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NCAA has made 2.transfers official for the 2023-2024 year. 

NCAA to allow players a second transfer without penalty through end of 2023-24 school year

The NCAA will allow all athletes to freely transfer a second time through the end of the 2023-24 school year.

The governing body’s decision comes after a federal court ruled against the NCAA’s rule preventing players from being immediately eligible after transferring a second time. The ruling against the NCAA on Wednesday gave players a 14-day window to transfer a second time without penalty via a temporary restraining order. Friday, the NCAA acquiesced to the remainder of the school year.

https://sports.yahoo.com/ncaa-to-allow-players-a-second-transfer-without-penalty-through-end-of-2023-24-school-year-001822801.html

 

 

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Yeah, just sue them and they'll back down. The NCAA was eviscerated by SCOTUS and knows what will happen if another case makes its way to them. It's either make them employees or the wild west. They elected for the latter.

Edited by Yuk
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14 minutes ago, Yuk said:

Yeah, just sue them and they'll back down. The NCAA was eviscerated by SCOTUS and knows what will happen if another case makes its way to them. It's either make them employees or the wild west. They elected for the latter.

Whole different can of worms.  FSU like every other program has already ceded authority in these matters to the NCAA. Some SMU alums were going to sue in the 80s to prevent the death penalty and were informed they couldn't. The fact we're already at announcing penalties means FSU already knows about it.

 

Plus, I believe the latest action in the court rooms has gone the NCAAs way.

Edited by TexasRenegade
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45 minutes ago, Yuk said:

Yeah, just sue them and they'll back down. The NCAA was eviscerated by SCOTUS and knows what will happen if another case makes its way to them. It's either make them employees or the wild west. They elected for the latter.

FSU already agreed to the deal

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Please don't shoot the messenger...

 

"House Divided" did an informative segment today on NIL in CFB & at UT. 1 of the SuperChats asked "Does aggy have more NIL than UT?". Ketch responded with Aggy has more affluent donors giving to NIL than UT does right now. He talked about UT doesn't have any former UT athletes giving to NIL.

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Did he indicate that other programs have former players dropping buckets of money into NIL programs? I have a tough time believing there are a ton of former athletes who are thrilled at the thought of contributing to paying players in an era they never got to play in. Many of them spent their college careers looking between the couch cushions to see if they could afford an extra taco from Taco Bell.

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41 minutes ago, TheMailBox357 said:

Please don't shoot the messenger...

 

"House Divided" did an informative segment today on NIL in CFB & at UT. 1 of the SuperChats asked "Does aggy have more NIL than UT?". Ketch responded with Aggy has more affluent donors giving to NIL than UT does right now. He talked about UT doesn't have any former UT athletes giving to NIL.

Geoff Ketchum has no fucking clue about NIL on either the Texas or ATM end. He gets a little info from one donor on the UT side who should know better, and he's fed bullshit that he eats up like the pig he is from his ATM buddies. He doesn't have any grasp about what's actually happening or why or how, and passing on anything he says here is just more bandwidth draining waste. 

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On 1/23/2024 at 8:28 AM, VirginiaLonghorn said:

Former Texas Athletes have given some, some at levels non commiserate to their career earnings but still have given. Also CJ is the best

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19 minutes ago, RGBIII said:

Former Texas Athletes have given some, some at levels non commiserate to their career earnings but still have given. Also CJ is the best

You're doing great work for Texas, my good sir. But I cannot let the butchering of a perfectly cromulent word like "commensurate" go unchecked. 

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24 minutes ago, Ricky's one-hitter said:

Cool. Let LSU have plenty of attnention. Meanwhile actual recruits can continue to see our offers are bigger. 

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LSU appears to be really good at owning NIL in sports like baseball, women's basketball and gymnastics. 

I love how the Heisman trophy-winning QB was just a footnote in that article/documentary. "Oh yeah we will also touch on the guy who won the most prestigious award in college football"

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Without having watched the documentary, or any other informaiton, I'm assuming they're "ahead" in gymnastics becuase Livy Dunne is fucking hot as balls. Fun fact, Lauren Burke did pretty fucking well at NIL at UT. 

As for baseball, it helps to have a singular guy who pumps money into one sport program that allows you to buy a title. Think Phil Knight, but for LSU baseball. 

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32 minutes ago, Hookem2147 said:

LSU appears to be really good at owning NIL in sports like baseball, women's basketball and gymnastics. 

I love how the Heisman trophy-winning QB was just a footnote in that article/documentary. "Oh yeah we will also touch on the guy who won the most prestigious award in college football"

Their gymnastics and basketball are being carried by Livvy and that sloth looking bitch. 

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11 minutes ago, closetojumping said:

Then there are the few schools that are able to at least pursue the ambitious goal of being able to take on all comers in every sport. Texas*, Stanford*, Oregon**, Ohio State. Those are the ones I know of, and maybe I am forgetting someone. 

This is pretty interesting, have you heard that Stanford is ramping up NIL operations to compete in football? As far as I can remember, they've only really landed a few guys from Mater Dei who were sought after nationally in the last few recruiting cycles and obviously they have to battle probably the toughest admissions hurdles of any P5 program. 

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3 minutes ago, Jimmy Two Times said:

This is pretty interesting, have you heard that Stanford is ramping up NIL operations to compete in football? As far as I can remember, they've only really landed a few guys from Mater Dei who were sought after nationally in the last few recruiting cycles and obviously they have to battle probably the toughest admissions hurdles of any P5 program. 

They don't have an NIL problem in football because of the nature of their allure. Retaining players, funding other sports, allegedly their alumni base has been helpful on those fronts. Hell, the admin tried to kill a bunch of other sports during corona and the alumni base threw a fit and endowed all of those sports into perpetuity to keep them. There's interest among the Stanford base to compete in all sports at a high level, albeit maybe flagging interest in men's football and men's basketball compared to the rest.

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1 hour ago, closetojumping said:

 

I've talked about this when it pops up in other forums like baseball or the other sports one, but I may never have gone into any detail here, so bear with me.

LSU and OU are probably the two best examples of handling limited in NIL in a highly productive manner. Here's what I mean:

Both of these schools came to the realization at some point in the first year of NIL that they were simply not going to be able to compete in NIL against all comers in all sports. They realized this through the lens of football, and soon sorted what the numbers would have to look like everywhere. Very few schools could make the effort to work on NIL against all comers across all sports. More on those later.

So what did they do? They both knew they couldn't avoid football, as their institution and major donors and students cared more about that sport than anything. So for football, they've largely adopted a "target of opportunity" approach and competed where they thought they had a shot of winning whether due to Texas/Georgia/Ohio State/ATM looking elsewhere or because they had a competitive advantage, such as the player being from Louisiana or a legacy or a big fan of cajun food and abject corruption. 

Outside of football, they've chosen to apply significant NIL pressure to the sports in which they are actively competing for national titles and the enthusiasm from the opposition is measured.

OU chose, outside of constant efforts addressed already for football, to focus on gymnastics and softball. Anything else like baseball or golf has to hunt for its own support however that coach can find it. Softball at OU is a machine. They may reel off UCLA basketball from the 60's numbers for the next decade (UT may well do this in volleyball in the same span). They've had national title success in a regular manner in gymnastics too. They're doing what they can to ensure they're as good as anyone in NIL in those two sports.

LSU's work has been more driven by serendipity than anything. Livy Dunne is hotter than Georgia asphalt and was a social media star ahead of NIL. Vuori and several other brands were on her early and she's been the top NIL earner across all sports for years now. That allowed the rest of the gymnastics team to draft off of that success and they're supposedly in good shape across the board there. Marucci being based in BR and run/backed by LSU people allowed baseball to be gifted $1M a year from the jump. Texas NIL has been busting its ass from an NIL perspective in baseball and might be in second nationally, but that is a tough hump to jump each cycle for that sport. There is word that LSU is trying to take the same approach in women's basketball now, but this is a poor institution with poor backers compared to most of their national competition. Gymnastics and baseball are a lot of heads to count and cover for LSU, plus limited football means, making other sport NIL dominance mostly fantasy. 

Many other schools are working with this same approach out of necessity, and it is a slog for most of them. 

There are also many schools that have only nominal offers in NIL to provide athletes in any sport, until an athlete becomes a true star that attracts boosters or corporate. 

There are schools that are by and large just focused on making sure they can compete with anyone in football and/or basketball. Georgia, Alabama, USC, Tennessee, UNC, UK, UH, etc. Those are kind of easy to spot in either sport.

Then there are the few schools that are able to at least pursue the ambitious goal of being able to take on all comers in every sport. Texas*, Stanford*, Oregon**, Ohio State. Those are the ones I know of, and maybe I am forgetting someone. 

Finally, corporate is a big deal when it can be accessed. The post above has a tweet talking about corporate being less than 10% of the NIL nationally and I'll argue that isn't true generically for all programs. Texas is accessing corporate well and that is a growing, important element. Most of LSU's non-football NIL is purely corporate if you count Marucci as such. Anyone with a Heisman candidate is accessing corporate NIL.

*Rowing has like 45 participants. T&F has a shit ton too. Helping with NIL there is basically stipend inflation. T&F gets help in global corporate ways too for the best programs.

**As long as Knight is alive and cares, Oregon has an ATM for NIL. Problem for Oregon will always be that, well, they're grounded in Eugene, Oregon. While you or I may aspire to live somewhere like that, it's just not a big city, bright lights, with beaches and bitches nearby kind of place. 

Great stuff here. Any clue what Notre Dame is doing? 

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The thing that I find most interesting is the balancing act between NIL funds and AD donations. It seems like CDC has navigated that a bit, although I think he is going to be asked to do more until there is a clear cut pay for play collective bargaining at the university's expense. A&M on the other hand, has piled almost a billion dollars into facilities projects and coaching hires, and yet somehow is completely inept on the true NIL side.  If even a tenth of those donations went to NIL, they would be a force. It seems like many AD's are still holding onto the old guard in terms of having donations in their job description, but looking the other way on NIL. 

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Don't know where this goes exactly, but it's relevant to NIL. I bolded some interesting elements:

https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/39394344/future-ncaa-college-athletics-money-private-equity

Spoiler

As college sports faces more change, is private equity money coming in?

Pete Thamel, ESPN
Jan 26, 2024, 02:00 PM ET

There are high-stakes lawsuits and labor relations boards, congressional hearings and an NCAA president's controversial overhaul plan. There's an angry school taking its conference to court over a grant of rights, and that conference preemptively striking against the school.

There's the disruption of name, image and likeness, grumbling over essentially unlimited transfers and million-dollar portal acquisitions. There are Hall of Fame coaches in football and men's basketball sprinting to retirement. There's a yawning gap between the SEC and Big Ten and the rest of the leagues, with those Power 2 commissioners beginning to realize the power of leveraging their ascension above the fray.

There are only two certainties in college sports -- sweeping change is coming, and no one knows what it will look like.

Amid this backdrop, a new market force has emerged as potentially interested in the future of college sports. From email inboxes to Zoom meetings to glad-handing at high-end events, representatives from private equity and other types of outside financial entities have emerged as interested in the chaos of college sports.

"What are you looking for if you are private equity?" asked an industry source. "You are looking for a poorly managed business that nevertheless has a strong market. That's the definition of college athletics."

There's also a search for solutions, which include a "Think Tank" shepherded by search firm executive Len Perna and includes names like billionaire David Blitzer, one of the country's most prolific investors in sports, former MLS president Mark Abbott and a handful of university leaders, including Syracuse chancellor Kent Syverud.

They stress they have no direct tie to any financial arm and are attempting to figure out a solution that includes more than 130 FBS football teams while keeping intact Olympic and women's sports.

"It's been obvious the whole college sports system has been a dead man walking for three years, driven by legal developments," Syverud told ESPN. "What's going to come out of it is the thing that hasn't been clear. The current system can't continue, it's a dead man walking."

The forces of Congress, legal decisions, a suddenly proactive NCAA and billion-dollar television contracts are colliding to shape some type of ambiguous future. Meanwhile, the inefficiencies between the far-flung conferences, the cost of nonrevenue sports and athletic department funding models remain glaring.

Uncertainty is nothing new in college athletics, a billion-dollar enterprise awkwardly tied to an educational model. But to see just how tenuous things are, it's always instructive to follow the money. Private equity officials have found profitable avenues in everything from professional sports to the WWE.

"It's a way of doing business that college athletics has never really engaged in," said a Power Five athletic director familiar with the space. "In the professional world, it's common practice -- for facilities, projects and payments."

So what's happening? There's Gerry Cardinale, founder of Redbird Capital, offering ideas on how to change college sports at the Sports Business Journal's Intercollegiate Athletics forum in December. He pointed out the power of the schools collectively negotiating television contracts, as opposed to having leagues do it. And he's engaging with officials around college athletics.

Former Florida State quarterback Drew Weatherford has been setting up and taking meetings with campus officials around the sport, as he's a partner in Weatherford Capital. There's Otro Capital, co-founded by a former Redbird partner -- former NFL executive Alec Scheiner -- also expressing curiosity about the space.

Another financial firm, Sixth Street Partners, is expected to engage with FSU if it needs a financial infusion in the wake of its attempt to detangle from the ACC's Grant of Rights.

"There's four or five venture capital companies all circling," said another industry source. "These are big-time places that will come in. It means that if these guys are circling, it means we're not maximizing our revenue."

The most intriguing group exploring the future of college sports that's emerged in recent months is Perna's, who works as the chairman and CEO of the search firm TurnkeyZRG. He acknowledges the complications for holistic solutions, as keeping some semblance of the college model is key.

When it's mentioned this idea could include football breaking away from the NCAA, he counters that it already has in many ways. (The NCAA gets virtually no revenue from football and doesn't control its postseason, unlike basketball.)

"We're studying ways to unlock more value from and for college football for the betterment of all," Perna said in a statement to ESPN. "Centralizing FBS football scheduling, promotion and commercial rights would be better for football student-athletes, because it would enable them to collectively bargain and be rewarded for their value, without limiting their choices or needing to be 'employees.'"

Added Syverud: "There's more than 100 universities with fine football teams and histories, and the Hunger Games is going to hurt a majority of them very seriously, and whole states and regions. Unless we come up with a decision that's fair to marquee programs and enables others to participate and [improve]."

The group has engaged leaders around the sport in conversations over the past few months. And while there's no formal link to a specific financial firm, one of the members is Blitzer, who is an executive at Blackstone and is one of the country's best-known investors in professional sports, including a role as managing partner in the Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Devils, the owner of Real Salt Lake of the MLS and a limited partner in the MLB's Guardians and NFL's Commanders.

Blitzer's role is one mostly of intellectual curiosity at this point, as this is the earliest days of what's only a potential project. Right now, there are just discussions with a crew of other high-profile names across the sports spectrum. (Perna declined to give all the names.)

"All forms of investment capital, including private equity, can help grow an enterprise that's properly structured," Perna told ESPN. "College sports isn't properly structured legally, politically, commercially, etc. PE alone can't fix the core structural problems, but can play a role once they're solved. The difference between our group and other groups is that we're focusing first and foremost on how to correct the big, daunting, holistic structural issues in college sports."

Perna has engaged with the NCAA about this idea, but it's not sanctioned or specifically supported.

Perna also noted the geographic inefficiencies of the current conference construct.

"It would also be better for other student-athletes in other sports, because they need not be flying all over the United States due to conference affiliations driven by one-game-a-week football," Perna's statement said. "The current rubric isn't academically tenable, nor affordable, nor even logical. It's worth the time to explore what alternative models could work better for student-athletes, schools, media partners, fans, etc."

With the complications of college football both sticking with or detaching from the current structure, the Think Tank plan is very much in the thinking phase. There remain plenty of headwinds to any change that would attempt to turn the college athletics battleship. Especially those that need congressional help.

When asked specifically about private equity being part of college sports, Syverud told ESPN: "I don't have a philosophical objection to almost anyone who wants to be part of the solution or can be a part of the solution. That includes legislators, that includes NIL boosters, private equity and it includes college presidents and athletic directors.

"I don't look at private equity as perfect or evil. I think we have to look at all the different pieces of the problem. There's a significant financial piece to this."

The search for answers is part of an overall environment where the issues are much easier to point out than the solutions.

"The next six months are going to be fascinating to watch unfold," said Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione to ESPN, speaking generally about the state of college athletics. "The next half of the year, a path is going to start forming. Whether it gets support or is possible, plausible or legal, we don't know.

"Candidly, something needs to start forming. There's so many things happening simultaneously, there's never been a time like this in college athletics. Ever."

Added Syverud: "Let's come up with the best we can and see what happens. Otherwise the dead man walking is going to produce something crazy."

 

Edited by MuellerHorn
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Texas EDGE Colin Simmons has inked his first NIL deal, signing with Vanguard Volkswagen đź‘€

The Five-Star Plus+ recruit and No. 11 prospect in the 2024 class is now enrolled in classes. He has a $727K On3 NIL Valuation

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https://www.on3.com/nil/news/colin-simmons-inks-nil-deal-vanguard-volkswagen-texas-longhorns-football/

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12 minutes ago, closetojumping said:

 

Posted this elsewhere but saying it here:

Some of us just sorted a whole bunch of NIL stuff for the 2024 cycle for Texas football on behalf of everyone else. Texas roster management is elite in CFB at this point. Everyone should sleep easy about transfers and people leaving.  Other schools, almost all of them, cannot say what I just said.

Praise be to Sarkisian, Billy Glasscock, Brandon Harris, Texas BMDs, CDC, the TOF and some random, ragtag rapscallions who had the audacity to say “fuck it, this is happening and we are doing this motherfucking thing and damn the consequences”, and Bobby Burton.  

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Thank you to you and everyone else who I think is involved with TOF. @RGBIII@SydneyCarton@immamacand whoever else is involved on this board in the heavy lifting. The unsung heroes.

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28 minutes ago, closetojumping said:

 

Posted this elsewhere but saying it here:

Some of us just sorted a whole bunch of NIL stuff for the 2024 cycle for Texas football on behalf of everyone else. Texas roster management is elite in CFB at this point. Everyone should sleep easy about transfers and people leaving.  Other schools, almost all of them, cannot say what I just said.

Praise be to Sarkisian, Billy Glasscock, Brandon Harris, Texas BMDs, CDC, the TOF and some random, ragtag rapscallions who had the audacity to say “fuck it, this is happening and we are doing this motherfucking thing and damn the consequences”, and Bobby Burton.  

Quote

 

14 minutes ago, BornAndRaised said:

Thank you to you and everyone else who I think is involved with TOF. @RGBIII@SydneyCarton@immamacand whoever else is involved on this board in the heavy lifting. The unsung heroes.

Agreed! Thank you to everyone who is involved with Texas NIL on this board. The collective “you” have built a force to be reckoned with.

@closetojumping, I know the parties listed above have discussed some of the process in bits and pieces on the board, but I’d (and I’m sure many others would be interested and appreciative) love to read a rundown of the history and the process flow of y’all’s Texas NIL efforts in more depth. I know y’all cant disclose everything, but any information would be valued. 

Edited by MuellerHorn
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1 hour ago, closetojumping said:

 

Posted this elsewhere but saying it here:

Some of us just sorted a whole bunch of NIL stuff for the 2024 cycle for Texas football on behalf of everyone else. Texas roster management is elite in CFB at this point. Everyone should sleep easy about transfers and people leaving.  Other schools, almost all of them, cannot say what I just said.

Praise be to Sarkisian, Billy Glasscock, Brandon Harris, Texas BMDs, Kenny Baker, CDC, the TOF and some random, ragtag rapscallions who had the audacity to say “fuck it, this is happening and we are doing this motherfucking thing and damn the consequences”, and Bobby Burton.  

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fixed

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