your own professional skills. Do you think that would hold up in court? And should it?
But until everyone gets the message, it's open season for performative politics. Having Nick Saban there doesn't do anything to make this charade any more credible.
That would be something, but who is going to legislate it? The leagues are all separate entities with disparate interests and the NCAA is toothless and ineffectual. I can't see any consensus developing around it.
Those courts are interpreting antitrust statutes passed by Congress starting in the 1880's. There's no fundamental right involved and it's exactly the kind of thing Congress should and must regulate.
Maybe Lyin’ Ted (🤣) can bring them to the bargaining table. That’s the only way out. Get a designation of what the players are and begin to set terms.
It's so far out of their purview that it isn't even worth considering. They can do nothing -- about this or anything else, for that matter.
Anyway, that horse is way out of the barn now. The players are the ones who make this thing go and if you think they are willingly going to go back to a model that makes hundreds of millions of dollars per year and sees them get nothing (and spare me the scholarship argument), I don't know what to say. That is not going to happen, ever.
Will the means of payment change? Perhaps they become salaried employees of the universities that have increasingly less to do with the football and basketball programs under whose names they compete? Or there will be some collectively bargained revenue-sharing agreement? I guess that could happen, but give that actual name, image, and likeness cannot, by law, be prohibited, how is that going to stop, even if it's the current pay-for-play model that makes up 90-something percent of "NIL" deals? None of that will ever help Seton Hall be more competitive. This current state may be as good as it ever gets for a program like ours.
Congress could give the NCAA an antitrust exemption and the old rules against NIL could be reinstated in whole or in part, which IMHO is what should happen.
Isn’t that only legal if it’s tied to revenue sharing? And you would still have (shady) outside endorsements.
Is there another example of the employees of huge revenue generating organizations who are not paid by the orgs who profit. The schools pay the coaches. And they should pay the athletes based on a salary cap based on revenue.
I still cap it as x amount for freshmen. Then an increase for sophomores and so on. Gives kids an incentive to stay in school. The schools Collectives can have a pot worth so much and then kids can earn true NIl deals based on their popularity
The problem is that nil is the only revenue stream for college athletes. And few can actually generate real nil money. Caitlin. Maybe some sec fb players. Not too many. Maybe i am wrong. I would love to know what percentage of "nil" is real nil.
This is a bit of a false narrative. It wouldn't be prohibiting any individual from undertaking any activity, but some activities would be disqualifying if you wanted to be an amateur athlete. Life is choices.
Admittedly I have very little knowledge of the NIL structure. But if the players are just getting a share of a huge revenue stream, why do they come to the fans for money?
I purposely worded it a bit ambiguously because for now at least, pay for play is technically not legal, but we are doing it packed as “NIL” because that’s the way to get it down — effectively compensating players for their labor. (And of course there are those few players who are also actually being paid for their name, image, and likenesses, too).
The vast minority. I am in favor of significant reform. Players going to the highest bidder, with no expectations of NIL -- the actual ruling that made it all possible -- doesn't sit well with me. Revenue sharing? Sure. The wild west, funded by Vitamin Water or Oil men? Not good. I don't have faith that Cruz or any other politician will have any material effect on the situation, but it bears consideration. I refuse to believe that because the court has ruled the way it has that "it's the end of it," and this completely unhinged system is acceptable or sustainable.
THEY ARE NOT GETTING ONE DIME FROM THE HUGE REVENUE STREAM. Which is why they come to us and why it is foolish. They SHOULD be paid from the revenue stream they generate.
And lets be honest. If the NCAA told us years ago that since college fb and bb generate some much money they are instituting a plan to pay the athletes, I bet most of us would have been against it
The court ruling on NIL was correct in its application, but there is no way to enforce its wider use for pay-for-play. Really, none, I don't think. It's just too hard to show the distinction when there is already an effort to disguise pay-for-play as NIL. A player only has to make a half-hearted, minimal attempt on social media to plug a brand, or make a promotional appearance here or there and they are covered, just going through the motions. There's no rule against bad business -- overpaying a kid well beyond the market value of his endorsement -- and so it becomes impossible for any agency to say which is which.
Obviously, expecting fans to be the direct revenue source of player payments is ridiculous and also not sustainable. Even the top, most well-funded football programs are already reporting "NIL" fatigue amongst their bases. I am firmly of the belief that players in big-time college football and basketball -- the sports that rake in huge revenues -- should see a good deal of that money. They are the talent, the ones who make it all go. There isn't a huge margin for schools in conferences like ours, where we have to make do with what we get from Fox Sports, so that isn't ideal from a Seton Hall perspective. But it's the most justifiable way of paying them.
(I also want to make clear that just because I believe the current model of fans funding player salaries is wrong and unsustainable, it is also the only way there is right now, so I applaud the yeoman's work of Mike Walsh, Mike McBride, and others at Seton Hall who are making the best go of it they can. I hope to see the burden eventually shifted off of fans and them to where it belongs, but in the meantime, they are getting it done.)
I find your take on all of this fascinating. For years, you've argued (rightly, IMO) that big conferences/college football and the way they operate were out to destroy the little guys. But now you're an advocate for that system, which includes paying players large amounts of money. Doesn't quite square with me.
No. The system today includes "paying players large amounts of money" which I clearly do not advocate. I favor a salary cap type system based on revenue that limits the amount of money a kid could make. Maybe something like all D1 hoopsters can be awarded up to $50K a season. While the players would balk at that today given the bogus NIL crap, they would have jumped at that a few years ago. You would have hated that suggestion.
NIL as is exists is bad and ridiculous. There isnt a N, an I or an L in it. This new system helps the huge fb schools and I still believe they are up to no good as far as we are concerned. If they had a way to prove that March would be as exciting without non fb schools we would be gone already.
The only way this happens is if it is collectively bargained with the player's union.
Oh, wait there isn't a college basketball player's union.
Then it's simply restraint of trade. I can see that going well.
The same way using the name, image and likenesses of players while denying them the ability to profit on the same went well.
