A Jersey Guy: CFB needs to regain control
It is spring, which in the world of college football means spring meetings to prepare for another season.
They are held in posh resorts in the desert and on beach front communities in Florida, where ideas spill out in challenge on the golf course and are mopped up over adult beverages later that night.
It's all good because no games are being played and all ideas (or most) seem logical.
Take the two major issues of the spring of 2022--Name, Image and Likeness cases involving boosters who are going wild and blue chip athletes who are shopping their wares and the transfer portal which is also overloading the system.
The NCAA began the process, declaring that a half century of working towards keeping boosters as far from the daily operation of athletic programs as possible was no longer their problem.
The NCAA also conceded it no longer had the right to put restrictions on a "student athlete's movements once they began their collegiate career.
What has followed has been predictable as it has been chaotic.
Reports have surfaced of players signing deals which surpassed 8 million dollars, with $350,000 "signing'' bonuses as part of the pf the package.
Direct booster involvement, a violation which contributed heavily in SMU's "death penalty (shutting down the program) sanctions, is now encouraged.
The transfer rule, which allows players to switch schools almost at will without sitting out a season, has created free agency for the players and a major revamping in recruiting strategies for coaches.
By the time the transfer portal clock kicks into a new year in August, more than 3,500 football and basketball players will have submitted their name in the transfer portal in the past 12 months.
The cries of anguish from its membership prompted the NCAA, which made it clear it no longer wanted to be in the enforcement business, to reverse itself by putting in new guidelines for NIL booster issues.
Which raises new questions about the ability of an organization ,which couldn't enforce the rules it already in place.
As conferences hold their annual spring meetings the next few weeks, the primary topic is clear: How do conferences regain control of sports which are run with new rules and priorities?
There has been more and more chatter about college football breaking at the Power 5 level into a separate entity, which sounds good when you hear the initial proposals of different regulations regarding NIL and transfer portal issues.
But without the NCAA structure, who enforces the rules put in my power conference members, what are the nitty-gritty details about actually making it work?
No one has definitive answers.
The guys in college football can't agree on how to move past the road block regarding conference and playoff expansion.
How are they going to reach an an agreement on who's going to govern their new group?
With that in mind, we offer two quick answers to long-term problems of transfers and NIL payouts.
1. Transfer portal
Two hard and fast rules. Have designated time slots to declare, perhaps from the start of the regular season until letter of intent day on the first Wednesday of February.
And then a one month in May after the end of spring practice.
Allow one "free'' transfer during a 5-year period. After that any transfer would follow rules already in place, which means sitting out a year after transferring.
2. NIL
Tough one to govern.
First set up a money NIL cap that schools would have to follow. If they go over the cap, the school pays a fine that goes into a general conference fund.
Make NIL money over 50,000 a year available only in annuity, available AFTER a player was finished with his or her career.
No easy solutions to any of this, but the schools must start to react sooner rather than later.