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Is he saying direct payments will replace NiL? Because I don't see that happening pretty much ever. It's a completely different source of funding, and despite goofy Nick Saban thinking that NiL revenue should be shared among different teams, it will remain the way for boosters to attract players to their own school. No way boosters are going to contribute to NiL if that money is going to teams other than their own.
There are some huge issues with direct payments over and above scholarships/stipends - not to mention Title IX implications - but I suppose we'll see. I'm skeptical that schools will do it to a significant degree because of the cost/internal politics at schools. Most academic leadership/deans are not going to want to spend more general university money to pay student athletes, nor should they. So that means it most likely would be limited to the dozen or so schools whose athletic department are in the black and that can therefore self-finance the payments.
I thought his comment that “there will be a line item in our budgets for student-athletes” and “it is not optional” was incredibly arrogant, ignorant and presumptuous.
No university is obligates to pay its athletes. If that’s eventually a mandate some schools with opt out with some or even all of their sports programs. Athletics does not have an ironclad right to money. Nor does any other school program. Universities can and do cut academic and athletic programs for all sorts of reasons.
Flat statements like these in a rapidly changing era of high legal uncertainty are risible. What’s more likely for sports programs like Ohio State and Alabama are not necessarily valid for less successful programs.