Truths the average person doesn’t want to hear:
1. Basketball and football players are not student-athletes. Lowered admission standards, fake classes at UNC, useless majors, terrible graduation rates, increased practice hours, AD and coach pay skyrocketing from 50 years ago, mega TV deals, and conference realignment making athletes miss more class now than ever says otherwise. Scummy coaches getting hired who are the exact opposite of good character shows this as well. There’s a reason why transfer rules until recently were different for FB and BB vs other sports.
2. P5 ADs and coaches have dragged their heels on NIL/paying players for obvious reasons: $$$ and avoiding change! No P5 AD wants to deal with headaches like a pay cut from the average pay of over $800k today, staff laid off, and figuring out how to handle the Title XI rules. Ugly, messy, confusing, stressful. They’re resisting like any industry’s old timers who like the system the way it is set up. Doesn’t make them bad people.
3. A big reason a lot of Olympic sports still exist in D1 today is tradition, Title XI, conference minimum sport requirements, and pressure on ADs to keep things the same. A lot of programs could run on a shoestring budget, but don’t because of the facility/coach pay arms race and because ADs need to justify their job. Much different than D3 where sports bring in students who would otherwise go to ISU or Iowa.
4. Title IX has not made athlete benefits equal. It has helped, but it’s obvious where ADs focus their attention and money.
5. Schools can build NIL value for players, but no one can deny top P5 FB and BB players are top 0.1% in athletic talent among peers and that comes with a huge value premium. The stars will bring in tons of money, but there are going to be plenty of lower-end schools which will have a donor willing to chip in $20k per BB player.