The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

I'm sure most of you have seen this but former Tennessee QB Nico Iamaleava, who had a $2.25 million NIL deal, skipped spring practices and meetings because he demanded that his deal be increased to $4 million.   This is after a season where he was supposedly not a good guy to be around in the locker room, had been missing workouts and team meetings, and not showing up for fan meet & greets/autograph sessions.   

Tennessee decided they were moving on from him and he enters the transfer portal.   He signs with UCLA for a deal worth about $1.75 million.   So that's a huge paycut because he's now making half a mil less and going from paying no state income tax in Tennessee to a pretty friggin high state income tax in California.   

Is this what college football has come to now?   Players holding out for more money?   I'm glad Tennessee decided to put their foot down and I hope other schools do the same until this NIL bullshit can be reigned in.   I'm all for college players getting paid, but not this kind of money.  They haven't earned it nor deserve it.

"earned it and deserved" has no place in a capitalistic system, the players will get what the market will bear. Supply and demand drive the valuations.

Your talk of paying them less because you don't feel like they should get it is some straight up communist stuff. Don't be a pinko.

I don't mind the players getting value for their talent.  However, without checks on it and with players leaving to bigger school, it just becomes a donor battle where winners and losers and determined by capitalism and that doesn't make for good sports.

I'd like to see the opposite.  Teams can only pay a certain amount, so if you use your money on the best player, the second best player will want to go somewhere else.  Also, loyalty, so that players don't leave teams that have already agreed on a payment amount....  there are ways to fix this within the system, but the Wild West approach really screws small colleges.  ..not that they weren't screwed already.

Any argument that players "don't deserve money" is an argument that schools deserve more.  The tickets are not getting cheaper, nor are the conference network TV packages.

There is a solution to players wanting to leave and go to another school: we call them employment contracts.  But if the schools want to continue to pretend that these athletes aren't employees, then they should get what they deserve.

This is not about capitalism vs communism.  This is about college football being corrupted and becoming more like the NFL, which fans don't want.  College football was never meant to be about the money.   It was about developing your game and your character.   When a guy like Nico Iamaleva starts "holding out" for more money, what does that say about his character?   Screw what the market bears.  


This I can somewhat agree with.   College players should get SOME money, perhaps enough for a nice apartment and a nice car, but not the millions the NFL players make.  Because then it takes away the value of making it to the NFL.  

Perhaps they can make it like arena ball where every player makes the same base salary to start with, then bonuses get paid out for players who make plays.  

You start giving out seven figure money to 18 year old kids who have never taken a snap of college football, it is going to get them in big trouble and that money will run like water through their fingers.

That's just not how pay works.  The money is coming in.  ...someone is getting it.  Why would you limit what a player can make but then pay the AG or the coach or whoever else?

I support salary cap type of stuff for parity's sake, but not from a "they don't deserve it" place.

I think college sports are going to face the same issues of inequality and an inability to improve programs as prosports have with no salary cap.

I'm playing the tiniest violin ever for the big schools who have to pay players to get them to attend their schools.

Strange that this same logic doesn't apply to college coaches.  How are they supposed to be motivated to improve at their craft and make it to the NFL level if they are paid millions of dollars to coach unpaid "amateur" student-athletes?

College coaches should also be paid just enough to afford an apartment and a car, in order to ensure they remain Properly Motivated to get better so they can make it to the big leagues.

How many of you think this new expense will be absorbed by the coaches, AD, and college president taking a pay cut?  How many think it will be absorbed by cutting student programs and raising fees on students?

But, but, there's millions of dollars coming in.  They shouldn't have to cut programs and raise student fees.   ::)

I don't care who gets paid what but if CFB does not come up with some kind of structure, the college game will suffer considerably in the end. Unfortunately it needs to be agreed on or created by the SEC and Big Ten. Otherwise CFB has no control over them and they could start their own thing. 

It's not just college football, it's all sports. A lot of players in other sports are getting more money from NIL than from the sport they play these days (I'm looking at you women's soccer and basketball). This is the new normal. Better get used to it, because it's not going away.

Like anything new it's going to take a bit of time to adjust, but it's all going to work itself out and honestly I think sports will be better off for it eventually. Players might actually be able to choose between staying in school and going pro. I think there's been a few college players that have decided to stay in school rather than turn pro because there's other ways to make a living. That's a good thing in my opinion.

And now the Supreme Court may strip away the NCAA eligibility rule.   Meaning you might be right because you'll have athletes staying in college for seven or eight years.

I didn't catch the name of the guy, but Joe Rose was talking about a guy who has changed 3 times since last season. This means he has been on 4 teams in a year. I think most people would agree that is ridiculous. There is nothing wrong with making rules for eligibility in college but they refuse to do so. I would love for us to go back to sitting out a year for unnecessary transfers. I'm all for allowing players to change if the coach leaves.

IMO, players should only be able to transfer and play immediately if they meet the following criteria:

1.  Family emergency (and this would need to be investigated)
2.  Coach leaves
3.  Graduate transfer
4.  Transfer to a downward tier school (Division 1-AA or Division 2)

I think the whole sham of College sports being regarded as an "amateur" game should be nuked immediately.

For comparison in Australia, the AFL players are drafted at 18 years of age straight out of high school (it used to be a lot younger) and paid appropriately because their career can end in a hurry. They are actively encouraged to take further education at University all the way through to have a pathway post-football, and most of, if not all, do wisely take advantage of that. But they also have a pretty healthy paycheck regardless, even at the bottom of the bottom rates.

Colleges make a fortune out of these athletes at the same age, and for too long they had to live on breadcrumbs. Yes their tuition is paid, but there should be a fairer apportionment. Is there any evidence that the massive bucketloads of cash from broadcasting rights that these athletes are generating to the Colleges are being used to discount the fees being charged to everyone else? I haven't heard of it.

Don't these guys have a limited time to play in college anyway?  If they want to spend their eligibility years transferring, so be it.

That could change soon if the Supreme Court strips the eligibility rule from the NCAA.  They just might, hell they've stripped almost everything else.  And next thing you know, you have 25-30 year olds playing college ball.  

I'm here for the death of college sports entirely. I hope it becomes to incredibly fake that the people stop watching and it stops polluting our Saturdays with low quality garbage games.

Barring that, if the universities are making millions and millions off the literal backs of these athletes, they're entitled to as much as they can get.

What these college players should do is unionize and bargain with the universities collectively and withhold services if they don't agree to a fair division of the proceeds.

As long as they are actually attending classes what would be wrong with this?

Where this could really hurt is minor league baseball.  Kids will stay in college knowing they can get more in NIL than minor league baseball pay.   Not to mention it's easier to hit with aluminum bats.

Chris Weinke won the Heisman at age 28, a quarter-century ago.

Or perhaps minor league baseball will have to actually you know, pay them something...they are afterall the practice squad for MLB.

It’s seems like there could have been a medium between paying players so they don’t steal crab legs and making them collegiate millionaires.

Oh well.

Given the amount of money floating around in college football, I'd rather more money go to the players than to coaches and administrators (who are already millionaires).

How about all that extra money going to fund the school's athletic programs that don't make money so they can operate?

How about the money going towards research projects for the school or facility improvements for the campus?

How about the money going to local hospitals and schools and other charities?

Oh, those things are important?  Then take some of those millions you've been paying coaches and administrators for decades.  Take some of the money from the millions upon millions you are spending on locker rooms and training facilities and stadium suites.

The actual players in the game deserve the money.  Everyone else is a distant second.

Money generated by CFB should always have been funded into academic research and scholarship programs, lowering tuition costs etc but that’s not how things work on a society where every thing is a business and the only objective is to be in the black

No sense arguing the system but I maintain there could have been something else other than don’t play players at all and give them millions upon millions as well. Again oh well.

Most players aren't getting millions, there's only a few select players getting that kind of money. Most aren't even getting a decent salary. I found this with a chatGPT search.

For instance, NCAA data from 2024 indicated that the average NIL earnings for football and men's and women's basketball players were nearly $38,000, but the median earning was only $1,328, highlighting significant disparities.
AP News

Below is the full article where that came from.

When 2025 arrives, so will the end of the amateur athlete in college sports (https://apnews.com/article/college-athletes-amateur-ncaa-79e481c957d73a545fee24cda06e4f87)

That’s better and makes sense. Thanks for the information.

How about getting a free education, free room and board, the best tutoring for free, free meals, free nutritionists, free personal trainers, free private gym, the best coaches for free, free health care, free exposure to market your talents on TV, yada, yada, yada.  Not to mention, for lack of better words “priority points” over kids without athletic talent, but in most cases more academically qualified when it comes to getting into school.


The entire system is absolutely broken. I have never seen so much entitlement in all of my life. You just have to almost laugh.

All of those things have determinable dollar values, likely under 100k/year combined.  

The one exception is "free marketing," which is only useful so far as it helps you make money.  But guess what else helps you make money?  Getting paid.

I think for some players it's the chance to make a lot of money, get rich, and support their families; because they probably wouldn't succeed in professional sports.  But for those that could succeed in pro sports it hurts them by jumping from one system to another and they don't get the coaching that could help them advance.