As long time readers of my barely-intelligible howlings will know, I generally have no love, patience or pity for “revenue generating sports” at the college level. The most charitable good-faith interpretation I can muster is that a relatively innocent but stupidly naive concept of the virtues of “amateurism” was corrupted at least 75 years ago and has only gotten more rancid as the money has skyrocketed for everyone except the ones actually playing the games. As we watched young men (and now women!) sacrifice their bodies and psyches before a live TV audience for someone else’s benefit, there was a slow dawning comprehension: maybe this is Bullshit. Perhaps more importantly, there was a slow dawning comprehension in the federal judiciary that there was no principled reason to give a pass to the NCAA-Industrial Complex solely on grounds of That’s How It’s Always Been.

In a move that can only be described as a modern-day Munich Agreement, the NCAA tried to stave off treating “the people who make the institutions money” as “workers” by allowing third parties to pay athletes for their Name, Image and Likeness rights, under the pretense that athletes were therefore not being paid to incentivize them to perform services for a specific school. And like the Munich Agreement, only the most willfully blind pollyannas believed this had bought Peace in Our Time.

NIL, combined with the Transfer Portal, has forced open acknowledgement of what used to be discussed only in sanctions and indictments: coaches bitching about how some other coach bought a great team, loud complaints about players lacking “loyalty” from one of the most grifting mercenary  asshole coaches (who was a diva asshole mercenary player), and Matt Rhule straight up telling the press that a good transfer quarterback “costs” $1-2 million to land.

Everyone knew at the time NIL was a transparent sham that wouldn’t fool a child who has realized their uncle does not, in fact, “got [their] nose.” The question was basically how long before it all collapsed.

Turns out that Munich Agreement analogy may hold there as well. With the implosion of the PAC 12 into the PAC 2, teams hopping conferences openly and solely for money, and university presidents taking the place of athletic directors in the crosshairs of angry fanbases, the NCAA brass met:

And lo! New NCAA Head Sockpuppet Charlie Baker has come out with proposed new rules to allow colleges to…pay NIL directly to athletes. Presumably, this is because calling it “payment for services” would make athletes into employees, with all the pesky worker protections that entails.

It would also allow colleges who put up a certain amount of money to join a new sub-subdivision (Division I, FBS, Champagne Room Tier) which can set its own rules regarding transfers, roster size, scholarships, etc., presumably so that the Power 5 (4?) Conference programs can set rules to let them spend in recruiting and suppress transfers within the VIP Section.

This sounds very much like the culmination of a thousand Southern sports radio callers’ secret theories- that the SEC and Big 10 are conspiring to swallow up the big teams from every other conference to form a Super League knockoff.

And to that I say: no shit. There are a limited number of media outlets with whom conferences can negotiate media rights. The fewer conferences the average fan wants to watch, the more those conferences can demand at the bargaining table. And this lets the big programs operate without having to court the votes of the Campbell University Fighting Camels.

I have called for college “revenue sports” to be broken off into what they really are: minor league teams. And this is a welcome first step for that- because they can just hand recruits giant bags of cash, universities like Cal won’t have to go into hock to compete on “facilities” or whatever. Brave new world out there.

NFL NEWS

Not much. Lot of ded quarterbacks (TrevoUr Lawrence, Kenny Pickett, Tim Boyle). Lot of quarterbacks wish were ded (Tommy DeVito, Baker Mayfield, Jameis Winston)

Underappreciated Movie of the Week:

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure