Shit is wild. Pay for play.
- Thread starter Cavanagh
- Start date
As a fan, these are confusing times. There used to be rules. Some teams were sleaze balls, others weren’t. As an IU fan I could thumb my nose at other programs, sit up on my high horse and say that at least we are clean, and doing things the right way.
now everything is legal. As long as you’ve got your contract written correctly. Everything is legal, and now it’s just a matter of how you play the game. I suspect IU will win in a pay for play scheme….it will be legal.
as a fan, though (at least speaking for myself), going forward the more we win the dirtier we are. It doesn’t have to do with rules, it has to do with money. It’s going to be hard to root for a group of players getting paid insane numbers. I don’t want to ever hear again about Alabama football or Kentucky basketball, or Kansas basketball for that matter being scum. They aren’t, they just play the game better too. We will do everything we can to play like them.
right now the NBA has rules. There are boundaries. Until there are guard rails set up in NCAA basketball , it’s going to be ugly.
frankly, I would prefer they blow it all up. Get rid of the allusion of student athletes. Get rid of all athletic scholarships, requirements to be a student….institute a salary cap, a draft, anything to control this. And let the jersey be nothing more than a school that sponsors a professional player.
i know i’m just an old guy that is yelling to get off my lawn.
now everything is legal. As long as you’ve got your contract written correctly. Everything is legal, and now it’s just a matter of how you play the game. I suspect IU will win in a pay for play scheme….it will be legal.
as a fan, though (at least speaking for myself), going forward the more we win the dirtier we are. It doesn’t have to do with rules, it has to do with money. It’s going to be hard to root for a group of players getting paid insane numbers. I don’t want to ever hear again about Alabama football or Kentucky basketball, or Kansas basketball for that matter being scum. They aren’t, they just play the game better too. We will do everything we can to play like them.
right now the NBA has rules. There are boundaries. Until there are guard rails set up in NCAA basketball , it’s going to be ugly.
frankly, I would prefer they blow it all up. Get rid of the allusion of student athletes. Get rid of all athletic scholarships, requirements to be a student….institute a salary cap, a draft, anything to control this. And let the jersey be nothing more than a school that sponsors a professional player.
i know i’m just an old guy that is yelling to get off my lawn.
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Kinda short on details, but a good description. Thanks,.
Explains it at their website
"sends the players out as ambassadors to talk at events...which isn't really worth much of anything)"
Well, I disagree with that. Many charities raise a lot of cash by bringing in athletes and celebrities. and having them give a half hour speech and shake a few hands and meet-and-greets.
That's just how money is raised. It's probably more cost effective than paying for ads to promote the charity.
I'm all for having athletes pay back their scholarship with whatever money they make while in college.
Some players won't make anything and they keep their full scholarship. A player making X dollars pays back his scholarship to to that X amount.
That would at least give them some appreciation for the scholarship they're given.
Nope, their perceived value as a player to IU. The charities have nothing to do with it. Which goes back to the point, HFG is about paying the players. They admit to that on their website. They are there to set up NIL deals and the people they pay they loan out to charities. It isn't about the charity, it never was.
I think you're right - it wasn't set up for charities. But charities do benefit from it.
To me, this is making the best of a bad situation. A guy could go out and shill for a car dealership or he can speak for a charity and maybe build some personal responsibility and pride in helping that organization, even if he/she is being paid.
Do you think Race Thompson is worth $150k for that job? In Indianapolis? Remember the Colts, the Pacers, and several Indy Car teams are in the Indy area. That isn't even mentioning former players for those organizations. Former coaches. Former executives. You got $150k to burn to promote your charity in Indy. How far down your list is Race Thompson?
That isn't a knock on Race, that is just reality.
Again, good for the players, get your money. I am not twisting myself into a pretzel to convince myself that this is about anything else than what it is. Finding a way to pay players to be on your sports teams in the most tax beneficial way to everyone involved.
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Possibly. Which do you think raises more, HFG to pay the players or the players going to speak at an event? I would bet money that in the vast majority of instances it would be the player making more than they raise.
So again, if this was about charity, you would be better off to give your money directly to the charities. Which is my whole point, HFG is basically a charitable front to get money to the players. Everybody is saying that paying the players is a good thing, so why not just admit this?
I think the reason is because of what @.Gerdis was getting at in his post. This stuff is legal, but it is still pretty sleazy.
I generally listen on the radio. Not sure what that is costing me other than my time.
I don't have any idea what he's worth.
I just know I've been to a high-roller charity event (invited by my financial advisor who had paid for a couple tables - only because my much richer brother-in-law couldn't make it) in Indy where Archie Manning spoke. There was some silent auction. This organization basically raised most of their revenue in this one event.
Don't underestimate the number of people that will pay or donate to have their picture taken with an IU player.
But I agree with you - they're paid based on what the athlete is worth to IU.
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If the player gets more than he raises, I would think that would be divulged in the charity's financial statemenet. It would raise a huge stink and people would stop giving to the charity.
I don't think these guys are making life-changing money. You and I both know $100k sounds like a lot, but can go in the blink of an eye.
If you want to criticize what I say that is dandy, I just ask that you stick to what I actually say. TIA.
Now...I am not happy about the NCAA changes, but I am glad IU got out on this early and I like the fact that with HFG there is actually some benefit to legitimate charities rather than only athletes and lawyers. Even if only 15% is going to the charities that is better than what others are doing. I believe ND has followed suit here, and good for them.
The deal you are talking about is just $50k and just for OL. But my point is whatever the money being spent at a place like Alabama/Texas, IU could probably take a quarter of that money but divide it up amongst a smaller number of players.
Plus, let's say that a place like Alabama/Texas could indeed get their deep bench guys up around 150k, those same guys could probably make solid chunk of that back at a place like IU by being one of the better players. Plus, they could be buried by other talent with little chance to play, potentially killing their chances of getting to the NFL which is still where the real money is made. Also for much of the pre restricted scholarship era, being an NFL player was frequently just a middle class to upper-middle profession. Even in 1990 when the scholarship limit was 95, low end NFL salaries were not even double the national median income. Now league minimum is about 10x national median income. So now good players are at much greater risk of lost income by being a bench player at a top school. A worst, what will happen is that good players will take the money for a year or 2, then transfer to a place where they have a better chance to play
I don’t think you are going to see IU football players getting big deals. I believe the 80%-90% of NIL money will go to the basketball team…. As it should.
Schools that try to fund both will struggle (without some billionaire funding it… ie Miami). When Purdue finally gets with the times they will try to fund both and it won’t get them very far.
It isn't "dirty" in the least. It is the way the game is played today, and Glass developed a program that benefits both IU athletes and multiple charities.
Were the teams that started giving full ride scholarships "dirty" when they started offering it? I bet some thought so.
Were teams that recruited three point shooters "dirty" when the rules changed? I bet some thought so.
Were teams like IU that embraced diversity early "dirty" when they did it? I bet some thought so.
Totally off topic, but your last sentence made remember something I read yesterday about Larry Doby - the 2nd black man to play in major league baseball. 1st black player in the AL.
While Robinson got some flak from his own teammates, Doby got no support. 4 teammates refused to shake his hand, and those that did gave him the cold fish shake. Home and opposing fans verbally abused him and no one did anything about it.
He was brought up mid-season and didn't have a good year, although the next year he had a great year and led the Indians to a WS. He went on to have a great career and eventually was a Manager, but he never got the recognition JR got.
At least he made it into the HoF - on the old-timers ballot.
It’s just my opinion.
pay for play is dirty, legal or not. Whether it is how the game is played is irrelevant.
if we put together a team where the players are being paid a total of $10 million, I’m sure we’d be really good. We would excel at the “game”, it doesn’t mean it isn’t sleazy .
I learned this watching a movie recently, you may already know this: Jackie Robinson's older brother Mack broke the 200M (I think) olympic record in 1936 but finished .04 behind Jesse Owens. Jesse became a national hero, Mack did not.
Fundamentally, I think that scholarship athletes have always been at least "semi-pro" because they do in fact receive something of monetary value in exchange for their participation. Retention of "amateur" status was somewhat of an arbitrary carve out and parsing words for PR purposes, to state otherwise means you have fallen for the PR campaign. For a lot of schools and sports, the scholarship is more than ample compensation for value provided (most scholarships are even a financial drain), but for men's football and basketball in major conferences, a scholarship isn't even in the same ballpark relative to revenue of the sports, and the gap has been widening rapidly in recent years/decades
That isn't what I said. I said that the charities would likely benefit more by receiving the cash the players get and that HFG is set up to provide NIL money to players. If HFG could just outright pay the players for nothing, they would. They cannot do that though because that is just a gift and you get into the tax issue I mentioned. So we set up this "charity" to get them paid.
This is the same thing as when charities present how much of every dollar goes to the actual charitable goal and how much gets gobbled up in "administrative" costs. If you give money to HFG, you are doing it to get players money. It is all there on the website. You are trying to get NIL money to players and then they can go get experiences working with charities. Something they could do for charity at any time without the check from HFG but that isn't the point. The point is getting the players paid.
Although charities do these sorts of work arounds all the time and the reason charities host events/auctions or give away swag in exchange for donations.
It will be pretty easy to measure whether the partner charities receive more after affiliating with HFG (after the NIL deals are paid-out) than before . I suspect they will benefit greatly from the NIL connection.
I did know that, but it's so interesting. Being #2 sucks. lol
Kinda depends though. Is that 100K after taxes? If you are talking about getting 100K after taxes, and still getting the benefit of free housing, free food, some free clothing, and I would assume that the stipend is still in effect (athletes have been getting monthly stipends for buying books and academic supplies, etc.). Heck, Pack just got a car too, so there's transportation covered also (and I could see that being a trend that balloons up to be done in a lot of these NIL deals).
It's not unreasonable to potentially see a player graduating with 400k to 500K. While I agree that it is not "life changing" in that these kids cant retire once they leave college, that's still a pretty big nest egg.
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I completely understand how the whole NCAA thing can feel dirty to those of us that have always held IU to a higher standard and looked down our collective noses that programs that cheat. I get that.
That said, there will absolutely be some "dirty" here in the new world but what IU is doing is far from that.
Hell, no one had ever heard of them until this program brought them to light. They are already ahead.
If Andy would have said to IU instead of firing Archie, I will hire 5 players at a million a kid to become spokesman for my dealerships, now you go recruit them from the portal or high school. Do you think we would have advanced beyond the play in game last year?
You rang? Admittedly behind on the fair market compensation piece of NIL—it initially started out with that language but got dropped along the way. As to pay for play—that’s still included in the NCAA guidelines but until they enforce it it’s got no teeth—as evidenced by the current kookiness.
Wish I could have had 400-500k in my IRA (if IRS would have allowed it) at the end of four years in my first job. Plus add to that all the $$$ I added to my Savings Funds/IRA over my next 39 years that I worked before retiring two years ago. I’d be sitting real pretty financially right now.
(disclaimer: they didn’t have IRA programs back when I started working. It was a company savings plan… and it was working just fine, until the Gov got involved and started forcing IRA’s, upon which I was never given a chance to opt out of when they started it. Then… when I wanted my own money out… it was a 20% penalty. But that’s a whole other topic for the Water Cooler)
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