Pollard's Latest on Athlete Compensation

One big miss in this graphic is the money JP's going to spend on search firm for a new MBB coach. Instead of just hearing -- "Make a play!" we just might a get a coach. Talk about value for our players!
 
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They do however, get free tuition, room and board, clothes, shoes, fitness training, etc, and a stipend. And aren't they going to able to start making money off of their name soon? What is that all worth a year? Probably not $500,000. But it's probably a lot more than I ever made working through college at three different part time jobs. I don't feel sorry for athletes. Give up the free ride and go get a job if you want to make money.

And we have to be realistic - a vast majority of scholarship athletes are a net financial negative to the university. I always find it funny when athletes for sports that lose money are in on this NIL stuff. No - the university spends tens of thousands a year and gives you a platform to provide you with some market value. In return the university gets far less revenue than they spend on you being there.
 
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I said it earlier, but the Pollard tweet seems more about how expensive it is to run an athletic program. I just don't see how it is at all related to player compensation. If it is, then I think there will be an even greater cost to running the athletic department.

So I see it as a tweet that is encouraging all of us to donate more to the Cyclone Club.
 
I said it earlier, but the Pollard tweet seems more about how expensive it is to run an athletic program. I just don't see how it is at all related to player compensation. If it is, then I think there will be an even greater cost to running the athletic department.

So I see it as a tweet that is encouraging all of us to donate more to the Cyclone Club.

The graphic? Yes. The accompanying tweet? No.
 
The graphic? Yes. The accompanying tweet? No.
Maybe I am missing something, so I apologize, but I read nothing in the tweet that says he does not want to pay athletes. It just says the department is making a huge commitment to the athletes. I suppose folks will read into the comments what they want.
 
I had a boss at a former job try to tell me that work travel was part of my overall compensation.

Like I should have been thankful to drive to Columbus Ohio and sit in the Holiday Inn Conference center for 3 days...

What a joke.

I mean, how can you monetize the immense value of a plane ride to Lubbock, Texas on a Thursday night to play on ESPN+.
 
Maybe I am missing something, so I apologize, but I read nothing in the tweet that says he does not want to pay athletes. It just says the department is making a huge commitment to the athletes. I suppose folks will read into the comments what they want.

JP is a smart guy. He's talking about the "value of a scholarship" as a person who has been very much against NIL and knows it's in the public eye right now. If he wanted to make this about the cost of running an athletic department, he wouldn't be talking "value". He knows better.
 
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Might as well put coaching/instruction as part of that investment as well. That would really increase that number.

That's what I was thinking.

Campbell + assistant salary pool: $8.5M
Scholarship players on roster: 85

"Exclusive Access to The Process: $100,000 per year, $500,000 over 5 years"
 
I am very pro Jamie Pollard and appreciate everything he's done to enhance Iowa State Athletics. But he continues to completely misfire on the athlete compensation debate. I know in the past he's been very vocally against athlete compensation. Here's his latest on Twitter claiming an Iowa State scholarship is somehow worth $500,000:

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You have to be kidding me with this graphic. Counting "sports medicine" and "travel to and from games" as includable in the value of a scholarship? So a player blows out his knee playing football and we are treating the cost of their surgery and rehab as "value"? A Tuesday night plane trip to and from Morgantown is "value"?

If he's trying to say each athlete costs the school $500,000 over the course of their career then maybe he's on to something, but trying to equate that to the "value of a scholarship" is silly.
Thank you for sharing this!
 
I’m against paying athletes because I think they are “paid” by getting free education. But, that would be maybe 50-75k at the high end. JP just overinflated the amount by so much that it was a complete fail on his part.
What about the schools who "profit" off of their abilities? Or Nike who profits off of their likeness through jersey sales?

Paying college athletes is a fascinating topic and I love talking about it. Jamie isn't wrong at all in his graphic, if anything, he's underselling the monetary value of most football athlete's scholarships. Athlete's also get many perks a regular student on scholarship would not.

However, I also think it would be interesting to flip this graphic around on Jamie and ask, "Looking at revenue of a normal, non-covid, academic year, what is each athletes worth to Iowa State?" Maybe I'm going about this wrong, but if I look at revenue from 2019, it was $95,411,884. Take that, divide it by total athletes (450). $212,026 per athlete, per year. Using 5 years from his model, that's $1,060,132 revenue per athlete over 5 years. This is all athletes, revenue and non revenue sports.

What does this all mean. No clue, but I thought it was interesting.

EDIT: Updated athlete number from 570 down to 450 for accuracy.
 
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There may be a slight argument to that, although I still don't buy it. I also think it's ironic this little graphic is completely devoid of any income related figures. Why do these kids have to travel halfway across the country to play? Oh yah, because conference alignment valued TV viewership over everything else. Don't create conferences that make zero geographical sense then try to claim the cost of flying these kids all over is "value" added.
I'm sure they would have liked to keep teams like Nebraska and Missouri in the Big 12 but that wasn't the decision of the schools that remained in the Big 12. I suppose they could have added Northern Illinois and Memphis but there was enough screaming when they added TCU and gave them a "promotion" to P5 status.
 
I fear for the day when ISU has to compete against teams with wealthier boosters and in big metros where they can get access to more funding for players' salaries and what not. This is all kind of a bummer for me.

The smarter cyclone fans I know are not too thrilled with this. Would lead to the epitome of an uneven playing field (and for those keeping score it already is an uneven playing field, this will make it worse).
Donations from ISU alum/fans lag behind the entire conference, as well as many teams from other conferences. Anything that puts us further behind is scary. If we don’t see an increase in donations this year, will we ever? The 6K current donors (and tix) can only carry so much, before they are tapped.
 
There are only about 100 scholarship players at ISU that create revenue above their cost of their scholarship. When we agree to pay, will those 100 after a few years ask that it get divided by sport, because shouldn’t they earn what they bring in?
 
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There appears to be another league trying to get organized, to take on the NCAA.

The Overtime Elite league proposes that providing a salary and a focus toward a pro career might be more appealing than college basketball’s biggest programs.