Crown Touney in Vegas

Caught the end of UC loss yesterday with post-game discussion of whether the Bearcats would play in this Fox fiasco considering it was 19 days away. NIL money, portal etc. figured in with one announcer saying it would be nice if there was a monetary incentive for the players to even participate. Apparently, the BIG 12 and other leagues involved are obliged to send teams to this event; and the winning team gets to divide $300k among the players.

The days of student-athletes clearly is over but this all raises the question of who returns to Xavier next year? Conwell's performance today will probably attract quite a few suitors. Swain might attract some. Kind of sucks that this is the expanding universe of college athletics. In this particular case, basketball.

I wish our mercenaries won today over Marquette's players-for-hire, Conwell's performance today was as exciting and inspiring as by any Xavier player ever. But as the game ended, I was thinking about the probabilities that next year I could find him on an opponent's team. That is really sad.

John Lennon's words about "strange day's indeed" come to mind .....

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Originally Posted by nickgyp

Caught the end of UC loss yesterday with post-game discussion of whether the Bearcats would play in this Fox fiasco considering it was 19 days away. NIL money, portal etc. figured in with one announcer saying it would be nice if there was a monetary incentive for the players to even participate. Apparently, the BIG 12 and other leagues involved are obliged to send teams to this event; and the winning team gets to divide $300k among the players.

The days of student-athletes clearly is over but this all raises the question of who returns to Xavier next year? Conwell's performance today will probably attract quite a few suitors. Swain might attract some. Kind of sucks that this is the expanding universe of college athletics. In this particular case, basketball.

I wish our mercenaries won today over Marquette's players-for-hire, Conwell's performance today was as exciting and inspiring as by any Xavier player ever. But as the game ended, I was thinking about the probabilities that next year I could find him on an opponent's team. That is really sad.

John Lennon's words about "strange day's indeed" come to mind .....

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You’re only about 5 years behind.

All of this was foreseeable.

Right, but ever single player on every single team is looking for the same thing. More money and a better opportunity. There is only so much to go around. Swain and Conwell will get well compensated from Xavier and as long as were competitive, they SHOULD stay. They will both start and get huge minutes playing for a coach that values them. There is risk in moving to another program and coach. Did Claude increase his (NIL or NBA) value? Nope. I dont think so.

It’s not like the NCAA or the coaches or the schools, set out to create the world that college sports is now. Every single one of the changes regarding eligibility and pay was forced upon them by the court’s decisions. The courts made their decisions based upon the laws that were already on the books. No new laws were passed that suddenly allowed athletes to be paid, or allowed transferring without sitting out, etc. It just took some smart people to look at the prior system, decide that it wasn’t fair, and decide to take it to court because the NCAA wouldn’t rewrite their rule book. There’s plenty of blame to go around but I’m not going to blame the players for it. If I was back in school I’d be looking for my best situation too.

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Originally Posted by XUGRAD80

It’s not like the NCAA or the coaches or the schools, set out to create the world that college sports is now. Every single one of the changes regarding eligibility and pay was forced upon them by the court’s decisions. The courts made their decisions based upon the laws that were already on the books. No new laws were passed that suddenly allowed athletes to be paid, or allowed transferring without sitting out, etc. It just took some smart people to look at the prior system, decide that it wasn’t fair, and decide to take it to court because the NCAA wouldn’t rewrite their rule book. There’s plenty of blame to go around but I’m not going to blame the players for it. If I was back in school I’d be looking for my best situation too.

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Smart people? Not fair? More like weasel attorneys looking to get a piece of the action. 99% of us had to pay for an education, didn’t get free clothes, travel the coubtry, play a game, and get showcased on national TV to future employers. Poor players my ass. Unless Mommy and Daddy were paying for school, most of us had to work menial part time jobs to make it thru school. It's turned college sports into a giant mess.

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Originally Posted by JTG

Smart people? Not fair? More like weasel attorneys looking to get a piece of the action. 99% of us had to pay for an education, didn’t get free clothes, travel the coubtry, play a game, and get showcased on national TV to future employers. Poor players my ass. Unless Mommy and Daddy were paying for school, most of us had to work menial part time jobs to make it thru school. It's turned college sports into a giant mess.

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Smart people in that they looked at the laws and found justification for their contention that college athletes were entitled….by law….to share in the millions of dollars being generated by their efforts. The courts agreed. It never occurred to me or hundreds of thousands (millions?) of other athletes that we were entitled to more than just a basic scholarship. Maybe in my case, and most everyone at XU during my era, it was because we rarely ever competed in front of big crowds and never felt that the university was taking advantage of us. But I can absolutely see where a player at a university that routinely had crowds of 80-90-100,000 might start thinking that someone was getting rich and it wasn’t them! Heck, all you have to do is start looking at coaches contracts and it would be normal to question why they were getting millions and you were eating at the school cafeteria? I certainly wasn’t smart enough to question the system. I was seriously just happy to have the opportunity to be on the team and to compete. But that was a different time.

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Originally Posted by XUGRAD80

It’s not like the NCAA or the coaches or the schools, set out to create the world that college sports is now. Every single one of the changes regarding eligibility and pay was forced upon them by the court’s decisions. The courts made their decisions based upon the laws that were already on the books. No new laws were passed that suddenly allowed athletes to be paid, or allowed transferring without sitting out, etc. It just took some smart people to look at the prior system, decide that it wasn’t fair, and decide to take it to court because the NCAA wouldn’t rewrite their rule book. There’s plenty of blame to go around but I’m not going to blame the players for it. If I was back in school I’d be looking for my best situation too.

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Well said. I largely blame the NCAA for not making any changes or concessions to their rules when it was obvious that once this started going to court they had no chance of winning. And...THEY STILL HAVEN'T!!!

Cancel this thread immediately.

You're not interested in a field that will include West Virginia, Ohio State and UC?

I should also congratulate Georgetown on joining Villanova as the Big East auto-bids.

On a related note, a friend of mine texted me that the SEC was supposed to get 3 bids to the NIT. What happens now that the SEC has 14 NCAA teams with Texas sneaking in?

Who cares????