We didn’t have time to get to this Monday, but the NCAA is proposing to junk 153 rules about amateurism that will pave the way for the House settlement.
If you don’t know, the House settlement will require revenue sharing with athletes.
We don’t fully understand this part: ”Proposed legislation also includes sport-specific roster limits and allowing full scholarships to all student-athletes on a declared roster — a move the NCAA said will double the scholarships available in women’s sports.”
Does that mean that all walk-ons will get scholarships? What will that mean for football? If you’re, say, Alabama with 25 walk-ons, are they all now to be on scholarship?Well, as it turns out, football rosters may go from 85 to 105 if the school so desires. Baseball could go from 11.7 to 34.As we understand it, schools could choose to increase roster sizes without increasing the total amount of money for scholarships. In other words, if your baseball program budgeted, say, 100,000 for 11.7 scholarships, it could still budget 100,000 for 34.
And naturally, big football schools will push money into football. There are surely Title IX lawsuits coming if that happens, and it almost certainly will happen, especially in the SEC.
The House settlement will provide $20.5 million to participating schools to dispense to athletes. Again, much of this will go to football, then men’s and women’s basketball. Expect Title IX lawsuits on this, too.
The NC State/Will Wade concerns should start here: “the NCAA has proposed rules to help add stability and accountability. All players will be required to disclose their NIL agreements if they are greater or equal to $600. Agreements between the player and a third party outside of their school will be reviewed.“which is about now. You can easily imagine a coach who lost his star QB poaching one from another school. And then that coach who was poached looking for his next one. Poaching carousel?
A lot of this will get sorted out as the new realities settle in, but the pressure to win will never go away. In fact, it’s just going to get worse because the stakes are higher. And human nature being what it is, people will break the new rules, just as they broke the old ones.
The Wild West analogy has been bandied about a lot since NIL and the new transfer rule took effect, but the corollary to that is that eventually, order was imposed. It will emerge in this too, but almost certainly, as in most aspects of life, power will be centralized and many people will be on the outside looking in. We can already see this with the transfer portal as many young athletes enter it and suddenly find themselves without a team or, worse, an academic path to a better life.
Things change and evolve and indeed must, and money to players is fair. Still, college athletics has lost something.
Last point: we have only heard from the gamblers so far when they berate or threaten athletes on social media after poor performances. Their stakes are going to go up as well, and soon enough, they’ll be heard from too.
