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The FBS Split is Near

This is a good, and sobering, conversation. In the spirit of diluting the quality of the thread, I'll put in my $0.02.

I absolutely agree that, outside of ND, membership in the P5 is not attainable. Any other addition is another mouth to feed that doesn't bring more to the table than what they'll consume. I keep hearing this garbage that the Big 12 will be forced to go to 12 teams if they consistently keep putting a team in the playoff because they don't have a conference championship game to hurdle. If that is the case, they're not going to punish the Big 12 by making them expand, they'll simply expand the playoff to eight (which will happen regardless).

As for athlete compensation, it boils down to overall compensation permissible per athlete and how many athletes have to be compensated. Per Division 1 regulations, the maximum number of equivalent full time scholarships Wyoming can offer is 226 (the actual number of athletes on rosters is higher, but most of the non-revenue sports have equivalent full-time scholarship caps lower than roster caps). If the total price tag is $3M or under, I'd like to think UW would give it a shot. I agree with Cup, however, that anything approaching $4-5M is a lost cause.

I also agree with Cup that if a choice had to be made, it would be to focus heavily on basketball. The ceiling is much, much higher, with a much, much lower price tag. Would schools be allowed to do that, however? How does Title IX figure into this whole mess?

The next five years are going to be very interesting. Should the revenue sports start genuinely competing for MWC titles, that should generate additional revenue that would offset the cost of keeping up with the Joneses. Not sure that makes the decision any easier.
 
Hayduke and Lakes in agreement on something? If it wasn't for the shitty WYO spring weather outside I would have thought I had died and passed to a more tranquil place..........
 
Well one perspective I have considered in this debate, if schools eventually are allowed to pay players...

Is a school like Texas really going to still pay 85 players to sit on their roster? Certainly they probably can afford to, but will they want to? The NFL has what a 52 or 53 man roster, because it doesn't make sense to pay for 30 more guys when in reality they aren't needed.

So will those schools offer full cash benefits to ALL 85 players currently on scholarship? If college football is truly moving the way of a business this is one angle to consider.
 
calpoke25 said:
Well one perspective I have considered in this debate, if schools eventually are allowed to pay players...

Is a school like Texas really going to still pay 85 players to sit on their roster? Certainly they probably can afford to, but will they want to? The NFL has what a 52 or 53 man roster, because it doesn't make sense to pay for 30 more guys when in reality they aren't needed.

So will those schools offer full cash benefits to ALL 85 players currently on scholarship? If college football is truly moving the way of a business this is one angle to consider.
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Which would mean more highly ranked players for non-aq schools.
 
https://twitter.com/schadjoe/status/461506822432501761" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
https://twitter.com/murphsturph/status/461508883018555393" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

That is potentially huge news. A game-changer in the MW.
 
If the state can actually kick in more money for once, Wyoming would be sitting pretty comfortably in the MWC should this come to pass.
 
fromolwyoming said:
If the state can actually kick in more money for once, Wyoming would be sitting pretty comfortably in the MWC should this come to pass.
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Umm No. A conference can't and won't continue to exist as is with such a disparity in scholarships among members.

What we would see is a whole new round of realignment with Woming potentially left out with other schools such as SJSU, Utah State, etc..
 
The MWC better look long and hard at this. Actually, all the G5 schools should. What would be best is if we all sign a pact to not do it. I don't think that will happen because many schools will be getting their ball gowns on to try to look pretty for the P5.

We are going to have some schools pay and some not.

Where do you want WYO (i.e. pay or no pay) and what do you think WYO will do?

I'm actually struggling with this. I want WYO athletics to be as competitive as possible, but I would like to see a return on investment. If we pay, then we better have a business plan that clearly outlines how it benefits the student population as a whole. I would not want to sacrifice or limit the academic success of even 1 student in order to have a good football team. However, I'm also fully aware of the benefits a successful team can bring to the entire University. Tough issue.
 
OrediggerPoke said:
What we would see is a whole new round of realignment with Wyoming potentially left out with other schools such as SJSU, Utah State, etc..
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Bingo....that's what some national media members are saying too. This will only split the MW again.
 
ragtimejoe1 said:
The MWC better look long and hard at this. Actually, all the G5 schools should. What would be best is if we all sign a pact to not do it. I don't think that will happen because many schools will be getting their ball gowns on to try to look pretty for the P5.

We are going to have some schools pay and some not.

Where do you want WYO (i.e. pay or no pay) and what do you think WYO will do?

I'm actually struggling with this. I want WYO athletics to be as competitive as possible, but I would like to see a return on investment. If we pay, then we better have a business plan that clearly outlines how it benefits the student population as a whole. I would not want to sacrifice or limit the academic success of even 1 student in order to have a good football team. However, I'm also fully aware of the benefits a successful team can bring to the entire University. Tough issue.
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Tough issue for sure. I am against pay/employment status for student athletes. We know how conservative our state is with its budget, so I don't believe there is any question that the University of Wyoming (through the legislature) will decline to pay student athletes.
 
Pretty sure when this issue came up the first time a couple years ago we stated we would pay. I don't have any link or anything just something I think I remember. I think we would step up to the plate and pay and I would support that.
 
Paying players is a long, long way off, if it ever happens at all. Short of that, there are other more realistic and probably more imminent things that will have similar competitive effects on schools like UW:

Things that cost money: paying for increased long-term medical care and insurance; paying for travel for players and families; increasing stipends; easing rules on benefits available to players...in other words, perks that cost cash money.

Things that don't (theoretically) cost money: allowing players to benefit from their celebrity, long-term scholarships, etc.

This isn't comprehensive, by any means, but the result is the same: Wyoming, and dozens and dozens of other colleges, just isn't going to be able to provide these things, nor will we want to. All schools like us will just have to find other similar schools to compete against (and that seems to be the real point of the split: we're going to set rules conference-by-conference).

By the way, as someone said above, this is nothing new. UW hasn't been in the same league as the top football schools during the modern era in any event. This new regime is just going to formalize it.

I'm not dispirited in the least. What we should be doing -- and are doing -- is make sure that our second-level conference stays stocked with schools like ours...and then we get going on being a winner in our conference.

I'm also going to bet that post-season stuff looks very much it does today, except that we'll not be eligible to get in the 4 or 8 team playoff for the NC. Bowls are too attractive, for TV and cities and alums, to get of rid the 124 bowls, or whatever, that are played throughout the extended holiday season.
 
UW already has catastrophic injury insurance.
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That's good a thing.

But, as I said, the issue will likely become long-term medical insurance and care, even, less likely, a worker's comp-type system.
 
I don't think there is a school in our conference that can afford to pay our players. Most are government or partially government funded. None have huge athletics budgets or extra cash laying around.

California's University system has been broke for a while. I think it is more of a struggle for them to keep the doors open to their institutions. Unless they magically get some large influx of cash from athletics, I just can't see them benefiting their athletes much more than they do now.

Colorado's University system is in the same place. Under funded. In fact, most of the MWC remains this way.

You think you hear enough screaming and yelling about athletes getting a full ride scholarship and a stipend every month, just wait until these Universities try to extend those benefits.

I can see the exception at a few special universities, the Texas', Florida's, Alabama's, only because their athletics dept brings in the cash to do so. Any university that starts digging into their pocket books out of the general budget is probably going to fail.
 
TSpoke said:
Pretty sure when this issue came up the first time a couple years ago we stated we would pay. I don't have any link or anything just something I think I remember. I think we would step up to the plate and pay and I would support that.
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This is true. Of course, it all depends on the amount of that stipend, but Burman has come out and said that he expected Wyoming would pay in that scenario. I believe he said it during a KFBC Sportzone interview and there might be an article as well.

What it will do though is restrict some of our other expenditures. We would have a harder time retaining a coach (although having someone else actually want our coach would be a problem I wouldn't mind having again) and recruiting budgets, etc. would be squeezed.


Overall, I am confident Wyoming would step up and pay. However, I think we will still get f'd as further realignment occurs. We may be willing to pay whereas SJSU and Nevada may not, however, a reformed conference with Boise, etc. would still have no interest in UW due to the lack of TV/media market revenue (and lack of success on the field/court too, that matters somewhat).

CSU will be stuck with us though, their operating budget is almost identical to ours. They do at least have the option of instituting additional student fees upon a large enrollment to pay the athletes, but they already forced that on their students once.
 
I'm sorry, but if I were a student, no way would I agree to an increase in fees for the purpose of paying a salary to my fellow students. If the players want to be considered employees, well then they should not expect subsidies from the paying non-athlete students.

I really hope the NFL moves forward with a professional minor league because that is the only way that I foresee college football being saved. Just like baseball, you can choose to go pro (and be paid) out of high school or you can choose to go to college and get an education.
 
Every team professional sport has a minor league but the NFL it's mind boggling to me that someone hasn't jumped in at creating a D league for NFL teams it's just screaming Money imo.
 
Wyo2dal said:
Every team professional sport has a minor league but the NFL it's mind boggling to me that someone hasn't jumped in at creating a D league for NFL teams it's just screaming Money imo.
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The NFL did have one in the 1990s-early 2000s....remember the WLAF which later became NFL Europe?
 
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