Randy Smith
If the NIL deals and the Transfer Portal weren't enough, the NCAA and Power Five conferences have announced that student athletes will now be part of a revenue sharing agreement....meaning players will now be paid to play college sports. There are back up players now at major schools who are millionaires and that's before this new agreement goes into effect in the fall of 2025. It's due to the settlement of three lawsuits against the NCAA worth $2.7 billion. As someone who is very knowledgeable about these sort of things told me this week, " The NCAA never wins a lawsuit."
That may be true but this basically means that amateurism in sports will soon be a thing of the past.
Maybe I'm old school and in a lot of ways I am but I can't help but feel all this is detrimental to sports as we know it. This is all good if you're a promising athlete but all of this is creating a different kind of athlete....one that doesn't care about winning or being a good teammate,. that will turn against their current school if they get a better offer from another school for more money. And with the Transfer Portal in place, they can leave with no penalties. There simply must be some regulation over all this money and freedom or we'll have a mess like none we've ever seen.
Don't get me wrong. Things have never been perfect in college sports. Back when it was illegal to pay players and schools would have "bag men " quietly slipping money to athletes
the NCAA could never really regulate things. They would occasionally catch schools or coaches cheating and most would be justified. But for every school they caught and put on probation, there would be at least a dozen more getting away with it. In that sense, things would be an improvement.
When I watch college sports on television now, the excitement generated is pure. It was always fun to watch because those men and women were playing for the sheer love of the game That can still be the case in non-Power Five schools but big-time college sports is continuing to distance itself from the pack. Perhaps the Power Five institutions will eventually break off and separate from smaller schools. That way we can have championship events for schools like UTC and Middle Tennessee State. We already have champions crowned in FCS, Division two and Division three so let's allow the big boys to go ahead and do their own thing. It appears they're going to do it whether we like it or not.
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Randy Smith can be reached at rsmithsports@epbfi.com.