I don’t know how many schools in the power conferences would be able to pay their athletes what the NCAA proposed.
What I heard is most likely going to happen is Football and Basketball super conferences will emerge and those sports athletes will be employees with revenue share from TV contacts. When you are an employee Title IX doesn’t have the same bite that it does now.
Good, it'll be more like a European university system. Academic institutions will be able to focus better on their core mission without the distraction of sports. In larger college towns and cities, interested parties can form for-profit clubs that don't give a f*ck-all about academic eligibility or course load or other namby pamby NCAA nanny rules and regulations. Runners will still run without direct oversight from academic Big Brother, and might even be better for it.
Those countries are all terrible at track. No depth.
You can't make policy around one relatively short-term run of success by a non-Power Conference team in an Olympic Sport.
If you split into a higher (paid) tier and second tier of today's Division I, there would be no more NAUs because those athletes would be at schools in the paid tier.
You can't make policy around one relatively short-term run of success by a non-Power Conference team in an Olympic Sport.
If you split into a higher (paid) tier and second tier of today's Division I, there would be no more NAUs because those athletes would be at schools in the paid tier.
UConn and Gonzaga for the B team basketball championships?
You can't make policy around one relatively short-term run of success by a non-Power Conference team in an Olympic Sport.
If you split into a higher (paid) tier and second tier of today's Division I, there would be no more NAUs because those athletes would be at schools in the paid tier.
UConn and Gonzaga for the B team basketball championships?
I think March Madness will be officially dead.
Start with the premise: IF anything close to this proposal transpires, you will have to make a paid and essentially unpaid level of the current Division I.
If you can make the case that those schools could afford to pay their athletes (buy their NIL rights, or however we couch it) at the going rate, then I'd love to hear it. Keep in mind, it isn't just about paying those basketball players. It would be about massive increases to the athletic budget to pay athletes across the board. Suddenly Gonzaga is paying $30k or more to half, or more, of its athletes?
You might have missed the point of the proposal and how it would alter the landscape in Division I.
Do you keep a bunch of sports and athletes when the cost-per-athlete rockets through the roof, or do you keep the minimum number of men's teams (focusing on football and basketball) and then just carry enough women's teams to meet substantial proportionality and that's it?
Olympic sports, and specifically men's cross country and track and field, would be under tremendous threat in this model.
Division III schools use athletics to drive enrollment and tuition revenue. Every athlete can be an overall asset. Under the proposed model, Olympic sports athletes in Division I would all be a liability.
Agreed! I think it will move to a DIII model outside of the top top tier of schools.
Track and Cross country will be severely impacted by this. The best international athletes all come to the ncaa system. It’s a better deal than being a pro most of the time. Without scholarship the international presence will disappear.
UConn and Gonzaga for the B team basketball championships?
I think March Madness will be officially dead.
Start with the premise: IF anything close to this proposal transpires, you will have to make a paid and essentially unpaid level of the current Division I.
If you can make the case that those schools could afford to pay their athletes (buy their NIL rights, or however we couch it) at the going rate, then I'd love to hear it. Keep in mind, it isn't just about paying those basketball players. It would be about massive increases to the athletic budget to pay athletes across the board. Suddenly Gonzaga is paying $30k or more to half, or more, of its athletes?
So you agree that March Madness will be dead? If only 40-50 schools can be eligible for the top tier basketball championship, it won't generate the same level of interest and revenue as it does today.
Why do we need to kill the rest of NCAA sports just for the sake of football? Simply reclassifying the football subdivisions within D1 makes more sense.
Start with the premise: IF anything close to this proposal transpires, you will have to make a paid and essentially unpaid level of the current Division I.
If you can make the case that those schools could afford to pay their athletes (buy their NIL rights, or however we couch it) at the going rate, then I'd love to hear it. Keep in mind, it isn't just about paying those basketball players. It would be about massive increases to the athletic budget to pay athletes across the board. Suddenly Gonzaga is paying $30k or more to half, or more, of its athletes?
So you agree that March Madness will be dead? If only 40-50 schools can be eligible for the top tier basketball championship, it won't generate the same level of interest and revenue as it does today.
Why do we need to kill the rest of NCAA sports just for the sake of football? Simply reclassifying the football subdivisions within D1 makes more sense.
Well, I do think that the death of the tournament as we know it would be really sad.
But how do reclassify football into essentially a paid sport without bringing an equal number of women's roster spots along for the ride for Title IX reasons? And how would you leave out the basketball teams that drive athletic department revenue as well?
But do we agree that as it is headed (and as this proposal would accelerate), the soon-to-be Power Four Conferences are already going to be a thing unto themselves?
Revenue is a myth. There are very few athletic departments that have revenue anywhere near what they spend. Most get bailed out from “main campus” aka the university president giving the department money, student fees, etc.
Basketball may generate revenue, but it costs a ton of money to operate.
The basketball tournament makes a ton of money that is distributed back to all the conferences and DI schools at different levels. When 30 schools make their own tournament, they will take the TV money and keep it for themselves.
So you agree that March Madness will be dead? If only 40-50 schools can be eligible for the top tier basketball championship, it won't generate the same level of interest and revenue as it does today.
Why do we need to kill the rest of NCAA sports just for the sake of football? Simply reclassifying the football subdivisions within D1 makes more sense.
Well, I do think that the death of the tournament as we know it would be really sad.
But how do reclassify football into essentially a paid sport without bringing an equal number of women's roster spots along for the ride for Title IX reasons? And how would you leave out the basketball teams that drive athletic department revenue as well?
But do we agree that as it is headed (and as this proposal would accelerate), the soon-to-be Power Four Conferences are already going to be a thing unto themselves?
We already have FBS and FCS within D1. Just make the top 40-50 schools the new FBS, and separate the rest of current FBS schools. Whether they want to join FCS or they want to remain FBS2 is up to them.
And as some have suggested, if they treat football players as employees instead of student athletes, they can go around the Title IX requirement. If football players want to take classes for free, just offer them as employee benefit.
Well, I do think that the death of the tournament as we know it would be really sad.
But how do reclassify football into essentially a paid sport without bringing an equal number of women's roster spots along for the ride for Title IX reasons? And how would you leave out the basketball teams that drive athletic department revenue as well?
But do we agree that as it is headed (and as this proposal would accelerate), the soon-to-be Power Four Conferences are already going to be a thing unto themselves?
We already have FBS and FCS within D1. Just make the top 40-50 schools the new FBS, and separate the rest of current FBS schools. Whether they want to join FCS or they want to remain FBS2 is up to them.
And as some have suggested, if they treat football players as employees instead of student athletes, they can go around the Title IX requirement. If football players want to take classes for free, just offer them as employee benefit.
Wouldn't we think that a model that says football players are employees who may or may not even be students is a going a bit too far, even for a hypothetical? Would that mean there is no academic eligibility requirement? No maximum number of years they can play, etc?
LMU is in a fairly attractive location in L.A., with nice weather, nice quiet campus. Unfortunately they've never done much in track or XC so I could see where they wanted to drop these sports. IMO the only way they could have survived is by carving out a niche program, a la Cal Baptist. Their men's basketball team had their brief run some years ago but not much since. Maybe they should consider dropping down to D3. It's not the worst thing. At one time NYU was a major basketball program and had some good track athletes. But they decided to move away from big time athletics and now compete at the D3 level. It certainly hasn't hurt their academic reputation.
We already have FBS and FCS within D1. Just make the top 40-50 schools the new FBS, and separate the rest of current FBS schools. Whether they want to join FCS or they want to remain FBS2 is up to them.
And as some have suggested, if they treat football players as employees instead of student athletes, they can go around the Title IX requirement. If football players want to take classes for free, just offer them as employee benefit.
Wouldn't we think that a model that says football players are employees who may or may not even be students is a going a bit too far, even for a hypothetical? Would that mean there is no academic eligibility requirement? No maximum number of years they can play, etc?
It is already going to far as it is proposed.
Of course, no academic eligibility because they are not student athletes. They can decide whatever about the max number of years, or the max roster size as long as it does not negatively affect other sports.
Revenue is a myth. There are very few athletic departments that have revenue anywhere near what they spend. Most get bailed out from “main campus” aka the university president giving the department money, student fees, etc.
Basketball may generate revenue, but it costs a ton of money to operate.
The basketball tournament makes a ton of money that is distributed back to all the conferences and DI schools at different levels. When 30 schools make their own tournament, they will take the TV money and keep it for themselves.
There is a difference between revenue and profit. Many schools have revenue from sports, even women's basketball and volleyball make some revenue, but they don't make enough to cover their expenses. Basketball is certainly cheaper than Football to operate, otherwise the likes of Gonzaga or Wake Forest would never be competitive. The fundamental problem with the high revenue sports in college is that they are generating plenty money for lots of people, from the TV networks to the coaches and the rest of the athletic department and yet they continue to pay the players $0. When you look at the size of the TV deals the top conferences are getting paid and the millions of dollars they are paying their football and basketball coaches, even $30,000/year for their football and basketball players is a pitance. Like it or not the system is heading for a big change, the legal precedent has been set now.
Good, it'll be more like a European university system. Academic institutions will be able to focus better on their core mission without the distraction of sports. In larger college towns and cities, interested parties can form for-profit clubs that don't give a f*ck-all about academic eligibility or course load or other namby pamby NCAA nanny rules and regulations. Runners will still run without direct oversight from academic Big Brother, and might even be better for it.
Those countries are all terrible at track. No depth.
Are they? Most of those countries are the size of a large US state. If you compare the US to the entire EU, which would be a much more reasonable comparison, I don't think the US would come out very favorably.
The reality is given the total resources spent, the NCAA hasn't really been getting it done for the US in International Track and Field for a long time now. Consider some of our most successful sprinters recently like Noah Lyles or Erriyon Knighton, both skipped college track all together. Even the likes of Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone or Mondo Duplantis (I know he doesn't compete for the US) had such brief college track careers that it's doubtful their college experience changed their trajectory any. The US only holds 1 individual men's running world record on the track anymore, and that's in the 110 hurdles. It's much worse as you go up in distance, heck it was only 3 years ago a high school boy ran a 1500m faster than the NCAA record, the NCAA has proven to be completely incapable of developing a world class distance runner above 800 meters.
Our best hope for college Track and Field at this point is for many D1 programs to somehow transition their non-revenue sports to a D3 like model or risk loosing the sports all together, at least on the men's side. At the highest level hopefully we can get more support for a club system, to at least try to maintain some competitiveness at the international level.
The cuts happened in Hollywood. It's a huge deal for all of us. LMU is in Hollywood the Center of International, National, and Prep Sports with more championships and champions than anywhere else by orders of magnitude.
Higher education in America is not in a healthy place to begin with. As institutions inflate and commercialize, the cost of education continues to increase yet the quality of education is generally lower than ever. More and more people feel the cost of education isn’t worth the payoff.
Sports in higher ed has also inflated and commercialized, including non-revenue sports like running. Almost any kid can at least walk on to a program and expect the experience will be like being a pro athlete. Whether we acknowledge it or not, these people are usually “athlete-students” instead of “student-athletes”. Schools know students’ decisions often are because of athletics, and so programs are being relentlessly overinflated, even though most sports are not directly bringing in revenue for schools. This is not sustainable.
Issues relating to revenue sports like football are going to eventually kill the non-revenue sport ecosystem in higher ed, if higher Ed itself doesn’t fall apart before then. Most schools can barely afford their current budgets; theres no way they can pay their athlete-students as employees. It would be a shame if American collegiate running fell apart, too, because it’s an amazing system to develop talent, is organized decently, allows for team dynamics, has some testing infrastructure, etc. a decentralized system for running in the US would not be preferable in my book.
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