Greg Byrne calls for Alabama fans to 'fight back'

[tusks_n_raider]

When NIL started I thought it just meant a player could get paid for doing a commercial or something like that. It seems like they just give players money now.

It’s straight up GREED by 18-22 year olds who think they’re more special than everyone else and they DESERVE your and my money.

No $$$ amount will ever be enough.

Shut the whole program and sport down.

I don’t care one iota anymore

 

[crimsonaudio]

I don't disagree with the opinions here, but understand we will be left behind.

We are going to be a victim of our past success because our fans don't want to pay for this.

But be sure, the other teams and fans will pay, they are desperate for what we have enjoyed.

The problem is most of us don't care enough to pay money directly for these kids to play a game we (once) enjoyed watching. They've allowed their greed to go too far and most likely killed the Golden Goose by not learning the lesson that NASCAR taught the world - sports are entertainment for 99.99% of the viewers and they (sports) are fighting for the small percentage of the income people are willing to dedicate to such.

I've long said NIL should be allowed, but pay for play is ridiculous. I know the one makes the other basically unavoidable, but that doesn't mean I have to support it. I recall reading about 10 years ago that the average football player at Alabama received roughly $100k annually in scholarship, aid, training, treatment, room, board, etc. in trade for their playing. That seems fair enough - but the inflated egos of a few fans has flamed the feeling of self-importance in these young men to the point many (again, most?) of us don't really give a crap any more.

If this is what football is now, I don't really care if Bama fades into the pack - as I'm not going to continue being part of it (as a fan) anyway.

 

[squib]

 

[tusks_n_raider]

We should fight back by not buying anymore tickets and just watch on TV!

I haven’t been able to go to games since about 2013.

I was on the Tide Pride wait list from about 2007-2013.

I sold most of them and then got out because the overall price associated with buying the tickets, the concession food, gas, staying somewhere etc priced me out pretty quick.

Heck… the TV part isn’t even cheap… Youtube TV just sent out emails a few weeks ago about a price raise to $85 a month.

Lol

 

[rjtide]

i initially was a contributor to yea alabama......no longer. i honestly cant believe i'm saying this but i could care less how Bama does in football moving forward in this current environment that the sport is in......ie, one where the NIL deals/and especially player payment being unregulated where those with the deepest pockets basically buy the best players and pick em off the teams that cant afford to pay. i mean players that dont necessarily have an emotional connection to Bama for me isnt a problem.....hell guys came here to play who werent Bama fans b/c Nick Saban was the coach........the problem for me is this totally unregulated aspect of the sport. and the U of A athletic dept coming across as desperate for fans to give more money to the football program. doesnt sit right with me.......my opinion only but this is bs

 

[CrimsonNagus]

As has been pointed out, that's just to pay the other stuff related to the legal settlement. There's a few billion schools are on the hook for, plus the limited NIL framework. This means they are going to have to come up with millions more per year.

This does not cover the NIL bidding wars we're seeing now and it specifically excludes it in reality. The funds have to be distributed throughout the athletic department, basketball and so on, this means for instance when Caleb Downs gets a 7 figure offer to leave, the money really won't be there within the department to suddenly match.

It can only come from outside means. Auburn isn't killing it in the NIL era either, they're not the ones to look at. They're getting left behind. It's Texas for instance that you need to look at to understand the economics driving this. It's Oregon's use of the transfer portal. It's what Ohio State did last year.

The final point that I'm not sure people get is they are already spending all the money they have on the athletes. Where do you think athletic department funds go to? They don't go elsewhere, they go to the athletic department. There are no profits to share that are not already being shared via facilities and expenses.

I understand what you are saying. What I am saying is the entire business (because that's what it is now) needs to be restructured so that it can support itself.

You think NFL fans would accept it if their team announced that payroll will be short this month, please donate and help us pay our players? No, of course not, but that is what college teams are asking of their fans now. If the business can't support itself then maybe it is time for the entire thing to fold. Asking for handouts from the fans is just ridiculous.

I want the next high school recruit, or transfer portal prospect, to look me in the eyes through the camera lens and beg, "please, oh please, random fan. I want to be a millionaire before I step on campus, please donate to Bama." Then I can say "take a hike kid, McDonald's is hiring."

 

[CB4]

Greg Byrne’s new book “Undertow: Getting Swept Away By Tone Deaf Statements” will be available on Kindle by Christmas…

 

[lowend]

The schools have got to start running the programs more like a business. NFL teams pay their players from the revenue earned and that's what college needs to start doing. Passing the collection plate around asking for a tithe to the almighty church of the Crimson Tide is a ridiculous way to foot the bill.

What this ultimately should mean is that non-revenue sports start getting cut. Football has been the golden goose for these sports for so long -- heck, even my beloved Million Dollar band is funded by athletics -- but, how long will these other groups be able to continue to be funded by football?

Men's sports	Women's sports
Baseball	Basketball
Basketball	Cross country
Cross country	Golf
Football	Gymnastics
Golf	Rowing
Swimming & diving	Soccer
Tennis	Softball
Track & field†	Swimming & diving
Soccer	Tennis
	Track & field†
	Volleyball

 

[mlh]

And on top of that, he is asking them to pay for a product that is vastly inferior to what it was just 5 years ago (speaking of the overall college football product).

Thank you!

 

[lowend]

 

[KrAzY3]

I understand what you are saying. What I am saying is the entire business (because that's what it is now) needs to be restructured so that it can support itself.

You think NFL fans would accept it if their team announced that payroll will be short this month, please donate and help us pay our players? No, of course not, but that is what college teams are asking of their fans now. If the business can't support itself then maybe it is time for the entire thing to fold. Asking for handouts from the fans is just ridiculous.

I want the next high school recruit, or transfer portal prospect, to look me in the eyes through the camera lens and beg, "please, oh please, random fan. I want to be a millionaire before I step on campus, please donate to Bama." Then I can say "take a hike kid, McDonald's is hiring."

I'm sympathetic to what you are saying, just trying to explain the current situation. I was against NIL and for trying to preserve the amateur model.

People were calling it a business, pretending it was a for profit venture, but it never was. It was just amateur athletics, born of the same thing that had people doing bake sales to support the team, and people on the side of the road raising money, etc... it was a donation driven model.

The massive lie that was told was that student athletes were being taken advantage of, but the truth is it was donations that were building their facilities, it was donations that was giving them all sorts of benefits, they had it easy while people on TV lied about it. Just to give an example, only 20 athletic departments didn't lose money, that's after the donations! But the media was lying about the situation so much that they were imaging some Scrooge McDuck behind the scenes just sitting on piles of money from hard working student athletes.

It's just that now that model has been corrupted. Unfortunately, that creates a crossroads that we don't necessarily want to face, not at least when Alabama football still has a chance at being elite.

As to what you said, and lowend's point the next logical step is to start cutting and when they're done it won't be college sports at all. No more bands, and due to Title IX you have to cut male sports first. Do away with everything but baseball, basketball and football and then go match that on the female side. That's the restructuring...

The 400 member band gets per diem, hotel rooms, transportation, seats that could be sold, men's golf coach makes over a quarter million, as does the track and field head coach, some faculty get free tickets, start cutting and keep cutting, and ironically that still won't solve the NIL issue but that's how to switch to a for profit model...

 

[davefrat]

I'm sympathetic to what you are saying, just trying to explain the current situation. I was against NIL and for trying to preserve the amateur model.

People were calling it a business, pretending it was a for profit venture, but it never was. It was just amateur athletics, born of the same thing that had people doing bake sales to support the team, and people on the side of the road raising money, etc... it was a donation driven model.

The massive lie that was told was that student athletes were being taken advantage of, but the truth is it was donations that were building their facilities, it was donations that was giving them all sorts of benefits, they had it easy while people on TV lied about it. Just to give an example, only 20 athletic departments didn't lose money, that's after the donations! But the media was lying about the situation so much that they were imaging some Scrooge McDuck behind the scenes just sitting on piles of money from hard working student athletes.

It's just that now that model has been corrupted. Unfortunately, that creates a crossroads that we don't necessarily want to face, not at least when Alabama football still has a chance at being elite.

As to what you said, and lowend's point the next logical step is to start cutting and when they're done it won't be college sports at all. No more bands, and due to Title IX you have to cut male sports first. Do away with everything but baseball, basketball and football and then go match that on the female side. That's the restructuring...

The 400 member band gets per diem, hotel rooms, transportation, seats that could be sold, men's golf coach makes over a quarter million, as does the track and field head coach, some faculty get free tickets, start cutting and keep cutting, and ironically that still won't solve the NIL issue but that's how to switch to a for profit model...

I think part of the problem with reality and perception arose from the fact that college coaches started making such insane amounts of money coaching amateur student athletes and athletic departments were raking in tens of millions a year in revenue from sports.

Right or wrong, it's hard to argue that free tuition, room and board, and a per diem (as valuable as they are) is just compensation to the players when the head coaches are making $5-$10mm a year and some assistants are making over a million a year.

There is so much money in big time college sports that it's understandable that the players would demand a bigger piece of the pie.

Add in the fact that the "student-athlete" concept largely became a farce years ago, and we are where we are.

I'm to the point that I think they shouldn't even have to be students anymore...just make them employees like everyone else who works for and brings value to the schools.

The good old days are dead and gone.

 

[NorCalTide]

What this ultimately should mean is that non-revenue sports start getting cut. Football has been the golden goose for these sports for so long -- heck, even my beloved Million Dollar band is funded by athletics -- but, how long will these other groups be able to continue to be funded by football?

Men's sports	Women's sports
Baseball	Basketball
Basketball	Cross country
Cross country	Golf
Football	Gymnastics
Golf	Rowing
Swimming & diving	Soccer
Tennis	Softball
Track & field†	Swimming & diving
Soccer	Tennis
	Track & field†
	Volleyball

Cross country conferences isn't going to work for the vast majority of these sports. It is an unsustainable model. Cal and Stanford in the ACC, UCLA/USC/Oregon/Washington isn't sustainable for anything beyond football and maybe men's basketball. The only way these other sports survive is to detach from the football conferences and go back to purely regional conferences. The NCAA has also significantly altered roster and scholarship rules for these sports that are going to have a massive impact that take effect next year. Probably won't see that fallout for a few years afterwards.

 

[KrAzY3]

I think part of the problem with reality and perception arose from the fact that college coaches started making such insane amounts of money coaching amateur student athletes and athletic departments were raking in tens of millions a year in revenue from sports.

Right or wrong, it's hard to argue that free tuition, room and board, and a per diem (as valuable as they are) is just compensation to the players when the head coaches are making $5-$10mm a year and some assistants are making over a million a year.

I understand the angst about the pay of coaches, but it is the same basic argument against non-profit CEO's making a lot of money as well. There's a guy making 16 million a year running a nonprofit and while that sounds obscene, that begs the question of what value he brings? Nick Saban certainly brought the value to his student athletes, they didn't get ripped off. There's data to show they went on to make far more than his pay relative to equally ranked recruits.

So, who was getting taken advantage of in this situation? It was bad optics, sure but if you consider young athletes as students, then getting them the best teacher possible did provide value. Giving them a cheaper coach like Mike Shula certainly wouldn't have been doing then any favors.

That's part of where people lost the plot. They just saw the number, but didn't understand the value proposition. Likewise, the athletic departments were raking in revenue on sports and then spending said revenue on the athletes. It was a closed loop, no one was dipping into it and pilfering it, in fact the opposite was happening. Boosters, state, and city officials, all sorts of people were actually pouring millions into these athletic departments (in same cases they were the ones paying the coaches salary anyway).

Imagine for instance a scenario where you do 100K worth of work a year, but you get 200K in benefits. Are you getting ripped off? No, and neither were the athletes, the complaint came down to they wanted more cash compensation.

The NCAA has also significantly altered roster and scholarship rules for these sports that are going to have a massive impact that take effect next year. Probably won't see that fallout for a few years afterwards.

Once you factor in the new numbers I'm not sure a lot of those sports could survive anyway, the math doesn't seem to work out.

 

[Bamabuzzard]

Once the current case in the supreme court is settled, Alabama (along with other P4 schools) is going to be hit with a $20 million dollar bill that funds don't currently exist within their budget to pay. THIS is what Byrne is getting out in front of, not that we couldn't come up with seven figures to keep the CB who was going to leave this week for Ole Miss.

So it's not just Alabama. Georgia, LSU, Florida, Ole Miss, Miss St, etc. are about to have a $20 million expense item added to their budget that they currently do not have funds in the budget to cover. According to Byrne, the school is already making efforts to streamline expenses, not replacing jobs if they aren't necessary and things like that. But they are trying to get out in front of this $20 million bill that's coming down the pike that as of now, they do not have funds within the budget to pay.

This still doesn't change my mind from my stance of "I'm not paying a dime", because I'm not. My line has been drawn. This court case may solve one problem but it is going create another problem in that schools are going to have to find funds outside of their existing budget to pay for and most schools are already using all the funds allocated in their budget. So it's not like they've got an additional $20,000,000 sitting in petty cash waiting for something to spend it on.

Again, this is what "fair" looks like...

 

[NoNC4Tubs]

Reminds me of retail stores where the cashier asks if you want to round up to help with this or that cause.

My standard reply is "Why don't you round down? As a consumer....don't I get a break once in a while?"

Yeah, kind of like you walk up to the counter to order your food and there is a tip jar or place on receipt to tip...for taking your order. REALLY?!?

 

[NorCalTide]

Once you factor in the new numbers I'm not sure a lot of those sports could survive anyway, the math doesn't seem to work out.

I think once the new numbers come into effect you are going to see a top tier of non-revenue sports that offer scholarships for the roster and become highly internationalized, while 2nbd tier develops under that with limited scholarship resources which in effect create an almost FBS/FCS split in these non-revenue sports. Some will decide they would rather not field teams at the 2nd tier level and others will use enrollment to balance books of program expenses and zero them out with limited scholarship resources.

 

[NoNC4Tubs]

Bad look for him asking this a week before Christmas.

Besides that, he's lost his mind, go find some rich alumni that's willing to pay kids to play. You've got to be crazy to give money to these kids unless you've got so much of it you don't know what to do with it. Those kids don't deserve a cent from me.

The whole situation in college football is toxic and this is a desperate plea for money...to the general Bama fan public. This is insanity.

I can't even afford to go to games anymore....and you have the nerve to ask me for money.

Here, I've got a coin jar....I'll take a picture and post it for you to look at, because that's as close as you're getting to my money.

I've got a kid at South Alabama, I can't believe we were just asked for money by this joker.

Good luck, the whole of college football is unraveling....but lets just throw more money at it instead of trying to fix any of it. Idiots.

Greg needs to be approaching Alabama Power, Drummond Coal, etc...

 

[NoNC4Tubs]

When NIL started I thought it just meant a player could get paid for doing a commercial or something like that. It seems like they just give players money now.

Yeah, exactly what is the definition of NIL?

There is no P (playing/participation) in that...

 

[NoNC4Tubs]

Can we just go back to bagmen handing cash to players under the table?

Kinda goes back to the rich alumni/fans footing the bill in the first place...