What a refreshing take for these depressing times:
All these conferences that have hired commissioners with backgrounds outside of college athletics — tennis, gaming, broadcasting, you name it — is that in embracing branding as the next big thing, they’ve lost sight of exactly what made college football a big thing in the first place. And that’s a real pity.
Filed under College Football
This one’s pitched on a bipartisan basis — one conservative and two liberal senators — and its main feature is that it doesn’t try to do too much. There’s no blanket antitrust immunity in it, nor is there a move to make college athletes employees. It does give the schools the national regulation of NIL that they crave, but there’s a certain element of be careful what you wish for in it.
This time around, the senators propose creating a non-government-operated corporation with the power to settle NIL disputes, certify agents and enforce other reforms, which include:
Health care: Establish a medical trust fund for sport-related injuries. Athletic departments that generate at least $20 million annually would be required to cover out-of-pocket medical expenses for athletes for two years after they finish playing. Athletic departments that generate at least $50 million annually would have to do the same for four years and provide athletic-related health care coverage while athletes were playing.
Draft eligibility: All college athletes can enter drafts for professional leagues without losing their NCAA eligibility if they decide to return to school within seven days of the draft ending.
Scholarship guarantees: Colleges would have to guarantee athletes would keep their scholarships until they finish their undergraduate degrees as long as they remain in good academic standing and do not transfer to another school.
Education: Schools could not attempt to discourage athletes from choosing particular academic majors. They would also be required to provide athletes with at least 15 hours per year of financial literacy and life skills training that could count as college credits.
Transparency: Schools would be required to report annually on their athletics revenue and expenses, how much money their coaches make, how much time athletes spent on their sports, academic outcomes, and the average value and total number of endorsement contracts athletes sign. The bill would make sure that specific contract details for endorsement deals were not made public or subject to public records requests.
The new corporation, dubbed the College Athletic Corporation, would work with existing associations like the NCAA to police certain areas of college sports. This group would be granted subpoena power to monitor whether all parties were obeying the framework established in the proposed law.
No doubt the schools could live with some of that. But there’s a lot of nibbling around the edges in terms of reducing coaches’ control over players, not to mention forcing athletic departments to be truly transparent about their finances. And I bet that subpoena power is going to make certain institutions skittish.
That all being said, it still doesn’t feel like we’re at a time when DC is ready to resolve things on the NIL front. And this is just proposed legislation; it hasn’t even been formally introduced. So, we’re still in the wait and see mode. Let’s see what folks like Sankey have to say about it first.
Filed under College Football, It's Just Bidness, Political Wankery
Greg Sankey and his membership are so full of shit.
Another SEC talking point calls the potential employment status for athletes “catastrophic” for sports that aren’t self-sufficient in terms of revenue generation. The briefing document says many universities would be forced to eliminate both men’s and women’s athletic programs.
“We expect some lower resource universities to do away with athletics altogether,” the talking points state.
Schools have endowments reaching into the billions. They’re raking in major bucks from television contracts and an expanded playoff. And we’re supposed to believe they’ll be too impoverished to take care of the women’s golf team? Sounds like somebody needs to work on resource allocation.
Filed under It's Just Bidness, SEC Football
Say what you will about Gary Danielson, at least he’s got enough sense to appreciate a group of people who don’t always get the appreciation they deserve.
Danielson did point out, however, as bad as social media reaction is to the weekly broadcasts, he hasn’t had a single bad interaction with an SEC fan in the years he has broadcasted games.
“I have been treated with respect for 17 years,” Danielson said. “I have never had an incident in the SEC. The stereotype of the SEC fan, yeah, they are rabid. That’s what makes it go. People meet me, and they kid me. Good. No one has ever been out of line with me. It’s a great fan base, and that’s the strength of this conference.”
Danielson shared he talked to Greg Sankey and told the SEC commissioner, “we’re going to kick butt again this year. I want people to say, ‘We miss CBS. These guys suck.”
I hope they bring Uncle Verne back for a guest shot once this season as a gesture to us.
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UPDATE:
https://twitter.com/normcharlatan/status/1681876378075951104
Better get used to this.
Filed under SEC Football
What about player evaluation…
The Bulldogs are deep and talented. They’re also the best at evaluating and developing players, as evidenced by their “COVID baby” recruiting class in 2021.
“We signed 20 high school players the COVID year, and 17 of those 20 are still in our program,” head coach Kirby Smart said.
“That’s hard to find anywhere in the country. They didn’t get to go on visits. They didn’t get to go on official visits. These guys are the core leadership group of our team.”
17 out of 20 is a batting average I bet very few other football programs can match. If any.
Filed under Georgia Football, Recruiting
We’ll stick with a harp player, but move from Chicago to New Orleans. Here’s Slim Harpo, with “I Got Love If You Want It”.
Filed under Uncategorized
Get The Picture 