Fleck is fired up on KFAN

Message to PJ. If I buy enough Duck Duck beer, could we get a few more 4-star studs?

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Since this was originally about PJ plea for more help on NIL, I think it's fine to put this here.

NYTimes has an excellent article out today, both an explainer and a bit of an expose on the BS that is these collectives and how they're a complete and total perversion of what was intended.

Some excerpts:

While in theory they operate independently of athletic programs, collectives have become deeply embedded in the economics of college sports, offering vast supplements to the scholarships that schools provide.

One player at Michigan State University now makes $750,000 a year, according to the group that pays him. At Ohio State University, some players not only get a paycheck — they get a free car lease to boot, courtesy of a donor collective.

“It’s a sweet car,” Rick Ricart, a car dealer and booster for Ohio State, said as he filmed himself giving a wide receiver a Dodge Challenger. “We’re looking for some sweet plays on the field.”

...

Instead, a very different model sprang up in parallel, one in which the collectives have effectively hijacked the N.I.L. system to circumvent the N.C.A.A.’s still-in-force ban on paying players to play by finding ways to get more money to more athletes.

The collective system is “a pay-for-play scheme disguised as N.I.L.,” Tony Petitti, the commissioner of the Big Ten Conference, said at a Senate hearing this week. “We are concerned that management of college athletics is shifting away from the universities to collectives.”

The New York Times identified more than 120 collectives, including at least one for every school in each of the five major college football conferences. The average starter at a big-time football program now takes in about $103,000 a year, according to Opendorse, a company that processes payments to the players for the collectives. This year, Opendorse said it expects to process over $100 million in payments for athletes, with about 80 percent coming through collectives.

...

“It’s the most important thing in college football,” said Kyle Whittingham, the head coach at the University of Utah. This month, Utah’s Crimson Collective announced that every scholarship football player will be able to drive a new $61,000 Dodge truck at no cost.

“It’s the most important thing in recruiting, which is the most important thing to your program,” Mr. Whittingham said.

...

After an abysmal offensive performance last season, the Iowa Hawkeyes wanted to lure Cade McNamara, a quarterback who had helped Michigan reach the College Football Playoff in 2021 but had entered the transfer portal after losing the starting job last season. Mr. McNamara, who said money was an explicit part of his search for a new school, got an offer from a collective at the University of Iowa called the Swarm Collective.

“Once it was put into writing, that’s when I knew what I would be getting if I went to Iowa,” Mr. McNamara said.

He said yes.

The Swarm Collective said its charitable arm had, indeed, hired Mr. McNamara, who suffered a season-ending knee injury on Sept. 30, for a job delivering meals to seniors and visiting children in hospitals. It pays about $600 an hour. The group also has a for-profit arm, Swarm Inc., which pays him even more to make ads for the collective’s corporate supporters.

N.C.A.A. rules prohibit collectives from offering compensation as a recruitment tool. Despite Mr. McNamara’s assertion that the collective offered him a job before he transferred, the collective denied doing so.

An N.C.A.A. spokeswoman said that N.I.L. deals that are conditional on enrollment in a particular school would likely violate the organization’s rules, but declined to comment on a specific case.

...

“The world’s greatest game of liar’s poker,” said Chris Schoemann, the head of the Boulevard Collective, a for-profit group at Southern Methodist University. His group goes so far as to instruct its players not to ask each other about compensation.

“I don’t want you discussing or comparing notes with the guy who dresses in the locker next to you,” Mr. Schoemann said. “This could deteriorate a locker room instantly.”

While the collectives have no formal relationship with the schools whose programs they are supporting, the distinction is effectively meaningless to the boosters who fund them.

...

This summer, Penn State’s collective, called Happy Valley United, held a $2,000-a-ticket fund-raiser at a yacht club on the New Jersey shore. It featured an open bar, dozens of items up for auction and the chance to mingle with both past stars and members of the current team, who had flown in that afternoon from State College, Pa.

One booster bid $20,000 for a dinner for 10 with former Penn State star LaVar Arrington, who was in attendance. Another paid $2,000 for a football autographed by Drew Allar, the team’s sophomore quarterback, who tossed the ball to the winning bidder after he signed it.

...

The Penn State collective, which is not a tax-exempt charity, tells donors their gift can still be tax-deductible if they route their money through an affiliated charity called the BPS Foundation. It is one of more than 60 collectives that offer donors tax deductions — either because the collective itself has been approved for charitable status by the I.R.S., or because the collective partners with an outside charity.

“If it’s not a 501(c)(3), I’m not going to give money to it,” said Dick Stewart, who attended the Happy Valley United fund-raiser, referring to the I.R.S. designation for charities. Stewart, an estate planning lawyer, donated $10,000 to Happy Valley United in June from a foundation he runs that was created by a deceased client who was a Penn State graduate.

The N.C.A.A. has criticized collectives for favoring male athletes over female, favoring big schools over small ones, and for backing out of deals with players. But its leaders say they have few tools to crack down on them directly, because the collectives — unlike schools — have not voluntarily put themselves under the N.C.A.A.’s authority.

“We don’t have subpoena power,” said Tim Buckley, a spokesman for Charlie Baker, the president of the N.C.A.A.
 

If anything actually happens with federal NIL law .... at the very least, the tax-exemption stuff needs to get curb stomped.

You kidding me??? These rich assholes are pumping money into college football in a blatant pay-for-play schemes...... and they want tax exemptions for it????

GTFO here!!!!!!!!!
 




Just what's always been done by the most successful programs. It's just out in the open.

"Out in the open" with cash for players that everyone can see + a free transfer = absolutely different than what was done before.
 

"Out in the open" with cash for players that everyone can see + a free transfer = absolutely different than what was done before.
The free transfer/portal is certainly different. But we all know guys were getting paid, getting cars, etc.from boosters. The point is, it's in the open now.
 





The free transfer/portal is certainly different. But we all know guys were getting paid, getting cars, etc.from boosters. The point is, it's in the open now.

I'm not debating that the big dogs didn't give money/cars/etc to some of their players. My point is that NIL has changed CFB so much that it is becoming no longer the same league.

(My estimates are guesses so please do feel free to investigate.)
I am guessing that (1) the money is way way more, (2) the programs giving money - have expanded from probably 20 to all CFB, and (3) the players and recruits aware of immediate cash earning in CFB have gone from a few to now all of them.

In professional leagues at least a draft, contracts, and trades give hope to smaller markets. College football has become a professional football league. With one free transfer, it has established zero protection for small market teams.

Removing the free transfer might help, but there is no way the NCAA reverses that. In fact, the NCAA is looking into being more gracious with the second-time transfer requests. So how else can this professional league protect small market teams? I'm willing to bet it's going to be contracts and then eventually drafts.
 
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If any of the rumors are true he has been trying to leave for several years now but none of these programs (Oregon, Tennessee, Nebraska, etc..) have returned his interest.
Nebraska. ROTFLMAO.
 



Originally accepted offer from Washington- with 60k in promised NIL; then
Ohio St. offered and he flipped- taking about a 25k NIL reduction; perhaps the Audi influenced the decision?

What are we doing NCAA/college sports?
The huge flaw in the system now is that it is schools are not supposed to be “promising” anything. So, these “promises” are all undocumented. So, in most cases, these will be empty promises.

Like we’ve seen with pissed-off athletes in the SEC, the school that are willing to break the rules are also going to be willing to lie like crazy to recruits about NIL.
 




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