Arkstfan

I'd not take the risk but then like most Americans I don't have enough itemized deductions to worry about it.

It's a wash. Liberty Bowl renovations have been kicked down the road many times because you do too much and ADA compliance starts kicking in on some issues grandfathered in. It's a big molded piece of concrete and renovations aren't cheap, especially to comply with accessibility issues. In the long run, it's a good deal because the city wants to preserve the Liberty Bowl game and more needs to be done than the city could justify. Getting donations wasn't really a big option for the city. First of all the city doesn't have a fund-raising staff to solicit donations and they don't have a donor list to work from. By turning it over to Memphis State they can solicit their fans to make up where the appropriation comes up short. The city and university for a long time were at cross purposes regarding the stadium. Memphis back in the 1970's was projected to explode the way Atlanta and Austin have and it didn't happen but basically from 1970 to 1995 Memphis was on any list of potential NFL expansion sites and in 1974 it was widely believed that had the WFL not put a team in Memphis that Memphis and Seattle would be the additions announced in 1974 for the 1976 season. Memphis nearly landed the Colts. So for years the city pursued NFL and what they needed the stadium to be for that didn't align with what the Tigers needed it to be. When Jacksonville and Charlotte got picked over Memphis, St. Louis and someone I can't remember, the NFL had talked to Memphis about a shared franchise. They asked Memphis if they'd be willing to move two to three home games a year to Nashville. Weren't happy but they talk with Nashville it's all warm and fuzzy then all of a sudden Nashville says not interested and pulls out of it and tells NFL they've no interest in working with Memphis despite not being a finalist for the expansion. Jacksonville and Carolina are announced and BOOM Adams announces he's moving the Oilers to Nashville. Once that happened Memphis accepted they are never getting in the NFL. That has changed the dynamic, there's no concern about making the stadium NFL ready, and best use is keep Liberty Bowl game vibrant while Memphis maximizes revenue at that site instead of having to buy land because they really don't have space for a stadium. So yeah long term it works well for everyone at least on paper.

You start tromping around and screwing with the NFL, you can have a problem. That's 32 billionaires and they swing a bigger stick than the Power 2. You are absolutely going to see guys opt to play college because they will be able to make more than NFL will pay. By the time you get a bit past middle of the second round, you are talking salaries that Texas, Michigan, Alabama, Ohio State can afford to pay. Colleges aren't going to be able to match a $200 million NFL payroll but a late third rounder like Demarion Oveshown is probably worth more to Texas than he is to the Cowboys and Texas can afford to guarantee more than $1.3 million over four years. No reason the Power 2 can't choose to keep guys around more than the old five to play four. Northern Illinois QB today was in his seventh season according to the announcers. I can see a professional Power 2 or Power 3 or Power 4 hollowing out the NFL talent after the first 50 picks or so.

NIL collective contributions aren't deductible. IRS already cut that off.

So we now have Florida State trying to break out of ACC, they've apparently been talking to a private equity firm to finance the hundreds of millions they will probably owe, they will give up a percentage of income for who knows how many years as part of the deal. Honestly at this point, it seems inevitable the Big Ten, SEC, maybe the Big XII are going to head to a straight up pay to play system. If I'm the NFL, I ask my 32 billionaire owners to call up the various senators and representatives they own uh sorry, donate to, in order knee cap professional college football. When a school is spending maybe 5% of its revenue on scholarships, one might wonder why donations to the richest athletic programs are tax deductible or why the government should provide financial aid to students when a program spends more than $100 million or $150 million on athletics.

The old system treated players as commodities. A sure first round NFL pick dominating player was priced identical to the 85th scholarship player on the roster who ended up playing senior day if and maybe a couple blowouts. A bushel of corn is a bushel of corn. New system is going to have glitches but should eventually become a market economy where being last scholarship player at Michigan pays very little over a scholarship and being a hoss gets you real money.

Sliding down a rabbit hole here, but this crap would be easier to swallow if this unregulated mess were more like soccer. Imagine every high school player in football and basketball signed a four year contract. Say $30,000 a year. Freshman year kid is AAC or Sun Belt player of the year. Texas Tech, OkSt, UCF want the kid. He wants to leave. UCF is offering $100,000 a year for the remaining three years. Has to pay 10% of the deal to buy his release. $30,000. Only played a year but buyout means played at no cost. Or maybe stud player from Plano gets $250,000 a year from Texas. He’s good not that good. Texas is stuck with him and he’s stuck on the bench but he likes coaches at UNT. Green say we will pay $75,000 a year. Texas is on the hook for $175,000 but Texas has leverage too. They tell him agree to cut salary to $100,000 and we will make up difference. Kid says nah make it $150,000 and we have a deal so kid is playing at UNT for $150,000 school only pays half. Meanwhile Arkansas offers a kid $50,000 because he’s a project. AState offers him that as well because he’s quality depth if nothing else. Hogs like what they see when he’s on campus but he’s a couple years from SEC ready. Hogs tell him we want you to get experience in games. Shop him around and agree to loan him to AState for a year at $15,000 Hogs pay the rest. Being able to profit from identifying talent and developing that talent changes the Charlie Brown I got a rock in my Halloween sack nature of how it works now.

The NCAA isn't spineless, it's toothless. The Association has been beat to hell by a string of antitrust lawsuit decisions going back 40 years. Basketball would likely have already had a privately run CFP style tournament had the NCAA not bought the NIT to stave off an inevitable loss to the NIT because of a stupid rule that said if you are invited to the NCAA Tournament and turn it down, you are ineligible for postseason. Incredibly obvious violation. Our courts are stacked pretty deep with judges who are skeptical of any sort of restraint on free markets and they are slapping the NCAA right and left. Absent Congress granted an antitrust exemption, genuine pay for play is coming and with it most likely a union and a collective bargaining agreement that sets minimum compensation standards that no one outside the P4 can afford and some in the P4 can't afford. If the NCAA and P4/5 gets slammed as bad as many expect in pending litigation ($4 billion is a possible verdict) its going to be insanity. You are going to see some of the P4 who can't just cough up their potentially as much as $58 million share of the verdict. They are going to turn to venture capital firms who are going to be willing throw hundreds of millions maybe billions at P4 athletic departments for a percentage of all future revenue. Imagine a bunch of schools selling their souls to venture capital and then being pressured to form a new conference that doesn't include those schools who take out more than they contribute. Sorry Mississippi State and Vandy we need your share of SEC revenue. This business got full on pro there won't be 69 Power 4 schools. College football isn't going to die. There are 772 four year colleges playing football, up four from last year with 11 more in the process off adding football. What is going to die is unpaid football at the schools in the SEC, ACC, Big Ten, and Big XII. Gee whiz schools in AAC, CUSA, MAC, MWC/P2, Sun Belt likely won't go play football at those schools for a million plus any more and won't be blessed with their top teams getting a crack at the P4 lower tier teams in a bowl. College football will live on.

Not exactly the same, no. But it's still about roster management. Figuring out how hard you are willing to go to keep a player, what you can afford, how to allocate what you can afford. Sign a high school kid, he can walk when he wants. Sign a kid who tore it up at Incarnate Word or Houston Baptist, he's stuck until he gets a diploma. High school coaches recruit by showing who they've placed at high Division I programs. Developing players that get a big pay day at OU or LSU ain't going to hurt recruiting.

I don't believe their numbers. I don't know if they are pulling them from an orifice or some "handlers" are self-reporting big numbers to get big numbers for other players they work.

12 team is same scenario for the G5 as now. Five fighting for a spot.

Half of the six MLB division winners were in the bottom half of the league in payroll. It's all going to be about roster management.

I don't think Congress nor the courts are inclined to preserve the amateur nature of college athletics. The ship for that sailed when top coaching salaries grew 5 times faster than inflation, the building boom took off, and every program suddenly had money for at least three sets of jerseys, three types of pants, and three different helmet styles not counting decal swaps. There was suddenly money for "analysts" to beak down just how the receivers did and how opponent defenses attacked receivers and help with game plans. Player spaces that are basically a clubhouse/hangout with constant supply of food. As I noted on the AState board. St Jude Research Hospital in Memphis has a budget of around $2 billion, ten times a top P5. They have TWO employees who make more than $1 million and none make $2 million. If St Jude paid someone like Dabo or Kirby it would be a national scandal, yet we continue the pretense that college athletics are some charitable undertaking. College athletics aren't a business. If it were they'd pay cash dividends over to the owners (university) or the owners would cash out sell the business. If Texas and Michigan and Georgia had been pouring the TV and fan largesse over to fund scholarships, faculty salaries, research, or fix the crappy HVAC system in the English department we aren't having these discussions about paying players. No one is saving college athletics from itself. Athletic departments have grown like a cancer eating the things around them, growing in an uncontrolled manner. Who is going to step up and pass antitrust legislation allow it to continue on the same path? You want antitrust protection to cap athletic spending and put athletes in a better spot? Maybe you can pass that. Right now players being employees, unionizing and signing a collective bargaining agreement is the best hope left.

I would expect there will be instances of collectives telling coaches we aren't pouring any more money into that kid, though I expect the norm will be coaches saying, don't spend any more or don't spend more than X. The real issue is the donor class. If you are paying and getting 3 win teams, your enthusiasm is bound to wane.

I don't know what anyone else is doing. I know the one at A-State does one year deals. They don't commit money they don't have. They also pay after the fact. You have to meet your various obligations during the month or you are likely to have your pay held until you make the required appearances and social media posts. I highly doubt that is the practice everywhere but one of the organizers at A-State was COO of a very large bank and did a stint at the Federal Reserve. My expectation is we will eventually see a collective go to bankruptcy or just flat fold because it lacks any assets to protect in bankruptcy court and some really unhappy players when the check bounces or never arrives. I also expect some schools will have the embarrassment of discovering that the person they hired to run the collective is a film-flam man and has skimmed money off in various schemes. Again won't be pretty.

I really think it is a fluke situation. Of the five G5 champions SMU 11-2, Troy 11-2, Miami 11-2, Boise State 8-5. It's like when BYU won the national title in 1984. In all of I-A only three teams had less than two losses. BYU 13-0, Cal State Fullerton 11-1 who had two non-FBS wins, finished second in what became the Big West, and their best win was 7-4 Hawaii, and 9-1-1 Florida who was on probation and opened the season losing to Miami who finished 8-5 and tied LSU at Florida and LSU finished 8-3-1. Everyone else had two or more losses. ACC, Big Ten, and Pac-10 champs ended up with three losses 7-5 (6-2) Houston won tiebreaker to go to the Cotton over SMU and SMU finished 10-2 beating a 7-5 Notre Dame. SEC champ was 8-3-1. Everything fell perfect for BYU. If JMU had been allowed to be eligible and had beaten Troy then 12-1 JMU vs 13-0 Liberty is a debate but two win gap? Committee ain't going to spend time looking at a two win gap in the G5. Heck made this argument years ago and data backs it up 2016 Western Michigan got NY6 game with one loss when every other G5 champ had three or more. Marshall got passed for Boise State when Marshall was only one win better. The only time a team with 2 more wins has been passed over was 2020 but that was 11-0 Coastal Carolina vs 9-0 Cincinnati an inherently screwy situation thanks to Covid and based on the rankings, if 12 playoff with 6/6 format had been in place Coastal would have taken the last auto bid over 4-3 Oregon I'm not pleased that the fourth best champion per various computer rankings got the slot but it was a weird scenario.

Portal is fascinating. In the short time it has been around I classed guys into three groups. 1. Those doing well looking to go up the food chain. 2. Those not getting the experience they expected and looking to move in some direction to find that experience, generally playing time. 3. Guys whose services are no longer required. Seeing high major starters go in? This think that requires a fourth category. 4. I want more NIL money and playing leverage to get it from you or someone else.

ESPN FPI rankings of the 5 G5 champions. 20 SMU 45 Troy* 46 Boise State 49 Liberty 71 Miami (OH) So much for the highest rated G5 champion. Liberty did not play a P5 team and doesn't have any P5 on future schedules until 2027 when they start a three for one with Virginia Tech. So they aren't going to amass a well regarded schedule but they do have a softer path to undefeated. I suspect had NCAA not imposed the waiting period and JMU had been able to play for the Sun Belt title, being 12-1 might have got them in. * The Sun Belt champ would have rated higher but the NCAA a few years ago in a potentially antitrust violating manner declared a two year boycott of teams moving from FCS to FBS (note that both Nevada and Marshall had previously played in the FCS playoffs one season and bowls the next). Because of that boycott JMU couldn't play in the Sun Belt title game. JMU finished 37 and whomever won between Troy and JMU would have finished higher than 45.

Midseason firing can be done. It more often than not makes things worse and the list of those going on to win a conference title that year is pretty small, it's less common than converting fourth and thirty or more yards. Blake Anderson canned his DC and another defensive assistant after a 3-2 start in 2020 and A-State dropped the next five with only ULM saving the remainder of the season from being a complete bust. My observation over the years is fans tend to horribly over-estimate the state of their roster. Fans do a bit better job assessing coaching than rosters.

Retirement gets you a Social Security check and whatever pension earned, and investment income. Firing gets you a buyout plus all those other things. Though I think Rick is in the age 66 and 6 months group for full retirement benefits from Social Security. Firing lets Chris look like he's on the ball. Maybe there was bad blood but it would have to be recent. Chris had no pressing need to extend Rick after the 2022 season.

Texas State went 2-2 in non-conference last year, they went 2-2 this year. Last year 2-6 in Sun Belt losing three of those by a combined 10 points, this year 4-4. Last year lost at ULM 31-30 this year beat them 21-20. Last year lost at Troy by 6 this year at home by 18. Texas State improved, no argument, but it wasn't a vast improvement.

Context is everything. What had Vegas set as the win total? Looks like it was 6, so ballpark but below. Looking at the schedule before the season with clear glass rather than green lenses what was your worst case, best case, and most likely predictions. Where did you finish vs the pre-season predictions? The coaches picked UNT 7th. Actual finish 8th again at least in the ballpark. I think in your shoes, I'm unhappy but cautiously optimistic. From an outsider standpoint, losing to a bad FIU is the difference between nailing the expected win total and falling short.

He was the G5 nightmare. Only posted two consecutive losing seasons. His second and third year which is excusable and then 2019 and the covid mess of 2020. Never good enough to get hired away, never bad enough to be an obvious fire. Final record of 113-111 sums his career. Almost good but not quite. Shared a title in 2006 when Troy beat them in Troy 21-20, had a shot to win Sun Belt outright in 2012 and got blown out by A-State in the season finale. 2018 had the CUSA title game at home and lost to UAB 27-25 after beating UAB on that same field 27-3 the week before. Figure losing last five vs WKU sunk him though going 0-4 vs the CUSA newcomers couldn't have helped him either. Fun fact, he was there 18 years and the AD who hired him also fired him.

Funnier because NMSU did it to him last year at Liberty

Son and I had this discussion coming home from the TXST beating. Go all in on the portal and you struggle to get a cohesive team. Don't go to the portal you get something like Clemson where you have talent gaps. Butch Jones would've done horribly under the grading system. Our roster was in absolute chaos when he arrived. It was senior day today. There were FIVE and Blake Anderson had recruited two of them. Of 77 points, 41 came from players signed from high schools 36 by transfers. Quarterback is a true freshman who was 14/17 for 196 yards, no TD's and no picks. We struggled to start the season with a portal QB who didn't go through spring drills and an offensive line that had several portal guys because the OL is so young. Portal QB never meshed, got benched for the Sophomore we signed out of high school who did better but didn't have the "it" factor, gets benched for the true freshman who enrolled early to go through spring. Offensive line didn't get its act together until around game 8. The whole roster thing is more chaotic than any NFL GM deals with. Look at Colorado. Thanks to the portal they are good to really good in a bunch of spots. Offensive line? Nope. They've not been able to get it to a good level.