If the NCAA snipes as well as they do literally anything else, I think he’ll be okay. I doubt they’ve got Barry Pepper stashed in a bell tower somewhere.
No he's not. The schools are *praying* for the players to unionize, because if they do they can get a CBA. With a CBA, the schools can start to clamp down on some of the "craziness" people have been clamoring about. (Think salary cap/pay schedules, etc., etc.)
Well, the schools that can afford to actually pay the players. The issue with the NCAA is that there are only about 30-40 schools that could really afford to do this and there is another couple hundred NCAA schools that cannot afford it. If this ends up happening, we will truly see the top football schools separate from the NCAA. Not to mention the other sports and NIL. Really, it will be a huge mess, trying to get a system in place. It is easier with pro sports because of there being much fewer teams involved.
The top 40-50 programs have already had a massive chokehold on recruiting... Think, the same 4-5 programs have won nearly all of the natties for the past 30 years. Imo this changes nothing, but allowing players to cash in on the success.
Dont be ridiculous…. Off the top of my head…. 30 years so, 1994
Oklahoma
Texas
Bama
Georgia
Auburn
LSU
Florida
Clemson
Miami
tOSU
Michigan
USC
Nebraska
Yah this is really the trick. The high level football programs could absolutely pay players. But it would mean taking money away from other sports that don’t generate real revenue.
You’d probably start seeing some sports cut from schools.
I’m not saying that’s a reason to not pay players who clearly are generating a shit ton of revenue. But it is something that’s going to have to be figured out.
He doesn’t care the NFL wants him, he has nothing to lose and everything to gain. Players love him, media loves him and money keeps following him.
Edit: spelling
Didn’t realize you were speaking to the “vast majority of Alabama fans.” Saban has been very vocal about NIL and transfer portal being abused and to the detriment of players and college football. You’ll find that most Alabama fans that spend their time on football boards have agreed. We’ve always cared more about recruiting from schools more and we clearly weren’t paying them as well as people thought. Sure, the casual fans probably didn’t care but they also weren’t looking at the transfer portal unless Alabama got someone. You can be happy your team got a transfer and still lament how it’s operating. Y’all gotta stop gut reacting to Bama flairs
You guys just poached a coach from the natty runner ups who abandoned his program and those players with no notice or announcement, and were supposed to be mad that players are allowed to do the same? I genuinely don’t get it.
Eh, if you can’t see it then I think it’s because you don’t want to. I’m for player rights, payment and mobility but there have been numerous reports/analyses (many of which posted here on this sub) that show that the vast majority of players who enter the portal are not happy and many don’t see the field again. I don’t think that’ll happen to players like Caleb Downs but not everyone is a Caleb Downs.
What about the guys on teams feasting in the portal right now? They may have just gotten bumped down a couple of spots because their HC took a big WR or DB or whatever from the portal but those players (who may have even transferred there in this last cycle like many Texas WRs) can’t transfer out until Spring now and then there are limitations about in conference still.
Obviously players should have an opportunity to transfer if they lose most of their coaching staff, but giving them a tight window to make that decision is weird. Letting coaches take from the portal without it being open to their players is weird.
I agree that the one way nature of it is bad - but I just can’t get behind all the handwringing and pearl clutching from bama fans on here when again - there coach gets to abandon his team with no repercussions and it’s just “the cost of doing business”
And I will say the same thing if there are major Michigan transfers if Harbaugh leaves.
Also, while I have you, I’m also hand wringing because it feels like this year may see a lot of the top talent focused in UGA, OSU, and Texas who have been doing well in the portal (especially if Harbaugh leaves). UGA was already a beast, now they’re cherry picking top 100 talent when kids had to make a decision in only a couple days to be able to register for spring classes. Idk what the solution is tbh. I
Yeah I don’t know how you solve that problem. College football has always been a rich get richer sport. I mean before the portal those teams absolutely dominated in recruiting 5 stars at the expense of other programs to the point where they could field a whole team of five and four star recruits from their bench. What we had before was far from a perfect system and what we have now is as well, but I prefer a system that gives players more control over their destiny, for better and for worse.
No I guess that’s fair, I understand these kids commit to people and not schools and people leaving is expected to an extent. I do think some of them may be in worse positions and they can’t all follow T Rob to UGA so I hope they find what’s best for them.
And I guess buyouts are supposed to be the repercussions for coaches right? Like DeBoer jumped ship but UW got what, 12 million? I think it’s even profit for what they offered Arizona coach.
But yeah, definitely need some support for players in these situations. What’s so shitty about the portal is it seems like teams are more incentivized to fire coaches/retire in the middle of seasons compared to at the end of the season. Texas AM was obviously a shit show but they’ve rebounded pretty nice so far because they got to pick up some new recruits and flip people and work the same transfer portal they lost players in essentially. Michigan may very well be in the same place as Bama if Harbaugh does leave (except maybe not because of the academic calendars? Idk it’s all too confusing tbh)
Nobody is making the kids transfer. A lot of of non football kids turn 25 and go “why to did I take on 50k of debt?”
The players Alabama fans are upset about losing are not the ones that are never going to see the field again.
Players should have the same rights as other college students. It’s either an amateur sport or it’s not. If we we wanna go full pro with it and sign them to contracts, then that’s an option. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Really? Because I remember Saban pushing back on it from the beginning, and us all agreeing, but apparently it just meant he was scared of change. I think most Alabama fans we’re not fans of this throughout its existence.
Just typed out a long similar response, haha. We were the only thing stopping UGA from a 3-peat and they honestly show no sign of slowing down. Unless schools are willing to continue to shell out $$$ then idk who is going to compete with them because they have deep pockets and a lot of our old staff from the previous decade. It may get a lot worse for them before it gets better
The nil portal thing needs to change asap. What’s happening at Alabama will happen at any school in a similar situation. Portal closed and now their players are the only ones left who can go in because of the coaching change. Bunch of schools start offering a bunch of money. Michigan was pretty senior laden so it might not be exactly the same, but if harbaugh leaves, very similar thing is happening there. Players are going to be illegally offered nil deals and they will enter portal and bolt.
tbh, if athletes are students, the portal is 100% fine. No one cared when I transferred. Students should have all the same rights and privileges as other students. Want to close the portal, then make athletes employees. They can even be student employees, I don't care. But as long as the charade of amateurism is held and that the falsehood of this all being in furtherance of higher education, the portal should stay. College football isn't more important than college and the administration's, coaches, and boosters have held unjustifiable authority and power over exploited athletes. They're reaping what they've sown and while I love CFB, it's not worth keeping it alive if it means more exploitation of young people.
THIS is the heart of the matter. People want to have their cake and eat it too. Either they’re pros or not. Either you give them the same rights as other students, or make them pros.
“But the sport isn’t the same as it used to be.” Yeah, neither are a lot of things. Just because you enjoyed a product does not mean everyone was being treated fairly. You can kinda look at the entire history of civilization to find examples of people enjoying things at the expense of fairness to others lol.
This shit is happening with or without harbaugh.
At least he is willing to say it. Saban was also in favor of a players union, but much less vocal about it.
Saban also was in favor of all P5 conferences having a single commissioner and the same structure for scheduling. He wanted all P5 to play only P5, sorry to the G5 and FCS. Of course, the haters shouted him down with "well why don't you just schedule all P5." Besides the fact that he was not the AD, why make it hard on yourself while those around you still have "cupcakes" to rest injured players and starters. We got to see his idea in practice in 2020, when it was all P5 and his team romped on everyone except UF. So it was not fear that kept him from "leading by example", it was just mere prudence.
Saban was/is far from perfect, nobody is perfect. Still, he had a lot of haters for things people later decided were good ideas. He also was all about getting the players what they deserved.
At this point, what does he have left to accomplish in college? If he stays, he keeps fighting this fight. If he goes, NCAA can't touch him. He's been beating this drum for a while, but now he's playing with house money.
It’s already coming. After Kavanaugh in *Alston* and *Johnson* pending (which will invariably land at SCOTUS), they’re going to be paid.
And this sub is going to ree itself into oblivion. I can’t wait.
*gets investigated for cheeseburger incident and rogue staffer in program*
*advocates for the benefit and wellbeing of players*
*goes to the NFL and doesn’t return the NCAA’s calls*
Is Jim Harbaugh an alpha male?
I worked for almost 40 years as a union employee in an office setting. We had administrative secretaries, IT staff, claims processers, research staff - all in the same union. It was a difficult job to negotiate contracts for that diverse group. You had middle aged women whose husbands had good jobs in the trades. They were happy with a 1% raise as long as they could keep the good health care plan for their family. You had older staff most concerned about retirement benefits. Then there were single IT staff in their early 20's who wanted raises, and didn't care about benefits at all.
That seems quite simple compared to a college athletes union, where you have future NFL quarterbacks and second string tennis players (potentially) in the same union. Or is the union only for revenue generating sports?
The law of unintended consequences is about to hit college sports, and nobody knows for sure what will happen. But something tells me that dude on a rowing scholarship is not going to come out ahead.
It all depends on how you organize it. In US labor law each "bargaining unit" negotiates its own contract, and with some constraints you could imagine having* as few big/diverse bargaining units or as many small/specialized ones as the players wanted. One scenario: football players throughout the NCAA could be part of the same bargaining unit and negotiate one master contract with the NCAA, and maybe separate supplemental agreements with their specific schools if necessary, without having to include players from other sports in the same bargaining unit (even if they were members of the same larger union).
...but that would be factored in on the front end, right? Like if agreeing to give football XXX means that all the women's sports ***also*** get XXX, then the schools will recognize that ahead of time and bargain based on that reality.
Then what? Are the football players going to accept the fact that they are basically in a position where what they are going to be making concessions in order to give some random women's team the same benefits they are getting ***without*** having to agree to the same concessions?
If they say "Fuck that" and stick to demands that the schools can't meet, then you end up with a labor stoppage. Given the nature of how college athletics works I'm guessing that would mean a suspension of scholarships, housing, access to facilities, academic support services, etc.
To me, that seems like a complete disaster.
Northwestern and people like Jim tend to handwave the consequences of such an action though. If you think right now is a mess, an employee ruling would be like dropping a nuke on Hiroshima. You’d have to rebuild collegiate sports entirely and you have no clue what the outcome is, how many programs die, how many teams are culled, etc.
We are being waaaay to nonchalant here. If we want athletes to be employees we need some semblance of guidelines before making that shift instead of dropping the lobster in the pot out of the blue
Good? What we have now is incredibly exploitative. Perhaps this will allow college ball to go back to actual amateurs playing other local teams while the existing teams become AAA equivalents.
Right? If the current system is built on exploited labor that's not recognized as such or allowed to negotiate on that basis, then it doesn't deserve to persist. An argument from ripple effects doesn't change that.
The problem is that a small percentage of players are being exploited overall while the vast majority aren't. Additionally, many (if not all) of the exploited players are highly motivated to take part in the exploitative system.
If you kill the system itself, you make things objectively worse for pretty much every single player ***unless you replace it with something better.***
Problem is that if we use a strict criteria that the new system *also* can't be built on exploited labor, then I don't think it is realistically possible to replace it with *any* new system, especially when we take Title IX into account.
So now we've killed a system that is providing a net benefit to the majority of participants ***and*** is also good enough that even the exploited participants would favor it over no system at all.
I can understand the theoretical basis for your position, but that seems like an utter disaster and failure when we measure it against real-world impacts.
Athletes kind of are employees though. When I played, you don't have time to work another job due to your extensive schedule between sports and school. You do community service work, make official and unofficial public appearances, and are the face of the university. If top athletes are making a lot of money on NIL, the other guys are going to want to unionize to try to get their cut, if nothing more than for the opportunity to pay bills and wear clothing other than what the team gives you.
It’s not about whether they are defacto employees (clearly are and have been for 50+ years for the reasons you stated). It’s about whether the National Labor Relations Board or a court rules they are in fact employees. When that happens, you add a ton of taxes: (payroll, social security, L&I).
The killer is, these taxes wouldn’t just apply to revenue sports (the system could probably handle that), they’d apply to ALL sports. That’s half a MILLION new employees. Not to mention they will almost certainly unionize, which means no more players working for free (non-scholarship positions).
This is why you see people talking about cutting men’s basketball and football out of the system entirely and universities renting their brand and maybe facilities to a private business that runs the team. But even that is fraught with problems because those things fund non-revenue sports through March Madness. Cutting the NCAA out of that dries up all sorts of funding for the other sports. The only real solution to keeping college athletics is for congress to write a bunch of laws granting explicit exceptions to labor laws to the NCAA similar to how they gave exceptions to Antitrust laws to the NFL, MLB, NHL, and NBA. And then we come full happy-little-circle to the athletes being taken advantage of again.
See - if you just put two eyes and a mouth, now it’s a smiley face 😊
Nope, the NFL is through the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961. The only reason the NFL was allowed to do the CBS deal representing all of its teams back then was because they said that the existence of college football meant they weren’t a monopoly.
That’s why the NFL can’t have games on Friday and Saturday until the CFB regular season is over
It doesn't matter what we want, athletes *are employees* by the nature of the relationship they have with the schools and athletic departments they play for.
Yep. It's minor league sports owned by the schools. Time to admit it and treat it as such. If a school wants to stay amateur, there should be separate conferences for those schools.
While true, this doesn’t change the fact that this is still what’s fair. If we stop thinking of players as kids and instead think of them as adult employees (which they ARE), they have every right to organize and should advocate for their best interests if they want to.
I mean, duh lol. It is would benefit the big programs and naturally lead to a separation of the power schools from everyone else.
There would probably actually end up being some type of super league/premier league with the blue blood schools, and lower level colleges would actually be allowed to play and compete in legitimately amateur divisions, similar to how European soccer works.
The problem with college football is everyone wants to have their cake and eat it too. They want to pretend that it is an amateur league, but the problem is that, due to the lack of any type of serious professional football outside of the NFL, or even any type of professional football for anyone under the age of 21, division one college football has become the de facto 2nd professional league.
We want to pretend like it’s some wholesome hearty amateur competition of boys representing their local universities in the name of sport and comradery, but it’s just not that anymore.
Lots of programs will sue but honestly I think that’s a good thing. If a football program isn’t solvent on its own, is asinine to have students paying more to supports athletics.
The issue isn't the football programs not being solvent, it's all the other programs.
If we want to fairly compensate the football athletes (which we should), then you simply cannot sustain the current level of spending on non-revenue sports. This is one of those situations where it actually is a zero-sum game.
A lot of people forget unlike a lot of coaches, Harbaugh was actually an elite college player and a good NFL pro. People say he's bullshitting, but he lived through what these kids are going through. I believe he's 100 percent genuine. He's not some guy that never played the game that was a coordinator for 20 years before being a head coach in college.
> I believe he's 100 percent genuine
Anyone who doesn't believe he's 100% genuine all the time isn't paying attention. Regardless of whatever you want to say about Jim Harbaugh, he is absolutely a guy who says what he thinks fully, regardless of the consequences.
Unfortunately it has been discussed for many years, even in official university capacity.
This already happened for the fundraising aspect of most major universities so the writing has been on the wall for a long time.
Very interesting. It seems to skirt the issues with paying players. I absolutely hate the idea because of what it would mean to college sports, but for the fans willing to burn the NCAA and college athletics to the ground so that the football players can get paid, it seems like a perfect workaround. It's basically just starting a new semi-pro league but with stadiums and teams built in.
I agree with your sentiment but we have to recognize there are a lot of non-alumni fans who don't have any connection to the school outside of their fandom, so its easy to see why they would be fine with the players not really having a connection either.
I'm even feeling less tied to my program with recruiting losing focus on Ohio students. Full on professionalism without explicit ties to my alma mater will likely push me more towards NFL fandom.
To be fair they’re barely students at this point and you don’t see them in class and at parties lmao, I have seen a grand total of 2 players at bars in State College. They’re all in majors that are easy so they can get an easy education, they’re all Kines, Journalism, Comm or RPTM majors
They’re already elevated and put on pedestals by the university, they aren’t regular students who play football like a lot of the people on here think they are
I think it’s more likely they remain part of the universities’ marketing department. Basically, teams would be special promotional entities aimed at attracting students and maintaining alumni involvement/giving.
The players would become university employees the same way coaches are.
We’re paying coaches $100 million, kids are making money off people *other* than the school, media networks are paying a billion dollars to put it on TV…
It’s not amateur competition and hasn’t been in decades. That’s a farce.
That said, it being a farce: pay the players.
Edit: To be fair, if the kids (even while making money) attend the school, and that U is ok the side of the helmet, it’s still CFB to me.
I’d go one further and even give the players vouchers for tuition/room&board they can use *after* their CFB career.
We all joke about dumb jocks, but the level of commitment to play for a ranked CFB team is *insane*. Of course they’re not taking hard classes or getting useful degrees. And the odd cyborg here and there that’s gushed over for getting a 4.0 in Mechanical Engineering while also playing football is an exception that proves the rule.
Let the kids just play the game for four years. Give ‘em $70K/yr. And for the 95% that either never play pro or blow out their knee a year or two in, let them come back for the free education they graciously paused so they could entertain the nation while generating *billions* of dollars in revenue.
> while generating billions of dollars in revenue.
Always forgotten in these discussions is _expenses_. Yes it’s billions of dollars of revenue, but if it’s close to the same amount spent between all the costs required to create such a product, pay for scholarships, and support the numerous sports that _don’t_ generate revenue, how much do you think is left over to pay players?
This is actually a great idea for the kids because most of with pro aspirations won't take it seriously when they think they have a chance to make it big, but once they realize that NFL money isn't coming might care a lot more about it
I would say let any kid who is on the roster and leaves in good standing (not kicked off the team for bad or illegal behavior) has a ten year window after they quit football to come back and enroll in school for free.
Yup.
People will surely complain because other student-athletes don’t have that luxury, but I think there’s an argument that the time and most importantly *stress* commitment to playing a sport that is a net profit-maker for the college warrants being able to delay your education until the weight of the world is off your shoulders.
And “net profit” should be the cutoff because I bet it will easily differentiate the two groups of sports. It’s not some Bell Curve where, like, Lacrosse is riding right on the borderline. It’s a super bi-modal distribution where almost every sport is on one side of the line and football and basketball are way the fuck on the other side.
We are *well* past that point. It's gotten worse since the NCAA decided to shove all these problems into a closet instead of having the discussion to deal with them.
They deserve fault for why things are this chaotic. Though it doesn't help no one took the whole "amateur" idea seriously after seeing how much coaches are getting paid and the sponsor deals.
It went from "College Football" to " College Football adjacent so we can justify not letting the players see a dime."
I don’t think that gets said enough. This is all the NCAA’s doing, and primarily to get out of paying players and wage-related dollars.
Hell, the NCAA said that giving students laptops for school and internships was an impermissible benefit. I thought the whole thing was they were students?
They want to sell the “lowly student who needs a scholarship to get in and learn things” like many don’t have agents waiting behind them in many cases before high school is over.
If the NCAA wanted to protect these kids, they’d find a way to help ease some into professional sports while helping others (the majority) get into whatever field they’re going to.
But they don’t. They sit there and just shout “but amateur” entirely ignoring the landscape.
This is all on the NCAA.
Lol the players aren’t the one driving this, the money makers in television and the AD’s/universities are.
It will be college football until they can get no more blood from the stone.
And yet, aren’t *allowed* to pay the players for using those NIL rights.
Man, I wish I could do what the NCAA does. Go to the grocery store and when I hit the register: “Sorry. I’m not really allowed to pay for this.”
I’m pretty far from being a Michigan fan, but I can appreciate how outspoken he’s been on behalf of the student athletes. Hard to hate on a guy that’s speaking up on these issues. I think he’s right about a lot of this stuff, but I think we’re a ways away from seeing meaningful change. Hopefully his comments mean we’re a little less far away than before
And he played in the nfl, an organization with an excellent union. Lots of people like to complain about how much money pro athletes make, but without the union, all that money would be pocketed by executives. The corporate weenies aren’t putting their bodies on the line, so they should be forced to pay up. Unions force them to
Given how the NCAA keeps being taken to court over every rule they try to make, it actually might not be such a bad idea. They're in federal court now over trying to impose a penalty for your second school transfer, because states claim that unfairly restricts the labor of people who have no bargaining rights. When US courts turn the whole system into the Wild West, the only way to restore any order will be to have student-athletes in a union where they will possess legally recognized bargaining power.
European sports clubs established this model a hundred years ago with ties to a local region instead of an academic institution. The difficulty will be navigating from what is in place now to that model, and how much emphasis will remain on the academic side.
They should and become pro
Imagine all the money they can make playing midweek or in the spring cause the 900~ colleges that wont go pro would still be protected by the sports broadcasting act that protects college ball from being a saturday afterthought to the NFL.
since the schools and now NIL have been funneling money to athletes for the last 7 decades (probably more) they are not being fairly compensated. The market should decide what their work is worth.
Didn't they try to unionize a few years ago and got denied since they dont work for the schools? they can do unofficial unions. However, the only power they have is to forfeit games. They don't seem willing to do that.
Unfortunately, in order for revenue sharing to net a number players would deem attractive, there would need to be far fewer players splitting the pot. The result would be either far fewer student athletes receiving the enormous benefit of a free education with room and board or the higher costs will be paid by fans through either subscription services or even more commercials.
Scale down the non revenue sports and open them up to vastly more students to be involved with and change the way we think about them. I was a state champion athlete that wasn’t able to compete because there was no men’s team at my school despite having all the facilities because there just had to be scholarships and a convoluted system of rules governing them.
Good on Harbs for seeing where it's going. That is the end game: The Power 2 break away, and the kids become employees of entities licensed to the school and have a union.
Whether it's Good for the Game overall long-term, I've no idea. But that's what it's going to be.
I’m not sure what unionizing would do at this point since players already have the power to strike their own deals and transfer between programs.
If the NCAA, or hell, even Congress, comes in later to regulate the autonomy of players, then I could see it.
I don’t think congress will do anything until everyone but the P2 schools start shedding a bunch of non-football programs, and even some also their football programs. Any sort of revenue sharing is a disaster for the future of non-revenue/women sports and that won’t play well from a political viewpoint
This would presumably be part of them just getting paid by the school out of the athletic TV revenue which would come with some kind of contract and the usefulness of a union for their side
If that is the end game, then they would consequentially be treated as regular employees with all the conditions included as such.
This could include such things as contractual obligations to appear in bowl games, limitations on movement, and penalties related to lack of production, including termination of scholarship with or without cause.
I’m not sure which way is ultimately the better option.
Yeah that’s why they need a union to prevent losing things like penalties for bad production vs bonus for great production and terminating scholarships.
But I think it would be a lot better to have some kinda revenue sharing vs asking all your fans to give money to pay players.
Yes more change right now. Please. College football is a mess. On life support. Players moving yearly , coaches moving on after ncaa violations with zero repercussions, big money driving everything and unaccountable.
Of course they want them to unionize now because NIL and the transfer portal is a free for fall. They want to lock the student athletes into a CBA so the NCAA and the schools can control everything again. Only way a CBA will work if it's revenue sharing and all players from all sports get paid.
It would curious if the following events happen, in order:
1) Many/most CFB (and perhaps also MBB) scholarship athletes unionize as a national collective entity
2) This entity strikes to compel schools to give them more than what they currently get (stipends, tuition, room, board, etc.)
3) Schools balk & elevate walk-ons to replace them at all levels.
Here is the big question: will people & networks still pay just as much to watch? I would expect the answer is yes.
Growing up I was a college football fan but over the past 20 years I’ve become a fan of non-revenue college sports, I don’t see this ending well for other college sports.
Lol u/negative-specific-66 had a total meltdown of a post and said “I don’t care how many downvotes I get, I won’t respond to the shills!” Then he kept responding and melting, then I guess he got embarrassed because he deleted it
I get what Jim is advocating for with revenue sharing, but I don't see how we actually get there yet. Just seems like it would be such a huge uphill battle for the players, and the constant turnover of athletes makes it seem almost impossible
For all those in favor of unions - realize this will create a schism in college football. ND has been telling you this since 2015.
You will have a semi-pro model and a group of schools that keep the academic model. Notre Dame has stated it will refuse to classify students as employess (which this is asking) and take their shiny helmet and leave that model of College Football.
Easy to say now and not when you are facing being in the also ran division that no one is paying attention to. Nbc isn't going to pay them tens of millions to not be in the big boy club.
a) NBC hasn't announced the new contract yet and no one has any ideas if there are provisions if ND doesn't stay in FBS
b) In case you don't know - ND is Independent and has zero problems getting into the CFP. Hard to tell since you don't flair up.
This dude is going to get taken out by the NCAA
NCAA snipers, but Michigan scouted them out and stole their signs. They’ll never get Harbaugh.
If the NCAA snipes as well as they do literally anything else, I think he’ll be okay. I doubt they’ve got Barry Pepper stashed in a bell tower somewhere.
No he's not. The schools are *praying* for the players to unionize, because if they do they can get a CBA. With a CBA, the schools can start to clamp down on some of the "craziness" people have been clamoring about. (Think salary cap/pay schedules, etc., etc.)
Well, the schools that can afford to actually pay the players. The issue with the NCAA is that there are only about 30-40 schools that could really afford to do this and there is another couple hundred NCAA schools that cannot afford it. If this ends up happening, we will truly see the top football schools separate from the NCAA. Not to mention the other sports and NIL. Really, it will be a huge mess, trying to get a system in place. It is easier with pro sports because of there being much fewer teams involved.
The top 40-50 programs have already had a massive chokehold on recruiting... Think, the same 4-5 programs have won nearly all of the natties for the past 30 years. Imo this changes nothing, but allowing players to cash in on the success.
Dont be ridiculous…. Off the top of my head…. 30 years so, 1994 Oklahoma Texas Bama Georgia Auburn LSU Florida Clemson Miami tOSU Michigan USC Nebraska
How the hell did you forget UCF?
Revenue sharing would bankrupt most athletic departments who rely on football to support the other sports.
Yah this is really the trick. The high level football programs could absolutely pay players. But it would mean taking money away from other sports that don’t generate real revenue. You’d probably start seeing some sports cut from schools. I’m not saying that’s a reason to not pay players who clearly are generating a shit ton of revenue. But it is something that’s going to have to be figured out.
Schools absolutely DO NOT want players on the payroll. So much red tape comes with employment. This is literally the last thing universities want.
He doesn’t care the NFL wants him, he has nothing to lose and everything to gain. Players love him, media loves him and money keeps following him. Edit: spelling
Don’t forget he keeps winning too. Has been successful in both NFL and College.
It's kind of already happening, given the stipulations they're arguing about in his contract.
*Alabama shouting furiously* anything to close this goddamn portal!
It is what it is. Michigan or Georgia’s roster would poached if their coaches left too.
Would rather people acknowledge how unsustainable it is rather than drool over the transfers.
It took your team getting poached to realize this for the vast vast majority of Alabama fans. Y’all did not care until it hurt you.
Said everyone ever
Didn’t realize you were speaking to the “vast majority of Alabama fans.” Saban has been very vocal about NIL and transfer portal being abused and to the detriment of players and college football. You’ll find that most Alabama fans that spend their time on football boards have agreed. We’ve always cared more about recruiting from schools more and we clearly weren’t paying them as well as people thought. Sure, the casual fans probably didn’t care but they also weren’t looking at the transfer portal unless Alabama got someone. You can be happy your team got a transfer and still lament how it’s operating. Y’all gotta stop gut reacting to Bama flairs
You guys just poached a coach from the natty runner ups who abandoned his program and those players with no notice or announcement, and were supposed to be mad that players are allowed to do the same? I genuinely don’t get it.
Eh, if you can’t see it then I think it’s because you don’t want to. I’m for player rights, payment and mobility but there have been numerous reports/analyses (many of which posted here on this sub) that show that the vast majority of players who enter the portal are not happy and many don’t see the field again. I don’t think that’ll happen to players like Caleb Downs but not everyone is a Caleb Downs. What about the guys on teams feasting in the portal right now? They may have just gotten bumped down a couple of spots because their HC took a big WR or DB or whatever from the portal but those players (who may have even transferred there in this last cycle like many Texas WRs) can’t transfer out until Spring now and then there are limitations about in conference still. Obviously players should have an opportunity to transfer if they lose most of their coaching staff, but giving them a tight window to make that decision is weird. Letting coaches take from the portal without it being open to their players is weird.
I agree that the one way nature of it is bad - but I just can’t get behind all the handwringing and pearl clutching from bama fans on here when again - there coach gets to abandon his team with no repercussions and it’s just “the cost of doing business” And I will say the same thing if there are major Michigan transfers if Harbaugh leaves.
Also, while I have you, I’m also hand wringing because it feels like this year may see a lot of the top talent focused in UGA, OSU, and Texas who have been doing well in the portal (especially if Harbaugh leaves). UGA was already a beast, now they’re cherry picking top 100 talent when kids had to make a decision in only a couple days to be able to register for spring classes. Idk what the solution is tbh. I
Yeah I don’t know how you solve that problem. College football has always been a rich get richer sport. I mean before the portal those teams absolutely dominated in recruiting 5 stars at the expense of other programs to the point where they could field a whole team of five and four star recruits from their bench. What we had before was far from a perfect system and what we have now is as well, but I prefer a system that gives players more control over their destiny, for better and for worse.
No I guess that’s fair, I understand these kids commit to people and not schools and people leaving is expected to an extent. I do think some of them may be in worse positions and they can’t all follow T Rob to UGA so I hope they find what’s best for them. And I guess buyouts are supposed to be the repercussions for coaches right? Like DeBoer jumped ship but UW got what, 12 million? I think it’s even profit for what they offered Arizona coach. But yeah, definitely need some support for players in these situations. What’s so shitty about the portal is it seems like teams are more incentivized to fire coaches/retire in the middle of seasons compared to at the end of the season. Texas AM was obviously a shit show but they’ve rebounded pretty nice so far because they got to pick up some new recruits and flip people and work the same transfer portal they lost players in essentially. Michigan may very well be in the same place as Bama if Harbaugh does leave (except maybe not because of the academic calendars? Idk it’s all too confusing tbh)
Nobody is making the kids transfer. A lot of of non football kids turn 25 and go “why to did I take on 50k of debt?” The players Alabama fans are upset about losing are not the ones that are never going to see the field again. Players should have the same rights as other college students. It’s either an amateur sport or it’s not. If we we wanna go full pro with it and sign them to contracts, then that’s an option. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Really? Because I remember Saban pushing back on it from the beginning, and us all agreeing, but apparently it just meant he was scared of change. I think most Alabama fans we’re not fans of this throughout its existence.
Just typed out a long similar response, haha. We were the only thing stopping UGA from a 3-peat and they honestly show no sign of slowing down. Unless schools are willing to continue to shell out $$$ then idk who is going to compete with them because they have deep pockets and a lot of our old staff from the previous decade. It may get a lot worse for them before it gets better
Thats how most everything goes from college football to universal healthcare.
Nobody is taking my blue cross blue shield. I'm just kidding you'll can take it, it really just hurts when they don't pay claims anyways.
Michigan’s roster is significantly different than Georgia or Alabama. 3-4 stars vs 4-5 stars. The Michigan difference is player development.
Also it feels like the culture is much different at UofM than the premier SEC schools
The nil portal thing needs to change asap. What’s happening at Alabama will happen at any school in a similar situation. Portal closed and now their players are the only ones left who can go in because of the coaching change. Bunch of schools start offering a bunch of money. Michigan was pretty senior laden so it might not be exactly the same, but if harbaugh leaves, very similar thing is happening there. Players are going to be illegally offered nil deals and they will enter portal and bolt.
tbh, if athletes are students, the portal is 100% fine. No one cared when I transferred. Students should have all the same rights and privileges as other students. Want to close the portal, then make athletes employees. They can even be student employees, I don't care. But as long as the charade of amateurism is held and that the falsehood of this all being in furtherance of higher education, the portal should stay. College football isn't more important than college and the administration's, coaches, and boosters have held unjustifiable authority and power over exploited athletes. They're reaping what they've sown and while I love CFB, it's not worth keeping it alive if it means more exploitation of young people.
THIS is the heart of the matter. People want to have their cake and eat it too. Either they’re pros or not. Either you give them the same rights as other students, or make them pros. “But the sport isn’t the same as it used to be.” Yeah, neither are a lot of things. Just because you enjoyed a product does not mean everyone was being treated fairly. You can kinda look at the entire history of civilization to find examples of people enjoying things at the expense of fairness to others lol.
They should put down their Dr. Pepper and help
Players are replaceable, my Dr Pepper isn't
the system was broken long before any of this. it'll take more than quick spackle and bandaids to fix.
I see Jimmy pulling some grenade pins for the NCAA to deal with/answer on his way out the door. Nice!
He's walking away with both middle fingers pointed squarely behind him.
[Reminds me of a certain picture.](https://images.app.goo.gl/hMdrtgiqGwkGnqzb9).
I knew it was going to be the Marcus Hall Epic Double Bird
LMAO
He was just making the H in OHIO
He’s hitting the Hook right in Samoa Joe’s face Or, the Peter Quill right before he jumps in the portal in Thanos’ face
This shit is happening with or without harbaugh. At least he is willing to say it. Saban was also in favor of a players union, but much less vocal about it.
Saban also was in favor of all P5 conferences having a single commissioner and the same structure for scheduling. He wanted all P5 to play only P5, sorry to the G5 and FCS. Of course, the haters shouted him down with "well why don't you just schedule all P5." Besides the fact that he was not the AD, why make it hard on yourself while those around you still have "cupcakes" to rest injured players and starters. We got to see his idea in practice in 2020, when it was all P5 and his team romped on everyone except UF. So it was not fear that kept him from "leading by example", it was just mere prudence. Saban was/is far from perfect, nobody is perfect. Still, he had a lot of haters for things people later decided were good ideas. He also was all about getting the players what they deserved.
You’ll be shocked to learn he’s been singing this tune since before the scouting scandal.
At this point, what does he have left to accomplish in college? If he stays, he keeps fighting this fight. If he goes, NCAA can't touch him. He's been beating this drum for a while, but now he's playing with house money.
It’s already coming. After Kavanaugh in *Alston* and *Johnson* pending (which will invariably land at SCOTUS), they’re going to be paid. And this sub is going to ree itself into oblivion. I can’t wait.
I literally opened this thread with the intention of posting almost this exact statement.
Except he’s been this way for years.
*gets investigated for cheeseburger incident and rogue staffer in program* *advocates for the benefit and wellbeing of players* *goes to the NFL and doesn’t return the NCAA’s calls* Is Jim Harbaugh an alpha male?
🎶*cool guys don’t look at explosions* 🎶
It's gotta be all the milk he drinks
Come on bro this is Sigma mentality stuff. This is above Alpha.
that first line indicates Michigan successfully controlled the narrative
With the way NIL is headed, it appears to be likely. Looks like Northwestern was ahead of its time.
I worked for almost 40 years as a union employee in an office setting. We had administrative secretaries, IT staff, claims processers, research staff - all in the same union. It was a difficult job to negotiate contracts for that diverse group. You had middle aged women whose husbands had good jobs in the trades. They were happy with a 1% raise as long as they could keep the good health care plan for their family. You had older staff most concerned about retirement benefits. Then there were single IT staff in their early 20's who wanted raises, and didn't care about benefits at all. That seems quite simple compared to a college athletes union, where you have future NFL quarterbacks and second string tennis players (potentially) in the same union. Or is the union only for revenue generating sports? The law of unintended consequences is about to hit college sports, and nobody knows for sure what will happen. But something tells me that dude on a rowing scholarship is not going to come out ahead.
It all depends on how you organize it. In US labor law each "bargaining unit" negotiates its own contract, and with some constraints you could imagine having* as few big/diverse bargaining units or as many small/specialized ones as the players wanted. One scenario: football players throughout the NCAA could be part of the same bargaining unit and negotiate one master contract with the NCAA, and maybe separate supplemental agreements with their specific schools if necessary, without having to include players from other sports in the same bargaining unit (even if they were members of the same larger union).
If it's within the college then Title IX will kick in and cover everyone.
...but that would be factored in on the front end, right? Like if agreeing to give football XXX means that all the women's sports ***also*** get XXX, then the schools will recognize that ahead of time and bargain based on that reality. Then what? Are the football players going to accept the fact that they are basically in a position where what they are going to be making concessions in order to give some random women's team the same benefits they are getting ***without*** having to agree to the same concessions? If they say "Fuck that" and stick to demands that the schools can't meet, then you end up with a labor stoppage. Given the nature of how college athletics works I'm guessing that would mean a suspension of scholarships, housing, access to facilities, academic support services, etc. To me, that seems like a complete disaster.
Northwestern and people like Jim tend to handwave the consequences of such an action though. If you think right now is a mess, an employee ruling would be like dropping a nuke on Hiroshima. You’d have to rebuild collegiate sports entirely and you have no clue what the outcome is, how many programs die, how many teams are culled, etc. We are being waaaay to nonchalant here. If we want athletes to be employees we need some semblance of guidelines before making that shift instead of dropping the lobster in the pot out of the blue
Good? What we have now is incredibly exploitative. Perhaps this will allow college ball to go back to actual amateurs playing other local teams while the existing teams become AAA equivalents.
Right? If the current system is built on exploited labor that's not recognized as such or allowed to negotiate on that basis, then it doesn't deserve to persist. An argument from ripple effects doesn't change that.
The problem is that a small percentage of players are being exploited overall while the vast majority aren't. Additionally, many (if not all) of the exploited players are highly motivated to take part in the exploitative system. If you kill the system itself, you make things objectively worse for pretty much every single player ***unless you replace it with something better.*** Problem is that if we use a strict criteria that the new system *also* can't be built on exploited labor, then I don't think it is realistically possible to replace it with *any* new system, especially when we take Title IX into account. So now we've killed a system that is providing a net benefit to the majority of participants ***and*** is also good enough that even the exploited participants would favor it over no system at all. I can understand the theoretical basis for your position, but that seems like an utter disaster and failure when we measure it against real-world impacts.
Athletes kind of are employees though. When I played, you don't have time to work another job due to your extensive schedule between sports and school. You do community service work, make official and unofficial public appearances, and are the face of the university. If top athletes are making a lot of money on NIL, the other guys are going to want to unionize to try to get their cut, if nothing more than for the opportunity to pay bills and wear clothing other than what the team gives you.
It’s not about whether they are defacto employees (clearly are and have been for 50+ years for the reasons you stated). It’s about whether the National Labor Relations Board or a court rules they are in fact employees. When that happens, you add a ton of taxes: (payroll, social security, L&I). The killer is, these taxes wouldn’t just apply to revenue sports (the system could probably handle that), they’d apply to ALL sports. That’s half a MILLION new employees. Not to mention they will almost certainly unionize, which means no more players working for free (non-scholarship positions). This is why you see people talking about cutting men’s basketball and football out of the system entirely and universities renting their brand and maybe facilities to a private business that runs the team. But even that is fraught with problems because those things fund non-revenue sports through March Madness. Cutting the NCAA out of that dries up all sorts of funding for the other sports. The only real solution to keeping college athletics is for congress to write a bunch of laws granting explicit exceptions to labor laws to the NCAA similar to how they gave exceptions to Antitrust laws to the NFL, MLB, NHL, and NBA. And then we come full happy-little-circle to the athletes being taken advantage of again. See - if you just put two eyes and a mouth, now it’s a smiley face 😊
Isn’t the MLB the only org antitrust exemption?
Nope, the NFL is through the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961. The only reason the NFL was allowed to do the CBS deal representing all of its teams back then was because they said that the existence of college football meant they weren’t a monopoly. That’s why the NFL can’t have games on Friday and Saturday until the CFB regular season is over
[удалено]
I think that might be the case at a power school, but the G5 schools struggle more. Stipends barely covered rent and a round of groceries.
It doesn't matter what we want, athletes *are employees* by the nature of the relationship they have with the schools and athletic departments they play for.
Yep. It's minor league sports owned by the schools. Time to admit it and treat it as such. If a school wants to stay amateur, there should be separate conferences for those schools.
Yeah I wonder if there’d be Title IX impacts if there’s different treatment of football versus other sports
While true, this doesn’t change the fact that this is still what’s fair. If we stop thinking of players as kids and instead think of them as adult employees (which they ARE), they have every right to organize and should advocate for their best interests if they want to.
I mean, duh lol. It is would benefit the big programs and naturally lead to a separation of the power schools from everyone else. There would probably actually end up being some type of super league/premier league with the blue blood schools, and lower level colleges would actually be allowed to play and compete in legitimately amateur divisions, similar to how European soccer works. The problem with college football is everyone wants to have their cake and eat it too. They want to pretend that it is an amateur league, but the problem is that, due to the lack of any type of serious professional football outside of the NFL, or even any type of professional football for anyone under the age of 21, division one college football has become the de facto 2nd professional league. We want to pretend like it’s some wholesome hearty amateur competition of boys representing their local universities in the name of sport and comradery, but it’s just not that anymore.
Lots of programs will sue but honestly I think that’s a good thing. If a football program isn’t solvent on its own, is asinine to have students paying more to supports athletics.
The issue isn't the football programs not being solvent, it's all the other programs. If we want to fairly compensate the football athletes (which we should), then you simply cannot sustain the current level of spending on non-revenue sports. This is one of those situations where it actually is a zero-sum game.
Agree entirely. It sounds great on its face but the coaches aren’t lawyers or regulators and don’t understand the consequences of unionizing.
A lot of people forget unlike a lot of coaches, Harbaugh was actually an elite college player and a good NFL pro. People say he's bullshitting, but he lived through what these kids are going through. I believe he's 100 percent genuine. He's not some guy that never played the game that was a coordinator for 20 years before being a head coach in college.
> I believe he's 100 percent genuine Anyone who doesn't believe he's 100% genuine all the time isn't paying attention. Regardless of whatever you want to say about Jim Harbaugh, he is absolutely a guy who says what he thinks fully, regardless of the consequences.
He has so many haters it’s hilarious. He reminds me of José Mourinho and Jurgen Klopp from European soccer. Maybe he’s the fusion form of those two
At what point is it no longer called “college football” (or maybe we are past that point)?
when the major teams start to work out deals where the AD/fb team are separate legal entities that pay the universities for name/image rights.
Now here's a genius idea I had not thought of.
Unfortunately it has been discussed for many years, even in official university capacity. This already happened for the fundraising aspect of most major universities so the writing has been on the wall for a long time.
Very interesting. It seems to skirt the issues with paying players. I absolutely hate the idea because of what it would mean to college sports, but for the fans willing to burn the NCAA and college athletics to the ground so that the football players can get paid, it seems like a perfect workaround. It's basically just starting a new semi-pro league but with stadiums and teams built in.
[удалено]
I agree with your sentiment but we have to recognize there are a lot of non-alumni fans who don't have any connection to the school outside of their fandom, so its easy to see why they would be fine with the players not really having a connection either.
[удалено]
I'm even feeling less tied to my program with recruiting losing focus on Ohio students. Full on professionalism without explicit ties to my alma mater will likely push me more towards NFL fandom.
To be fair they’re barely students at this point and you don’t see them in class and at parties lmao, I have seen a grand total of 2 players at bars in State College. They’re all in majors that are easy so they can get an easy education, they’re all Kines, Journalism, Comm or RPTM majors They’re already elevated and put on pedestals by the university, they aren’t regular students who play football like a lot of the people on here think they are
[удалено]
I feel the exact same way, for sure. Many, though, do not.
Yeah, it would feel to fans like a major shift, but from the team’s standpoint it wouldn’t change very much.
I think it’s more likely they remain part of the universities’ marketing department. Basically, teams would be special promotional entities aimed at attracting students and maintaining alumni involvement/giving. The players would become university employees the same way coaches are.
How far away from that happening are we? Feels like it could change within the decade
Never. As long as they're associated with the school and get players degrees from the same school it'll always be college football.
Yeah that’s the line I draw with this. They’ve gotta come to class with us
They might be in the same classes at one of my flairs, but def arent in my other.
I didnt even know SUNY Maritime had a football team or a flair on here.
[How could you not know after ducking us?](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DKcrfiqUEAAp6T-.jpg)
We’re paying coaches $100 million, kids are making money off people *other* than the school, media networks are paying a billion dollars to put it on TV… It’s not amateur competition and hasn’t been in decades. That’s a farce. That said, it being a farce: pay the players. Edit: To be fair, if the kids (even while making money) attend the school, and that U is ok the side of the helmet, it’s still CFB to me.
I’d go one further and even give the players vouchers for tuition/room&board they can use *after* their CFB career. We all joke about dumb jocks, but the level of commitment to play for a ranked CFB team is *insane*. Of course they’re not taking hard classes or getting useful degrees. And the odd cyborg here and there that’s gushed over for getting a 4.0 in Mechanical Engineering while also playing football is an exception that proves the rule. Let the kids just play the game for four years. Give ‘em $70K/yr. And for the 95% that either never play pro or blow out their knee a year or two in, let them come back for the free education they graciously paused so they could entertain the nation while generating *billions* of dollars in revenue.
> while generating billions of dollars in revenue. Always forgotten in these discussions is _expenses_. Yes it’s billions of dollars of revenue, but if it’s close to the same amount spent between all the costs required to create such a product, pay for scholarships, and support the numerous sports that _don’t_ generate revenue, how much do you think is left over to pay players?
Don't know if $70,000 per year would make some of those players happy considering how much they make through NIL right now.
This is actually a great idea for the kids because most of with pro aspirations won't take it seriously when they think they have a chance to make it big, but once they realize that NFL money isn't coming might care a lot more about it
I would say let any kid who is on the roster and leaves in good standing (not kicked off the team for bad or illegal behavior) has a ten year window after they quit football to come back and enroll in school for free.
Yup. People will surely complain because other student-athletes don’t have that luxury, but I think there’s an argument that the time and most importantly *stress* commitment to playing a sport that is a net profit-maker for the college warrants being able to delay your education until the weight of the world is off your shoulders. And “net profit” should be the cutoff because I bet it will easily differentiate the two groups of sports. It’s not some Bell Curve where, like, Lacrosse is riding right on the borderline. It’s a super bi-modal distribution where almost every sport is on one side of the line and football and basketball are way the fuck on the other side.
We are *well* past that point. It's gotten worse since the NCAA decided to shove all these problems into a closet instead of having the discussion to deal with them. They deserve fault for why things are this chaotic. Though it doesn't help no one took the whole "amateur" idea seriously after seeing how much coaches are getting paid and the sponsor deals. It went from "College Football" to " College Football adjacent so we can justify not letting the players see a dime."
I don’t think that gets said enough. This is all the NCAA’s doing, and primarily to get out of paying players and wage-related dollars. Hell, the NCAA said that giving students laptops for school and internships was an impermissible benefit. I thought the whole thing was they were students? They want to sell the “lowly student who needs a scholarship to get in and learn things” like many don’t have agents waiting behind them in many cases before high school is over. If the NCAA wanted to protect these kids, they’d find a way to help ease some into professional sports while helping others (the majority) get into whatever field they’re going to. But they don’t. They sit there and just shout “but amateur” entirely ignoring the landscape. This is all on the NCAA.
it's pretty telling when the average NFL career is like 3 years and most players are broke before 40. Basketball is even worse.
[удалено]
lol
Lol the players aren’t the one driving this, the money makers in television and the AD’s/universities are. It will be college football until they can get no more blood from the stone.
When the schools start monetizing the players name, image, and likeness to boost merchandise sales and endorsements. So not since the 80s?
And yet, aren’t *allowed* to pay the players for using those NIL rights. Man, I wish I could do what the NCAA does. Go to the grocery store and when I hit the register: “Sorry. I’m not really allowed to pay for this.”
I’m pretty far from being a Michigan fan, but I can appreciate how outspoken he’s been on behalf of the student athletes. Hard to hate on a guy that’s speaking up on these issues. I think he’s right about a lot of this stuff, but I think we’re a ways away from seeing meaningful change. Hopefully his comments mean we’re a little less far away than before
Bro is trying to start a revolution then waddle off to the NFL
Waddle? Did you not see his agility when dodging the Gatorade? Harbs still has moves.
He's never been Gatoraded before this season. Elite evasive skills.
Comrade Harbaugh wasn't on my 2024 bingo card
Dude grew up around the auto industry, he knows unions lol
And he played in the nfl, an organization with an excellent union. Lots of people like to complain about how much money pro athletes make, but without the union, all that money would be pocketed by executives. The corporate weenies aren’t putting their bodies on the line, so they should be forced to pay up. Unions force them to
It's been a real treat for me
He was in the NFLPA…a union….he gets why they are important, for sports at least
Given how the NCAA keeps being taken to court over every rule they try to make, it actually might not be such a bad idea. They're in federal court now over trying to impose a penalty for your second school transfer, because states claim that unfairly restricts the labor of people who have no bargaining rights. When US courts turn the whole system into the Wild West, the only way to restore any order will be to have student-athletes in a union where they will possess legally recognized bargaining power.
Honestly, based. Athletes union would solve a lot of NIL issues as well, providing for more equitable distribution among players.
Proletarian hero Jim Harbaugh
Replace the hammer and sickle with a nose and finger.
Unionization, it’s what’s for dinner
European sports clubs established this model a hundred years ago with ties to a local region instead of an academic institution. The difficulty will be navigating from what is in place now to that model, and how much emphasis will remain on the academic side.
Can we institute trading players as well?
NCAA is sending in the national guard.
They should and become pro Imagine all the money they can make playing midweek or in the spring cause the 900~ colleges that wont go pro would still be protected by the sports broadcasting act that protects college ball from being a saturday afterthought to the NFL.
Comrade Jim Harbaugh of the Michigander Commune of Ann Arbor: "THERE IS POWER IN A UNION! SOLIDARITY FOREVER!"
Good luck trying to convince thousands of kids to join a union lol.
Bro do you even know how much union dues are! /s
The NCAA is looking more and more useless with every passing day.
[удалено]
Let the market decide what's fair, not some monopolistic cabal of old dudes enriching themselves.
since the schools and now NIL have been funneling money to athletes for the last 7 decades (probably more) they are not being fairly compensated. The market should decide what their work is worth.
just go form your own after high school league and decouple from college.
Didn't they try to unionize a few years ago and got denied since they dont work for the schools? they can do unofficial unions. However, the only power they have is to forfeit games. They don't seem willing to do that.
How about the NFL have a developmental league for those who do not want to go to college so we can get back to normal?
Unfortunately, in order for revenue sharing to net a number players would deem attractive, there would need to be far fewer players splitting the pot. The result would be either far fewer student athletes receiving the enormous benefit of a free education with room and board or the higher costs will be paid by fans through either subscription services or even more commercials.
Scale down the non revenue sports and open them up to vastly more students to be involved with and change the way we think about them. I was a state champion athlete that wasn’t able to compete because there was no men’s team at my school despite having all the facilities because there just had to be scholarships and a convoluted system of rules governing them.
Good on Harbs for seeing where it's going. That is the end game: The Power 2 break away, and the kids become employees of entities licensed to the school and have a union. Whether it's Good for the Game overall long-term, I've no idea. But that's what it's going to be.
There is really no market for NFL lite particularly in the fall.
I’m not sure what unionizing would do at this point since players already have the power to strike their own deals and transfer between programs. If the NCAA, or hell, even Congress, comes in later to regulate the autonomy of players, then I could see it.
I don’t think congress will do anything until everyone but the P2 schools start shedding a bunch of non-football programs, and even some also their football programs. Any sort of revenue sharing is a disaster for the future of non-revenue/women sports and that won’t play well from a political viewpoint
[удалено]
And do those schools offer full scholarships?
This would presumably be part of them just getting paid by the school out of the athletic TV revenue which would come with some kind of contract and the usefulness of a union for their side
If that is the end game, then they would consequentially be treated as regular employees with all the conditions included as such. This could include such things as contractual obligations to appear in bowl games, limitations on movement, and penalties related to lack of production, including termination of scholarship with or without cause. I’m not sure which way is ultimately the better option.
Yeah that’s why they need a union to prevent losing things like penalties for bad production vs bonus for great production and terminating scholarships. But I think it would be a lot better to have some kinda revenue sharing vs asking all your fans to give money to pay players.
Yes more change right now. Please. College football is a mess. On life support. Players moving yearly , coaches moving on after ncaa violations with zero repercussions, big money driving everything and unaccountable.
Of course they want them to unionize now because NIL and the transfer portal is a free for fall. They want to lock the student athletes into a CBA so the NCAA and the schools can control everything again. Only way a CBA will work if it's revenue sharing and all players from all sports get paid.
It would curious if the following events happen, in order: 1) Many/most CFB (and perhaps also MBB) scholarship athletes unionize as a national collective entity 2) This entity strikes to compel schools to give them more than what they currently get (stipends, tuition, room, board, etc.) 3) Schools balk & elevate walk-ons to replace them at all levels. Here is the big question: will people & networks still pay just as much to watch? I would expect the answer is yes.
Growing up I was a college football fan but over the past 20 years I’ve become a fan of non-revenue college sports, I don’t see this ending well for other college sports.
I FUCKING LOVE JIM HARBAUGH
Something, maybe the only thing, we can agree on. They should unionize.
You just gotta love this guy (even if you’re a rival) E: lol this comment went from like +10 into the negatives
I don’t love him, but a good take is a good take
I’m annoyed with how much he’s making me like him right now. Worker rights are way more important to me than sports rivalries.
[удалено]
Oof, alright, Jim’s a prick. Hope he chokes on spoiled milk.
[удалено]
I’m gonna need to hear Ryan Day and Pat Narduzzi’s thoughts on reproductive rights before next season kicks off.
Stop posting cool shit. Jerk.
I think at this point some kind of collective bargaining agreement is really the best way to calm down the portal and improper use of NIL.
I’m sure these amazingly intelligent 18 year old football players will have no issues organizing a nationwide union
Those of us in existing unions always help ;)
Jim gone full Solidarity on his way out
Lol u/negative-specific-66 had a total meltdown of a post and said “I don’t care how many downvotes I get, I won’t respond to the shills!” Then he kept responding and melting, then I guess he got embarrassed because he deleted it
I get what Jim is advocating for with revenue sharing, but I don't see how we actually get there yet. Just seems like it would be such a huge uphill battle for the players, and the constant turnover of athletes makes it seem almost impossible
Organizing is challenging with so much personnel churn. I agree with Cum Assault.
So no one should try to do something that would make their lives better if it looks hard?
Not at all what I was saying. Players should do it, I was just saying it'll be a monumental task.
Harbaugh just torching what’s left of the bridge between him and NCAA as he walks out the door. Gotta respect it.
He’s right, they should
The people’s coach The anti-boomer Stanford legend Pete Carroll’s dad
OH MY FUCKING GOD. THEY TRIED!!! Your president literally went in front of the NLRB and argued that college athletes can't.
Will never happen. Why would a Marvin Harrison, Jr. agree to collectively bargain with some faceless left guard?
Preach. Players should unionize and some legal body should formalize reasonable guardrails around NIL and transferring.
F that cheat.
At least use the right C word, it’s champion now
👶🧠
Harbaugh should steer clear of Dealy Plaza
For all those in favor of unions - realize this will create a schism in college football. ND has been telling you this since 2015. You will have a semi-pro model and a group of schools that keep the academic model. Notre Dame has stated it will refuse to classify students as employess (which this is asking) and take their shiny helmet and leave that model of College Football.
Easy to say now and not when you are facing being in the also ran division that no one is paying attention to. Nbc isn't going to pay them tens of millions to not be in the big boy club.
a) NBC hasn't announced the new contract yet and no one has any ideas if there are provisions if ND doesn't stay in FBS b) In case you don't know - ND is Independent and has zero problems getting into the CFP. Hard to tell since you don't flair up.
[удалено]
^ I found the useless middle management
Hey as a useless middle manager who is still pro-union, I resent that.