kreed5120

College athletics is far worse than baseball for a number of reasons. 1) Baseball gives teams 6 years of control. If a Guardians rookie wins ROY, a Red Sox GM can't just slide into his DM and steal him after year 1. 2) Baseball actually has a draft so talent is disbursed in a way that struggling teams get the most hyped prospects. Hence why Skene is a Pirate, not Yankee. You wouldn't see Cooper Flagg in a Chicago State, NIU, or insert whatever other MEAC school jersey. The top schools are getting both the best incoming freshman and the top players at the mid-major level. 3) In addition to draft picks by record, MLB gives small market teams and non luxury tax paying teams additional compensation. Baseball is a little broken, but can be fixed with some tweaks. It's nowhere near the level of s*** show college athletics has become. Even a school like Baylor is turning over their entire roster. It's the wild wild west with no sheriffs.

https://tenor.com/view/money-crying-woody-harrelson-wiping-tears-with-money-gif-6945518

It's still TBD what minimum, if any, the MAC plan to impose. I know the AAC has $10 million planned for 2027 (likely 4-6 million of which will go to football). Furthermore, if other MAC, SunBelt, and C-USA schools decide to spend multi million of direct support, that puts pressure on others to follow. Not doing so will leave you destined to be the Pirates of FBS.

Neither has eligibility remaining as of now, but some are speculating (hoping) that the house settlement will give everyone 5 years of eligibility instead of the current 4. They're entering the portal in case that happens.

Sounds like you're talking about collusion of schools against players, which certainly wouldn't hold up in court. Besides, players technically aren't being paid to play even though in reality that's what's happening. They're paid for 'name, image, and likeness.' That's why a collective bargaining is needed. Anything that restricts player movement will get challenged in court otherwise. The NCAA tried to implement things, like restoring the 1 year sit out for transfers, but the courts told them they can't do that.

Contracts and transfer fees won't hold up in court. They only work in professional sports because the players are unionized and collective bargaining agreements are in place.

This is mostly my thoughts as well. I will say I'd slot Miami just ahead of us right now, but things are subject to change as rosters get filled out.

I noticed his X bio says professional athlete. My have collegiate athletics changed...

Not anymore, but it was previously. By laws were amended after they decided to grant Akron permission.

The system is only going to get worse once revenue sharing is fully implemented. That's another $3-4 million/yr that programs like Utah and Kansas State will have at their disposal to poach our players. I setup a reccurring donation to the NIL, which I'll keep for now, but probably won't bother renewing once the card I have it on expires in a ~year. If role players, like Okonkwo, are getting $500k today then the money I'm contributing really amounts to nothing.

Kicked from the conference. Baseball was a required MAC sport as well, but Akron was granted permission to eliminate it.

The only benefit is it would allow us to keep travel costs down. Using the MVC as an example, it would be a step up in hoops, but I believe Valpo would be our closest conference mate. Per Google maps thats nearly a 5 hour bus ride away. We can get to nearly all the MAC schools in less time than that.

Obviously not that secretive if it's finding it's way to a MAC message board...

I feel it's still TBD how much revenue sharing and direct institutional NIL support will impact the cost of college athletics. If the standard becomes G5 schools paying players $3 million, that means schools like Akron would have to play 2 paycheck games just to fund the players. A cost that doesn't currently exist today.

In the case of Nate, probably not much. The top 20-25 P5 teams are spending an estimated $7-$10+ million in NIL. The Toledo Blade article had other MAC coaches guessing Akron was set to spend ~$1 million. That means Nate received more from Kansas State than Akron had to spend in total, assuming that ~$1.5 million is accurate. As for Nate, it's hard to blame him. $1.5 million for him at his age is pretty life changing. If he's smart with the money and invests the bulk of it, he should be fairly comfortable for retirement by the time his European basketball career comes to an end.

Assuming this was true, I would think that wouldn't roll out Kent. Financially their situation isn't as dire as Akron, but they're still facing budgets deficits. Their president or maybe athletic director a few years back said they were going to prioritize basketball over football. They've pretty much been at the bottom of the MAC in spending and have played 3 paycheck games a year much longer than Akron ever did. Also, they don't play in a city, but they're in close proximity to both Akron and Cleveland.

The portal closes Tuesday. I'm not sure if that means players have 1 or 2 days left to enter their names. Either way I'll be holding my breathe.

I will add Nate has P5 size, strength, and athleticism. At Akron this year he was asked to run the offense, which led to him forcing up several bad shots a game and 1-2 bone head turnovers a game. I by no means am an expert on KSU, but I can't imagine they're bringing him in to be the guy who shoots 10+ fga per game. They probably see him more as a 3rd or 4th scoring option who can defend the opposing teams top guard. If you look at Nate's freshman year, when we had Castaneda and Freeman running the offense and Nate was just a role player, Johnson shot 50% from the field and 42% from 3. They're probably hoping that asking him to do less will lead to him returning closer to those percentages. I'm not saying that will be the case.

Offensively I'd expect him to more closely replace being a more athletic Okonkwo than Nate. He will score by getting put backs on the offensive glass and collecting dump off passes for easy dunks. The added dimension is he'll be able to better run the floor and score in the open court. If he developed a jump shot he'd be a stud. He likely isn't going to be the one creating offense for himself and others in the half court. That's just not his game, which is fine. Groce teams have generally performed best when the offense runs through a ball dominant pg (Cooper, LCJ, Castaneda, Johnson & Johnson).

Evan is already slotted in to replace Gray. He won't even be defending the same player that Johnson would otherwise be defending. If both Johnson's are gone that would mean we'd be down 2 first team All MAC guards and our entire starting 5 from last year. That would be explanation enough why our perceived ceiling would be lower. Besides, my prior higher perceived ceiling accounted for Mahaffey on the team. It's not like he was signed after. Nate literally made the basket that sent us to the tournament and Tavari made the defensive stop that led to the run out. Without them we wouldn't have even made it to the tournment. Yet you're trying to argue we'd be better off with them not here? If that's what you honestly believe we can just agree to disagree. Now if Tavari returns we can manage without Nate, but both gone would be a kick to the groin. We'll see where we go on bigs. I frankly don't think it's worth the money given the premium paid to the position. Guys like Dynes from YSU have received massive bag despite putting up pretty pedestrian numbers in not so great conferences. Dollars go much further spending on forwards and guards as those positions are more plentiful. Not to mention whoever we sign will likely only be playing ~20 minutes a game as they would be splitting time with Lyles.

Go back and read my post in its entirety. The first sentence said TJ isn't officially gone yet. The 2nd sentence said it pertained to only if he does leave. If he returns, I think the Zips are still well positioned. Nate is a loss even if you want to downplay it. That said, if Tavari returns we can replace much of his production in the aggregate with our depth at guard. A luxury other MAC teams wouldn't have. Okonkwo seems to collect a lot of strays here. He was fine in his role, but he wasn't going to be the guy to make or break the team next year. He can be replaced in the portal, but at the same time I don't see us majorly upgrading the position. Reece Potter (who averaged fewer points, rebounds, and blocks than Okonkwo while playing similar minutes) is reportedly requesting $300k in the portal. Whoever we bring in will likely be unproven and looking for an opportunity.

Let's start off by establishing I simply stating our ceiling for next season has likely been lowered. I never stated that we couldn't win the MAC. In fact, I said the opposite. What I said is our odds of winning the MAC are less than what they would have been 1 week ago and the seed we'd get if we do win will likely be lower than had we been able to run it back. Any objective person without Zippy tinted glasses would agree.

Tavari still isn't in the portal officially as I can tell. If it happens, I would have to think Miami enters the season as the favorites. That's obviously not to say that we can't still win the MAC, but it's going to be a much more uphill battle with these departures. We looked positioned to be one of the more hyped mid-major entering the season. Similar to a Drake or McNeese. Now at best even if we find a way to win the MAC, the best we could realistically hope for is being a +15+ underdog 13 seed.

I've thought about avoiding the forum until April 23rd since the portal closes on the 22nd. At least then I'd know what kind of aftermath we're dealing with.

I feel the criticism of players has been a far minority of the posts. I would think just about any one on this board would leave their current job if another offered to double or triple their salary. The majority of the complaints is about how the current system in broken. At least with pro sports, which is what D1 basketball has become, there are mechanisms in place to keep order (multi-year contracts, max deals, soft salary cap, no tampering with players on others rosters). College basketball is the wild west. It's just utter chaos.