parentswerebears said:
That's the thing. It kind of doesn't matter who is coming in. They arenr likely to be four year guys who you can watch develop and get to know as faces of the program. Gone are the days of Jorge and others like him. Now it truly is semi-pro and the spirit of college hoops is dying. It wasn't as fun watching the tournament this year, knowing that each of the teams has a price tag attached to it.
The issue isn't NIL or transfers. This happened decades ago when schools realized they could make a lot of money not just through ticket sales to its students and alums, but through TV money, merchandising and generally to marketing to people who have nothing to do with their university community. When you saw bowl games stop trying to set up games that put together the best matchup, opting instead to try and determine who would sell the most tickets or be the biggest draw, to the extent that they needed to make a rule that you had to have a winning record because otherwise Notre Dame was going to get invited every year no matter how bad they were, that was a wake up call no one heeded.
The issue was that as long as the universities could enforce unfair labor practices and heavily penalize players for transferring and not give them any share of the economic spoils, you could continue to pretend like this was "our team" made up of "our students" with "school spirit" and "tradition", like this was your high school where you just went out to root for your classmates. Except it wasn't that. Players didn't play for their school. They stayed because they were enslaved by a market that was artificially rigged to give them no other choice. Given no other choice, sure, many of them chose school ties because it was their only choice. Given a free market, most wouldn't have done that. College sports have been a business for a long time and it is not that "kids today" are different. Had they had NIL 30 years ago, the same exact things would have happened. The players are in this for themselves. To get the best deal for themselves. To get the best training for themselves. And in a world where the universities are all in it for themselves, there is no reason why players should treat this as anything else but a business relationship. We'd all do the same thing in our job, no matter how much we like our employer, believe in the work, are loyal, if someone else offered a substantially better deal, we'd go. Players shouldn't sacrifice so we can keep up the facade that this is still all about school spirit.
To be clear, I feel the same way that you do. I was able to pretend for a long time that college sports was something it wasn't, and with essentially unlimited transfers and NIL and annual bidding for players, I can't remotely keep up that fantasy. I seriously believe that at this point it is ridiculous not to acknowledge that these are just professional teams sponsored by universities, and the hoops that we go through to keep pretending they aren't in the most thinly veiled ways are ridiculous at this point. NIL is not allowed to be pay for play, but we all know it is pay for play. Guys are required to go to class, but we all know schools are passing them with no effort. Players are only supposed to practice certain times of the year, but if they go out and practice with only the strength and conditioning coach present, they can have full blown practices running the entire play book. It's all bullshyte
Few care if they get paid. Few care if they go to class or get degrees. Stop the pretense. I think it is time schools decide who they want to be. If they want to be in the full blown, big TV contract, national college football league where it is all about money, make it so. Let them sponsor professional teams, pay the players, don't give them scholarships (unless the school wants to and the player actually wants to go to class), and let them practice 5 days a week 52 weeks a year. Why keep up the charade? And if the school DOESN'T want to participate in that, go back to the old system. Sell tickets. Stream games online with low budget broadcasts and local advertisers. Treat it as a nonprofit. Players go back to getting scholarships and no pay and strict rules about alumni interference. Just pick one or the other. Let sports be a school function for the students where we want to win but at the end of the day we support the team because they are our students. Or let it be a professional sports league. There is room for both. I don't need to pretend like Yankees players love the Yankees, love New York, or are bettering themselves in any way other than to make them better baseball players, or pretend that I give a damn about them other than what they do on the field and I don't need to pretend they care about me other than the dollars I spend on their team. I shouldn't have to (and can't) pretend that players paid, directly or indirectly, though my university care about my university and I shouldn't have to pretend I care about what they do off the field/court.
Given that Division I football and basketball are pro leagues now, and given how much the product absolutely sucks compared to the NFL and NBA, I don't really see the value in them in the same way I don't waste my time with minor league baseball. And that is kind of the point of these stupid rules. They want to keep up the fantasy for you because they know the second you realize this isn't really about your school and that it really is just minor league baseball, you'll stop watching.
When I realized that I got a lot more enjoyment watching my 10 year old play at a competitive level - watching them work hard in practice, improve their games, care about each other as teammates, compete and win or lose with spirit and sportsmanship, it became much harder to pretend that today's college sports is anything like that. Its a business. It's a business with a bad product wrapped in nostalgia in an attempt to stop you from noticing the product went rancid a long time ago. Personally, my hope is that NIL hastens the point where enough people realize this so that we can go back to a time where both revenues and spending come crashing down to earth (and we can stop pretending like we actually make big bucks doing this) and we stop the dysfunctional system and go back to it actually being school sports again.
It is time to acknowledge this is a professional sports product and support it or don't on that basis.
