Grambling volleyball

Article says transfer portal.

The article says the AD is cool with cutting an entire team of college athletes to recruit their replacements via the transfer portal.

Essentially, the coach and athletic department just said “F—- those players! They suck and we’ll get better ones in the portal!”

As a coach, that’d be a major red flag for potential student athletes in any sport. If the school allows this with a non-revenue producing sport like volleyball and considers it a simple business decision to improve the competitiveness of the team, what are they willing to do in money sports like basketball and football?

We don't have a ton of talent and love having schools come and recruit... that being said there is a school within 100 miles that doesn't bother anymore after what they have done to at least a dozen of our athletes.
1. Offered and pulled scholarships in recruiting process
2. pulled scholarships after signing day
3. pulled scholarships at semester time with no justification.
4. Had campus security called on a recruit... funny story 5 years in the rearview mirror.

In the mid-2000's we had a RB walk-on at an NAIA school. By his sophomore year, he'd earned a scholarship and had a stand out spring game. The kid rushed for 100+ yards, caught several balls out of the backfield and scored a few times. The NAIA HC signed a pair of JUCO RBs a few weeks later and dumped the sophomore before the end of spring term.

The HC I was working under refused to let the college in the building afterward.

What would fair compensation for a guy like Nick Saban be?

I understand your point, but you don’t think those schools academics and the support for programs beyond athletics are bolstered by the fans engaging directly or indirectly as a result if athletics?

I’m not talking just revenues brought in from athletics. I’m talking about just overall enrollment and engagement with university programs.

I think there’s a net gain when athletics are elite.

I can respect people who want these institutions to still have a primary focus on academic purposes. I just disagree that that setup serves the greatest good.

Looks like loyalty, vis-a-vis the transfer portal, is a sword that cuts both ways.

No loyalty from players, no loyalty from coaches.

At least in the Pros, the players have a contract.........

I do not think it would be as elite. I think the reason certain programs have become elite while others have not is because they stay ahead of the curve in keeping the top human capital. If you want the best anything, you have to pay for it.

It’s gotten pretty wild, maybe even absurd, but I still think that there’s a greater good with paying a guy like Saban to make ab institutions athletics elite.

I can kind of see where paying for guys that don’t succeed to try to keep up with the Sabans, Dabos, Smarts can cause institutional instability and a downward spiral that’s not pretty.

But I do not think college athletics or academics would be better off if coaching salaries were capped at 150,000 or even 1.5 million. I tend to believe both would be diminished in overall value.

Why?  Isn't it a relative comparison?  If Saban is making $150,000 and Swinney is making $150,000 and the athletic budget is significantly reduced do you think somehow the TOTAL revenues will go down? It is a long established economic principal that collusion to limit costs increases "profit". If schools aren't pouring the 9 figure revenue streams back into their athletic programs, but rather into school general funds, why would that decrease the revenue stream?  Power 5 athletics is essentially a cartel.  The players are going SOMEWHERE.   Your idea that a "greater good" is achieved only holds up on an individual basis.   As a collective, it clearly isn't.  

I am simply saying that if the management (coaches and administrators) were not so disproportionately compensated with regards to the labor (students)  in the "non professional" environment that is college athletics, I don't think the current environment would have come about. 

I understand the basic game theory of colluding cartels, but I think you assume the top talent in college coaching would stay in college coaching and I don’t agree. I tend to believe those guys would leave the college game for the pro game or another game or profession all together. Alabama might be able to keep Saban if it’s 9 million a year vs 10 million a year in the pros but not if it’s 150,000 a year vs 5 million in the pros. Also I do think revenues would go down because I think the product would be worse off. The coaching is so refined with the technology, the data, the amount of coaches and other personnel on staff. The athletes are so refine because coaches are working every edge. Weights, nutrition, technological speed tracking, whatever because they want to be good enough to keep these high paying jobs by winning games.

The article in football scoop about Brian Kelly leaving Notre Dame is exactly this. He wanted a team chef and nutrition hall among other luxuries that Notre Dame wouldn’t provide but LSU would.

Also I think a schools general fund benefits from stellar academics not the opposite. When schools make national championship runs enrollment and donor engagement both increase immensely most of the time.

I do understand your last point. I think athletes should have the right to profit off the talent and image so I’m not opposed to the NIL era. I think they deserve their cut of the pie regardless of coaching and administrative salaries. I do realize it opens many cans of worms to competitive balance issues and shady recruiting tactics, but I don’t think there was an absence of those issues before NIL.

The college game is not the same game it 20 years ago or 50 years ago or a 100 years ago. It certainly has shifted priorities. It clearly isn’t purely an academic extra curricular anymore. But I still think it provides opportunity for young people to get an education and supports education so I hope it’s for a greater good. But I might be wrong.

Will just have to disagree here. Again, from a macro economic perspective, the Iron Bowl is going to be the Iron Bowl if Saban is making 9 million or not. 111,000 are going to pack the Big House to see Michigan vs OSU if Ryan Day and Jim Harbaugh are making $150,000 or $5 million. It is all relative. That is the "power" of the cartel. It artificially pressures costs and prices down.

Nick Saban and Jim Harbaugh Chip Kelly are not being "kept" from the NFL by Bama, Michigan, and Chip Kelly because of the $$$ paid by those organizations. That's like saying you and I are being "kept" from being with Gal Gadot, Adriana Lima, Selena Gomez etc. because of our current significant others.

There are a total of 32 NFL head coaching positions-and lets say 300 total coaching positions in the NFL.


This is exactly my point regarding a cartel. If such amenities were offered to all athletes at many many schools because their athletic programs were not compensating the ADs and coaches at such a high level- wouldn't that be better? Of course, many of those players don't truly value it but still.

I believe you meant to type stellar athletics as opposed to stellar academics. And you aren't wrong. But that doesn't have a place in this particular argument because SOMEONE is making a national championship run every year- whether their HFC is making 8 digits or 6. What I am suggesting is that if ALL the HFCs are making 6 (instead of 8) is there a noticeable difference?


Again, I recognize this is a pipe dream.

All I am saying is that for the last 80-100 years (since the NCAA was founded and revenue sports of college athletics became more of a separate entity) the NCAA, coaches and administrators have treated the students in a very similar way to what I am suggesting here. I am saying instead of just pulling the veil back and saying "Ok, you know what...you got us. This is not amateur athletics. We are operating professional sports leagues with provisions to ensure low labor cost" go the other way. Unrealistic --yes.



I don't see how limiting the compensation of coaches and athletic administration and diverting those funds into the Universities instead of the University athletic organizations (which are separate-many don't realize that) LSU is a good example. Until the last 2 years, they were one of the few universities that received direct payments to the University from it's athletic fund. The last few years, the new AD stopped that practice stating that it was not "sustainable" for the LSU athletic program to continue to provide money to the University.

We both just have fundamentally different opinions on the value of human talent in regards to an institution's academic achievement. It's probably theoretical more than practical on both ends. 

I think all of college football would look like division 2 or 3 athletics if there wasn't the investment that large universities make into their sports programs. I know it is anecdotal but when I coached D3 ball there was a trophy case where our university had beat many of the D1 teams in the state in the earlier parts of the 20th century. I always thought it showed the different investment levels and priorities placed on athletics among the institutions over the course of the succeeding decades since those wins. 

I agree with this IF......the coach can't drop the player once the contract has been signed for anything other than conduct.

Coach, I think Shakespeare would apply here.  "A rose by any other name..."  
Point being it doesn't matter what you call it. Function over title.   

The NCAA has spent the better part of 7 decades claiming that there is no employee/employer relationship.  The term "student-athlete" was coined before most members here were born (and likely before ANY member here was coaching) to avoid labor law protections and workman's compensation claims by arguing that there was no employee / employer relationship.  

What you are suggesting seems VERY much like an employee/employer relationship.  The reason you say it is a common sense thing (I don't disagree with you) is that...SURPRISE.... the NCAA Institutions (and by extension the NCAA) are ABSOLUTELY in an employee/employer relationship with athletes participating in revenue generating sports.  

Just like I don't think there would ever be an artificial cap on coach and admin salaries, I can't see the NCAA willingly just saying "Ok, you got us... there is  and has been an employer/employee relationship for the past 70 years..."