full image - Repost: College Football's Transformation & Professionalization (from Reddit.com, College Football's Transformation & Professionalization)
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I’ve been fascinated with the on-going demolition and remaking of college sports – and college football, in particular – for the better part of 2 decades now. Basically, dating back to a few years after the inception of the BCS. And this post (and comments) on Defector prompted me to finally jot down my (always scattered) thoughts which follow…A lot of the absurdity of the situation is pretty well encapsulated in Cardale Jones’ tweet from 2012:"Why should we have to go to class if we came here to play FOOTBALL, we ain't come to play SCHOOL, classes are POINTLESS."And what wasn’t captured in the tweet itself was probably picked up in the giant pile of hot takes it spawned. But, however inelegantly stated, at its core is a basic truth: These guys are NOT going to Ohio State or Miami or Auburn or Florida State or any number of other FBS schools ranging the academic spectrum from UCLA to Mississippi State. I might possibly be willing to make exceptions for Stanford and certainly would for the service academies. But the rest?And let’s be honest, the average football player is NOT an academic colossus. Sure, there are occasional exceptions (Like… this guy: John Urschel) and it’s not to say they are stupid people but the reality is that most people find it very difficult to hold down a full-time job that requires travel AND a full-time class load. The reality for football scholarship athletes – particularly in the upper tier of the Power 5 conferences - is a lot like trying to do that. And people like John Urschel are simply exceptionally gifted human beings both intellectually and physically. He's a +3 standard deviation person with respect to both intellectual and physical talents. Most people are lucky to be +1 at one thing. (But I digress.)So what does college football look like if it is fully “professionalized” or the similar state of no longer being an amateur sport? These aren’t really the same things. Kind of like legalizing as opposed to decriminalizing in a way.If you’re fully professionalized do you end up with NFL minor league teams just associated with colleges? Does the sport end up with a championship game of the Seattle Huskies (in purple & gold unis) vs. Ann Arbor Wolverines (in maize & blue)?Sometimes I think that what is really attracting the local boosters is the dream of being a team owner. I imagine it’s the same weird feeling just “more” as the people that are “shareholders” of the Green Bay Packers. A lot of these guys are very rich – but usually not NFL team owner rich. So instead they get to role-play like they are with college teams and players for whom the local magnate's wealth level is impressive. To think this is a modern phenomenon is ahistorical; anyone who’s watched the 30 for 30 on the Pony Express and the shenanigans at SMU can tell you that boosters have been throwing money around forever.You have several different and inter-related blocs in the college football universe:The Players: these guys usually want to go to the NFL. Most of them are wrong, sort of by definition. They are not going to be professional football players. It is obviously to their detriment that many do not care about college since they have often found their way into fairly selective academic institutions, but youth squandering opportunity is a tale as old as time.Can they negotiate “guaranteed” contracts? What do they look like?Medical care?Could they form a union a la the attempt at Northwestern football a few years ago?What amount of salary are we talking here? Will it be more or less than the usual amount of scholarship?The Fans: they usually have a different relationship to their teams than the average NFL fan by dint of having spent some of their most formative years often in the (literal) shadow of the stadium. Not to mention probably having dropped anywhere from $50-200K+ in tuition depending on when & where they went to school. It’s much more tribal and competitive. There was a hilarious recent incident where the Texas stadium went bonkers when the Big 12 commissioner came out at the Texas Tech game and they just absolutely roasted the guy on the Jumbotron playing back his recorded statements hoping that Tech would defeat the Longhorns. That kind of petty hilarity is just not something you see at the NFL level. But the reason these incidents do occur has a lot to do with the intense relationship fans/alumni have with their schools and teams.Casual Fans: the run of the mill alumni who likes to watch their team on Saturday, maybe tailgate once in a while if they live close by and consider a trip to a bowl game if it’s in a good city.BOOSTERS: The people that donate to the athletic department, they’re like super-fans. See above about wishing/dreaming they could be team owners and behaving in the most hilarious ways.Sometimes I think that what is really attracting the local boosters is the dream of being a team owner. I imagine it’s the same weird feeling just “more” as the people that are “shareholders” of the Green Bay Packers. A lot of these guys are very rich – but usually not NFL team owner rich. So instead they get to role-play like they are.Do they keep donating if it doesn’t count as a tax write off?Athletic Departments: I feel like this is where things start to get very, very interesting. After all, the devil is in the details right?In some schools, football is a profit center which then helps to fund other “non-revenue” sports like track, volleyball, etc. What happens to them?Title IX: what happens if you dump all those football scholarships?Despite the occasional claim, I do NOT believe any D1 athletic department is paying for academic departments. Or at least not more than 5-10 programs and certainly not in significant amounts relative to the academic budget. See the Knight commission report.What does happen if they are forced to run football as a business though?Coaches: Do coach salaries decrease? Do they more resemble NFL guys where their recruitment matters less and their schemes matter so much more?Administrators: fewer or cheaper?Taxes!!The Universities & Colleges: While the athletics departments are parts of the institutions they are more often than not supported by the institutions themselves via allocations of student fees, etc. See here: (https://ift.tt/fxqBJmX what if the university had no football team? Can they just keep any money transferred to football program and force it to stand on its own?Supposedly, many 2nd tier institutions see football as advertising for their schools and claim they see a jump in applications following bowl appearances. This is the “Flutie effect”.Can the universities just license their NIL to the football teams?If the football team has been subsidizing non-revenue sports, are they willing to pony up potentially more money to support those other teams?TV networks: Obviously, the TV rights revenue is the fuel in the engine. What happens with this stream of dollars is purely a reaction to how the intensity of the fans is altered if players are simply contracted.NCAA: lol. These vultures have been slowly obsoleting themselves for decades now. That said, they will cling desperately to the NCAA tournament which is really their last major source of revenue. Other than that, in a newly professionalized reality they have literally zero function in terms of rules enforcement. Unless they can somehow morph themselves into the enforcer of the new rules that are akin to those in the NFL like player tampering and such.The NFL: Another interesting player. In one sense I think they would not be too worried, assuming this newly professionalized league keeps the player pipeline flowing. But if they can’t – and given the history of the USFL, XLF, etc. - I bet the NFL will be very, very sad. It wouldn’t surprise me if they have lots of behind-the-scenes discussion trying to slow down the destruction of what remains of amateurism.Other related questions:Does the brand make the player, vice-versa or some combination? How do you figure out that ratio?Can the players just stay more than 4 years?What will the salaries for average players look like?How do the relative successes and (mostly) failures of the XFL, USFL, UFL, AAF, etc fit into the future of professionalized college football?Could you allow deferred college attendance after the years of eligibility? (see comment here)NBA G-League Attendance: Some dude compiled that here. Is that the future of a professionalized "college football"?Is there a simile between medical school – residency – attending physician to HS footballer – college footballer – NFLer in terms of compensation/workload?
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