Sorry, wrong board

Agreed, I stopped donating in 2020 and never will again. If college sports is just "the players/coach we paid for are better than the players/coach you paid for because we have the most money, haha" then there's no point in caring. I will watch our football games on TV. Thats about it.

The reality of the NIL era is that the business model has drastically changed and the sooner athletic departments change, the better off they will be.

Prior to NIL, major athletic departments were $150-200m revenue entities that paid almost nothing for some of its most valuable employees (athletes). You convinced athletes to come to your school by hiring expensive coaches, building the Taj Mahal of athletic facilities, and provide tons of staffers for white glove service to wipe everyone's ass.

Enter NIL and now players can indirectly receive compensation and pretty soon, universities will be able to pay players directly. What % of our AD budget should there be? If you look at major sports leagues (nfl, nhl, nba, mlb), player compensation is ~50% of revenue in almost all leagues. There could certainly be legitimate structural reasons college ADs shouldn't be at that %, but it's probably in the same ballpark.

If we assume A&M ultimately transforms its business model to pay athletes 50% of revenue, we're talking about >$100m annually which means that bucket of cash needs to come from somewhere. The very unofficial estimates I've seen have A&M's (and similar sized collectives) spending $20m annually.

We need to stop the mindless spending to upgrade already nice facilities and pay thousands of staffers. That isn't to say facilities and staffers aren't important, but do you think a recruit would rather earn $500k annually to play in decent facilities or $200k annually to play in an exceptional facility.

Olsen may need some upgrades, but it doesn't need an $80m remodel. Our football facilities are exceptional but would the $200m we just spent upgrading them be better spent on NIL?

Buy players, not coaches

well_endowed_ag said:

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Agreed, I stopped donating in 2020 and never will again. If college sports is just "the players/coach we paid for are better than the players/coach you paid for because we have the most money, haha" then there's no point in caring. I will watch our football games on TV. Thats about it.

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I stopped donating 25 years ago. No regrets. Not one.

TexasAggie81 said:

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well_endowed_ag said:

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Agreed, I stopped donating in 2020 and never will again. If college sports is just "the players/coach we paid for are better than the players/coach you paid for because we have the most money, haha" then there's no point in caring. I will watch our football games on TV. Thats about it.

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I stopped donating 25 years ago. No regrets. Not one.

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Well I was 10 years old 25 years ago, so I wasn't donating then either.

Quote:

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Prior to NIL, major athletic departments were $150-200m revenue entities that paid almost nothing for some of its most valuable employees (athletes).

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A quarter million dollars and a first class education seems like a good deal to me.

It was still significantly below market compensation

B-1 83 said:

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Quote:

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Prior to NIL, major athletic departments were $150-200m revenue entities that paid almost nothing for some of its most valuable employees (athletes).

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A quarter million dollars and a first class education seems like a good deal to me.

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It's still a good deal for a lot of athletes. It's a terrible deal for others.