Purp
Active Member
It's lunacy because the kid is still a kid and the financial incentives encourage him to not (and maybe even don't allow for him to) behave like a kid. He's the best player on his high school team and has an entire year of great memories he's forfeiting for himself and his best friends on the team because the university he's committed to enables him to be paid already. It's lunacy. It won't be long and the top freshmen in high school will start getting NIL deals and paying for private trainers so they don't have to develop in their high school programs or 7v7 teams. It's lunacy.Why is it "lunacy"? As a share of revenue for a big time college program, $1mm is a drop in the bucket (and remember, this isn't even coming out of the school's pocket anyway). How is a kid getting that money before playing a game in at the college level significantly different than Joe Burrow getting a $23 million signing bonus before playing a down in the NFL?
I think this is a bit of a stretch. College ball is popular in no small part because of it's exclusive access to the best of the best U-22 talent. In other words, it's not a minor league, it's a young league, and that makes a huge difference. What you're describing would be losing the elite talent and rounding out the roster with NFL rejects, and at that point it's basically the XFL with more established uniforms.
College football is popular because it reaches all the parts of the country nowhere near an NFL franchise and gives them access to a really high level entertainment product. It's also yugely popular because loyalties to universities are tight and often reach back for generations. Tons of t-shirt fans are t-shirt fans because their parent or grandparent or (in my nephews' case) uncle went to a particular school. The rooting interest is a family tradition. So are the sports hating interests. Rivalries are huge and predate the NFL.
What I'm describing would be keeping a lot of the elite talent b/c they'll be making enormous sums on endorsement deals and other arranged payments to encourage them to not enter the NFL draft. The only way the NFL keeps attracting this elite talent is for owners to start distributing more and more revenue to the players in the CBA. And the fringe guys who might not make NFL rosters right now would have much more security in this new pro "college" league and would prefer to not go in the draft. Best case scenario they make an NFL roster at roughly the same pay, but they could get cut at any time and lose their income. The same wouldn't be true in the "college" league.
It wouldn't happen overnight, but there are no limits to the financial incentives that could be offered to players to stay. The bigger the numbers get and the more autonomous the programs in this league become the larger the TV contracts will get. It's just a virtuous cycle to a larger and large pie to share with players until the NFL really starts to get pinched. I can see the NFL having to change its draft structure and the CBA will eventually get shredded as long as this is allowed to metastasize at the "college" level.