Heck, Purdueâs nickname is basically the Purdue âyou donât recognize those guys from Calculus class, do you?â
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Eh. In Japan, a lot of the baseball teams are owned by big companies, and I assume were originally viewed as marketing effort. The âNippon Ham Fightersâ are indeed owned by Nippon Ham, a food-processing conglomerate with roughly $10B in revenue.
I guess itâd be weird that US minor league basketball and football is predominantly owned by universities, but its also kinda weird that US professional sports teams arenât visibly owned by big US companies. Companies line up to pay to put their name on stadiums, but they never outright buy the teams and then make them the âFrito-Lay Texas Rangersâ. I mean, a decent chunk of the value of the NY Times for a long time was their ownership stake in the Red Sox, its just that no one talked about it.
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Thatâs why womenâs hoopers used to make bank in Russia. The local industrialist would pay a huge amount of money to have Diana Turasi play for his team. Until of course that woman from Baylor got detained for months
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Last time my wife went to a UVA bball game, as a marketing professional, she was distracted for a significant amount of time by the sheer density of branding in both the physical space in JPJ and by the events programming around the game itself. The Smithfield bacon promotion for the 2nd half missed FTs kinda broke her.
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I was actually thinking about this - that itâs just an entertainment product on grounds - but then why would it be named and affiliated with UVA? Bands and other stuff that perform at UVA arenât officially affiliated with the university unless its students or professors or whatever performing, right? Why would a university own a professional sports team and utilize the universityâs space and resources to host games?
And yeah, elsewhere companies do own teams and all that. It still feels like a super weird thing for a university to own if thereâs no actual affiliation between the players and the school. I donât think Iâll be super excited to cheer for a minor league pro team bankrolled by my university as a side investment. (I acknowledge many would argue we are already at that point ha)
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I agree with you, mostly, I think.
That would all be super weird. But I think we also need to acknowledge that the system that lasted for the last several decades, where our nationâs universities operated minor leagues for 2/3 major sports and paid the participants with scholarships was also really weird!
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Oh super weird. Nowhere else in the world really does it, and nowhere close to the extent we do. And thereâs not really a good reason why universities should be affiliated with big time money sports other than âHey, we all enjoy itâ.
I also understand if others feel differently. Just for me, the reason I love college sports is because I feel like I share something small in common with the athletes. We are from the same broad âtribeâ so to speak. And that makes the inherent tribalism of sports so much more fun for me. Conversely, I also donât care nearly as much about pro sports.
Itâll just make me sad if/when they fully sever the connection and the only thing Iâll have in common with a UVA basketball player is that we both were in Charlottesville for an approximately similar period of time. At that point, Iâll just tune into the non-rev sports.
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As almost always, you can lay blame at the feet of the NCAA.
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Bittersweet innit?
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Yep. I think Iâm a lot closer to there than you are.
The new model has laid bare the hypocrisy that has been at the heart of major college sports for some time now. But it is also stripping away a lot of the supports that were in place to:
Choose one:
- maintain that illusion
or - try to keep teams nominally under the control of and a part of the universities whose names they carried.
If itâs just minor league basketball, why are they sharing revenue with swimming? No AAA baseball club is supporting a womenâs lacrosse team as part of the business model, but if both are part of a universityâs athletic program, then itâs reasonable that they do so.
And so many of us accepted the compromises of preferential admission and separate dormitories and cafeterias for certain âstudentsâ because they provided marketing, camaraderie, and connection to the university and fellow students/alums because the team was part of the university. They were technically students - with privileges not afforded to the rest of us, but also with responsibilities and commitments other students didnât have to fulfill.
And some schools took advantage of the system, and other schools took less advantage of the system, but there was a system.
I think that is irretrievably broken, and I know it has seriously undermined my interest in college sports generally and UVa specifically.
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Great tune!
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I would compare it to the Euro Leagues more than a minor league. Itâs sorta already been the NBAâs minor league. This is way more chaotic. Shady contracts, players sometimes not being paid, all one-year arrangements. And lots of overpays to play in places they normally wouldnât consider.
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I donât really disagree. You donât want your team to be a âminor league pro team bankrolled by my universityâ, and neither do I. The space between you and me is simply that I think weâre already there.
Maybe that means Iâm at âAcceptanceâ? Idk. Feels more like âResignation,â but same diff I guess.
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Lmao this is whatâs against the rules nowadays?
Getting dinged for taking pics at Times Square is so dumb.
I meanâŚcome on:
All together, the cost of these various impermissible benefits added up to an approximate total of $10,736.
That nets out to likeâŚhalf a day of AJ Dybantsaâs compensation for next season?
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Yeah, itâs a bit silly, but it looks like there was some noncompliance with the investigation. That always pisses them off.
So I guess with Urgoâs departure, the Jay Wright coaching tree is on life support. We shall see what happens with Mike Nardi. Looks like thereâs a rumor he goes to UConn.
Wonder if Magpayo gets any traction. Iâve got a ton of family ties to Fordham, and Iâm even an alum myself, and itâs a historic gym, and Iâve never been. Would be fun if he did.
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Basically they donât want anyone on a roster today to get screwed by roster limits. Football rosters average like 120-130 and now limited to 105. So protecting those 20 walk-ons from being impacted.
Not sure how that plays out in other sports (ie. Does that mean Carter Lang doesnât count?)
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Article says swimming, track/cross country, football as the main sports affected by roster limits: NCAA settlement on hold as judge requests changes on roster limits - Yahoo Sports
I did enjoy judgespeak for âthis is a you problemâ:
âThe Court finds that the decision by Defendants and NCAA member schools to begin implementing the roster limits before the Court granted final approval of the settlement agreement is not a valid reason for approval of the agreement in its current form despite the harm discussed above,â [Wilken] wrote in Wednesdayâs order.
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On the podcast today, 3 man weave fell into a trap that Iâm surprised hasnât ensnared more folks: they thought the House settlement is something the House of Representatives came up with⌠followed by the typical âwhy are they involved?â
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I was in that trap when I first heard the term.
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