they believe it's going to be only in the $15-$20M a year range to pay their football players.
(note: the coaches hate it)
They can get boosters to chip in the difference and still keep their expenses low.
without permission from the revenue generating sports? What sort of benefit do the athletes in the revenue generating sports get from that? Kessler is pretty much there, but the strain in getting to title 9 is a bridge too far. Why is it the football team's problem to make sure that the University is in compliance with title 9?
This is where this all falls apart, IMO. The way the system is and the way it's moving (witness ND's new plans for a 100 million palace for their football program) it is clear that this is not some sort of extra curricular activity but rather a professional sports enterprise. The solution is clear--the athletes need to be deemed employees at this level of football and there needs to be collective bargaining.
edit to add: I agree with the concept of separating out the top 70 or so schools and treating them differently. The idea of "opting in" to a more formal method of payment is interesting and a good start. However, the title 9 stuff is bullshit and another continued red herring. They're not so worried about women's sports when they're out there negotiating these media deals.
I love this part, especially as it pertains to recent ND related discussions:
But over the years, fueled by multi-million dollar television contracts, athletic departments at the highest level became flush with cash. Unable to directly compensate athletes and situated in a competitive environment, departments pumped the excess cash into gaudy facility projects and million-dollar coaching and administrative salaries in an effort to compete with their rivals on the recruiting trail.
This resulted in schools reporting a loss or break-even figure in their annual financial documents. Their argument against an employment or revenue sharing model is simple: If profits are shared with athletes — women athletes, too, as required by Title IX — how then are the other sports funded?
“If you are paying your athletic director $3.5 million because you have the money and you [report] that you have a $100,000 loss, you’re making money!” Kessler bellowed
First you wanna pay the players and now you want them to have a union?
Dirty words around here, sir.
Gonna get yourself in trouble.
Joking aside, minor league baseball has already shown the way--make the players a subgroup of the nflpa.
are seeing is recognition from lawyers -- as you know I have pointed out for some time here on this board -- that Title IX isn't going away and must be accounted for in revenue distribution. That is reality. Football players don't need to give "permission" because the law requires it. If revenue is being paid by the school to the players, then women have to get their equitable cut.
I've tried to hypothesize ways around that, but so far as I can tell nobody is interested in taking that extra step, e.g. having players paid directly by media companies for broadcasting their games. That would literally be NIL money and wouldn't implicate Title IX. But schools paying players would. Or I suppose you could just completely carve out football teams from the school and make them professionals with no requirement to be students and then license the school name to the uniforms.
Give them 48% of all revenue generated by their sport (scholarship values included in that formula).
As the Knight Commission suggests in a recent study, the big boys in FBS will have revenues on average, well over $200M a year. Some already do. Most of that is Football-Related-Revenue (FRR).
I'm not an attorney, so I'll defer to you and others.
But could "equal opportunity" or "fair treatment" be constructed to mean that ND football players would, if a Marvin Miller ever materializes, be able to get 48% of ND's soon-to-be $175M of FRR, and ND softball players would be able to get 48% of their SRR?
question. I'm linking a roundtable on the topic.
applies to student athletes who are deemed employees, then I would compose it of people with their backgrounds. My (non lawyer) opinion is the opposite and I think it is common sense that Title IX was never intended to include any class of people deemed employees. Those student athletes not deemed employees will still fall under Title IX.
"Title IX was never intended to include any class of people deemed employees."
You realize Title IX covers a lot more than athletics, right? The notion that Title IX doesn't cover employees is . . . not close.
Hopefully there is a path that doesn’t destroy most Olympic sports at Universities. Paying football & basketball players the market value they deserve will significantly reduce the money available for those other sports.
for example, perhaps trimming some of the bloated AD staff could free up some money.
correct me if I'm wrong, but the salary structure of employees doesn't have to balance out, does it? Do we need a female employee making north of 3 million dollars per year to balance out our AD? How about balancing out what we pay Freeman (which is more than that)?
The title 9 argument is and always has been a red herring.
(i.e. a minor league), I would imagine that forcing the players to split their revenue (generated in part due to their efforts) with the female sports would require some sort of agreement (i.e. "permission" also known as a "bargaining agreement") or it could lead to more lawsuits down the road (and rightly so, in my opinion). This is why I've always stated that the NFL needs to be involved, as this is truly their de-facto minor league, and currently it is 100% free for them, which is the biggest load of bullshit in this whole situation.
If the media companies pay the players directly, they would likely want control over which players went where and other things. That might be a place to start, however. Again, IMO it would need to be bargained and I'm not sure exactly how that would work.
If you carve out the teams and make them employees, I'm not sure why you can't have academic requirements; again, you would have to bargain for that. You could make cost of tuition part of the compensation agreement. There are a variety of solutions, but as I said above, one has to believe that both sides are reasonable and at least interested in a mutually beneficial solution. 100 plus years of NCAA administration would argue that the situation is actually the opposite of that.
That’s amusing. What a brave new world. I think at that point we might as well stop calling them student athletes. As you’ve said, at many places they haven’t been students for decades (if ever) so it won’t be much of change, but I don’t see how this model doesn’t end with ND becoming equivalent to Ole Miss in all ways other than the uniforms.
the academic requirements would tie to eligibility and amount of time someone could play for a school.
They would need to bargain for it. And yes, I agree that this is a mess and it's a damn shame.
I ask this question as a jumping off point. I don’t really have a solid idea, but would love to hear others thoughts.
I would think. Kessler might have some experience in that arena, I would imagine. Would probably have to be some kind of revenue share/split of the pie. I believe that the NFL is around 53-47 in favor of the owners, but don't hold me to that. I'm not sure exactly what it should be for colleges.
For example, would we give freshman fencers less than freshman football players? Would women’s sports receive less than men’s sports?
And how does NIL factor in?
And overall, is there anyone in college athletics we trust not to royally screw this up?
solutions, but in asking those questions you need to assume that both sides would be dealing in a reasonable manner and in good faith.
I do not believe that would be the case, so I don't know how they'll approach it. I know the coaches hate NIL and they hate the portal and they are in favor of player compensation. Now, that doesn't mean that we have to do everything that the coach's say, as I am certain that they would be in favor of minimizing/eliminating academic requirements, etc. but it gives us an idea of what the guys who are in the trenches want when it comes to compensation--some type of agreement that pays the players and allows more control to the coaches. Whether the school presidents want it or not is a different story.
He cited the salary of Alabama’s strength coach, David Ballou, who earns $950,000.
“If [he] only made $500,000 and those athletes, largely Black athletes on the football team, got some of that money, no one is going to think that is a bad thing — except the people who are trying to hold up and profit from the system,” he said.
Kessler also questions why football players should miss out on compensation because they hold the responsibility of funding the department with the revenue in which they generate.
often pay the delivery folks 40% to 60% of gross revenues. The professional sports leagues also seem to have collective bargaining agreements in that range.