Texas Tech News, Notes and Links | 2011-04-06

Unfortunately, Hance thinks the only way to look out for Tech is to kiss ut’s butt.

The article also made me consider something I never thought of before. Ignoring for a moment that the NCAA doesn’t even enforce its own rules on the top programs anyway, doesn’t this escalation (the espNUT) kind of render obsolete the whole “don’t pay the players” system of doing things. To explain:

The whole POINT of the “don’t pay the players” system is that the biggest schools would have a ridiculous advantage from the standpoint of having alums that can offer significantly more than the smaller schools. (if you know of a more LOGICAL reason than that, please let me know) As such, the only “advantages” to sell are:
1. Facilities
2. Championships (better team)
3. TV exposure (theoretically leading to higher fame and better draft odds)

Now granted, teams already have inherent advantages in these areas, and people already have the capability to affect these. (higher enrollment means more viewers=more TV appearances, more alumni contributions=better facilities, etc.) But now you’re allowing a single school to essentially “profit” straight up from it’s own network. Anything they CAN pay for (facilities) they get immediate upgrade. TV exposure ALSO gets immediate upgrade because they get to choose the content of their own network. (X games are on network TV, Y games are on TV by conference deal, anything left can be broadcast on their own network by school fiat)

Think about this, here in Austin various UT (football player) alumni consistently make commercials for various products. Consider also, you have players like Cam Newton (who may or may not have been paid straight up) that not only want to be star PLAYERS, but want to be STARS. As a school, you can now offer “TV time” on top of everything else. Heck, what if the NUT starts playing “meet the player” segments to go with everything else. What if they allow a 5 star wide receiver to try to launch his own rap career on the NUT? You can tell a kid in Chicago that your school can allow his parents to watch every moment of his college games on TV in their home in Chicago, can any other school (who doesn’t have their own network) give that assurance? (and before anyone says "what if it’s not available in their area, are you telling me a school with a $300mil deal and loaded alumni can’t make that happen if necessary?)

The point is that this takes “competitive advantage” to a whole new level, and because our commissioner is a ****less coward, we get to be the incubator for the next stage. If this sort of thing is going to be allowed, they may as well just get it over with and let the colleges pay the players directly, since there’s no real benefit to “preventing” it.