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The original was posted on /r/cfb by /u/samf54 on 2024-02-11 04:11:49.
The other night I talked about CFB with my relatives and explained NIL, they admittedly are not sports fans but could not wrap their heads around why boosters pay so much for these kids. And the more I think about it it makes sense that NIL is a bubble that will burst.
Sure a lot of boosters have insane amounts of money but people still want a return on investment, i.e. wins and success. Right now it seems like 20ish booster collectives think they can buy a championship team in the next couple of years, but it’s not going to work like that, there’s only 12 playoff spots and only one champion and inevitably there will be disappointing seasons. For example, Tennessee has notably large NIL collectives which presumably are just paying stacks, what if they go 8-4 over the next two years? Will boosters become disenchanted? Imagine being a booster at UW right now, the rumors about Fisch leaving are well everywhere and you know that there is no way you field a better team than last year, so why cough up the cash?
It just seems like there are so many things that can dissuade potential boosters, kids not panning out, bad coaching hires, bad seasons, and even success. What if you win the championship, now what? Do you still cough tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars every year? Obviously, that’s the less common scenario. The more common scenario is you get 8-10 wins every year and your best players demand more and more money or else they transfer, your coach could leave at any second (unless you’re a top-six? job feels like there’s less and less secure places nowadays) and you quickly realize that every major program is armed with the same amount or more of cash as you are so it’s paying into oblivion to stay relevant or just say screw this is no longer worth my money.
I think NIL from a business perspective will continue to exist and become the more common form of it. Putting a star like Caleb in commercials is good marketing (bad for USC’s karma though) this is a genuine business transaction. The pay-for-play model is going to wear very thin very fast ,I think NIL bounced off like crazy because everyone just saw players and thought hey we could buy a championship and very quickly these boosters will become disenchanted once that doesn’t work out.
Or maybe they regulate it and that changes things. Or this is all just a pipedream and it will continue to only get crazier.