The transfer portal is becoming a highly efficient market.
This is the kind of report that elicits a big reaction. How dare a player, committed to a school, tell competing schools how much money he’d need to reconsider that commitment? Can you imagine if a coach did that? Like how Dusty May presumably just did with FAU?
I’m not going to say that the transfer portal is perfect, because it’s not. I’m not going to say that college students and college coaches are in the same situations, because they’re not. But generally, what we’re seeing with the transfer portal is a free market, and generally, free markets are good. In this case, the free market is good because it helps players capture their own value. Without the NIL/transfer portal combination, the situation was similar to heavy taxation: Certain players generated a certain amount of value, and thanks to rules and laws, a lot of that value went to somebody else. That’s not exactly a tax, but it’s pretty close.
Enough about the good things, though. Let’s talk about one improvement to the current situation.
Imagine a world where college players could sign contracts.
The premise here is that high school recruits and inter-college transfers could commit to a school for one, two, three, four, or five years. The contract would go both ways—that would be part of the value, the player couldn’t be pushed out without some sort of buyout on the part of the school—and could have clauses that voided it if a coach left a school (or not—the player could simply commit, presumably for more value from the school and its boosters). This might not keep players on rosters for longer, but it would clarify the situation. It would make the situation a known one coming in. Take Tyrese Hunter, for example: If Iowa State fans had known all along that he was a one-year Cyclone, that situation might have gone down differently.
There are two key issues here, but both appear destined to eventually need addressing whether we go to contracts like these or not. So, let’s crack through ‘em.
First, this would eliminate what’s currently a soft barrier between boosters and coaches. This would be a very good thing. Rather than the current situation, in which some schools foster direct relationships between their coaches and their boosters while others keep a distance, all parties could be working together. It would be simpler, it would be more efficient, and it wouldn’t leave schools wondering if they were breaking poorly enforced rules. The money for a contract like one of these will have to come from somewhere, and whether college athletics goes the formal employment route or not, that somewhere is boosters. That’s how college sports work. Making the contract a three-way deal, then—between the school, the booster, and the athlete—would formalize what’s currently a wink-and-nod process, taking the advantage away from schools currently willing to more aggressively test the rules. It would level the playing field rather than letting Oregon and Miami play chicken with the toothless NCAA.
Second, there’s the relevant question of how this would work in non-money sports.
The fear for some, when it comes to the question of college athletes as employees, is what employment would mean for athletes in non-money sports, or athletes in big-money sports who aren’t worth big money themselves. It’s a fair question. It’s a concerning question. If men’s tennis is a job, accompanied by payment, not many collegiate tennis players are going to be worth enough money for that job to continue to exist. Employment really could conceivably destroy college sports as we know them. This is why it’s unlikely true legal employment, with full enforcement of employment laws, will ever come universally to collegiate athletics. Not enough people want college sports destroyed to allow college sports to be destroyed.
The beauty of this contract system, in part, would be that players wouldn’t have to sign. They could continue on the traditional path. For any athlete who could get a booster’s backing, the contract would be an option, but it wouldn’t be the recipe for every single person. What college sports needs, in order to stay intact, is a two-path system for its athletes. On one path, athletes can choose to sign a contract and—literally or not—become an employee. On another, athletes can choose to be a traditional college student who plays sports. As is the case with the booster/coach barrier, what we’re proposing already exists, just in a more shadowy way. College athletes are already on one of two paths. By formalizing it, colleges can get it out in the open. Making two paths won’t change the game. Failing to make two paths—forcing all of college sports to effectively choose one path or the other—will change the game, and not for the better.
Give me contracts. Get things out in the open. It’s not only going to be ok. It’s going to be a lot better.
The Pac-12 Isn’t Doing Its Deal
According to Pete Thamel, who I haven’t seen be terribly wrong about anything in this sphere, the Pac-12 media deal probably won’t come until summer. Given how close summer is, this isn’t huge news, but it does take some of the anticipation out of next week’s Pac-12 meetings.
What seems to be happening is that the Pac-12 hasn’t yet put together a deal that all of its schools want to sign. How do we know that’s the case? They haven’t signed it yet. If a deal that held the conference together or expanded the conference to twelve schools had been reached, it would be done. The fact it isn’t done tells us what we need to know. The Pac-12 remains in limbo.
I’m lumping conference expansion into this, but I do think we could get a conference expansion update before we get a TV deal. I think it’s not impossible. My caution, then, is this: If the Pac-12 announces the additions of San Diego State and SMU, or if that’s informally confirmed to be official, don’t count on the Pac-12 sticking together just yet. It could be a good sign, or it could just be more posturing. Until there are signatures on pages of a media rights deal, the Pac-12 is at risk of collapse. The Big 12 is waiting for probably eight of the schools with open arms. There’s a safe landing spot if anyone jumps ship. If someone does, then, expect them to be followed.
The Bulls’ Best Case
The Bulls are locked into the 10-seed in the East, which with the Bucks locked into the 1-seed means the best scenario for the Bulls involves winning two games on the road in the Play-In Tournament and then having to play the Bucks. Which brings us back to tanking.
If the Bulls don’t win those two games, and instead enter the lottery, they could have odds somewhere around 10% to land in the top four in the first round of the NBA Draft. If they do land in the top four, their first-round pick which is supposed to go to the Magic becomes protected, and they don’t have to lose it. Given they currently have no other draft picks (their second-rounder from the Nuggets is going to be removed for the tampering violation), this would be a big, big deal, and would turn the next three months from the worst possible three months for Bulls fans into merely three bad months. Rather than being stuck in purgatory with no draft picks, Bulls fans would be stuck in purgatory with a 10% chance of a top-four draft pick, and with the additional hope that the cursed front office could accidentally pick someone good at basketball, saving the franchise.
All of this, taken together, means we want the Bulls to lose these next two games. We want that, off the bat. From there, it gets debatable: Do we want the Bulls to at least win one, giving us a little more fun? Do we want them to just get the loss over with? How well do I actually understand where the Play-In Tournament losers land in the lottery order?
We’ll follow up to that latter debate, of course, and try to figure out real answers, but for the time being: If the Bulls don’t lose tomorrow night in Dallas, we should be furious.
