I recently had ISU Athletics Director Jamie Pollard on my podcast and he was super Doomsday about the state of athletics given the NIL. I was wondering how people felt about his takes, and if they think it's as bad as he says it is. I think this is the first permanent and public discussion he has had about it, so I'm hoping to get some conversation going about it.
Jamie Pollard preaches "Doomsday" about College Athletics and the NIL
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I recently had ISU Athletics Director Jamie Pollard on my podcast and he was super Doomsday about the state of athletics given the NIL. I was wondering how people felt about his takes, and if they think it's as bad as he says it is. I think this is the first permanent and public discussion he has had about it, so I'm hoping to get some conversation going about it.
Just trying my best!
Without listening yet, he’s probably not wrong.
Didn’t know about Virginia Tech increasing student fees to pay student athletes. At what point will students become very bitter about paying a college player $1 million, Pollard asks. Good question.
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Pollard does a good job of laying out how the current landscape came to be. I will point out that when he talks about revenue sharing and Iowa State not having $20 million, he says "But if we don't pay it, someone else will" likening it to the wild west.
But that's not any different than a small business not being able to afford to pay their employees as well as their bigger competitors can. You can call it the wild west, I suppose, but that's just the way the world works. There's no artificial limit, making sure that Principal can't offer better pay than Farm Bureau can.
But that's not any different than a small business not being able to afford to pay their employees as well as their bigger competitors can. You can call it the wild west, I suppose, but that's just the way the world works. There's no artificial limit, making sure that Principal can't offer better pay than Farm Bureau can.
This is the epitome of an apples to oranges comparison.
Curious why you think it’s drastically different?
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No it isn't. That's what the NCAA desperately wants people to believe, that they're somehow special. It's part of their decades long con job. But it's exactly the comparison that the courts have made when ruling against them.
"Nowhere else in America can businesses get away with agreeing not to pay their workers a fair market rate on the theory that their product is defined by not paying their workers a fair market rate. And under ordinary principles of antitrust law, it is not evident why college sports should be any different."
That's from the Alston case decision that was decided 9-0 by the supreme Court. You and the NCAA may not think it's apples and oranges to compare them against other businesses, but the court system would absolutely disagree with that.
That sucks!!!
Student fees should not go to athletes. Players should get paid from revenue they generate from the sports. If the sports are not generating the revenue then the payments should decrease.
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His logic is also flawed when he talks about how someone can't demand a huge amount of money for their first job. Someone can absolutely do that if they want. Period. And if there's a company that thinks they're worth that amount of money, there's nothing stopping them completing that transaction. That is 100% legal, and there's no credible argument that it shouldn't be.
Then he laments how that person can bail on their contract and go work for a competitor.
These players are NOT under contract with the schools. That's not by law, either. That's by the NCAA's OWN directive. There's no legal reason why Iowa State couldn't offer Rocco Becht a contract to play football for the next 4 years, and include all kinds of binding language to keep him from going to Kansas State. The NCAA doesn't want schools to do it though. Jamie can lay that particular gripe right at his own feet.
And in the absence of a contract, then there's nothing being broken if someone decides they want to go somewhere else. At-will employment and all that.
The NCAA absolutely has the power to offer enforceable contracts to athletes. They just don't want to.
Then he laments how that person can bail on their contract and go work for a competitor.
These players are NOT under contract with the schools. That's not by law, either. That's by the NCAA's OWN directive. There's no legal reason why Iowa State couldn't offer Rocco Becht a contract to play football for the next 4 years, and include all kinds of binding language to keep him from going to Kansas State. The NCAA doesn't want schools to do it though. Jamie can lay that particular gripe right at his own feet.
And in the absence of a contract, then there's nothing being broken if someone decides they want to go somewhere else. At-will employment and all that.
The NCAA absolutely has the power to offer enforceable contracts to athletes. They just don't want to.
F that. The cost of a college education was already growing at an unsustainable rate. Now you are asking dirt broke 21 year old kids to take out even bigger loans just so the 3rd string wide receiver can buy a beamer? Yeah, hard pass.
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I think the problem is that it isn't based off of a fair market rate, as the payments are wildly unregulated. I don't think Jamie would want to not pay the students, just not the exorbitant amount that they are getting paid and without a reasonable limit to what they can get paid. I think that this competitive nature doesn't exist nearly as hard as it does in business, so the business comparisons might be seen as unfair. I haven't heard this perspective so I am very interested to see what the opposing side thinks.
It is apples to oranges because in business if someone can't afford to pay for good talent, that business can go out of business or merge/purchased by another business.
Sports can't operate like that in purest sense because the whole concept is based off teams playing each other. Who do you play if only a few teams can afford to pay?
So it sounds like we will be fully funded for 2 years based on our piggy bank? If so, that's a pretty nice cushion to have while all this crap (hopefully) gets figured out.
I didn't hear a single thing he said that I would consider exaggerated.
I didn't hear a single thing he said that I would consider exaggerated.
This is true, but having a piggy bank while every other school crashes and burns is not great either. He mentioned that Arizona is 100 million dollars in debt, so I can't imagine a lot of schools aren't against just taking it and crashing the ship together.
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It's absolutely a fair market rate. Texas A&M boosters are very clearly willing to put up a whole lot of money to bring in talented players. If Iowa State won't/can't match, that's not A&M's problem. That's just capitalism.
It is all up to the SEC and Big 10 to save the NCAA or be the sole entities to destroy it.
If you get congress to pass an anti trust bill for the NCAA there is a perfectly reasonable solution. Salary cap for the schools. If you pay someone $2M to transfer you also have to pay 25% of that to their old school and that total amount counts against your cap.
External endorsement deals are unlimited, but to maintain NCAA eligibility, those deals have be reasonable.
If the NFL and NBA can have guardrails on stuff like this, there is nothing stopping the NCAA to do the same. Just need congress to pass the right laws and have reasonable rules that would hold up in the courts.
But this would limit the advantages the Big 10 and SEC could have so they will probably ruin it.
Tell me why the 49ers owner can't just offer Brock Purdy a $55 million a year dollar endorsement deal and then a $5M NFL contract to circumvent the salary cap?
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Why doesn't that apply to schools? Don't schools drop sports all of the time? The Ivy League doesn't do athletic scholarships. They've chosen not to play that game, and yet they field teams.
