They'll just be legislated and monied out of existence.
As in, probably, COMPLETELY out of existence, unless you want to talk about club sports or whatever is going to be left of lower-level college football in about 3 or 4 years.
Since the Supreme Court effectively is allowing players to be paid in college, NIL deals are now springing up -- and, with the right amount of exposure, etc., a number of players will be getting six figures this year for their Name, Image, and Likeness.
That said, NIL has also brought about the material end of college football as you knew it, and also the more immediate material end of the Big XII Conference, with the defections of Texas and Oklahoma to a rapidly expanding SEC.
The Big XII, of course, is threatening to sue ESPN for "destabilizing the conference" -- never mind that a very few schools, even by ESPN's own talents' admission (I got Andrea Adelson or however her name is spelled to agree that the yearly number is about 12 -- and there is at least one common CFP coach who believes the number is definitely far less than that!!!), are even RELEVANT anymore.
I believe the NCAA is finally going to die. And, because of all obvious reasons, I'm happy about that.
And I think a lot of people are going to get their wish, as well, that college sports is going to go with it.
Because, even as some people believe we are going to end up with four national superconferences, I think we end up with one, with the SEC power schools as a basis.
It'll be one national superconference, and they'll flush out all the flotsam and jetsam from even there (see ya, Vanderbilt and Tennessee, for starters...), and you'll end up with basically a permanent set of 32 top-level schools.
Then, in answer to the question as to "who will adjudicate it?" -- look at the NFL... They've now tried how many times? to get a formal minor league? Now, with the players being professionals, about the only thing stopping that is that, if they actually did take on this superconference, the players would probably end up unionized under the NFLPA or something similar.
But this is the end of the Little Sisters of the Poor, both the FCS kind and the FBS-II kind.
Man, I hope so. Brian Tuohy was right in The Fix is Still In. College sports should be terminated completely.
ReplyDeleteI think you're going to end up seeing them formally melded into a minor league, especially in football. The NFL has been BEGGING to try this several times.
DeleteNBA might be a bit harder -- they already have the G-League.