The ink wasn’t dry on the House v. NCAA settlement decision, which now allows colleges to share up to $20.5 million of the athletic department’s revenue with student athletes, and we already knew things had changed.
The divide between the “haves” of college athletics – the Big Ten, SEC, Big 12, ACC and Notre Dame – and the “have-nots” – the Group of 5 or mid-majors – in the FBS was only about to grow greater. But maybe what many didn’t see coming was the distance being put in place between the “haves.”
If we learned nothing from the crumbling of the once-powerful Pac-12, we should have found that the “haves” aren’t necessarily created equally. Just ask Oregon State and Washington State.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that the most outspoken of college coaches, Deion Sanders, was the first to sound the alarm during the recent Big 12 Football Media Days. The Colorado football coach suggested that it’s time to institute a salary cap for college programs that would be similar to the NFL’s salary cap, in hopes of leveling the playing field.
Huh?
This doesn’t sound right coming from the always flashy, pro-paying-players Sanders. But Sanders understands what’s at stake for a program like his when it comes to battling schools like Ohio State, Texas, Georgia and Notre Dame for high school recruits and transfer portal players.
Not even the smooth-talking, transfer portal pied piper will stand a chance against the Big Boys and their deep-pocketed supporters because Colorado boosters ain’t rolling like that. It has Sanders dreaming of ways to level the playing field.
“I wish there was a cap,” Sanders said during the Big 12 Media Days. “Like, the top-of-the-line player makes this and if you’re not that type of guy, you know you’re not going to make that. That’s what the NFL does. The problem is, you’ve got a guy that’s not that darn good, but he could go to another school and they give him another half a million dollars. You can’t compete with that. It don’t make sense.
“You talk about equality… all you have to do is look at the playoffs and see what those teams spent, and you understand darn near why they’re in the playoffs. It’s kind of hard to compete with somebody who’s giving $25, $30 million to a darn freshman class. It’s crazy.”
It all sounds crazy to many of us to put millions of dollars into the hands of college student-athletes and then expect them to be focused enough not to forget the student part. But that’s where we are.
Football and basketball players at the power conference levels all get something from the revenue sharing piece, and others make even more from name, image and likeness (NIL) deals. Only the elite will get around that maximum barrier.
In this state alone, we know programs like Texas and Texas A&M and their deep-pocket donors will find ways to exceed the established $20.5 million annual revenue sharing threshold. This money will likely be funneled through the NIL deals, which schools can now actively participate in overseeing for their athletes.
It’s being reported that Texas Tech, a fringe Top 25 football program, will pay out $28 million this year to its football players. How does the University of Houston, TCU or even Baylor compete with that?
Coaches see the divide coming, and in this pressure-to-win-now coaching environment, they are worried about their futures. Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin, who has job-hopped to the highest bidder while accomplishing very little, joined Sanders’ call for a cap during the SEC Football Media Days.
Hell, even Donald Trump is chiming in, threatening to sign one of his executive orders to put a cap on all the NIL money he only sees young Black student-athletes making.
But it’s interesting that coaches like Sanders, who makes $10 million per year to coach college football, aren’t demanding a call on coaches’ salaries as a method to level the playing field. It sounds a little like crying wolf.
It’s also funny Sanders didn’t have this epiphany last year when he star two-way player, Travis Hunter, was living in luxury mansion with his then-girlfriend in Boulder, Colorado and his quarterback son, Shedeur Sanders, was driving a Rolls Royce around campus and making so much NIL money that he actually took a pay cut this year to play for the Cleveland Browns as a fifth-round NFL draft pick.
“We’re not complaining, because all these coaches up here can coach their butts off and given the right opportunity with the right players and to play here and there, you’ll be there,” Sanders said. “But what’s going on right now don’t make sense. We want to say stuff, but we’re trying to be professional.
“But you’re going to see the same teams darn near at the end, and with somebody who sneaks up in there, the team that pays the most is going to be there in the end.”
