This Bloomberg article demonstrates my point about you can't trust every number out there because so much is opaque and hidden. It could be real, ambiguous or just lies. I've mentioned this before with regards to a MSU NIL but think about this even a NIL partially funded by one of their billionaires who funded Tucker's contract and donates millions to the school wasn't all on the up and up. If you can't even believe something like that is trustworthy then WTH. There is big money out there for some but you can't take it all at face value when so much is purposely hidden. I've seen similar accounts from other reporters too.
Someone mentioned a Lamborghini in one of these threads. It could've been bought by NIL money, given over or just allowed to be used for 4 months of the season and taken back, who knows.
Excerpts from a Bloomberg article in Sept
Yes, the stars are making millions. Everyone else is vulnerable to boosters making promises they can’t or won’t keep.
During the short flight from East Lansing, Michigan, around three dozen of the team’s players had received a stunning email from a booster group that had committed to paying them. The group was called Spartan Dawgs 4 Life. Backed by some of the university’s deepest-pocketed alumni, including the mortgage loan billionaire Mat Ishbia and technology entrepreneur Steve St. Andre, the Spartan Dawgs had raised $6 million, according to a spokesperson for the group. At least one football player had been getting $10,000 a month. Now the group told some Spartans it was ending those payments—dawgs for life no more.
But in this opaque new world, quarterbacks like Sanders are something akin to the celebrity CEO, and most of his teammates the underpaid and insecure cogs in a system in which they hold little power. Bloomberg Businessweek submitted requests for records to every public school in the major athletic conferences and talked with more than 70 players, coaches, agents, parents, lawyers, donors, academics and administrators for this story. What these people describe—and the available documents show—is that changes meant to enrich young athletes are instead turning into another way for the adults in their lives to exploit many of them. In the worst cases, some of the US’ top public institutions, which have long portrayed themselves as among the most progressive in the country on matters of equity, have led vulnerable teenagers to believe they’ll enjoy benefits that aren’t delivered.
Coaches make promises to entice players to enroll and then, according to accounts by multiple people, often change the terms after the fact. After committing to schools in the expectation of big NIL money, some wind up getting nothing. “It happens a ton,” says one former assistant coach at a Big Ten school, who asked for anonymity to preserve his employment prospects. “I had to do that to a few kids, and it was like, ‘Hey, I can’t really do anything about it.’” Business plans fall through, or donor priorities change, and the coaches making the promises don’t actually control the purse strings. In some cases, neither does the collective: It’s counting on raising revenue by hosting tailgates or autograph signings or just persuading donors to chip in $2,000 here or $5,000 there.
Player contracts are closely guarded, but Businessweek obtained three of them and talked to 20 people who’ve seen others. Many included broad termination rights that, lawyers say, would be unusual in a negotiated contract in any other industry. Lacking employment rights or a collective-bargaining agreement, and desperate to earn playing time from coaches, the athletes have little leverage to hold the programs accountable. The same is true for the NCAA, after a federal judge in February halted its attempt to crack down on a collective’s recruitment of a quarterback, saying the governing body’s actions likely violated antitrust law.
The injustice at the heart of college sports has long been the economic exploitation of the players who generate much of the revenue. They’re now better off, wildly so in some cases. But somehow, in just about every town where big-time college football is played, the players are still at the mercy of the richest car dealer or real estate developer.
One director of player personnel at an ACC school described a “payroll” of $3.8 million—which the collective associated with the school didn’t have. As a result, the school employee said, the team often missed payments to players. “We’ve been taking from Peter to pay Paul,” he told the academics. “It’s exactly like a Ponzi scheme.”
While the stars have leverage, the portal is frequently a disappointment for others.
The amount at stake in Rashada’s case is unusual, but the experience alleged in the complaint, of a teenager and his family stumbling through life-altering choices in a system with unclear and little-enforced rules, is all too common. In the NFL, the collective bargaining agreement requires that all contracts are disclosed to the union representing players—transparency that benefits the athletes. In the contracts seen by Businessweek, it’s common for them to stipulate that players can’t reveal what they’re making. One example is a contract from Bulldog Initiative, a collective affiliated with Mississippi State University: Its terms aren’t to be disclosed to anyone except financial advisors. An underlined passage adds that the “Student-Athlete specifically agrees” to keep the amount of compensation confidential from other athletes. The contract for the Spartan Dawgs 4 Life also tells players to keep it confidential—even after it’s terminated.
The group signed contracts with as many as 40 football players, according to WLNS, the CBS News affiliate in Lansing. (SD4L declined to confirm the number.) One of them went to a freshman who’d been rated by recruiting websites as one of Tucker’s top out-of-state recruits a year earlier—Andrew DePaepe, a 6-foot-5, 245-pound defensive lineman from Bettendorf, Iowa. SD4L presented him with an offer of $10,000 a month. Still, the deal worried his father, because the offer included a clause that said “the company shall have the right in its sole discretion” to terminate the deal for any reason and at any time. (A spokesperson for SD4L says some of the contracts allowed for immediate termination and others provided for a 30-day notice.)
“This contract isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on,” Steve DePaepe, Andrew’s father, recalls telling his son, who replied: “Dad, they won’t pay me anything if I don’t sign it.”
Someone mentioned a Lamborghini in one of these threads. It could've been bought by NIL money, given over or just allowed to be used for 4 months of the season and taken back, who knows.
Excerpts from a Bloomberg article in Sept
Yes, the stars are making millions. Everyone else is vulnerable to boosters making promises they can’t or won’t keep.
During the short flight from East Lansing, Michigan, around three dozen of the team’s players had received a stunning email from a booster group that had committed to paying them. The group was called Spartan Dawgs 4 Life. Backed by some of the university’s deepest-pocketed alumni, including the mortgage loan billionaire Mat Ishbia and technology entrepreneur Steve St. Andre, the Spartan Dawgs had raised $6 million, according to a spokesperson for the group. At least one football player had been getting $10,000 a month. Now the group told some Spartans it was ending those payments—dawgs for life no more.
But in this opaque new world, quarterbacks like Sanders are something akin to the celebrity CEO, and most of his teammates the underpaid and insecure cogs in a system in which they hold little power. Bloomberg Businessweek submitted requests for records to every public school in the major athletic conferences and talked with more than 70 players, coaches, agents, parents, lawyers, donors, academics and administrators for this story. What these people describe—and the available documents show—is that changes meant to enrich young athletes are instead turning into another way for the adults in their lives to exploit many of them. In the worst cases, some of the US’ top public institutions, which have long portrayed themselves as among the most progressive in the country on matters of equity, have led vulnerable teenagers to believe they’ll enjoy benefits that aren’t delivered.
Coaches make promises to entice players to enroll and then, according to accounts by multiple people, often change the terms after the fact. After committing to schools in the expectation of big NIL money, some wind up getting nothing. “It happens a ton,” says one former assistant coach at a Big Ten school, who asked for anonymity to preserve his employment prospects. “I had to do that to a few kids, and it was like, ‘Hey, I can’t really do anything about it.’” Business plans fall through, or donor priorities change, and the coaches making the promises don’t actually control the purse strings. In some cases, neither does the collective: It’s counting on raising revenue by hosting tailgates or autograph signings or just persuading donors to chip in $2,000 here or $5,000 there.
Player contracts are closely guarded, but Businessweek obtained three of them and talked to 20 people who’ve seen others. Many included broad termination rights that, lawyers say, would be unusual in a negotiated contract in any other industry. Lacking employment rights or a collective-bargaining agreement, and desperate to earn playing time from coaches, the athletes have little leverage to hold the programs accountable. The same is true for the NCAA, after a federal judge in February halted its attempt to crack down on a collective’s recruitment of a quarterback, saying the governing body’s actions likely violated antitrust law.
The injustice at the heart of college sports has long been the economic exploitation of the players who generate much of the revenue. They’re now better off, wildly so in some cases. But somehow, in just about every town where big-time college football is played, the players are still at the mercy of the richest car dealer or real estate developer.
One director of player personnel at an ACC school described a “payroll” of $3.8 million—which the collective associated with the school didn’t have. As a result, the school employee said, the team often missed payments to players. “We’ve been taking from Peter to pay Paul,” he told the academics. “It’s exactly like a Ponzi scheme.”
While the stars have leverage, the portal is frequently a disappointment for others.
The amount at stake in Rashada’s case is unusual, but the experience alleged in the complaint, of a teenager and his family stumbling through life-altering choices in a system with unclear and little-enforced rules, is all too common. In the NFL, the collective bargaining agreement requires that all contracts are disclosed to the union representing players—transparency that benefits the athletes. In the contracts seen by Businessweek, it’s common for them to stipulate that players can’t reveal what they’re making. One example is a contract from Bulldog Initiative, a collective affiliated with Mississippi State University: Its terms aren’t to be disclosed to anyone except financial advisors. An underlined passage adds that the “Student-Athlete specifically agrees” to keep the amount of compensation confidential from other athletes. The contract for the Spartan Dawgs 4 Life also tells players to keep it confidential—even after it’s terminated.
The group signed contracts with as many as 40 football players, according to WLNS, the CBS News affiliate in Lansing. (SD4L declined to confirm the number.) One of them went to a freshman who’d been rated by recruiting websites as one of Tucker’s top out-of-state recruits a year earlier—Andrew DePaepe, a 6-foot-5, 245-pound defensive lineman from Bettendorf, Iowa. SD4L presented him with an offer of $10,000 a month. Still, the deal worried his father, because the offer included a clause that said “the company shall have the right in its sole discretion” to terminate the deal for any reason and at any time. (A spokesperson for SD4L says some of the contracts allowed for immediate termination and others provided for a 30-day notice.)
“This contract isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on,” Steve DePaepe, Andrew’s father, recalls telling his son, who replied: “Dad, they won’t pay me anything if I don’t sign it.”
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