calumnus said:
BearSD said:
calumnus said:
BearBoarBlarney said:
I'm interested to see how NIL impacts the Southeastern Conference. Time was that those "bag men" really helped sway the recruiting decisions in favor of the SEC powers, but now everyone's got bags -- and lots of other places can afford big bags.
The House Settlement changes the dynamics. The SEC is now able to spend a percentage of their huge media earnings on NIL. This is where the haves will be separated from the have nots.
The dynamics have been changed to loosen the SEC's monopoly at the top of college football. They haven't even had a team in the final the last two years after dominating the playoff for eight years before that.
Big Ten teams also have tons of TV money, and the separation between the Big Ten and SEC on the one hand and everyone else on the other isn't limited to football. Look at the distribution of teams in the men's and women's NCAA basketball tournaments this year. That kind of distribution is going to happen going forward in any sport in which Big Ten and SEC members choose to invest.
You are pointing to the effects of the LAST, brief era of NIL whereby boosters could pay NIL but the schools could not pay NIL out of their media earnings. This was a change from when the SEC boosters paid "NIL" illegally and it was an equalizer, with Cal getting two top 20 transfer classes in a row, for example. It (and this year) was our brief window to elevate our program.
What we saw in the House settlement is the P5 schools can now use a percentage of their media earnings for NIL. We have not seen the effects yet, but the huge media earnings of the SEC and the B1G are now going to used to get the best players. It is coming. Right now Cal is at the bottom of P5 media earnings, so it will be tough for our boosters to make up the difference.
The House settlement has a cap on University supplied NIL. The SEC and B1G do have a tremendous advantage given their media revenues. Many donors will give to the secondary source of NIL via collectives. They get enough from media revenues etc that they will not need as much donor support just to handle all the other things.
Cal will still be relying extensively on donor support for the many programs they currently field. Cal will provide the full cap for hoops via the AD. But the secondary NIL while ok is not likely to be in the ballpark with the blueblood programs and many of the SEC and B1G programs.
I think they can still field a competitive team just not likely a top 20 type team unless everything breaks just right. The NIL money they do have has to be used very wisely. Even in this current environment Cal can and should be a program that plays in the NCAA tournament often. And play before much larger home crowds. The home slate for hoops next season will feature Duke, UNC, Notre Dame, Louisville, Clemson, GaTech, Stanford and an OOC game vs USC.
