- When Cliff Ellis retired from coaching in December, he was the winningest active coach in the NCAA division. I’m the 9th winningest coach overall in college basketball.
- He began his coaching career at Cumberland College in Lebanon, Tennessee.
When I recently retired as a college basketball coach, age was a concern, but a bigger factor was simply being able to retire with the transfer portal and NIL funds (name, image, likeness).
The system is broken. Coaches are now, and will continue to be, left the profession to coach “professional” athletes in college sports at the NCAA Division I level.
Teams are built and destroyed by the transfer portal/NIL system. More than 1,800 players entered the men’s basketball transfer portal last year. There are 351 Division I basketball teams. On average, transfers affect nearly half of a team’s roster, not accounting for graduation or other attrition.
That’s insane. Teams can go from bad to good or good to bad overnight.
Column by Gentry Estes:Before being ejected, Jerry Stackhouse gave Vanderbilt basketball a warning.
Students should be paid, but what about transparency?
When the Transfer Portal/NIL system was introduced, Power Five schools had the option to take advantage of easy transfers and attractive NIL packages to attract players who honed their skills at non-Power Five schools. . It’s hard for non-Power Five schools to compete with the deep-funded teams in the NIL.
Athletes should be compensated, as the Supreme Court pointed out in NCAA v. Alston that the NCAA, universities, conferences, and other companies are not the only ones who profit from the names, images, and likenesses of college athletes. I agree. The truth is, college athletics has long been a hot commodity that generates large amounts of revenue for countless organizations, not including athletes.
While the court’s decision corrected the wrong, it did not come with thoughtful, prudent guidance on how to maintain the quality of college athletics while compensating student-athletes.
For example, there should be some transparency in the process. Open and honest reporting of NIL transactions will force a demonstration of legitimacy. Currently, there is no salary cap in the NCAA structure. In the past, giving a T-shirt to a freshman could lead to an investigation by the NCAA. The quarterback is currently being acquired on a $1 million NIL contract.
Professional teams have managed free agents with rules and restrictions. There are basically no restrictions in the University Athletic Association. For example, a player can leave at any time, which is not necessarily good for his immature 18-year-old.
Being a member of a team is invaluable in learning how to live a productive and positive life. Being a cooperative and dedicated team member improves the performance of a community, regardless of the sport in which the individual participates.
Fans are losing interest due to too many changes.
While professional sports are governed by contracts, there are essentially no student-athlete contracts related to the NIL. Instead, there is understanding. When a student-athlete enters into a NIL contract, many of the same factors as a formal contract should apply.
There have already been cases where college athletes have had to sue universities to recover funds paid from NIL contracts due to misunderstandings, and there are many more cases to come due to the way these contracts are entered into. Dew.
Perhaps most importantly, and very unfortunately, education is lost in this system. “Student” is no longer an important part of the athlete experience.
Fans are losing interest in the game because they can’t keep up with Portal’s revolving door of players, and fan support will dwindle even further if it’s all the same old dancers without Cinderella.
You must save the game before it collapses.
New NCAA President Charles Baker has a huge opportunity and a difficult challenge to change the direction we are headed. But that would require more effort than he did. We also need people in Congress, state government, universities and conferences to come together and work together to fix this broken system.
When Cliff Ellis retired from coaching in December, he was the winningest active coach in the NCAA division. I’m the 9th winningest coach overall in college basketball. He led four of his universities to the NCAA National Basketball Tournament, including Alabama, Clemson, Auburn, and Coastal Carolina. He began his college coaching career at Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tennessee, winning 909 games during his career and was named AP Coach of the Year in 1999, as well as ACC Coach of the Year and SEC Coach of the Year. was selected twice. His 1989-1990 Clemson team won the ACC for the first time in school history and advanced to the Sweet 16 in the NCAA National Tournament. He led Auburn teams to the Sweet 16 twice, in 1999 and 2003.
