Ketamakan. Egoisme. Kurangnya integritas. 12 Pelatih Besar mengusulkan perubahan di era nil

Eight head coaches sat in a roundtable setting at Big 12 Media Days on Wednesday, nodding in agreement that college athletics’ NIL system is not just flawed, it’s impossibly screwed up. It’s not sustainable. It wreaks of sycophants, selfishness and greed. 

The money isn’t the problem. The money is a symptom. Led by the voice of Colorado head coach Deion Sanders, the youngest among the eight in coaching years, the group agreed: a fix is needed, and it’s quite simple.

This is a group of coaches that are anti-Gordon Gekko. Greed isn’t so good. It’s a group of coaches that are all millionaires … several times over … but change the stage at AT&T Stadium into a boardroom in a high rise on Wall Street, and you can feel like Jeremy Irons’ John Tuld as he asks question after question to his staff in “Margin Call” and each of their answers are essentially the same. No matter who he asks and how he asks it, the market is doomed. Business as usual no longer applies and will not apply ever again.

College football coaches now use national letters of intent like cudgels, even though those letters of intent must be renewed and scholarships are one-year contracts. Players are no longer forced to sit out a year if they choose to transfer within the highest subdivision in football. And, of course, players are now paid a lot more than they used to be, up to seven figures in many cases.

On Wednesday afternoon, the college football world watched as half the coaches in a Power 4 league pleaded for change … and fast. Coaches know they can’t keep total control of the sport, but they do believe they still have some level of control.

Big 12 coaches want a salary cap. They want enforceable termination and buyout clauses. They even want a collective bargaining agreement, knowing players would need a union for such a thing to exist. They want a system that is not littered with back-dealing, tampering and payment to players they don’t feel have earned it. They want to be able to compete with programs that simply have no bottom to their bank accounts. And they want it now.

“I wish there was a cap,” Sanders said on Wednesday. “I wish that 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 got a guy that’s not that darn good, but he could go to another school and give him half a million dollars, and you can’t compete with that.”

Houston coach Willie Fritz has coached college football since 1978, beginning at Pittsburg State in Pittsburg, Kansas. In other words, he’s seen it all. From the split between Division I-A and Division I-AA to the inception of a 12-team tournament to crown a national champion, he believes the integrity of the sport is under attack.

Fritz went 4-8 in Year 1 in a city he called “the epicenter of football in the world.” This happened because he couldn’t afford to pay enough to incoming players, as well as monitor the players he is committed to paying, all while stopping others — namely boosters, NIL collectives and agents — from aggressively poaching players even after deals are done. And that could be mitigated.

TCU coach Sonny Dykes got started coaching college football at Navarro, a school more known for its cheerleading program than its football team, and he was one of the first coaches hired by Mike Leach at Texas Tech in 2000. At the time, the Red Raiders made it work with a plucky attitude and the most eccentric offensive system anybody had ever seen in major college football. This past offseason, Dykes watched Texas Tech spend more than $10 million on portal additions to its football roster, $1 million on a softball player, and open a state-of-the-art football facility. He also recognizes tampering as a problem the men on that stage could fix.

“There are obviously conversations that have taken place and guys have known each other for a long time,” Dykes said. “But I do think that’s a thing we should be able to communicate with each other. You should be able to call anybody up here and say, ‘This happened’ or ‘I’m not comfortable with this. What can we do to make sure this doesn’t happen again?’”

It’s difficult to make that call when you’re not just trying to keep your own job, but the jobs of everyone you hired to work for you. When money becomes a symptom you can no longer ignore, integrity and character get tested, but putting food on the table is a test many of us don’t get to fail. So the status quo will remain until the market fails.

Mike Gundy has been the head coach at Oklahoma State for 20 years. He has seen the creation of and the realignment of the Big 12 Conference. He has always been great at evaluating under-recruited, under-valued players, from Wes Lunt to Ollie Gordon, but he draws the line at who gets paid what.

“We really need to get some guardrails to eliminate the things that are going on from a tampering standpoint,” Gundy said, “and players that are coming out of high school getting way too much money before they ever make a play on game day.”

Here is a good time to remind you: Michigan QB Bryce Underwood is set to make a reported $12 million, and he has yet to play a single snap in college football.

[Related: Top 25 college athletes with highest NIL valuations]

Pelatih Kansas Lance Leipold naik ke Lawrence, Kansas, menggunakan sisi kasar gunung dengan karier yang dimulai pada tahun 1987 di Divisi III Wisconsin-Whitewater. Itu berarti dia telah melihat sebagian besar dari itu, dari perubahan aliansi mangkuk ke seri kejuaraan mangkuk hingga konferensi penyesuaian kembali. Dia telah mengubah salah satu keset olahraga menjadi program yang tidak ingin Anda mainkan di akhir musim – tanyakan saja pada Iowa State, BYU dan Colorado – tiga tim peringkat yang semuanya jatuh ke Jayhawks dalam minggu -minggu berturut -turut pada tahun 2024.

Leipold juga merupakan salah satu pelatih yang merupakan pendukung perubahan, berbicara tentang pemain yang sudah berburu untuk kesepakatan yang lebih baik daripada yang baru saja mereka tandatangani.

“Kami memiliki orang -orang di luar sana yang mencoba untuk bertarung di sekitar sistem, mendapatkan para pemain, mendapatkan agen, pihak ketiga, pelatih sekolah menengah, apa pun itu, untuk mengeluarkan feelers, dan kemudian hal berikutnya yang Anda tahu, mereka berbicara angka dolar dengan seorang pemuda,” kata Leipold pada 12 hari media besar. “Itu bukan cara untuk melakukan bisnis. Saya pikir kita sebagai pelatih dan pemimpin harus memberikan contoh melakukan ini dengan integritas begitu kita menyelesaikan semuanya.”

Masalahnya adalah, bukan milik mereka untuk diselesaikan. Pelatih Virginia Barat Rich Rodriguez berharap itu tidak akan menjadi kasus ke depan.

“Harapan saya adalah bahwa para pelatih, direktur atletik, dan komisaris berada di garis depan dalam membuat keputusan untuk apa yang terbaik untuk olahraga perguruan tinggi dan sepak bola perguruan tinggi,” katanya.

Rodriguez, yang telah menjadi pelatih kepala di beberapa sekolah – dari Michigan dan Arizona ke Jacksonville State – menginginkan suara seperti miliknya untuk memimpin jalan daripada pemerintah federal. Masalah dengan itu, sejauh ini, bahkan para komisioner tidak ingin menyentuh rawa 156 tahun ini dalam pembuatan.

Sanders meninggalkannya tumpul ketika ditanya apa yang ingin dia lihat, sementara tujuh pelatih lain di liga mengangguk setuju.

“Yang harus Anda lakukan adalah melihat playoff dan melihat apa yang dihabiskan tim -tim itu, dan Anda memahami dengan baik mengapa mereka berakhir di babak playoff,” kata Sanders. “Agak sulit untuk bersaing dengan seseorang yang memberikan $ 25, $ 30 juta untuk kelas mahasiswa baru. Ini gila.

“Kami tidak mengeluh karena semua pelatih ini dapat melatih puntung mereka dan, diberi kesempatan yang tepat dengan pemain yang tepat, permainan di sana -sini, Anda akan berada di sana [the CFP]Tapi apa yang terjadi saat ini tidak masuk akal. “

Baru tahun lalu, Ohio State dilaporkan menghabiskan lebih dari $ 20 juta untuk daftar 2024, dan Buckeyes memenangkan gelar nasional.

Akan ada lebih banyak rahang – lebih banyak rahang. Akan ada yang lebih megah, melarang tangan, dan layanan bibir dari sekelompok orang yang mengaku tahu cara membuat tangan jutaan dolar mereka kotor. Tapi itu akan kembali tidak hanya menang, tetapi siapa yang memiliki tanah yang kita semua mainkan. Selalu berhasil.

Olahraga tidak pernah adil. Orang kaya selalu menjadi lebih kaya, dan penggemar selalu ingin melihat Ohio State dan Notre Dame bermain untuk gelar nasional lebih dari Boise State dan Southern Methodist. Dan sebagian besar pelatih akan merasakannya. Apa yang tidak akan mereka temui adalah kehilangan lebih banyak kendali atas lembaga yang pernah menjadi sosok paling kuat di setiap kamar. Sekarang, dengan semua wajah baru di tanah – agen, kolektif, pengacara – mereka menginginkan apa yang diambil John Dutton di Yellowstone, Montana. Ingatkan semua orang, sekali dan untuk semua, yang benar -benar menjalankan lembah. Dan itu bukan kamu.

RJ Young adalah penulis sepak bola perguruan tinggi nasional dan analis untuk Fox Sports dan pembawa acara podcast “acara sepak bola perguruan tinggi nomor satu.” Ikuti dia di @Rj_young.

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