As I’ve stated before, I would love to see an NFL “D” league for players who don’t really want to go to college. I think a lot of this goes away if you have that option for kids who “don’t want to play school”. I honestly don’t think this would diminish the excitement for fans at all.
However, as I realize that is very unlikely to happen (and I realize it doesn’t directly address the CFB “arms race”), here is a modest proposal:
Out of all football revenue (gross) for a given school:
- No more than 50% can be used for non-facilities operating expenses (e.g. coaches’ salaries, travel, recruiting, equipment);
- No more than 10% can be used for facilities related needs (improvement, utilities, etc) for the football team
- At least 10% must be used to help fund other sports teams at the school;
- At least 5% must be spent on academic support for the team;
- No less than 5% (but no more than 10%) must be set aside in a protected account to be divided equally among each player and paid only after the completion of their degree.
- At least 20% must be returned to the school’s general scholarship fund to benefit the general enrollment of the school.
If booster want to pay to buy a building or pay for the coach’s salary, that amount counts towards the percentages just like other revenue (i.e. donations = revenue).
Using the 2019 season as an example, PSU brought in about $100M so the math is pretty easy there. To break the players’ fund down more thoroughly, you’d have $5M to divide among roughly 100 players. That’s $50K per player per year. That seems reasonable.
You can obviously play around with those numbers to change my proposal but this plan:
- Directly ties expenditures to revenues
- “Diverts” some revenue to other sports and well as to the general student population
- Dampens the impact of boosters (e.g. effectively only 50% of their donation could go towards a coach) and even less to a building
- Provides revenue sharing for players, with equality (i.e. QB1 makes the same as walk on snapper)
