A district court once invalidated the NFL's three-years-from-high-school rule that Maurice Clarett challenged as a violation of antitrust law. The judge Shira A. Scheindlin was a pretty activist judge, and the Second Circuit unanimously reversed her, finding the rule fell within the common law labor exemption to antitrust laws.
I haven't read the opinion, but a look at the judge's bio shows he had a nontraditional path to his appointment. He was in private practice only one year before opening a solo practice for two decades before being appointed a magistrate judge for just a couple years before being appointed to his judgeship after narrowly escaping committee. Traditionally, the number of no votes would be interesting, though these days that may just have become standard practice. But first impression would be not to assume the opinion stands.
Interestingly, if players are ever recognized by a court as employees, that will potentially give the NCAA greater leverage to enforce restrictions on compensation under a labor exemption for joint action by employers that the NFL enjoys sometimes even without the issue being directly collectively bargained if it is ancillary to the bargaining process.
Pay them whatever they want whenever they want, let them play at as many schools as they want?
You can't have a sport with no salary cap and unlimited free agency.
What's the solution?
So long as universities don't try to exploit the name, image, and/or likeness of players, it would seem OK to make players who sell that ineligible to play for a college team.
Further, a budget cap for athletic departments and football programs would be a good thing.
The pendulum should be made to swing back, but that will require ADs to break the habit of their bloated salaries, staffs, and profligate lifestyles.
I don’t care anymore.
The only solution is if the major players get together and create a standard.
I suspect there will be a subset of schools that choose to play by certain rules.
The others are governed by money.
reasons:
1) Nobody has known what the rules are, so schools are playing by different rules (or no rules in some cases), which affects how much players are being paid. Once there are rules -- whatever they are, including the possibility of unlimited free agency if it comes to that -- that will help even the playing field since everyone will at least know what the rules (or no rules) are.
2) This is all still relatively new. BUT, we have already seen players leave Texas A&M, for example, in droves, and I doubt it's because they were happy with their paychecks. In other words, I suspect their collective donors in some cases regretted what they had agreed to pay and bailed. (I don't know that, but why else would so many players leave? And it's not because they were setting the world on fire at A&M either.) So collectives are still finding their sea legs, I think, on valuing players.
3) The elephant in the room remains TV revenue reaching players. Until there is a mechanism for that to happen, nothing will finally be resolved.
...would be to unlink the varsity football programs from the schools, and instead, have teams that are still called the UT Volunteers, Alabama Crimson Tide, or ND Fighting Irish, but rather than being entities directly owned and controlled by the school, they would become independently incorporated entities that license the brand names from the respective institutions.
The athletes playing for these newly-incorporated entities might still largely be students of the licensor institutions but could not be considered employees of those institutions; they would work for, and have contracts with, the newly incorporated teams. These new entities could form a league or leagues that then feed the NFL without the historical obstacles or processes characteristic of NCAA days--no draft day, etc.; the pro teams would just hire whoever they can (in line, of course, with their own agreements with the pro players' unions, etc.)
Football would continue as owned and operated entities of places like UT, Alabama, and ND as club sports with no scholarships...sort of a glorified interhall status, maybe.
Remember when I said “this will inevitably lead to the Harvard patriots” and really deep thinkers called me crazy?
Guess what? They’re wrong and I’m right. As usual.
...As you recall, my grad school alma mater is famous in college football circles for abandoning the varsity/scholarship model in 1939. One of my favorite SI articles is the one by Hutchins in 1951 where he laid all that was wrong with college football out for all to see.
Streams. This shit is already in UBIT territory (unrelated business income tax).
The second whatever you proposed happens it will behoove the ivys to say “hold my Cabernet” and start buying pro teams. There will also be litigation. This is the most dimwitted meat headed way to go and it’s sad there are intelligent posters on here who can’t see further than this step in the downfall of college football.
Call it, for instance, the NCAA. Let the revenue addicts and southern rednecks take their ball and play elsewhere.
it's just a matter of where the exit leads.
on what the bifurcation looks like.
Its not like Nd borrowed to build crossroads. They are in the middle of a $10B capital campaign. They'd be entirely fine without big money college football.
I don't know.
You're probably right in that it depends on the circumstances, but I can pretty much see ways to justify just about anything.
"When your values are clear, your decisions are easy." Roy Disney
Why would anybody associated with ND care about a team--consisting entirely of non-students (because that's what will happen)--that wears its logo via a licensing agreement with the school?
If ND licensed its logo to a minor-league baseball team (or even a major league team), I would have no more interest in that squad than a team like the South Bend Silverhawks or Chicago Cubs.
The "shared experience" we have with the student-athletes wearing ND uniforms is a hell of a lot more important to most fans than a "shared logo" will ever be.
presumably ND would still be able to recruit athletes that would find the benefit of pursuing a ND degree. Let's say 30-50% of the team still wants to work towards a degree.
For the others, wouldn't ND still continue to recruit high-character kids who value the school, its mission, and its values? Marcus Freeman has no connection to the school other than getting paid a hefty sum to coach it. Yet, it's obvious he completely embodies the spirit of the school and its mission. Would there not be a number of 18-22 year olds who may not wish (or cannot) pursue a degree, but would still be fine representatives of the University and you could cheer for?
I am not taking a position either way, but just throwing this out there.
College athletics is for college students, period.
When that connection is severed--even if by "just" 50% of the players on the roster--so is my interest in it.
There is a long list of things ND currently licenses its trademarks for that I have zero interest in: Citizen watches, Dooney & Bourke wallets, Tervis tumblers, Zipchair gaming chairs, Marble Canyon duffel bags, chrome pub tables, billiard lights, letter openers, paperweights, etc. A licensed "college football" team would immediately land on that list.
Schools will license these new entities the name and branding, and use of facilities. One huge licensing payment will be made to the university, which will fund all other sports.
no real interest in going to any of them. This would be an inferior product that I feel no connection to. Not going to and not going out of my way to watch it.
I doubt ND would compete at that level. If they did, they’d do it without this lifelong fan and third-generation alum.
Some long-ago programmed synapses will let me root for the guys in the gold helmets on Saturdays in the fall, but I likely won't follow much of what else is going on in college football.
work, but could they transition to models similar to baseball or hockey? At least for the sports where there could be a significant pro minor league option?
football, which historically hasn't flourished.
College football is not going away for many just because the payments are now over the table.
You’re taking away their right to earn a living after all.
It's where this is all leading.
It would take the NFL about 10 seconds to file a suit saying that since these are no longer amateur leagues, the ban on them playing Saturdays before mid-December should no longer apply.
That would completely destroy CFB's money train, and frankly I would welcome that at that point.
for all the same reasons they haven't wanted to kill it up to now.
To my limited understanding, the Supreme Court has been very clear that the workers' rights can only be abridged (say, by a salary cap) if they approve an agent authorized on their behalf to negotiate those rights away—i.e., a players' union.
It's the same legal environment that's led every major league pro sport to end up with that solution.
Which is why I've long felt it was the exact opposite of visionary when Northwestern and Spanky Fitzgerald crushed the union movement among their players. They could have gotten out in front of it and looked like champions of their players' welfare, just by going along with what they ultimately couldn't prevent anyway. But just like the NCAA as a whole, they had to greedily try to keep the whole loaf.
in their legal department. I took it just out of sheer curiosity. It became fairly obvious why they have some of their troubles.
Or at least there will be no enforcement.