As college football's elite is engulfed in a power struggle, G5 left just trying to survive: 'We are a farm system'
As college football's elite is engulfed in a power struggle, G5 left just trying to survive: 'We are a farm system'
The gap between haves and have-nots is widening, and the Group of Five can't keep up.
Interesting insight into how NIL and free transfers have combined (and only the combination could have done it) to wreak havoc on the G5, and to some extent up and down the chain. Seems the biggest schools are even cobbling together NIL packages for "walk-ons" that mysteriously cover the cost of attendance.
“They’ve got to make up what a scholarship covers. I get it. It’s smart,” Chadwell said. “But the NCAA needs to create a rule requiring players to sit out a year if they are not on full academic scholarship.”
But as always, this is where they lose me. Limiting player movement without compensation is never the answer. Either you're a student and this an extracurricular and anything you do or anywhere you go between seasons is your own goddamn business (even you Trevor fucking Etienne, even you, traitor), or you deserve material consideration for limiting your own mobility during your prime developmental years and/or your last chance to play a game you love competitively.
Yeah as a USF fan, I’m expecting at least the next few years to be painful. We don’t have the money to compete on NIL deals, we don’t have the money to compete on coaching salaries.
Maybe we sneak into a depleted ACC.
Maybe the big 2 conferences fuck off with ESPN and leave the rest of us to a game ruled by slightly less money
As a Tennessee fan, I highly doubt we form a totally walled off league. Even if we do jump ship from the NCAA (won't happen b/c non revenue sports but let's say we do) I don't think the big dogs will stop coming after the studs from teams like USF. So the question becomes how can you incentive those athletes to not leave for greener pastures monetarily. The only solution that comes to mind for me is to fight fire with fire, but that would make the G5+ no better and no different than the P2.
I don’t think the big dogs will stop coming after the studs from teams like USF.
While I don't think pro/rel is the solution in CFB, at all, I do think professional soccer has it right in how they handle similar roster pressures with nominally "equal" clubs on obviously uneven financial ground. If you pay players for a 3-4 year commitment, there is control with compensation. Big teams buy the contracts of players from smaller teams, and they pay training compensation to the teams where players first developed, and some non-negligible fees go to the players as well. Players still move, but in doing so they keep their old clubs financially healthy, the costs throw some grit into the flow from small to large, so not every player moves after every good year, and players are incentivized to maximize their value where they are. Something roughly analogous could happen in a professionalized CFB, though obviously compressed with most of the players moving on after 3-5 years.
Though, as I wander off on a tangent, admittedly the length of contracts is another wrinkle in professionalizing, and the powers that be do have their work cut out for them finding the right way to maintain a connection to the schools to keep product differentiation (i.e. how to keep it "college" football). A "lower" league can be vibrant and have passionate fans, but it needs something to make it unique and to have its rewards valued by stakeholders; in England for instance, history and community ties are enough to keep 100+ clubs culturally relevant. A "minor" league, on the other hand, is ultimately practice with uniforms and has a natural cap on how much enthusiasm it can generate.
Yeah, they're a farm system. Same as Power 5 is for the NFL
We're just getting closer to admitting that truth and paying the athletes for their work in the minor leagues, er, I mean college. And maybe someday soon we'll come to grips with how outrageously oversized the minor leagues are compared to the majors.
We’re just getting closer to admitting that truth and paying the athletes for their work in the minor leagues, er, I mean college.
I mean, good. I want the college teams to have some essential nexus with the schools, but there are more ways to do that than the current or the prior model. The fiction that they're just regular ol' students who work out and practice and play for the love of "good ol' 'varsity" is ridiculous to the point of being insulting, and now we're in the worst of all worlds where the schools STILL pretend and therefore also won't pay the players directly to commit to them for 3-4 years, but the money is there so the players all (reasonably) follow it. Even the guys who have accepted that the NFL isn't an option (and among upperclassman starters I bet that's not very many) likely love the experience and lifestyle of playing football and/or getting a no-cost degree+NIL more than they love their specific schools.
And maybe someday soon we’ll come to grips with how outrageously oversized the minor leagues are compared to the majors.
But I think this inherently must be true. Talent is gradually sifted through the system. It has too start with a wide net and then get filtered down. From thousands of high schools to hundreds of colleges to tens of pro teams. Plus with both the NFL and whatever the spring league is, I don't think 130ish D1 teams is that ridiculously oversized. And with 130ish D1 teams, you need a ton of juco/dii+iii/hs options to fill the rosters.