Well, that certainly was the spirit of the law. I belong to a group in Dayton that has ADs from Dayton, Wright St., Miami and UC speak each year. They were all in favor of true NIL. If a car dealership wanted to hire an athlete to make an appearance to help drive auto sales, then that was perfectly acceptable. But they ALL said they knew that's what this wasn't going to be. Add in the removal of sit-out year and you have free agency that has the pro sports leagues envious.
So now you have collectives raising millions of dollars and just giving to players (although players are often asked to make an appearance at charity events to legitimize the transaction). There is still true NIL. Ohio has a platform set up to allow you interact directly with athletes (https://dash.inflcr.com/exchange/ohio-university/registra... ). Ohio's collective is https://1804sportcollective.com /. I understand that to be primarily focused on basketball but I could be wrong.
Just as the MAC has never joined the arms race in terms of facilities or coaching salaries, I don't see it being a huge player in NIL. Many schools are in small cities/towns with fanbases that can't generate meaningful money.
But the NIL money certainly changes the landscape at the Power 5 level. There was an article in today's Athletic about Pitino and the NIL at St. John's. He determined he would need around $2.3M to put together the team he wanted. So he went to about 30-40 fundraising events to get that money. Pitno said that, with NIL, St. John's is the same as Kentucky. The University of Dayton was on the verge of losing star big man DaRon Holmes. He had an offer of $1M to leave (presumably from Kansas who ended up giving Michigan's Hunter Dickinson $1M). Their collective, Dayton 6th, was able to give Holmes $500K (plus he had true NIL deals) and that was enough to get him to stay.
Many of the ADs feel you have to play the game right now to the extent you can. Although they all believe it will moderate. At some point, people will want ROI from NIL. Plus, universities will start trying to pull back donor dollars into their coffers vs it going to the players. At least in the very short-term, conference realignment and massive player movement doesn't seem to impact the popularity of college athletics. But you start to wonder about its future.

. . . Will the NIL bubble at some point burst like the housing bubble or the tech bubble? I can't see how it won't.

My opinion has always been that we used whatever NIL we had to keep the guys we had and didn't have enough to pursue a big man - Boals more or less said it himself at Caravan stops that big men were the hardest to come by/most expensive, didn't he?

[QUOTE=GoCats105]
I always thought players should be able to get a cut, but never imagined this - I can't even believe its real. No guardrails whatsoever, except apparently the Miami guy couldn't tweet at the hot twins, and Harbaugh couldn't pay for a kids cheeseburger. Nate Oates could drop $500,000 in a duffle bag on Sears front door though. All good. No JBC's here.

At 50k you're getting the Gabe Wiznitzers of the world.

I wrote a long thing, but deleted it. Because YUCK. I feel sad even writing out those words.

An FBS team is better off cutting the sport than trying to keep playing without a fan base. Dropping to FCS isn't as easy as just saying, oh we're paying less money now, and we're gonna remain competitive - now all your players are going to every other school in Ohio - you still have to pay to travel to whomever is in your new dog shit conference, you're still paying the same costs to host home games, only you have far less people in the stands, watching on TV, playing less money games.

Just look at Idaho. The move down has been a disaster. They're still as bad as they were - only now it's in front of 10 people. Instead of 10K. The move to FCS doesn’t make things easier either, the same problems exist except with even less money.

That's why a place like Rice doesn't drop down. Among dozens of others.

Unless OU was offered a spot in the Big East - and UD would go before we would - I'm happy to have our above average success outside the P5. I'm sad thinking its even a possibility we lose FBS football.

We may never win the College Football Playoff, but 8-9-10 win seasons, bowl games, competitive football, out of conference games (that we occasionally win) I enjoy that. I think we all enjoy that. That's why we're here. If OU dropped down to 1AA or something... honestly, I can't even picture what it would do to the University as a whole.

We would just rely on basketball - and our 5K a night attendance in a cavernous arena that needs bulldozed - for overall desirability, campus enrichment, branding, money, school spirit, diversity, student life, outside funding, pride, outreach, etc etc etc

This is the NCAAs fault. They ignored the obvious for a decade and the courts forced their hand in ways everybody knew the courts would rule. They could have been preparing for this and ushered this in with a much more reasonable approach, and instead we have blank check NILs.

The NCAA thought this was a PR war, not a legal one. And they bet very wrong on that, and their own product's suffered as a result.

But I'd be totally fine if those 30-40 schools did their own thing and the rest were able to advance up through relegation. It at least gives an incentive, rather than the current illusion that everyone is on the same playing field.

Love the overall discussion but as it relates to IJ — I was told earlier he’s academically ineligible (not shocking, with him in steer clothes). So, who knows if and when we’ll see him at this rate.

There is absolutely no way the mid-tier P5 schools would sign up to this, but it would be interesting to see it happen.

There is absolutely no way the mid-tier P5 schools would sign up to this, but it would be interesting to see it happen.

There are 69 P5 schools, 59 non-P5 schools. 128 total. (as of this 2022 article I'm reading from SI, and I don't want to google SMU, etc)

The FBS could be the Power 50.

Those outside 19 teams would combine regionally, with the current G5 59. Making an 78 team Champions League.

Still have your Top 25, etc

Bottom 15 relegated down, Top 15 moved up.

Every year your JMU's, your Toledo has a chance to move into a conference with Ohio State and Penn State to prove themselves. If they don't... back down.

But that could even help with recruiting, and allow smaller schools to get some of that massive money pie. Even if just for a year. Imagine what OU could do with $30M in TV revenue.

Damn. I love it. Too bad this came out in an IJ Ezuma thread lmao