Dear NCAA, Greg Sankey, Tony Pettitti and whoever is running college sports these days:
Psst. We, the people of the world interested in common sense solutions, ones that won’t be struck down by a court, have an idea for you.
We bring it to you as the football transfer portal opens for the spring. The basketball portal window is already open. And we know you’re already hearing from your upset coaches. They’re upset about a lost investment, about players who signed with them, were the focus of their time and expense and are now leaving for another place. Maybe to cash in. Well, almost certainly to cash in.
If only there was a way to cash in by staying. Ah, but there could be. A fully above-board, legal and regulated way that won’t stop everyone from leaving but could stop enough to make roster management a somewhat sane experience.
No, this is not another plea to make athletes employees, sign them to contracts, let them unionize and negotiate a collective bargaining agreement. Whether that’s inevitable, clearly you aren’t there yet. Let’s put that aside for now.
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But we know, whether you will admit it, another idea seems imminent: revenue sharing. NCAA president Charlie Baker has proposed some form of it. Nick Saban, even while belaboring what name, image and likeness and the portal have become, endorsed revenue sharing. Schools directly paying the players, beyond the scholarships, cost of attendance and Alston payments, which already add up to a considerable amount, depending on the school — $20,000 to $50,000 or so per year per athlete — but still are only a fraction of the millions of dollars many schools take in from television money and donations.
Many athletic directors are already planning for it. They’re quietly setting aside money in future budgets: Maybe $10 million per year, maybe $15 million, maybe more. But they know it’s coming. And they’re fine with it because it will take pressure off collectives, which have been dealing with donor fatigue for a while.
Rewarding loyalty through revenue sharing could help SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and the other commissioners in college sports deal with the chaos they’re facing. (Christopher Hanewinckel / USA Today)
They know it’s coming. You know it’s coming. And when it comes, here’s an idea to help your coaches out with the transfer portal: reward loyalty. The longer athletes stay at a school, the more money they get.
Let’s say you’re a football player, and your revenue-sharing payment from a school is $50,000 annually. That’s just an estimate but a reasonable starting point: For a football team’s full roster of 85 players, it would total up to $4.25 million. And since football scholarships usually take up about one-third of an athletic department’s scholarships, it’s getting close to that $10-15 million that athletic directors are starting to set aside.
And note that it doesn’t include the outside NIL money — commercials, endorsements, autograph signings, etc. — nor the scholarship, cost of attendance and Alston payments. This is $50,000 in addition to all that, as well as collective money, but it would replace a lot of payments collectives are making now.
So $50,000 per year … for a freshman. But that’s the starting point.
If the football player stays until his sophomore year, his payment goes up. Maybe up to $75,000? And if he stays for his junior year, it goes up again, maybe to $100,000? And so on.
This would not prevent the top players from transferring. They are the most marketable. But it could keep others home: the impatient players, future starters who need time to develop, etc. It would calm the waters. And if the $50,000 starting point is too low, and the $25,000 escalators are too low, then raise them. These are numbers thrown out to give you the idea, so you figure out what it needs to be to achieve your ends.
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What about players who need to leave — playing time, personal reasons, coaching change — but wouldn’t want to sacrifice the extra $25,000 (or whatever) they would get for staying? There could be a waiver process where the loyalty reward travels with you, automatically in case of a coaching change or granted by the coach or university that the player is leaving. Yes, that could get messy in some circumstances. We all remember the old waiver process, players hiring lawyers and talking about sick family members. But the stakes there were bigger — the ability to play right away — whereas you would hope things wouldn’t get messy about $25,000 per year, especially when a collective could make up for it.
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There will be complications. This isn’t a perfect proposal. Nothing is at this point, other than maybe going the employee-contracts-CBA route. You’ll get there someday but not today.
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This is an idea, however, that you should jump on. Revenue sharing is coming. Rewarding loyalty can be part of it. Tweak it if it doesn’t work well enough. Just do something to rein in the current portal chaos. It’s not good for the coaches, it’s not good for the sport, it’s not good for the fans trying to keep track of the rosters. It is good for the players who get to leverage the portal to get more money — unless there’s a built-in way for them to profit by staying.
Players can have the freedom to leave. Teams can give them something to think about. The longer players stay, the more they get paid.
Reward loyalty.
Editor’s note: This is part of a series of stories examining the transfer portal, NIL and their impact on college sports. The spring football transfer portal window is open from April 16-30. Find all transfer portal stories here.
(Top photo of Charlie Baker: Alex Wong / Getty Images)
2024-04-16 16:40:13
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