Basketball-centric schools without football may soon gain major advantage. Here's how

[waggy]

Greg Christopher comments about revenue sharing

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sport...l/82539403007/

[xubrew]

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I think how it will ultimately play out is that the Big Ten, SEC, and ACC will decide they don't want to be handcuffed by the limited revenue sharing, and will simply decide to increase it. But until then...it will be interesting!!

It is worth examining how important basketball is at "football" schools. For the SEC in particular, basketball has never been better or more popular. I lived in Alabama for nine years, and at the time I was there basketball was, at best, a side dish. It sure as hell wasn't the entre, and while it was important, it wasn't going to completely ruin the meal if it turned out to suck. I guess it sort of started when Auburn hired Bruce Pearl and started to get good, and then Alabama decided they wanted to be really good at basketball too, and then it started to blow up. I don't live down there anymore, but I still have quite a few contacts, and they say it's insane. Every game is sold out, tickets cost a fortune on the secondary market, it's all anyone is talking about, and it has become a huge deal. It's probably not bigger than football, but it's still very very big.

I think Garth Glissman is also brilliant as a commissioner. You wonder how long he's going to be with the SEC, but he basically met with all the SEC AD's and presidents and sold them on the idea that basketball could be very successful, very popular, and very profitable. And for the last two years, it has been. We're seeing reports that the TV ratings for the NCAA Tournament are the highest they've been since 1993, and a big reason for that is probably because viewership is way up in a lot of SEC markets. They only played 15 OOC games total on a Saturday prior to Christmas. That means there were teams that didn't play on Saturday at all. They didn't schedule games in November and December that went up against SEC football or MNF, and in December when it's normally a dead zone for college basketball seemingly every Tuesday, Wedensday, and Thursday night the showcase game of the entire day featured an SEC team and they basically had the national spotlight to themselves. That probably indirectly resulted in why they collectively won so many big OOC games.

Anyway, that's a lot of examples of how (and perhaps why) basketball is suddenly a much much MUCH bigger deal at several football schools than it was a very short time ago. And it is very interesting to see what kind of impact the revenue sharing (which is something they sort of came up with themselves) will have on it. I could see them kind of collectively saying "Hey, wait a minute! This is GREAT! We've got seven in the Sweet Sixteen! It's popular, successful, and profitable! We don't want to give this up!"

[paulxu]

Brew, in regard to the article above, can you explain why some schools under the settlement get $20 million, and the AD at VCU is saying $3-4 million?
I guess all schools must not get the same amount.
How do they decide who gets what?
Thanks

[xubrew]

Brew, in regard to the article above, can you explain why some schools under the settlement get $20 million, and the AD at VCU is saying $3-4 million?
I guess all schools must not get the same amount.
How do they decide who gets what?
Thanks

$20 million is the projected cap for institutional NIL initiatives. When you hear a college AD say "revenue sharing" what they mean is how much they will be sharing amongst all of their own teams. it's not revenue sharing the way a conference would do it. So you would be allowed to share up to $20 million. VCU is anticipating sharing $3-4 million probably because that is all they can afford to share. They don't have $20 million.

The gist of the article is that schools who prioritize football, and perhaps spend $18 million of the $20 million (if that's what it ends up being) on football, then they won't have as much left over from basketball, which will allow the basketball centric schools the chance to sort of level the playing field. And, it's not wrong.

But there is one big red legal flag to all of this that is being completely overlooked. If a cap is set at $20 million, or $30 million, or $200 million, it's only a matter of time before someone sues on the grounds that they would/should be getting more but are not because of a cap that the current players did not agree to. This needs to be bargained with the players, and it doesn't look like it is going to be. If we learn anything from history, it's that the NCAA does not learn anything from history.

Another issue is that if these are not true NIL deals and that the colleges are directly playing the players, I don't see how this is not a major Title IX issue.

But then again Trump is trying to shut down the DOE, and if he succeeds then I guess Title IX may no longer be a thing anymore.

[paulxu]

Sorry. Guess I'm confused concerning the money that may be coming from some sort of settlement with the NCAA to each school.

Thanks