Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

https://www.outkick.com/tennessee-lawsuit-ncaa-nil-investigation-football/

State of TN / Commonwealth of VA vs. NCAA

It was pretty much inevitable.  The states are not going to allow the NCAA to infringe upon their laws or, more importantly, their power.

https://www.outkick.com/tennessee-lawsuit-ncaa-nil-investigation-football/

State of TN / Commonwealth of VA vs. NCAA

While I don't like the new NIL paradigm, since we're here, I think Tennessee and Virginia's response is technically the correct one.  I'm a little unclear on the article's wording and meaning, tho.  The article says something to the effect of "the University of Tennessee is taking their fight straight to court..." but the document reads State of TN (and VA), not the schools, vs. the NCAA.  Is it more accurate to say that the state is suing on behalf of the school?  Or as a state school, is it basically one and the same in legal matters?

My issue with this...

The amateurism ideal is that it's not "pay for play". People complained (rightly) that in other areas of amateurism, where it is NOT pay for play, we still allow athletes to make money off of their fame. I.e. if Dr Pepper wants to pay DJ for Fansville ads, or Nissan wants to pay Caleb Williams for Heisman House ads, they should be able to monetize their fame w/o jeopardizing their amateur status. Because that's not pay-for-play. 

But what these collectives are doing? 100% pay-for-play. It's not monetizing their NIL via endorsements. It's "come to school X and you'll make Y per year". And because it's an arms-length transaction from the school, it can't be meaningfully stopped or policed. 

Now, you can make an argument the athletes SHOULD be allowed to be paid for play. But if you maintain that they're amateurs, this collective crap is just a loophole to get to pay-for-play and is a way to get it without making the argument. 

I agree with what both @betarhoalphadelta and @utee94 are saying.  I think the States should have stayed out of it because they can't effectively govern a national sport but they didn't which pretty much forced the issue.  

I've thought from the beginning that doing this would be akin to opening pandora's box because once you started down this road it would obviously be impossible to police a distinction between a kid getting paid a legitimate sum for his Name Image and Likeness (ie, the Heismann House ad) and just flat-out pay-to-play so amateurism effectively died once we started.  

Frankly I think it will be VERY good for my school because I think that my school will be able to compete in the top-tier so I *COULD* just look at it and say "yay for us" but I think it kills the sport generally because only a handful of schools will be able to compete at that level and the rest will be hopeless.  

I think you will see a return to or even a magnification of what happened in the 1970's.  If you look at CFB records, nearly all of the "Helmets" were REALLY good in the 1970's.  Ohio State and Michigan DOMINATED the Big Ten.  After Indiana went to the Rose Bowl (three way tie with MN and PU) in 1967, it was more than a decade before the Big Ten was represented in the Rose Bowl by a team not named tOSU or M.  

Back then it was because scholarships were not as limited.  

Using RB's as an example:
Basically, Ohio State and Michigan are probably always going to get the top couple of RB's in the midwest.  From Scholarship Limits until NIL there was still a possibility that Purdue could get #3 and he'd end up being good enough to challenge tOSU and M once in a while.  

Before Scholarship Limits #3 through #8 were generally the 2nd through 4th stringers at Ohio State and Michigan.  Now with NIL I think that tOSU and Michigan will basically be able to buy #3 through #8 whenever they decide they need them.  

My prediction is that this will result in a situation where a small group of teams can throw a lot of money around and the F4 are going to come almost exclusively from that small group every single year.  

I suspect Michigan--like most everyone else at the moment--is keeping a close eye on how this TN/VA stuff plays out.  If we get legal precedent handcuffing the NCAA, it may be that a lot of other schools will adopt more "institutional backbone" and begin telling the NCAA is STFU.

If Programs are openly flaunting long standing rules/violations and nothings done then the sport is dead.The NCAA more than likely would penalize a blue blood than any league would their own because of revenue - IMO

It sucks. It really does.

I agree, yet I continue to try to think of ways my waning interest can be salvaged.

Would it be possible for the schools to collectively agree in some type of binding manner (i.e., involve the NCAA or replicate their role) on a flat-reimbursement for football athletes in order to maintain "amateur status?"  If we call it a reimbursement rather than a fee, the guise of amateurism can still be maintained, and if they're all equal--maybe something reached similar to a collective bargaining agreement--then players can profit from their NIL but it wouldn't transfer all the power to the Haves, which it currently seems to be trending towards.  The biggest names and stars probably wouldn't like it, but the point is they're not supposed to be in the free market...they're supposed to be amateurs doing it for other reasons.  I always found arguments that athletes shouldn't be prohibited from earning money off their skill compelling, but it's in tension with other arguments that these are supposed to be amateurs I also find compelling.  I'm just wondering if there's a middle ground. 

As it is now, it's lost all semblance of amateurism, which as MedinaBuckeye outlined, sucks, because at the heart of why and how I always rooted for LSU athletes was because they were either Louisiana kids who wanted to represent the state at the flagship program, or they were out-of-state kids the staff sold on the program and what life could be there for them.  I never cared much about the NFL because it lacked that athlete-program tie, they just played for whoever paid them*, and now that's more or less what cfb is turning into. 

I agree with your sentiment and with what you are trying to accomplish but sadly I don't think there are any practical ways to get where you are trying to go.  

Paying every player a flat amount would be great in theory because it would get some money to the guys playing while still (at least theoretically) returning recruitment to what it was where the tOSU and the LSU coaches competed with each other and everyone else by trying to sell their programs and/or facilities, chance to win NC, playing time, etc.  

In practice some players are worth more than others.  The 4th string TE at Vanderbilt simply isn't worth anything close to what the starting QB at LSU is worth.  Once you start paying, the more valuable players are naturally going to demand that their compensation be commensurate with their "worth" and I think it would be impossible to get around that both practically and legally.  

Second, I think this is one of those "pandora's box" things.  I just don't think you can put this toothpaste back in the tube no matter how much you might want to.  

Like you, I always liked that when I rooted for my school, the bulk of the players were from my state so there was some tie to them.  

Slightly off topic:
I hope it was clear in my example above that I wasn't picking on or criticizing either LSU or Joe Burrow.  They would be stupid not to do what they did and it worked out great for both of them.  They utilized the rules to their advantage.  Joe Burrow got to be a starter then a superstar when it looked like if he had stayed in Columbus he might never have gotten on the field and LSU got a great QB that helped them win an NC.  Good for them, at this point I want my school to do the same thing wherever possible.  

More off topic:
There is a fourth factor for me in addition to NCAA Impotence, NIL, and the Portal.  The fourth is actually a bit older for me:

A few years ago there was a report about "student" athlete test scores.  We (on this board) analyzed the information and it was eye opening to me.  I always knew that revenue sport (FB/BB) players at places like Ohio State got some help academically but the report that we looked at demonstrated that the vast majority of the "student" athletes that we ALL cheer for on Saturdays couldn't get into Clown College if they couldn't play Ball.  Seriously, the athlete scores were ridiculously low, like Special Education low.  In the report "student" athlete scores were compared to general student population scores and I remember that Michigan had one of if not the biggest gap in the country.  The thing is, that isn't a criticism of Michigan.  EVERYBODY had stupid athletes.  Michigan's gap was not bigger because they had unusually dumb athletes, it was bigger bigger because their general student population was pretty smart.  

This realization forced me to accept that when I cheer Ohio State beating Michigan or lament Michigan beating Ohio State I'm not actually cheering for Ohio State students to beat Michigan students.  In reality I'm cheering for Ohio State's ringers to beat Michigan's ringers and in an average football game there probably aren't more than one or two starters (out of 44, both sides of the ball, both teams) who are legitimately smart enough to get into either school.