Open letter to Greg Sankey

[BamaSully]

Greg, please just bite the bullet and move forward with your B1G commish partner with the following

Create a new league, outside the NCAA, with a new set of rules that make sense.

1. Every scholarship player gets a set stipend to live on outside of the scholarship and all the other amenities they have available to them, but it is not negotiable, not based on position or stats or starter or backup. A set amount. Period. Make it something that is affordable and also somewhat attractive to the players. Maybe $100K per year.

2. Portal windows are the months of January and July when the least football activity is ongoing. 1st transfer is free - play immediately. All subsequent transfers required sitting out a year, period. No exceptions, no waivers, no questions. No special windows for coaching changes either. Just January and July.

3. NIL money is paid out in February and August to the players who stayed and did not transfer. You transfer, you wait until the next payment window to get paid.

4. Teams must play at least 10 games against teams in the top division to qualify for the playoffs. If your old rival stays down in the NCAA you can play them but you’ll need at least 10 games against the big dogs.

5. inclusion in the new division is voluntary. Only those who can afford it and want to compete at that level.

6. Create a centralized scheduling method that optimizes strength of schedule across the board. You can play all your regular rivals but the remainder of your games will be scheduled for you to optimize SOS. If your rivals are weak, the rest of your schedule will be ranked teams. If your rivals are all tough, you’ll have weaker teams to fill out the schedule.

 

[Guido]

Greg, please just bite the bullet and move forward with your B1G commish partner with the following

Create a new league, outside the NCAA, with a new set of rules that make sense.

1. Every scholarship player gets a set stipend to live on outside of the scholarship and all the other amenities they have available to them, but it is not negotiable, not based on position or stats or starter or backup. A set amount. Period. Make it something that is affordable and also somewhat attractive to the players. Maybe $100K per year.

2. Portal windows are the months of January and July when the least football activity is ongoing. 1st transfer is free - play immediately. All subsequent transfers required sitting out a year, period. No exceptions, no waivers, no questions. No special windows for coaching changes either. Just January and July.

3. NIL money is paid out in February and August to the players who stayed and did not transfer. You transfer, you wait until the next payment window to get paid.

4. Teams must play at least 10 games against teams in the top division to qualify for the playoffs. If your old rival stays down in the NCAA you can play them but you’ll need at least 10 games against the big dogs.

5. inclusion in the new division is voluntary. Only those who can afford it and want to compete at that level.

6. Create a centralized scheduling method that optimizes strength of schedule across the board. You can play all your regular rivals but the remainder of your games will be scheduled for you to optimize SOS. If your rivals are weak, the rest of your schedule will be ranked teams. If your rivals are all tough, you’ll have weaker teams to fill out the schedule.

As long as it's all legal, this is a well thought out proposal. Of course, some big details are missing but the nucleus here is solid.

 

[BamaSully]

Centralized collective bargaining for all TV rights. The games we would have each week in that format would be insane. The money would be split evenly to all the teams in the new league.

 

[AlexanderFan]

No way a college athlete is going to throttle their own earning potential with something like this.

 

[BamaSully]

No way a college athlete is going to throttle their own earning potential with something like this.

Lol it’s not like they would be offered any other option. You can come with the team or transfer to one of the schools that stays in the NCAA.

 

[Ole Man Dan]

Some good ideas, bit I don't think players will give up NIL for a set salary for all.

 

[AlexanderFan]

Lol it’s not like they would be offered any other option. You can come with the team or transfer to one of the schools that stays in the NCAA.

There would be litigation forever.

 

[JohnD]

Greg, please just bite the bullet and move forward with your B1G commish partner with the following

Create a new league, outside the NCAA, with a new set of rules that make sense.

1. Every scholarship player gets a set stipend to live on outside of the scholarship and all the other amenities they have available to them, but it is not negotiable, not based on position or stats or starter or backup. A set amount. Period. Make it something that is affordable and also somewhat attractive to the players. Maybe $100K per year.

2. Portal windows are the months of January and July when the least football activity is ongoing. 1st transfer is free - play immediately. All subsequent transfers required sitting out a year, period. No exceptions, no waivers, no questions. No special windows for coaching changes either. Just January and July.

3. NIL money is paid out in February and August to the players who stayed and did not transfer. You transfer, you wait until the next payment window to get paid.

4. Teams must play at least 10 games against teams in the top division to qualify for the playoffs. If your old rival stays down in the NCAA you can play them but you’ll need at least 10 games against the big dogs.

5. inclusion in the new division is voluntary. Only those who can afford it and want to compete at that level.

6. Create a centralized scheduling method that optimizes strength of schedule across the board. You can play all your regular rivals but the remainder of your games will be scheduled for you to optimize SOS. If your rivals are weak, the rest of your schedule will be ranked teams. If your rivals are all tough, you’ll have weaker teams to fill out the schedule.

What "college" football has turned into belongs in a different league altogether. Something like the UFL. College is for amateur athletes and paying a kings ransom for football players under the guise of labeling them "student athletes" is making a mockery of the college education process.

I like your plan though. I think it will take something bold like this to salvage some resemblance of true college football from this wild wild west money grab. Universities could simply remove themselves from it.

 

[BamaMoon]

Some very good ideas, but my question would be if the NCAA teams not in the new super league can still pay huge NILs, wouldn't a lot of the really good, 5 star type recruits just decide to go play for Western-Southern of the North East???

If more money is out there, they won't care if the new league is the best of the SEC and the B1G.

IMO, the first thing that needs to happen is the NCAA, as a governing entity needs to be blown to smithereens.

 

[BamaSully]

Some very good ideas, but my question would be if the NCAA teams not in the new super league can still pay huge NILs, wouldn't a lot of the really good, 5 star type recruits just decide to go play for Western-Southern of the North East???

If more money is out there, they won't care if the new league is the best of the SEC and the B1G.

IMO, the first thing that needs to happen is the NCAA, as a governing entity needs to be blown to smithereens.

It has already gotten really screwed up and unlike a light bulb, I don’t think we can unscrew this one. However in my little fantasy world I was thinking all the teams that can afford to pay the players would be in the new league and so no one who would be left in the NCAA would have access to a lot of NIL money.

 

[4Q Basket Case]

I like your ideas.

Still, I think all this pay-for-play and transfer stuff is at heart a legal issue, not an athletic one. So even if the new organization were managed competently and fairly, I think it might run into the same legal challenges as the NCAA.

IOW, the solution has to stand up in court. I'm not sure what you outline would.

 

[NoNC4Tubs]

Greg, please just bite the bullet and move forward with your B1G commish partner with the following

Create a new league, outside the NCAA, with a new set of rules that make sense.

1. Every scholarship player gets a set stipend to live on outside of the scholarship and all the other amenities they have available to them, but it is not negotiable, not based on position or stats or starter or backup. A set amount. Period. Make it something that is affordable and also somewhat attractive to the players. Maybe $100K per year.

2. Portal windows are the months of January and July when the least football activity is ongoing. 1st transfer is free - play immediately. All subsequent transfers required sitting out a year, period. No exceptions, no waivers, no questions. No special windows for coaching changes either. Just January and July.

3. NIL money is paid out in February and August to the players who stayed and did not transfer. You transfer, you wait until the next payment window to get paid.

4. Teams must play at least 10 games against teams in the top division to qualify for the playoffs. If your old rival stays down in the NCAA you can play them but you’ll need at least 10 games against the big dogs.

5. inclusion in the new division is voluntary. Only those who can afford it and want to compete at that level.

6. Create a centralized scheduling method that optimizes strength of schedule across the board. You can play all your regular rivals but the remainder of your games will be scheduled for you to optimize SOS. If your rivals are weak, the rest of your schedule will be ranked teams. If your rivals are all tough, you’ll have weaker teams to fill out the schedule.

It makes sense, but it doesn't make cents...

 

[BamaSully]

A fella can dream

 

[4Q Basket Case]

As I think about a solution to the problems that pay-for-play and transfer portals have caused, it's occurred to me that we need to fundamentally change our thinking.

We need to move on from the concept of a top-down structure (similar to the NCAA), administered and enforced competently and fairly (which the NCAA wasn't). Anything remotely similar to that, no matter how competently and fairly managed, simply won't withstand the inevitable court challenges.

Think of being a player as a job and the school as the employer. As distasteful as I find the situation, we're already about an angstrom away from that anyway.

Next, think of a structure that would be legally enforceable across a body of workers and employers spanning all 50 states.

Now you're getting away from nostalgic wishful thinking and on the way to solving the problem.

I've already laid out my proposal (a labor union negotiating with management) so often that I'm sure the board is getting sick of it.

Full disclosure: I don't like my own idea. So I'd love to hear legally workable alternatives.

 

[davefrat]

Supposedly the Group of 5 is considering their own playoff because they feel like they're getting frozen out of the CFP by the SEC and BIG.

If that came to pass, then we'd have essentially a P5 champion, G5 champion, the non-G5 FBS teams would have to figure something out like fall back to or elevate the FCS programs into a new league, as well as the already existing D2 and D3 championships.

What a clownshow.

 

[4Q Basket Case]

Supposedly the Group of 5 is considering their own playoff because they feel like they're getting frozen out of the CFP by the SEC and BIG.

If that came to pass, then we'd have essentially a P5 champion, G5 champion, the non-G5 FBS teams would have to figure something out like fall back to or elevate the FCS programs into a new league, as well as the already existing D2 and D3 championships.

What a clownshow.

Agreed.

Not so long ago, there was huge sentiment to burn the NCAA down. My position was that it needed to go, but we should have a replacement structure up and ready to implement before striking the match. That as much as the NCAA deserved a bonfire, no governance at all wasn't good either.

But emotions were high, pitchforks were out, and you could almost hear chants of, "Burn baby burn!"

Well, the NCAA is now effectively burned down. We don't have a replacement. We do have chaos. Nobody's happy, and everybody's scrambling.

 

[JDCrimson]

The NIL retainer needs to be rolled into the value of the scholarship so the athlete is also still a student. On the academic side, there are students who have a scholarship valued at more than the cost.of attendance. Athletic scholarships could be handled the same way.

 

[Bamabuzzard]

Anything the players do not like they will have their "agent" file a lawsuit which at that point, most schools back down. So at this stage what can really be implemented that doesn't get the players approval first?

 

[crimsonaudio]

Agreed.

Not so long ago, there was huge sentiment to burn the NCAA down. My position was that it needed to go, but we should have a replacement structure up and ready to implement before striking the match. That as much as the NCAA deserved a bonfire, no governance at all wasn't good either.

But emotions were high, pitchforks were out, and you could almost hear chants of, "Burn baby burn!"

Well, the NCAA is now effectively burned down. We don't have a replacement. We do have chaos. Nobody's happy, and everybody's scrambling.

The problem is it was the NCAA that doused themselves in gasoline and lit the match.

 

[4Q Basket Case]

Anything the players do not like they will have their "agent" file a lawsuit which at that point, most schools back down. So at this stage what can really be implemented that doesn't get the players approval first?

You make an interesting point.

I'm not aware of management of any company or industry saying, "We won't negotiate with individuals....we will negotiate only with a union."

Right now the players have the power. So why would the more talented ones share that power -- and the money that comes with it -- with their less talented teammates?

If the players decline to unionize, Congress doesn't pass federal legislation, and the college presidents can't present a unified front to force the issue (I giggled at myself as I typed that -- most of those people are ivory tower academic pinheads who couldn't come to a consensus on the color of the sky), as the ultimate source of cash that feeds all of this, the fans have a choice:

1. Grudgingly accept the chaotic new world, or

2A. Stop attending games, cancel season tickets and cut off donations to seat license and pay-for-play programs -- Tide Pride and Yea Alabama and similar. And most important of all....

2B. Stop watching college games on TV -- cable, streaming, DVR, YouTube, whatever.

IOW, fans rise up en masse, refuse to accept what's being fed to them, and college football becomes NASCAR redux.

It might take a while, but I could see that happening.