Let’s start here: These are dark days for the NCAA, obviously. The pandemic has dealt college athletics a potentially lethal blow. Cutbacks are everywhere, some extreme. Non-revenue sports are on life support at many schools. A lot of student athletes aren’t going to have teams to play for when they do return to campus. The future of everything is murky. We aren’t even sure if we’ll have a college football season in 2020.
Now let’s factor in a group of short-sighted, do-gooder politicians. These are folks who don’t understand what NCAA sports are supposed to be about. They just hear about fat contracts for football and basketball coaches and huge money being brought in and think they can make the world better for themselves (in terms of getting re-elected) and for the ‘poor, exploited college athletes’ who ‘should be sharing in the wealth’ — wealth that is not coincidentally being wiped out by the pandemic.
These do-gooders have apparently scored a victory over the hamstrung organization, with the NCAA about to capitulate and agree to let college athletes profit from the use of the “Name, Image or Likeness.” It’s “hooray for free enterprise” and those “poor, exploited college athletes.”
The politicians may mean well, but they obviously don’t understand where the ‘NIL’ can and will lead – to unfettered and massive corruption that could ruin collegiate sports.
Perhaps we shouldn’t expect them to understand. But what they should know is this: College sports should be for student athletes who want to earn a college degree while competing in their sport of choice. Pro sports should be for those who are good enough and want to earn a paycheck — before or after college.
One person who does seem to understand all this? NBA Commissioner Adam Silver.
Silver has come to realize that the pro leagues should be the place where kids get paid to play. And he’s figured out how to compete with leagues and franchises overseas that had already started luring top high school basketball prospects across the pond with nice paydays and no final exams to worry about.
So after doing a 180-degree turnaround on the NBA’s age-limit and the resulting “one and done” process, Silver has begun taking his league in a new and corrected direction – away from a dependence on college basketball and towards the advancement of an NBA minor league developmental process.
The NBA G-League is now signing high school prospects, and by giving high school prospects a choice – turn pro or go to college – Silver is joining baseball and hockey as pro leagues that are doing what’s actually best for the “poor exploited athletes,” AND all of college sports.
Hooray for Adam Silver. What his league is doing could help save college sports from the ruination of “NIL.”
Roger Goodell, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to get this at all.
The NFL could be doing the exact same thing. They’ve had two potential developmental leagues start up – without their help – in the past two seasons and give it the old college try before crashing and burning (to be fair, the XFL was doing okay before COVID-19 shuttered the league. Who knows what might have been?)
Both the Alliance of American Football and/or the XFL could have become what the G-League is the for NBA – a place for highly touted high school prospects to turn pro – and get trained by NFL coaches – instead of going to college, especially if they weren’t interested in being a student and trying to earn a college degree.
If Goodell had the same amount of forethought as Silver, the NFL would already have its own developmental league and be bringing along its own young prospects while not being dependent on college football. We hear constant reminders of how the college game – with its less traditional offensive systems – isn’t developing pro-style quarterbacks anymore. Obviously if the NFL had a developmental league, they could change that. And we know that better quarterback play means a better NFL product.
An NFL minor league would benefit everyone. There are more than enough talented high school football players to stock an NFL developmental/minor league AND all of college football. The elite prospects – those more advanced and closer to being pro-ready (and coincidentally, more ready to earn sponsorship endorsement dollars) could sign and play in the minors while the rest went to college to develop as players and people. The AAF and/or the XFL could have done that, while providing a more watchable alternative to what both fledgling leagues put on the field in their most recent seasons.
If both the NFL and NBA had developmental leagues, the need for the “NIL” legislation would pretty much vanish. College sports could be for college students once again, and those who want or need to get paid out of high school could do just that.
And a level playing field could be restored across college sports.
Adam Silver sees the big picture. Roger Goodell apparently doesn’t.
Listen to Mark Knudson on Monday’s at 12:30 with Brady Hull on AM 1310 KFKA and on Saturday mornings on “Klahr and Kompany” on AM 1600 ESPN Denver.
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