Red Flagg

It’s pretty much given that Duke’s Cooper Flagg will exercise his one-and-done rights and declare his intention to ball professionally when the season ends. The freshman is the presumptive No. 1 pick in the upcoming NBA Draft, a kid who exceeded even the lofty expectations surrounding him when he arrived on campus. 

Flagg caused a bit of a stir recently when he said in a piece in The Athletic that he might consider returning to Duke. “Sh*t, I want to come back next year,” was the exact quote. It was a lengthy story, however, and was said in the context of how much he enjoys college and competing for championships at the highest level. Add the fact that the Blue Devils have the No. 1-ranked recruiting class for 2025 on the way, which with Flagg and whomever else returns would make for an embarrassment of riches and presumably increase the fun. 

Few believe he’ll return to school, though the story and Flagg’s remarks ignited the hooperati and various opinionators about what he should do. The majority take is that he should declare for the NBA Draft, because by delaying even one year he could cost himself tens of millions of dollars in the long haul. 

Perhaps, but there’s a case to be made for returning to school for another year, precisely because it potentially benefits him over the long haul, in terms of physical maturity. No one disputes that Flagg can compete at the highest level. He demonstrated that for an entire college season and against NBA players last summer during pre-Olympic workouts. But if he declares for the Draft and turns pro this Spring, he will have jumped from high school and its four-month season, to top-tier college competition and its six-month season, to the NBA and its eight-to-nine month season and 82-plus game grind, all in the span of three years. And he’ll still be a teenager. 

Recall that he re-classified in high school to graduate a year early and enter college at age 17. He doesn’t turn 20 until Dec. 2026. He’s 6-9 and 205 pounds, but his body isn’t yet fully developed, and he’ll still be expected to compete, and excel, daily against grown-ass men. Tall ask. 

There’s no way to accelerate physical maturity, and another year of college would provide a small step in that direction. The financial argument for Flagg to turn pro immediately is compelling. I’ll spare details related to the salary cap and contract structures because 1) I don’t completely understand it, 2) it will rupture attention spans, and 3) the people who devise such systems are often those who love numbers and hate sports and should not be encouraged. The upshot is that rookie draft choices are slotted into early contracts and are not permitted to bargain for comparatively large numbers until three or four years into the league. 

If Flagg returns to Duke, he’d delay eligibility into his second, or so-called “rookie max”, contract. As a guide, last season’s No. 1 draft pick, French teenager Zaccharie Risacher, received a deal from Atlanta worth $57 million over four years, an average of a little over $14 million per season. Maximum contracts are based on a percentage of a team’s total salary cap. Projecting ahead with annual increases, if Flagg enters the NBA next season he will be eligible for an extension in 2029-30 that could pay him $67.8 million per season. 

So, by delaying one year, he could cost himself more than $50 million, the difference between the first year of a max deal and the last of a rookie contract. If his health and productivity hold, a similar dynamic could play out between the end of his second contract and start of a third deal. 

The advent of Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) and player pay have somewhat mitigated the traditional argument for college players to turn pro immediately. The question used to be: “What if he gets hurt and is never the same again and torches his pro career?” But Flagg’s valuation and endorsement deals this season are reported to be in the $4-million range. If he returns to Duke, he is projected to make more than $16 million next season. The decision then becomes whether to jump into the deep end now, or hope that another year’s maturity will benefit him down the line and perhaps help extend his career. 

Implicit in that call is answering the unknowable question: Where might he more likely suffer severe injury, during a college season workload, or in the middle of the nine-month NBA season as a 21-year-old when his body is still developing? Was his recent ankle sprain in the ACC Tournament a one-off or an omen? If he begins the NBA journey this year, there’s no telling what sort of toll it may take on his body by his mid- and late 20s, when he reaches the peak of his earning power. Perhaps he’s a physical outlier and is productive and efficient into his 30s. But should that be assumed for someone at 18? (We pause for a moment to recognize LeBron James, athletic marvel and possible mutant. 

The NBA’s career leading scorer also arrived in the league as a teenager and through talent, will, genetic blessings, self-care and good fortune, elevated himself into the GOAT discussion. At age 40, in his 22nd season, he is still balling at elite level. He averages 25 points, 8 rebounds and 8 assists, while shooting almost 52 percent from the field and 38 percent from 3-point range and playing 35 minutes per game. Consider, too, that he’s played 287 playoff games, the equivalent of 3½ entire seasons on top of the regular calendar payload; one might say he’s actually played 25½ seasons. Enjoy him now, because we will not see his like again.) 

Look, Flagg is going to make generational money regardless of when he turns pro. He and his progeny and extended family will be able to buy boats and bunkers and comforts to navigate our deteriorating landscape for decades to come. They can afford eggs. Any decision he makes requires financial advisors. He may choose “adult” or delay full immersion for a year, and the difference will be “wealthy” or “wealthier.” Pretty good gig.

NIL Of A Predicament

As college athletics avails itself of labor law and bumper cars its way around the present landscape, the Big Hats believed they had some guidelines in place that would provide a semblance of direction and stability. That is, until a Federal judge said, ‘Nope, this won’t fly; back to your legal pads and laptops.’ 

Last May, the NCAA and remaining Power Conferences agreed to settle three cases that challenged the payment of athletes – the primary one known as “House v. NCAA” and two similar cases. The major points were that the NCAA and P4 would pay out $2.78 billion in damages to current and former athletes who were denied the opportunity to make money from their Name, Image and Likeness (NIL), dating back to 2016. Conferences also agreed to a revenue-sharing plan that would permit schools to direct approximately $22 million annually to athletes for use of their NIL, beginning as early as next season if the settlement is approved. Across-the-board increases in scholarship limits and roster sizes are also part of the deal. 

This does NOT look like 
a person to be trifled with

The settlement also attempts to eliminate spiraling payments to athletes by boosters and collectives, verboten by the old NCAA but shelved in 2021 as unworkable if not illegal. Instead, payments would be funneled through schools, where they would be regulated and where outside arbitrators would determine if rules were violated. U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken studied the settlement proposal and, in a Sept. 5 hearing, voiced concerns and objections. Among them: the notion of the NCAA attempting backdoor restrictions of payments to athletes; whether it’s possible to distinguish between allegedly legitimate business/endorsement deals and straight-up NIL payments without restricting athlete compensation. 

Though the settlement and proposed model quacked and waddled, the NCAA insisted that it was not in fact waterfowl, which led to this exchange during the hearing: NCAA: “Our position is that pay-for-play is prohibited.” Wilken: “But in this ‘House’ settlement, if it is approved, you will be explicitly paying for play or allowing schools to pay for play. So that ‘no pay-for-play’ thing is kind of not going to be there anymore, is it?” NCAA: “There’s still going to be a prohibition on pay-for-play, and there’s discretion for schools to make payments as they see fit under the new regime.” Wilken, incredulously: “And that won’t be pay-for-play?” 

Wilken, you might recall, isn’t some judicial naif wading into the athletic bog. She ruled against the NCAA a decade ago in the O’Bannon case, saying that the NCAA violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act by prohibiting athletes from earning money from their names and images when they were used by schools, conferences and businesses to generate revenue. This time, she told the NCAA and the conferences to at least alter some of the language, if not the entire proposal, and she would revisit it in the coming weeks. The inference being that they likely would be kneecapped again in the courts if challenged. 

Indeed, plaintiffs’ attorney and apex legal predator Jeffrey Kessler said in the hearing that NIL payments for athletes from boosters or collectives are likely to increase in the coming years, not remain static or decrease due to a settlement. There’s a Wild West, gold rush mentality afoot. Recent stories pegged Ohio State’s football roster at approximately $20 million for transfers, recruits and retention of current players. Most top-25 programs spend well north of $10 million. 

CBS Sports took a crack at an NIL transfer portal pay structure for football back in May and determined that quarterbacks cost $500,000-$800,000, with a few receiving as much as $2 million. Running backs typically cost $200-300,000, offensive linemen $350-500,000, receivers between $75-300,000 and defensive linemen $250-600,000, with top-shelf edge rushers likely commanding a little more. 

For a hoops example, University of Washington transfer Great Osobor, a Spanish-English power forward who previously starred at Montana State and Utah State, will receive $2 million in NIL money, according to ESPN. Here's a couple of examples closer to home, from friends and former colleagues plugged into the Virginia college athletic scene: A defensive lineman who played at Alabama chose to transfer after last season. He considered both Virginia Tech and Michigan. He was told by Tech interests that if he didn’t visit Michigan, he could expect $600,000 in his bank account. Reporters haven’t seen the player’s bank statements, but he didn’t board the plane for Ann Arbor, and he suits up for the Hokies. 

A Tech booster boasted that he helped facilitate the transfer of a quarterback from UCLA, also supposedly for $600,000. The young man is a redshirt senior and the Hokies’ backup, so even considering the possibility of exaggeration, it’s likely that Tech interests sank at least a half-mil for a one-season rental who may not see the field. 

And then there’s the scholarship and roster size component of the proposed settlement. Division I programs will now be able to offer scholarships to every player on every roster, eliminating sports-specific restrictions that have been in place for decades. For example, D1 baseball programs were allowed a total of 11.7 scholarships, and men’s soccer permitted 9.9 – obviously, far fewer than the number of players on the roster. Aid was routinely chopped up and parceled out, a half-scholarship here, a partial scholarship there. Under settlement terms, baseball can now offer full schollies to a maximum of 34 players on the roster, men’s soccer can offer to a roster max of 28 players. Scholarships can still be carved and parceled but overall costs most certainly will increase. 

Football figures in the mix, as well. FBS programs are permitted to carry 105 players on their rosters, but scholarships presently are capped at 85. Under settlement terms, programs can now offer scholarships to all 105 players. For Power Conference schools, it would be competitively irresponsible not to fully fund the roster. And don’t you know that if a department suddenly funds 20 more men’s scholarships, there are Title IX and women’s sports advocates who will bang on the door and seek 20 more for women, justifiably so. Many major D1 programs have approximately 500 scholarship athletes. The settlement proposal could increase that number to 1,200. 

Programs are planning to goose their scholarship budgets by $5-10 million. Factor in the previously mentioned $22-million NIL outlay for athletes and scholarship increases, and some schools are looking at forking out at least an additional $30 million per year. 

If you wonder, is this sustainable, you aren’t alone. Massive TV contracts and payouts for the Power Conference schools will absorb some of the blow. Alphas Big Ten and Southeastern conferences will distribute somewhere above $60 million per school annually, while ACC and Big 12 schools will receive an estimated $40 million per year. But all that cabbage is earmarked for far more than gaps and shortfalls. Group of Five conferences and lower-tier D1 athletic programs will simply be unable to keep up and left to conduct business as usual. 

Perhaps the most sensible path forward is also the least appealing to many suits and traditionalists. Collective bargaining, a la union and organized labor practices, would provide guardrails and structure for payments and athlete compensation. It also would essentially concede that athletes are employees of universities, something the NCAA has fought forever (worth noting that the NCAA introduced the odiously self-serving term “student-athlete” in 1953 as part of a strategy to avoid paying workmen’s compensation for injured players). Courts have repeatedly ruled in favor of athletes as the arrangement between management and labor climbed into Gilded Age territory this century. Predictable doom arguments that paying athletes and a departure from the status quo would lead to the demise of major college athletics have been every bit as inaccurate as contentions decades ago that free agency and increased salaries and player movement would kill professional sports. 

Which brings us to where we are now, with the NCAA and college athletics playing catch-up because they were unable or unwilling to read the room and prepare accordingly. They would dearly love for Congress to step in and legislate … something. Maybe an exemption that permits collective bargaining without granting athletes employee status (good luck threading that needle). Perhaps a strategy of legal duck and delay, as any march through the court system likely will take years, and who knows what might transpire in the interim? It’s exhausting. Free markets can be so unruly when they’re open to the help. And billable hours remain undefeated.

College Football's Next Chapter

As we put a bow on the Scrappin’ Harbaughs’ kneecapping of Washington for the national championship, we might also bid a fond farewell to major college football as we know it. They’ll still play the games, we’ll still watch, and the circus will continue. Given the changes afoot, however, the 2023 season feels like the end of an era as the sport lumbers toward whatever’s next. 

Megafootballfauna!

Mega-conferences [NOTE FROM YOUR TINY DICTATOR, WHO MAY OR MAY NOT BE A BIT TIPSY: I prefer to read this as megafauna, which I find an excellent word], the 12-team playoff, and players profiting from their abilities are upon us. Any of those measures alone create a seismic shift. That all three arrive together while college athletics’ leadership essentially draws “HELP” in super-sized letters on the beach in hopes of a rescue flyover is its own level of entertainment. 

Athletes making money from their name, image and likeness (NIL) has been in place for a couple of years now, as schools figure out how to use it as recruiting tool and oversee it without calling their new assistant athletic directors “bagmen.” If anything, NIL has been bolstered by the other two components. 

When the Southeastern Conference poached Texas and Oklahoma from the Big 12, and the Big Ten countered by grabbing Southern Cal and UCLA from the Pac-12, it kicked off a round of realignment that exposed the lie that major college athletics’ primary concern is the welfare of the athletes, unless frequent-flier miles and Marriott points are now considered benefits. The Big Ten is about to be an 18-team coast-to-coast league, the SEC a 16-team outfit that stretches from central Texas and Oklahoma to Florida. The two wealthiest conferences, in terms of TV contracts and interest, are about to become even wealthier once the upcoming round of TV negotiations is complete. Meanwhile, the Big 12 is up to 16 schools after cherry-picking from the underserved and then snatching a quartet of Pac-12 refugees, and the last-at-the-table ACC is also up to 18 schools and bi-coastal. 

Couple that movement with the 12-team playoff, and it makes for a dandy cash grab. The four-team playoff structure was worth $400-600 million per year for the decade it was in place. The new, expanded setup is estimated to be worth approximately $1-1.2 billion per year. Under the old system, conferences received $6 million for each semifinalist and $4 million for each team in one of the rotating non-playoff major bowls (Cotton, Fiesta, Peach). Expect those payouts to increase substantially under the 12-team field. 

All that lettuce, and still there are plenty of folks who want to restrict the kids who attract the eyeballs and cash. At this point, arguments for the traditional model of college athletics should come with a laugh track, though it does provide a valuable lesson for the kids: that the adults who control the means and venues and distribution won’t cede a dime without a hissy fit, and they won’t hesitate to use any tool in the shed. 

Education and nostalgia and sports can make for darn fine cover, which Eugene Debs and Mother Jones and Marvin Miller would recognize. But we digress. The combination of conference consolidation and the fact that an actual playoff field was imminent made this season feel a little like a missed opportunity. Consider what the 12-team field would have looked like this season: three SEC teams (Alabama, Georgia, Missouri), three Big Ten teams (Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State), two from the Pac-12 (Washington, Oregon), champs from the Big 12 (Texas) and ACC (Florida State), and the Group of Five choice (Liberty). Argue among yourselves about the 12th team. 

A potentially terrific tournament strictly from a competitive standpoint, but also a fairly broad representation of the sport. Future tournaments may be similarly competitive but something will be lost. One of the beauties of college football, of college athletics in general, is its unique fingerprint, both individually and regionally. It’s what separates the game from the more homogenized NFL. 

Going forward, programs will still have their own personalities and loyalties, but consolidation and the elimination of an entire conference (RIP, Pac-12) erodes some of the individuality. When programs are grouped under increasingly large umbrellas, it begins to feel like watching branch offices of Amazon and Microsoft rather than pure athletic competition (if the West Coast programs are somehow cowed into an Iowafication of their style of play, the Big Ten offices will receive a sternly worded letter; just sayin’).  

Now, if all this nudges college football toward separate governance and scheduling and permits athletic departments to return to more regionally sensible schedules for all other sports, then the upheaval may have been worth it. Good or bad in total no one can say. Though the fact that in this revolution no skulls were cracked probably counts as a win.

Gheorghe: The Endorsement Deals

Like a lot of change, the movement towards allowing collegiate athletes to monetize their name, image, and likeness (NIL) happened at a glacial pace, right up until it accelerated to plaid. 

Haley and Hanna Cavinder have already signed deals with
Boost Mobile and Six Star Pro Nutrition

After literally decades of debate and litigation, the Supreme Court ruled ten days ago that the NCAA's rules limiting student-athletes'* educational compensation violated antitrust laws. From that ruling, it was a short sprint to the NCAA throwing the barn doors open and letting college athletes test their earning potential on the free market.

* - Ain't it nice to see that phrase, so redolent of antiquated legal trickeration, going the way of the dodo?

It is far to early to see how college athletes' newfound freedoms will change the competitive landscape. Some argue that the playing field will level, as kids at schools like Memphis and Wichita State - the only games in their towns - will find their limited supply causes their value to be bid up in comparison to other locales. Others think the rich will stay rich, as Alabama's national footprint leads Ford to outbid Chevy for the next Najee Harris's commercial appeal. Still others say that the massive influx of money and interest in a short period of time is a recipe for fraud, hucksterism, and burned collegiate athletes.

I think all three of those are possible and even likely, as are unintended consequences still just a twinkle in some Tallahassee bar owner or Nike Chairman's eye. For the moment, it's kinda cool to see Fresno State's Cavinder twins quickly figuring out how to monetize the 3.3 million followers they've amassed on TikTok. Or Arkansas Wide Receiver Trey Knox and his dog, Blue, inking a deal with PetSmart. 

Meanwhile, former collegiate stars lamented the timing of their births. J.J. Redick said on Twitter, "From 2004-2006, I would have made a bag 💰 on NIL endorsements.  Sadly- I would have blown it all on Natty Light and Lacoste polos (with the collars popped, of course)." Chris Webber said he'd have stayed in college for four years if he was getting paid (legally). Reggie Bush immediately agitated for the restoration of his Heisman. Not bloody likely, that - we've got a whole bunch of drug convictions to overturn, first.

With all that as prelude, let's get to the point. This post isn't a prediction. Rather, I come here with a very much intended consequence.

We're very pro-athlete around here. And we love the underdog, especially if she wears green and gold. I propose to you today, friends, our first sponsorship deal. If the executive committee ratifies it, we're going to offer $250 to the 12th man and woman on William & Mary's men's and women's basketball teams to be the official spokespeople of Gheorghe: The Blog. Additional promotional considerations are also on the table, including guest blogging privileges, free G:TB t-shirts, and naming rights to the next child born to a Gheorghie or his/her family.

Please provide your approval in the comments, as well as any other ideas for compensation for our spokesfolks.