In traditional professional football, when teams pay players and have a losing season, the teams still make $$$ and turn a profit. Thus they can afford to continue to pay players.
In todayâs college football, when boosters pay players NIL and the team has a losing season, the boosters lose money AND they donât get to experience the joy of being associated with a winner. Will those boosters keep donating NIL? Do you have to find new boosters? Donât you eventually run out of boosters?
Just donât see how this NIL model is sustainable. Rich people didnât get rich by losing money and I donât see how you can keep asking them to do that via NIL.
The revenue sharing model WILL work and it will be interesting to see what percentage of revenue is ultimately allocated to labor. The NBA gives 51% of gross revenue to players. The other major professional leagues give less.
But why would colleges give players anything close to that? College players are infinitely replaceable. People root for their school and as a consequence of that, root for the players competing for that school. But if the Top 100 players in college football disappeared overnight, would the popularity of the sport suffer at all? I donât think it would.
Offer the players minimum wage, make them sign binding contracts with buyouts and non-competes (assuming you can still enforce those: that is another rabbit hole). NIL will still exist but wonât be as big of a deal because of the contracts and buyouts.
If a players thinks he is too good for this system, they can start their own football league or wait until they are eligible for the NFL.
Why wouldnât this work?
I donât know how much they care. Itâs like monopoly money. Many of them are just borrowing from Uncle Sam and hoping they donât have to pay it back.
Did you believe Alabama would be uncompetitive vs Oklahoma? What about OSU vs Tennessee?
Did you think TCU would get absolutely nuked by Georgia a few heads ago AFTER beating #4. Michigan?
Blowouts happen every year in we den the 4 team playoff. They mean little.
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