Jim Larrañaga of Miami is candid about why he’s quitting. We’ll see more of this.
Can’t say that I blame him.
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I am sure it has to be out of control to deal with.
Somehow they need to get this compensation and free agency situation moved into something more manageable.
Again “What is this all.about?” Is a great question. Is it about the kid’s and opportunity to make a better life for them and their family or is it about the opportunity for the University?
NIL isn’t the problem as much as no rules is the problem. Just add some guidelines to even it out. But, faulting the kids and not the universities and NCAA is wild.
Also, he’s 75. We are going to see a ton of older coaches leave and blame NIL instead of being 4-8 with a stacked squad (like him).
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My wife had an excellent question on all the transfers: “What school do they get the degree from?”
Most universities require a big chunk of hours to be from that school, so 4 transfers in 4 years probably means no degree. There are exceptions, the grad transfer rule was legit.
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It has to be exhausting. Long gone are the days where recruiting meant sitting in the homes of 17 year olds and telling mom and/or dad about what their child’s 4 years would look like. Now its that, plus agreeing on an nil package, plus keeping current players, plus reaching out to other team’s players to gauge their interest in flipping to you (I think anyone not doing this is failing, even if it feels slimy).
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One story I’ve shared a few times is from Rick Majerus’ book. He was recruiting Phil Cullen up in his Washington home. Phil had been visited by a few PAC12 coaches and promised he would start and have the team built around him. Rick told Phil he’d seen his tapes, listed some of his weaknesses and said with hard work Phil might earn a few minutes of playing time. Phil signed with Utah saying Rick was the most honest coach who had visited him. Ended up playing all 4 years with Utah.
Today whatever coach visits and offers the most NIL $$$$ is getting that player (for one lone year) then each year he’s looking around for higher offers.
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Rick was a one in a million coach. Most schools and universities in the past kept kids from getting the degrees they wanted for easier degrees. Kept them from classes they wanted to take to keep them eligible. They also promised many things to get them signed and their lies were rewarded by keeping that prospect from playing against them for at least two years.
Let’s not romanticize the old system where many kids and their families were still broke and CRM was being scalped for offering food and other programs got away with murder.
There is a positive outcome in between.
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I roomed with a grey shirt walk-on on Majerus’ team. There were some interesting insights. He was a great coach and cared for his players, giving them a cookie be damned. I do remember one player getting a civil engineering degree during that time. That must’ve been really hard for scheduling, but that’s what being a student-athlete used to be.
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Cullen was a great 3-point shooter. He played at a time when you seldom saw a 6-10 kid even shoot a 3, let alone make many. I remember him being the lone bright spot in Utah’s blowout loss to Indiana in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. He hit seven 3-pointers in what was Majerus’ only first-round loss.
He was later an assistant at Utah. What happened to him?
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When he left the Utes he became an assistant, or was on the staff, of the San Antonio Spurs.
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I find the “they are just kids trying to better their lives” argument hollow in a couple fundamental ways.
1). Most of them aren’t kids. They can vote and drive and can own a house and pay taxes. Maybe in HS this floats but I think if they are getting paid and over 18 we call them adults.
- the behavior of vapid greed and an utter lack of loyalty to friends, teammates, and others does matter. Money is not some kind of moral get out of jail free card excuse. If it were then everyone would be fine with prostitution. But we have moral limits on how poorly and selfishly one acts even when there aren’t specific written rules. If we are defending “as long as I get mine” culture we need to pause and thInk about that.
3). Yes obviously there needs to be rules and parameters and the NCAA and Universities allowed this to abscess and explode in this way. A pox on all of them for it.
4). Regardless it’s a business now so anyone interested in academics needs to distance themselves and the universities should sell off the teams and see if they can get back to teaching art, engineering, and chemistry…maybe some history and poli sci too 
This is why I’m actually surprised Whitt stuck it out the last two years and is coming back next year. I’d love to have dinner with him and hear about his real motivation at this point.
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It’s funny how much universities are greedy and our states elect people who make so much money for themselves in spite of the common man to represent us (President Elon comes to mind) and yet we think young adults need to rise above what the alleged adults in the room are doing profiting off the game.
America is a country filled with legal prostitution. As for these players they went from enslaved to their institutions to prostitutes for them. If we want to use your analogy.
We keep having an argument as if we don’t live in a country where being a business man or hoarding the most wealth is not seen as a virtue.
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The only way to rein NIL is with the tax code.
First NIL payments can not be written off as charitable deductions. Yes you can do this through the Utah NIL.
Second: Make each athlete & employer (athlete is easier to control & check) account for the way the NIL $$ was used. If it was not legitimate then it was tax fraud.
The question is: who wants to rein it in—not the big hitters who have the money & can lobby against it. And Congress can’t pass anything—so not going to happen
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I’m not sure pointing to Elon and the gross corruption of our politicians somehow absolves the rest of us. If anything it’s just a further indictment as they are a dark reflection of ourselves and how we have collectively abandoned some very fundamental ethical precepts.
We agree on the universities. I just don’t agree that this somehow is free license for anyone to then act with abandon and disregard. The players should still have some behavioral expectations as should we all.
Rapacious greed and a willingness to sell out anyone for money is a bad look on anyone.
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Here’s a solution. Fund university engineering departments to design football playing robots and just field teams with that. Back to academics, no more NIL. Problem solved
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The NCAA would just pass some rule that there would have to be a governor like they have on trucks.
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Again I very much think of the players as the workers. Do you think the system was great before where they had no safety net if injured on the field or income for their work (as we have established most didn’t get the degrees they wanted). There has to be a middle ground here.
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