• The KillerFrogs

FWST: ‘There is no wrong.’ TCU’s Patterson delivers NIL message to local business leaders

FinanceFrog

Full Member
How free the market is remains to be seen. The reality is that a lot of these schools have MASSIVE head starts due to enormous government subsidies. They're large, public schools and that provides a clear competitive advantage that most schools don't have. That doesn't make the market less free, but it certainly makes it less competitive and I don't think it will take long for that gap to widen to such an extent that most FBS schools don't try to compete.

I really think we could see a return to old school college football at a lot of major universities within a decade. I suspect they would still be televised, but all the money and corruption left to the small handful play professional football.

sure, schools have headstarts with their size and capital - just like individuals in the real world. you think a trust fund kid is on a level playing field with a lower class kid? a free market doesn’t mean all players are equal, that’s communism. a free market is simply that participants have the freedom to act how they see fit.
 

jake102

Active Member
Let's say Evans has a big year and a big blue blood in need of a RB comes along and offers a $2M NIL deal.

THAT is when it'll hit home. And once that starts happening on any kind of regular basis at all, what's the point in even following the sport? You have literally no chance of competing. Can't build a roster. Can't even run a program really with all the contingencies you'd have to have in place.

Yeah I'll be out. Evans is the one I'm watching after this year. Possibly QJ
 

jake102

Active Member
Starts higher, unfortunately... If you asked V-Bo today, he would give you some answer that sounds like, "Within the rules, I support our alumni supporting our student-athletes, TCU wants to compete at a high level, etc..."

However, the hard truth is, over the last six months and into the summer, V-Bo and several key board members were MUCH more reticent and that commentary floated out to prominent boosters. Too conservative, too worried about the University's image, etc. etc...

NIL is actually right up Donati's ally, but he can only do and say what his boss and the University compliance office allow him to. This started VERY conservative and has now loosened up thanks to coaches sounding the alarm, but it's hard to turn that boat, and to break through years of scar tissue of boosters being yelled at by compliance if they put one pinky out of line.

Going from running a "tight house" to barreling into the wild west full steam is a big change, much bigger than some expected for TCU.

Idiots.
 
Damn. That's around $50+ thousand a year? Too bad for me it's WAY too late to reconsider my college options to be small, slow, not-too-strong or coordinated, and generally unsuited for high school athletics much less college.

The thinking is, best case scenario:

- 3 to 5 football players who are "elite" will need total comp. of $500-1mm a year. Some of that will be boosters, some may be real national sponsorship opportunities.

- 10 to 20 football players who are not elite, but very talented and important (4-5 star guys), will need $100-500k a year. Some of that is booster, some may be real sponsorships

- The rest of the roster will need at least $50-250k a year in total NIL deals depending on their value... Almost all of this is going to booster funded, in all likelihood.

The same kind of thing will be true for MBB and CBB.

Here's some good news to keep in mind: If the TCU Baseball boosters get their [ Finebaum ] together, the 11.7 scholarship rules and high cost of TCU tuition are no longer an issue!
 

Pharm Frog

Full Member
this is the free market at work. many of you most likely want to cut regulations and let the free market work. well…..here you go.

So higher education is the free market all of a sudden? So the desired destination for these athletes you speak about is “the free market” without anti-trust protection? There’s nothing in any of this that is “the free market”.
 

Pharm Frog

Full Member
The thinking is, best case scenario:

- 3 to 5 football players who are "elite" will need total comp. of $500-1mm a year. Some of that will be boosters, some may be real national sponsorship opportunities.

- 10 to 20 football players who are not elite, but very talented and important (4-5 star guys), will need $100-500k a year. Some of that is booster, some may be real sponsorships

- The rest of the roster will need at least $50-250k a year in total NIL deals depending on their value... Almost all of this is going to booster funded, in all likelihood.

The same kind of thing will be true for MBB and CBB.

Here's some good news to keep in mind: If the TCU Baseball boosters get their [ #2020 ] together, the 11.7 scholarship rules and high cost of TCU tuition are no longer an issue!

How so to the last point about baseball? So we can make up the difference in tuition and somehow that will be sufficient to compete with low tuition AND booster pay? Not seeing it….
 
Also, just a general observation, but I’m becoming less and less confident in Donati and our leadership every day. Everything I read makes us sound unprepared.

Revised: More and more, its becoming obvious TCU is not, and likey won't be, a major top tier athletics program. It's just not in our DNA. We may be second, but that gap grows continuously.
 
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Pharm Frog

Full Member
no - moose’s post was judging players for chasing money rather than a degree or a program. The judgement is about the players and their motivations - do whatever you want as fans.

Even so…I’m a fan and you bet I’m gonna “judge” a player about his/her/whatever motivations about ENROLLING in whatever college I’m interested in.
 
There should be a VERY simple way for any business that is interested in being involved with our athletes to contact them. That seems like common sense. Is this not something we have in place?
No.


Donati got caught with his pants down. & people like Chris are his "bros" that keep pumping him up. Guy is a prick. Group of us tried to sponsor players and he basically told us to pound sand and stand in line. How is that working out?
 

Pharm Frog

Full Member
This could get really interesting when kids start missing classes for photo shoots and such to meet all the demands of their NIL deals. I'll probably be checked out by then, though.

Yeah…when kids start missing classes…. Would you care to know how many of my classes Bam Morris attended?
 
How so to the last point about baseball? So we can make up the difference in tuition and somehow that will be sufficient to compete with low tuition AND booster pay? Not seeing it….

1. Baseball is far less competitive in general, the number of schools funding NIL deals for 20-30 baseball players will be relatively limited.

2. The point is we can close the gap with donor money. Again, if TCU Baseball boosters get it together, the "Total Comp" of a TCU Baseball player will be at or above the average. I don't know what that market will be as its early, but I feel confident we have the money to do it if we have the will.
 

Eight

Member
I feel like a smaller school like us almost has to pick 1-2 sports and devote all their energy/money into that and just day “we’re gonna be good at this and pretty much nothing else”.

rifle and women's soccer. fits our budget and we are already strong in those sports so they athletic department needs to stay the scheiss away from them and just let the coaches work directly with those supplying the funds
 

FinanceFrog

Full Member
Even so…I’m a fan and you bet I’m gonna “judge” a player about his/her/whatever motivations about ENROLLING in whatever college I’m interested in.

feel free to judge all you want - doesn’t bother that player any what your thoughts about them are. just sounds like a lot of unnecessary judgement and angst you’re putting yourself through but feel free.

i myself don’t get too worked up about an 18 year old that I don’t know from Adam choosing a school or why he chose it. but that’s just me.
 

Purp

Active Member
sure, schools have headstarts with their size and capital - just like individuals in the real world. you think a trust fund kid is on a level playing field with a lower class kid? a free market doesn’t mean all players are equal, that’s communism. a free market is simply that participants have the freedom to act how they see fit.
I'll quote myself for you. "That doesn't make the market less free..."

You're preaching to the choir and totally missing/ignoring my point. Out of about 130 FBS schools I think less than 40 will try to compete in this brave new world. In the free market lots of people don't try to enter the marketplace b/c it's already saturated. You'd have to work too hard for too narrow a margin to justify the effort. American professional sports leagues are the biggest in the world at around 28-32 teams usually. The FBS college football market is beyond saturated. So many schools will stop competing we won't like what we're viewing anymore. I honestly think a lot of these behemoth programs will lose a lot of t-shirt fans too. If they wanted to watch professional sports they'd watch professional sports. We'll see what happens.

College football is miles different from a free market economy also in that innovation can truly differentiate a newcomer in the marketplace and make everyone else's previous competitive advantages obsolete. That's not happening in college football b/c a school can't innovate the game outside of the rules and b/c it takes a lot of eye balls to make money in NIL. A smaller school won't be able to generate enough interested eye balls, whether through size of fan base or innovation, to make enough players profitable. The only way someone new could come in and compete in this environment is for an independently wealthy alumnus to blow tons of cash on NIL payments that do nothing to generate revenue for his business/businesses. I suspect that will happen in some silos for a while, but I don't think it's going to last very long. A small squad of wealthy alumni can't compete with a phalanx of wealthy alumni at these behemoth programs.
 
No.


Donati got caught with his pants down. & people like Chris are his "bros" that keep pumping him up. Guy is a prick. Group of us tried to sponsor players and he basically told us to pound sand and stand in line. How is that working out?

I'm not a Donati fan (nor am I, literally, Donati), but just to correct the record here: ADJD was under orders from his bosses and university compliance. In a perfect world, the university would have been lining up deals left and right (even though that's kinda against the rules). I'm confident we are about to "catch up" real fast, and JD will be leading that effort.
 

Wexahu

Full Member
sure, schools have headstarts with their size and capital - just like individuals in the real world. you think a trust fund kid is on a level playing field with a lower class kid? a free market doesn’t mean all players are equal, that’s communism. a free market is simply that participants have the freedom to act how they see fit.

Competitive sports leagues are the one thing that needs a bit of "socialism" in order to survive, or at least make it interesting. It doesn't mirror the real world.

There is a reason why the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL have binding multi-year contracts and salary caps in place. Because without them, the teams in the smaller markets would have no chance to compete.

Your "free market" rants are pretty stupid sometimes.
 
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