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Reply to "California Lawmakers Vote to Undo N.C.A.A. Amateurism"

There are about 3 groups that will be impacted here.  Football & Basketball players.  Olympic athletes primarily in individual sports like swimming and maybe a few regional things like UCONN women's basketball.

What everyone is missing here is the shoe money.  How much could Zion have commanded from Adidas?  But suppose he is at a Nike school?  Whose shoe does he wear?  Would he have stayed in college for another year or two with $100 million in his pocket?  If that happened it would be the best thing to happen in college basketball in 40 years since they brought the dunk back. 

This might hasten the time where we finally get rid of the student athlete and treat football and basketball for what they are - professional sports.  I have said for years that players should have a choice of getting paid or free school.  I also think they should have 5 or 6 years of eligibility.  The pay can be scaled with a base.  Say $50k base with 25K incentive for all conference and another $50k for all American.

Scholarships cost the school $0.  Room and board are about $20k.  For a big time football program 85 paid players would be about $5mm.  A home game with 75,000 at $25 per seat is almost $2 Million.  So 3 home games pays the freight with money to burn.  That still leaves TV, Shoe, jersey's etc. for the school to get fat on.  

Basketball math is 15 paid players or $750k.  A 14,000 seat area at $15 per seat means 4 home games cover it.

It could create a separate tier where the top 60 football schools (Power 5) break off the rest of Div I and basketball gets DI cut down to 100.  DII and DIII won't have too many issues from this.  All those mid majors will either drop to D1AA or form their own alliance with less cash sloshing around or they maintain the old model.  The bowls die and a 16 team football playoff results.  

The non revenue sports won't be impacted significantly.  Schools will fund them for conference TV content and to keep the Feds at bay for Title IX etc.   There is plenty of cheese to go around and if the players get a bite the world will stay on its axis.  

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