Charlie Batch offers Caleb Williams $1million dollars to transfer to Eastern Michigan. How we going to compete with this?

What's fair about it when schools in your own conference are able to link up 5, 6, 7 figure deals to land kids, when we can't. Wait until this starts happening in basketball with Buffalo and Akron, people will not see that as fair.

One thing is certain, BobcatAttack.com needs to step up to help the recruiting effort.

With yearly free agency! We are already seeing NIL money being used to get desired portal players. And more players will be entering the portal thinking they can get them some.

Can you help OHIO Athletics find their billions of dollars?

And the moment that we start losing young players who have great freshmen and sophomore seasons to P's, then some will see how "fair" this is.

As for exploration, and 18 year old student athlete is getting more compensation than an 18 year old who hires on at Honda of America. And Honda makes more money than OHIO, so maybe it's the workers of the world who are being exploited.

+1 I warned earlier about unintended consequences. This is just the beginning. And, I still maintain that eventually there are going to be issues related to the non-profit status of universities that are maintaining semi-pro football and/or basketball teams, notwithstanding the legal-eagles on this board telling me that that won't happen. Some of them are actual lawyers, and I'm not -- so maybe they know more than I do. We'll see.

A few more random thoughts about this issue:

1. Would not be surprised to have the NCAA say that Akron can't do this based on current NIL rules, and then a short time later rule in a case involving Ohio A&M that it's within the NIL rules.

2. Someone on here will start calling for us to drop football (or go DIII in football) and then enter the arms race in basketball with all the money we save.

3. It's now time to resurrect the GWC as an avenue to raise NIL money. One of the major rationales used by the Schaus regime for shutting down the GWC was that the NCAA was looking askance on any athletic club that was run by boosters. The only legit clubs, he told us, were those controlled by the university, hence the birth of the OBC. Now that boosters can openly raise money for NIL distribution, it seems that a booster-run club would be most appropriate in the new landscape.

4. If things continue in this direction the MAC teams in bigger cities -- UA, WMU, UT, UB and maybe to a lesser extent BSU will be at a distinct advantage, without major infusion of cash from the alumni bases of the other schools.

Exactly, but how many of these players are basing their decisions on reality when they make them. Most everyone of these guys who enter the portal think they are moving up, hell, if you gave a survey of any DI locker room, you'd be surprised at how many think they are going to the NFL. So, now will they not only chase the upward dream, they will chase the dream of making $$$.

1. Federal Law will dictate NIL, not the NCAA.

2. Be harder to compete in basketball, as don't you think a P5 would rather recruit a proven DI player with experience over a HS kid? And a defection of a quality basketball player will hurt worse. And extra budget to basketball will not help NIL money

3. A club like the GWC, could help our athletes. But as former AD's viewed it, the GWC was taking money from them.

4. And that is EXACTLY my point! Those schools all have corporate partners, and businesses.

Maybe a dedicated successful player like Mike Mitchell will help us land some?

Agreed. It's a simple business matter of ROI. Better returns in basketball than football for OHIO.

To those looking closely, it started to look an awful lot like a pro sport a long time ago. Coaches paid exorbitant salaries, a governing earning crazy amounts, huge TV deals, 100,000 person stadiums. Like it or not, college football generates a ton of money. That so many people's interest hinges on whether or not players get access to that money seems very, very odd to me.

Because if it's amateurism that attracts you, there's plenty of that left. Go follow D3 football. But the reality is that what attracts people is the quality of the players, and the tradition of college football, which is basically impossible to disentangle from the quality of the players.

My point was that football does not generate a lot of money at lots of schools, the have nots are living off the backs of the big boys. They throw us a few scraps from the heap of money they’re taking in. No doubt the sport has changed much over the last 20-30 years, but not so much at some places. The students are paying for much of our expenses now, I’m sure they’re going to love sending more to fellow students who are getting a free ride now. I’m just wondering where the extra money will be coming from for all the new salaries.

I’m having a hard time seeing how turning the players into pros has anything to do with the tradition of college football. It’s looking less and less traditional to me.

So, to make it fair, would you advocate an open negotiation for every player? I agree that some are worth far more than a full ride scholarship, but perhaps some are worth less? Given that the team as a whole operates at a loss, the overall "pay" of full ride scholars for everyone may be too much, and thus, the "fair" thing might be to increase the "pay" for the stars, and decrease it for everyone else?

Alternatively, if it is going to be treated like a business, the best choice may be to shut it down (unless those missing millions of revenue can be found).

You’re wrong. I can remember before the “modern history” when we were a competitive D-1 athletics program with individual national champs, played and beat the big guys in many sports, final 8 team, etc. Those were good old days before the modern era we have now. I know we can’t go back, but it was fun to be there.