The incoming Michigan Freshman QB got a $12 million check from Larry Ellison.
I liked the quote at the end: “Who made the most money from NIL?”
Former Texas A&M quarterback and NFL bust Johnny Manzell.
“He made more money that gymnast LIvvy Dunne, but most of it was illegal.”
Also interesting the the old administration issued a rule in the waning days that NIL money had to be split with women athletes 50/50 – just as Title IX demands. No doubt there’ll be an Executive Order on that soon.
Mom told me that it took her fifty years to comprehend that her university experience during WWII was utterly bizarre, cuz, well, no significant sports, although the sports department was still in operation and guys called players were protected from allegations of rape. Just like in normal times.
This thing about “concepts” puzzles me. What is a concept? Hut 3 hut 1 hut 2 hut hut hut….
It just depends what the law is. Title IX has guaranteed female athletes 50% of the pie since 1972. I’m pretty sure Larry Ellison is wealthy enough to cut a $30 million check to net a $12 million payment to a favored player. Can Texas and Louisiana billionaires with much smaller checkbooks compete on this new field of play? I guess we’ll find out.
Maybe the solution is to remove football and basketball from the college campus and create a farm system like they have in Minor League baseball. Students paying the $1,000 mandatory “Student Activity Fee” to fund about a hundred Division 1 athletes might welcome the tuition cut.
I remember reading that Bryce Young, the Alabama QB, took a paycut when he left as the #1 overall pick. As a senior in college, he was making more money than former Alabama qb Jalen Hurts was making as the starting qb for the Eagles on his rookie contract.
I think Ohio State had the highest player payroll this season, $21 Million. Michigan knows they need to step up the spending,lol.
College football has always been a minor league feeder program for the NFL, but now it’s probably the best minor league system in all of pro sports, from a players perspective. The top players are making $millions, they are in close proximity to coeds who are really, really friendly, and compared to say minor league baseball players, they are not on a bus on a daily basis traveling to their next game.
It beats all of the money going to the coaches and sports admins, and the players being disposable cogs in the machine.
50% of the opportunity not 50% of the results. Getting to play is opportunity. Getting an NIL deal is results.
IIRC, when enacted, you had to have equal number of sports participation slots with football getting an exemption because there was no female equivalent. So if you had men’s basketball you had women’s basketball, swimming, tennis, etc. I also remember many wrestling programs being shut down because no female wrestlers at the time. You barely have some now. I think some adjustments have been made over time but it is still 1 to 1.
I do think eventually football and basketball will become their own entities. Again, too much $$$. But universities, at least those making money, will still have a grip on the team. Hard to pass up on an “easy” $10 million plus weekend for a sold out stadium. Plus, plenty of studies have shown a good football team (not sure about basketball but talk to Duke and Kentucky) drives an increase in enrollment applications, etc., etc., etc. Call it student life, atmosphere, whatever, it matters.
I posted the numbers before. Only a handful of universities make a profit on athletics. Most universities lose millions per year, so put the bite on the people who are there to learn, to balance their books.
I’m pretty sure Title IX doesn’t require participation in the same sports, but it has to be the same number of participants across all sports. So things like men’s wrestling got cut in order to add, say women’s cross country.
Where the NCAA screwed up is they were making money on their athletes NIL, but not sharing the money with the athletes themselves. For example, the NCAA licensed images of basketball players to EA Sports for video games and kept all the money.
At the same time, players were prohibited from making money by signing jerseys for example.
The system was never very good, but now we have this wild west where boosters pool funding to create the best team money can buy.
