Micky Loving wrote:
It will result in the exact opposite. More athletes will stay in college, and Football and basketball already support T&F financially, so as football will grow, so will the revenues and the sharing to other non-revenue sports, like xc and track.
I would say your argument is flawed. If it does happen that "more athletes stay in college" in football and basketball, then unless roster sizes in those sports increase or schools add these sports then you're just shuffling the names around. Instead of the kids who are one-and-done now, which clears a roster slot for someone else coming in, if you have a top level college player (not sure we'll be able to call them "student-athletes" any more) who sticks around for 4 years that team won't be bringing in new kids to fill roster slots that open up when someone exits their college program early.
It may or may not happen that "football will grow" if college players start being paid a salary. Growth, economic growth anyway, is probably more dependent on what "professional college football" can generate for television revenue above what they are currently generating. What the market will bear, I have no idea.
The idea that any additional revenues a "professional college football" system generates will be directed to other sports, outside of any Title IX requirements that are forced on the college system, to me that's a fantasy.
To me, the primary factor to look at is what is the potential cost to the college system of making athletes on college teams professionals. On the high end, let's say all DI sports become "professional eligible". The NFL has 32 teams with a roster limit of 90 = 2880 players with contracts. In DI the current roster size limit is 105. There are 125 schools in the FBS. Ignoring the DI FCS programs, DII and DIII schools, that means over 13,000 potential "professional college football" players. Assuming current practice is that nearly all the FBS schools fully fund football to the max of 85 scholarships, that is 10,625 student-athletes on full-ride athletic scholarships. Add in FCS, DII, DIII and the numbers escalate massively.
Let's say the FBS decides to "go pro". Unless tv money or some other revenue source is increased substantially can the market cover salary costs that are going to be 2-3 times NFL costs? (~4-5 times as many players in FBS schools compared to the NFL, but NFL contracts would be expected to be substantially higher, so I'm just making a wild guess.)
The only way I see this working in any way is for a college to essentially cut all non-revenue producing sports. Unless all the stats I've ever seen are wrong about how many colleges actually are in the black with their football and/or men's basketball teams. In any case, it certainly is an interesting time to be associated with college sports.