Maddog13
5/25/2024 11:03 PM
Okay, I am not a lawyer, but I do play one on television, so I feel just as qualified as any other clown out there when it comes to breaking this all down. (I don’t really play a lawyer on television, but if one is willing to accept the absurdity of all of this, it means that you can now call me Brad Pitt.)
First off, this reminds me of the 2008 Real Estate and Banking Crisis, where the clown of all clowns and former United States Secretary of the Treasury, Henry M. Paulson, announced that he had saved our Capitalist System, when, in fact, he had only saved the asses of the wealthy elite in this country by working on bailing those thieving bastards out, while the rest of us got completely screwed. To add insult to injury, we even got handed the bill for such. This, in part, explains why so many people on the right and left are so angry and out for blood in today’s heated political environment, when, in fact, the easy solution here is to hold those who benefited the most from these past transgressions accountable for their continued efforts to screw the little guy, which, in this case, would be our beloved Bobcats amongst many others of the lesser conferences.
“According to expert witness testimony in case filings, approximately 90% of the value of those media agreements is attributable to football and men’s basketball, which means an overwhelming majority (roughly 90%) of damages will be paid to Power 5 athletes.”
Therefore, simple math would say that Ohio A&M (screw the Buckeyes) and their fellow cronies are really the ones who should be held responsible here for the majority of the bill, unless, of course, they do what we all knew they would be eventually doing anyway, which is to leave the NCAA to fold and declare bankruptcy themselves in the wake of all of this; while the Power 5 elite themselves rush off and form a Super Conference or league made up only of major schools. If the other 27 conferences want to stick with the NCAA and go down with the ship, the Power 5 schools are not about to stop them. In fact, thank you and screw you, which they have done all along anyway. So how is Alabama and other schools going to have more wins then losses if forced to play better and better programs rather than bribing cupcakes, like the Bobcats and others, into their massive stadiums to be used as tackling dummies?
“So how to pay off 90% of $2.8 billion? Send a bill or withhold significant future revenue distributions to the Mid-American Conference and the Horizon League. And the MEAC and Patriot League and all of the 27 conferences that make up the 32-league NCAA — the Power 5, and the Other 27 — and ask those 27 smaller leagues, whose former student-athletes account for a tiny fraction of the plaintiffs in the House class action, to pay nearly $1 billion of the total bill.”
So let me get this straight, for those of you, like me, who got screwed in 2008 were suddenly to be handed a bill for all the extensive damage that was caused by Wall Street elites, you would all put your heads down; say, “sorry”; and go,”yeah” here is the routing number for my bank account? Yeah, right, I didn’t think so, and, besides, we already got handed the bill via our taxes. In addition, future revenue distributions? If by staying in the NCAA, I am now on the hook for insane amounts of money from the past, who cares about “future revenue distributions.” Good lord, the arrogance and entitlements at play behind all of this is staggering. Besides, you don’t get an MBA (or what I like to call accountants who can’t count) from a place like Ohio University to end up being a moron.
“Those smaller leagues — places like the Big Sky, Ohio Valley and SWAC — didn’t find out about the proposed settlement, and their nearly $1 billion contribution, until about two weeks ago. After the deed was all but done.”
Exactly, this is clearly a backroom deal that carries no weight nor requires the Other 27 smaller leagues to pony up other than some silly clause in their agreement with the NCAA, which I think could easily be challenged in court and would be considered “Null and Void.” (Pretty good, huh, when it comes to passing off legal jargon, and to think that this lawyer on TV doesn’t even have any writers helping him to come up with all of this. Huh. Perhaps, I am, indeed, Brad Pitt.)
“At issue is the schools’ portion. The power conferences will pay about $664 million in contributions to the damages. The other 27 non-power conferences will pay $990 million.”
Okay, some of you out there might not believe in the Rule of Law as much as I do, but the fact remains is that the math here makes no sense at all. Nice try NCAA. It’s also clear that the Power 5 sports powers are, indeed, fraudulent Universities since they can’t even do basic math here. For God’s sakes, they should also, perhaps, invest just as much into their Law Schools in order to being able to defend themselves from such madness.
“Three sources with direct knowledge of the settlement believe the total number of plaintiffs in the case to be between 10,000-15,000. If 15,000 plaintiffs received equal shares, the average payment per athlete is about $180,000 over 10 years, when not excluding attorney fees.”
Anyone else been involved in a class action lawsuit? I have been included in several (like it or not, especially since those little cardboard notices that I receive at times give me only the option of opting out), and I think that the most that I have ever received from such was $35 related to a national gym membership that basically equated to pennies on the dollar when you take into consideration how much I had paid out to them over a period of time. Big deal and trust me, despite being a lawyer/actor named Brad Pitt, I still cannot afford to live in Malibu, California on this kind of settlement, though my lawyers can.
“Kessler declined to reveal attorney fees associated with such a mega settlement. In normal cases, fees are often about 25% of damages. However, in settlements such as this, with billions in damages spread over a mass of plaintiffs, the court often seeks a more reasonable fee while considering the monetary value of the settlement to members of the class.”
In other words, this is not holding up in court and, once again, it is the college athletes themselves who are getting screwed. Likewise, these shady litigation lawyers won’t be getting enough money to justify all of this either, so I guess they will just have to become shady politicians instead.
“Meanwhile, NCAA and conference leaders march forward with finalizing settlement terms to meet a deadline from plaintiff attorneys, as well as rectify the situation before a hearing in a separate antitrust case, Fontenot v. NCAA, on Thursday.”
No shit, Sherlock. Isn’t this just proof, yet again, that the NCAA has been dead in the water for years. I mean, a five year old could do a better job of rectifying a wrong than they have. Even if an agreement is made on this settlement, it will open the door for even more lawsuits and counter lawsuits. Therefore, we are looking at years and years and years of litigation with no guarantee that anyone is ever going to make a dime off of any of this, let alone us seeing this issue resolved in our lifetimes.
“I’m definitely not opting in,” said one non-FBS conference commissioner.
Exactly, any other decision would be insane.
“Not only can we not share revenue with athletes, but we may be cutting athlete benefits, such as Alston payments, because of the funding formula,” said another.
And now we are back to square one, which is the fact that going to school is not a money making transaction for the student themselves. Education is supposed to assist in helping them make money down the road, but not while you are going to school there. College, like it or not, and despite thinking themselves as “the Ivory Tower” of society, is a straight up business with absolutely no guarantees that you will be rewarded any wealth due to having a Fine Arts Degree. (Oops, I think I just revealed far too much about myself.) For college athletes, it is a platform by which to display your talents in the hope that you might one day make money off of your athletic prowess. However, so few do, and the reality is what are athletes going to do now when all of these conferences and schools drop their athletic programs, which they, of course, should do. Good luck when it comes to trying out for the big leagues. If you’re lucky, you might make it three days in the course of a mass try out before your dreams of making it in the big leagues is replaced by the reality that you got to find a real job.
This is, by the way, what happens when you allow lawyers to attempt to run the world. The only people who benefit from this is themselves, but only if you all buy into it. Besides, even if they win, good luck when it comes to actually getting the money. That’s why we have bankruptcy options in this country.
Back in the 1970s, when people no longer had to worry about being drafted into the War in Vietnam, enrollment at Ohio University declined dramatically, and there was serious talk then about the football program being disbanded/dropped altogether in order to help reduce the staggering loss of income. Due to having far less players, doing the same for the basketball program was not discussed if my memory serves me right. (Makes you wonder if this would have opened the way for Ohio to become the Gonzaga of the Midwest?)
Obviously, the course of action for Ohio is simple as follows: Bye-bye NCAA. Besides, has anyone seen how many kids on campus at Ohio walk around with Ohio A&M shirts instead of Bobcat merchandise. If it were me, I think this would be grounds to have them booted out of school, but I am a bit old fashioned about things such as loyalty.
The truth of all of this is that the NCAA is now officially dead and nobody is going to save them nor does anyone really want to either. The question now is whether cable sports is going to foot the bill, or, perhaps, they will just back off and support professional leagues instead. Unfortunately, I have been watching some form of Arena Football on Youtube of late and it is simply dreadful, not to mention the fact that I don’t know how any of what I have observed would translate to convincing the NFL to pick up one of these guys. Instead of suffering a Traumatic brain injury, which won’t be curable, perhaps, these young men should find a less dangerous vocation instead and focus on other things in life. Just saying.