statsman

It would require the universities to want to get rid of them. I think, for Klatt, it’s enough that most schools he talks to thinks the current environment is unsustainable. For most schools, it is unsustainable. Hopefully, the Texas leadership (and other Gullivers) refuse to be tied down by the Lilliputians.

Maybe Texas can fire him in 2024.

Did you notice, in an attempt to avoid embarrassing scheduling and ratings, how the Texas schools in the Big XII took that day off?

Klatt talked as if the only NIL in this future world would be real marketing. That may be wishcasting the collectives away, leaving only the auto dealerships and the like. I think there are two ways that might be possibly understood. 1. Maybe he think there is no need for a collective when players are getting paid from a $20M pool. For small programs, that can only scrape up $5M per year, that’s probably true. 2. Maybe he thinks collective bargaining and new NCAA regulations would ban collectives. I am sure the majority of NCAA members would vote for that. If so, my hope is that programs like Texas, tOSU, Oregon, Michigan, UGA and the like tell the NCAA to pound sand.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-joel-klatt-show-a-college-football-podcast/id1037085984?i=1000656883603 Klatt is smart, and talks to people. He discusses the NCAA vs. House court decision and what it means. His takeaways: 1. Necessary to stop the NCAA lawsuits, that they keep losing. He says the conferences are all onboard. 2. Positive move that revenue sharing will be used to pay players, because he says current system (collectives) isn’t sustainable. He believes/wants NIL to be pure marketing for worthy marketable players, and not pay-for-play. 3. He thinks legislation is needed so whole nation has same rules, plus an exemption from antitrust. 4. He thinks the NCAA has to split away from non-revenue sports because it makes no sense to share the pie with those non-revenue players. 5. He expects collective bargaining. Statsman’s thoughts: 1. Of course Klatt wants the course he has charted. He calls games for a couple of leagues of schools. He doesn’t want any of them (especially his alma mater) to become less relevant. He wants things to be the way they used to be. 2. He describes a future NCAA that exists mainly to market a sport. That’s really not needed. Before the NCAA became a big thing, in the ‘50s, the conferences regulated and enforced rules. Then, the NCAA took that function over, leaving the conferences to market their leagues. I don’t see why the NCAA is needed if it won’t enforce rules (and it hasn’t for almost 15 years). 3. I absolutely agree that if it came to a vote, most of the programs would vote for revenue sharing, salary caps and restrictions on movement, because that would help most of the programs. The programs that don’t need sharing, that don’t need a cap, and are fine with few player restrictions (teams like Texas) are very much the minority. I hope that Texas has plans for these proposals, and is working with similar programs. I wonder if it makes sense for there to be a super-league, with no caps and Texas NIL being a differentiator in recruiting.

“The Rude Awakening” trope, again.

Hey! My dad was army buddies with a Hawaiian guy named Charlie Kalani, who left the islands to play football in Utah in the early ‘50s. He wrestled as n evil Japanese, Professor Tanaka, and rounded out his career playing heavies in Chuck Norris and Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. (Dad said he was the greatest guy, but since they served together on the all-Army pistol team, and he was actually really good at martial arts, besides the rassling, I’m going to say he really was a badass.)

I had posted earlier about an AD covering a budget shortfall by drawing from university funds. That got some blowback, so I wanted to explain what I meant in more detail. There are at least two ways of covering such a shortfall. One is just drawing from the university. It’s a bad look, but it happens. The Ags, infamously, covered a budget in the ‘00s, by “borrowing”, interest free, $20 million from the university, to be paid back at times the AD felt like paying. (It may still be unpaid). Another way is through “creative accounting”. I’m not talking about playing loose with financial accounting, where someone signs that the books are good and risks going to jail. I’m talking about managerial accounting, the practice of allocating costs, supposedly to support good managerial decisions. Example- a small G5 university has a gym. It is used for PE classes, recreational sports, intra-murals, and varsity sports. Only the last item comes under the AD. When the university is allocating costs to users, what is shown as the cost of varsity sports? That’s a subjective decision (do you assign a ratio based on wear? On time used? On square footage used?). The answer reached by the manager truly seeking to manage costs can be different than the answer reached if the goal is to minimize AD expenses. One of the legends around UT (I don’t know that it’s true; it could be) is that Bellmont Hall has classrooms because that allowed the university to use PUF funds for the 1970s stadium expansion project. What I’m getting at- for smaller programs, if the cost of competing requires them to run a deficit that their university has to close, I respect them to say, “Gee, sorry, we just can’t recruit the good players, because the AD can’t handle the NIL on its own”. This especially applies to the private schools, that have to answer to no one on funding athletics with general funding (much backed by tuition paid with guaranteed student loans, Ha-ha-ha-ha!)

Surprised Westbrook never did it in his seasons as OKC totem. Did none of those playoff disasters make it to five games?

Solid post. I mentioned UH because I was trying to think of a program whose ambitions outpaced their reach I agree about the danger of the NCAA regaining control. The problem with the NCAA is that it’s a democracy, and there are a hell of a lot more OSU sized programs than tOSU sized programs. Lilliputians will always try to tie down Gulliver.

The big unknown is how the $20M is to be allotted. Is it a Title IX style even spread across all sports, men’s and women’s? Or do schools get to allocate unevenly, based on revenue from each sport? If it’s the former, schools may decide that they’re not going into the roll for $20M each year so they can give 75% to non-revenue sports. If it’s the latter, I expect a bunch of dicey accounting to basically have the university pay it. Which is what schools do now when they do their annual federal filings about revenue and expenses. Football drives the AD budgets. Schools don’t have to make money annually on athletics; it’s an economic winner long term. It keeps boosters engaged and giving, even to academic efforts, even at schools much smaller than UT. Texas is one of a handful of schools where competitive funding of football at the highest level isn’t a problem. For the vast majority of FBS, they have been seeking a way to use university general funds to pay players, and now they have it.

This is the only part I disagree with. Your statement is true for Texas and the handful of schools in a similar financial position. For the other 100 FBS schools, that can’t scrape together $10M per year for football through a collective, this is a godsend. Now, they get to tap into university funding, instead of soliciting donors (although that will still happen for NIL). All they have to do is weather political criticism for state and national funding paying for football players (which they have always had to do, to a much lesser extent). Spelling it out- let’s take UH as an example. Suppose their annual AD spending exactly matches all their revenue. Do you have any doubt that, now that it is allowed, they will budget $20M for athletes’ pay? I don’t. Where will the money come from, if revenue doesn’t increase? I believe it will come from the school. Does anyone believe that UH’s AD would say, “We’d like to spend the $20M for our athletes, but we don’t have the money, so we won’t. We’ll just let those players go to TCU and Baylor.”? I don’t.

I agree. There are a lot more Oklahoma State-type programs (that will now pay $20M per year to their athletes, on top of what small NIL they have) than Texas-type programs, though. This gives them a lifeline. This won’t be an easy transition. UT can afford this without going into regular university funding. ITEP and UTSA can’t. How does the BoR handle this?

As I posted- “regular resources”. That is regular university funding. Think tuition, state funding (if public) and endowments. Most universities (not UT, which is the exception) subsidize athletics to seven figures (going from memory, when I looked years ago). It usually gets tsk-tsked by independent observers (the universities don’t care). This move will take that number to eight figures, annually. It’s not a surprise. NIL went from genuine marketing pay to outright “pay for play” a couple of years faster than I thought. I wondered when the universities with less athletic revenues, desperate to compete, would start paying players out of general funds.

This seems to help the smaller schools, that were hurting in NIL resources? Now they have a $20M budget to pay, out of AD revenue. It seems that is $20M less to pay elsewhere (coaches, facilities, travel, equipment), but the shameless poor will just pay that deficit out of regular resources. A bad look; the private schools won’t care.

I listened to the induction podcast. So, Grant Teaff is involved with the TSHOF, in Waco, and was in attendance. Know how sometimes, a coach speaking in a rival’s town, will tell self-deprecating stories of being beaten by the hosts? I have heard Royal and Brown do that a few times. It shows class and self-confidence to praise an old foe while being honored by them. Would you be surprised to hear Jackie didn’t do that? He gave a shout out to Teaff, in the audience, and then told a story of how he countered a Teaff motivational ploy before a game with a better one by him (Sherrill), and won the game. Sherrill is a weird dude.

We will know he really studied up if, after a first season ass-kicking, he says, “They better get their licks in now, while they can”.

How did they get this? Insider?

Yeah. I really expected to see a mix of shit B1G games (Purdue vs. Rutgers for example), but the worst one looks like Northwestern at Maryland. Most of the B1G games have at least one tier 1 or two tier 2 teams. I guess Fox really wants this to work.

Isn’t Sark a guy who inserts himself as needed, in the recruiting? Like, he’s not the “hands off” manager in that aspect, unless you have proven (like Banks? Choice?) that you don’t need his help?

Ah, yes, the good old “Rude Awakening” trope. I guess they have to have something to put hope in. On the Sooner boards, they’re banking on Texas being typically overrated and falling back to the level of the past 14 years.

It was an old guy, because it was the Homecoming game, because old players come to the game wearing their decades old uniforms. And they cannibalize the young opponents. Hope that helps.

In 1975, #2 undefeated Aggy beat one loss Texas 20-10, in B/CS (that was the game where they intentionally took out QB Marty Akins’ knees). The Ags had the inside lane on not only the Cotton Bowl, but the MnC after the win. Of course they lost the next game, upset by Arkansas, and then lost the Liberty Bowl to USC. They finished 10th and Texas finished (after a bowl win over top 10 Colorado) 6th. Poor Aggies.

I have no legal knowledge to base an opinion of the validity of this argument on, but as a regular dumbass fan, I have to question the strategy of Florida’s collective arguing that the recruit should have known better than to trust the collective to honor a contract that they don’t have to. Going forward.

Thinking Texas Football is pretty good. One of its best parts is coverage of opposing teams. Know how the typical “analyst” looks at Texas and says, “They had three WRs drafted; their cupboard must be bare” and leaves it at that? He doesn’t make that mistake with opposing teams; he digs at least one more, and often two more levels.