It's Time To Make Revenue Sports In College Professional

 

December 5th, 2023, will go down as the day that NCAA President Charlie Baker finally realized what so many people have known since the early 2000s, student-athletes are more athletes than students. 

FBS Football and Division I Men's College Basketball players should be paid for the revenue they bring into their respective colleges. Men's football revenues for the Power 5 conferences far outpace the second-leading sport men's basketball. According to financial data from the 2022 fiscal year, the average college football program generated 31.9 million dollars of revenue while men's college basketball brought in 8.1 million dollars. Thirty-five non-revenue sports combined average to bring in 31.7 million dollars that year, two hundred thousand dollars less than football alone. 

Baker's proposal would create a new subdivision in college athletics that would be allowed to set its own rules for recruiting, roster sizes, transfers, and other policies. This would let the Power 5 secede from the rest of the FBS and create a feeder league to the pros for football and men's basketball. To be a part of this division schools would have to put millions of dollars a year into an educational trust for the athletes to use either during the summer or after their playing careers are over. The schools would be required to pay athletes a minimum of 30 thousand dollars a semester per athlete for at least half of their athletes. Schools could provide more athletes money and more than the minimum if they want to. It would also not require athletes to graduate to receive the money.   That's all and great but another part of the proposal is where a lot of trouble will come from.

Due to Title IX regulations, women's sports would have to be compensated at the same rate as men's sports including money from NIL according to Baker's proposal. Women's sports do not generate the money that men's sports do especially the sports of football and men's basketball. Should sports that fail to generate ticket sales or TV deals of the big two sports still be allowed to get an equal share of the money? 

This murky area is where the NCAA will have to work on this proposal with Congress and federal regulators. A 15-year study by the NCAA showed that most schools' athletics departments are operating on losses. This model is not sustainable for all the schools especially schools in the Group of 5 conferences. (The Group of 5 conferences are the American, Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West, and Sun Belt.) The new Power 4 (ACC, Big Ten, Big XII, and SEC) can afford these new payments because of the revenue they generate with conference TV deals and bowl payouts. 

The lines are being drawn that will forever change college athletics. The model we grew up with will be on the trash heap of history. Student-athletes will receive thousands if not millions of dollars before they even go pro. The model proposed by Baker is only the beginning. It is not the end of the journey of financial compensation for athletes. A long road is ahead of everyone to work out a model that will officially make parts of college athletics professional. 

Why Ted Lasso Is Right About Anxiety and Sports

 

****Season 2 Spoilers Ahead For Ted Lasso****

The show Ted Lasso is a critical and fan-favorite because it works on so many levels. It's a fish-out-of-water story mixed with a plucky underdog story, a splash of social commentary, and mental health. The main characters all deal with their mental health in different ways and it isn't until Dr. Sharon Fieldstone appears in season two that a lot of the mental health of the team is addressed. 

The season starts with star Dani Rojas killing the team mascot on a penalty kick causing him to go into a downward spiral ending in the yips. His guilt over the death radically affects the play of one of Richmond FCs best players. It isn't until he goes to Dr. Fieldstone that he finally gets the help he needs. All the players start talking to Dr. Fieldstone and eventually, Ted ends up in her office after a panic attack during a critical game. His distrust of therapy is eventually worn down by the persistent doctor who also realizes things about her life during therapy. This is monumental for Ted.

Ted's character is absolutely lovable. He's an Andy Griffith in London who happens to be a soccer coach. His great speeches throughout the series are memorable and heartfelt. He seems to have it all together. But his father's death has an effect he does not want to acknowledge and pushes him to a breaking point. He has his first attack during a party and then the aforementioned panic attack during a critical match. It's not until he confronts his issues that he moves forward. The finale of season 2 has Ted acknowledging that the media needs to do a better job of covering mental health and anxiety in sports. 

Mental health and anxiety treatments are essential today and it's new ground that athletes today are treading. An Ole Miss player named DeSanto Rollins filed a lawsuit against Ole Miss and Lane Kiffin this year due to treatment over mental health.  Simone Biles famously suffered mental health issues during the 2021 Summer Olympics in Tokyo which led to a new conversation about mental health in athletes.  Studies are coming out showing that college athletes are experiencing higher levels of mental health issues and more articles are coming out about this sensitive topic. College Athletes are committing suicide. And this is very troubling.

Athletes today are exposed more to fans than at any time in the history of organized sports. Social media brings out the worst in fans including death threats. Read any popular athlete's comments on their tweets, Instagram pics, TikToks, or Facebook posts and you'll see vile comments. They are exposed to an endless news cycle. The only escape they seem to have is by escaping their devices. There are several stories of phone numbers getting leaked for prominent coaches and athletes. They have no escape. They live in a bubble on campus. They cannot have a normal life. They are going to need someone to talk to and not judge them. Someone who will allow them to vent. That is why more colleges are setting up programs for the athletes.

Ted Lasso's approach to this difficult subject is to be commended. Athletes on all levels need help and therapy options. They need people they can trust who are professionally trained. Athletes need help in dealing with a difficult time of their life when their brains are still forming and they essentially live in a bubble. It's a different day and age. I know a lot of the old-school athletes want to say, "Toughen up, Buttercup." But the days of running around on your wife and no one saying anything about it are over. Athletes today have to deal with smartphones with cameras. They are one viral social media post away from infamy. It's a new day and age and we need to approach it as such. Ted Lasso is just opening the door to this conversation. Thank you, Ted. 

If you or someone you know needs mental health, please call 988 for the suicide and crisis helpline. They have great mental health professionals available 24/7. There is no shame in needing help.

The Alliance Doomed FSU

In one of the classic episodes of the American version of The Office, downsizing rumors swirl and Dwight Schrute proposes an alliance with Jim Halpert to try and avoid being fired. It was a silly move that really had no purpose. But by the end of the episode, the Alliance had failed and Dwight betrayed Jim.

In 2021, SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey, Big XII Commissioner Bob Bowlsby, Mountain West Commissioner Craig Thompson, and the Athletic Director of Notre Dame Jack Swarbrick unveiled a 12-team playoff for College Football that would eliminate automatic qualifiers and would instead take the six highest-rated conference champions. It wanted to ensure that the best teams would make the College Football Playoffs instead of a team that was 9-3 pulling an upset in a conference championship game. This plan was accepted by 8 of the 11 commissioners at the conference. But an Alliance blocked this measure.

The 2020 COVID season saw interesting developments in the final College Football Playoff rankings. Had the proposal been in effect that year, the top six ranked conference champions would have been Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Cincinnati, and Coastal Carolina. The Pac-12 champion, Oregon, would not have been a part of that and would have been left out of the 12-team playoff. This ruffled the feathers of the Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott. He wanted to make sure that his conference champion would automatically qualify for the playoffs. 

The proposed playoff expansion would have gone into effect for the 2023 season. But in July of 2021, the SEC rocked the college football landscape by announcing that Texas and Oklahoma were leaving the Big XII to join the SEC in 2025. 

Seeing that the proposed format by the SEC, Big XII, Mountain West, and Notre Dame would make some conference champions possibly miss the playoffs, and the stunning expansion move by the SEC, ACC Commissioner James J. Phillips, Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott, and Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren met secretly to propose an Alliance that would be a voting bloc preventing any playoff expansion that they didn't agree with. On August 24, 2021, The Alliance was officially announced.

This Alliance had no official contract but was a gentleman's agreement that was going to stick together on major decisions of college athletics and work together on scheduling various sports' non-conference games. On paper, it looked great and like it would help further college athletics. But in reality, they were going to impede any college football playoff expansion that they didn't agree with. 

In February of 2022, the 11 conference commissioners gathered to vote on the proposed playoff system that would have started for the 2023 season.  The vote had to be unanimous to start the new playoff format. The vote was 8-3 with the Alliance all objecting to preventing the expansion. It took nine months before the vote would happen again and by that time, the college football landscape had changed. 

The Pac 12 became greedy with new commissioner Greg Kliavkoff turned down a TV licensing deal that would have annually brought the conference $30 million per school. Kliavkoff thought he could do better. The Big XII knew they had to jump on any deal to avoid falling into irrelevancy. Then in June of 2022, the Big Ten announced that USC and UCLA were leaving the Pac-12. The Alliance was shattered. The vote for the 12-team playoff expansion was held in November of 2022 and the model had not been changed. The expansion vote passed 11-0 but the soonest the new format would be implemented would be for the 2024 season.

The Big XII then announced that Colorado was leaving for their conference in August of 2023. Then, Oregon and Washington announced they were leaving the Pac-12 for the Big Ten. Utah, Arizona, and Arizona State soon announced they were leaving the Pac-12 to join the Big XII. The ACC announced that Cal and Stanford were leaving the Pac-12 to join them. The once mighty Pac-12 had only two members in Washington State and Oregon State. One of the key pillars of the Alliance was no more. But the effects of the failed group would be felt that Fall.

Now we're here in December of 2023. The FSU Seminoles are undefeated and left out because their conference commissioner joined an Alliance that like Dwight Schrute, ultimately betrayed the other members of the Alliance. Had the Alliance approved the expansion in February of 2022, the new playoff format would be in full effect and the 12-team playoff would be here. FSU would be in. But the ACC was hoisted by their own petard and cost their champion a shot at a national championship.