Home Football NCAA Approves Pay for Play — The End of College Football

NCAA Approves Pay for Play — The End of College Football

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This got little discussion yesterday, but it’s worthy of it’s own thread and discussion. Here is a synopsis.

Can anyone think of a positive way this effects the Beavs, or any other small market team? California pushed the issue, and that makes sense since every CA school has deep pockets. It should give those schools an advantage.

This take by a Vol’s blog is disturbing, but worth a read for some National perspective.

This will go down the inevitable rabbit hole where marketing departments usurp athletic departments. We will see 18 year old multi-millionaires with their own reality TV shows, etc. A college degree is already a watered down joke, but this will add to that. And of course the obvious that any smaller market team will not be able to compete.

I don’t understand the arguments for this change. Players are already paid via scholarship, free food/training/medical, room and board, tuition, etc. NCAA football is supposed to be an amateur sport. What this change does is take the worst of both worlds — we will have the poor product that is NCAA football combined with the inflated egos of young, rich people. Add it it a litany of new ways to cheat.

Yuck.

Can anyone come up with a realistic counter as to how this at all helps college football? The only thing I can come up with is we get contraction from this and the smaller teams split from the power 5 and form their own conferences.

207 COMMENTS

  1. Now that we no longer have Student / Athletes, it is time we treat the sport as it is – a professional sport entity. The Next logical step is to implement a Draft so that all schools have a fair opportunity to sign the the most valuable athletes. This will help bring parity to the sport. The Atheletes want fairneess – this is the next step – After all, all other professional sports do this.
    There would be 4 exclusions (Opt outs) for the National Draft.
    1) Athlete can select school if Biological Mother, Father, or Grandparents graduated from the school
    2) Athlete only wants to attend school in home state – Any State School can use draft to select – This could be a regional option
    3) Athlete on whats to attend a specif conference – Any Conference School can use draft to select
    4) Education requirements are demanded – Any School can use draft to select if education requirements are meet.

    Before you bash – think about it. Many though pay for likeness would never happen. All that is needed is the congress to get involved and drive the idea.

    • They don’t have a draft for academic scholarships. Not sure how there’s a distinction between athletic and academic scholarships other than the field of expertise? Impact is maybe more tangible with athletes since we watch them on a weekly basis.
      It could be argued the 5* academic students are worth as much to the school as 5* athletes in terms of boosting the school’s reputation, future donor money, etc.

      I think we just need to accept that this model is never going to have competitive balance, and really never has. Like Angry said, only about 10 teams ever have a shot at winning the national title. And even then, there’s a top 5(Alabama/Clemson/Ohio St/Oklahoma/SEC runner up) that are head and shoulders ahead of the next 5.

      • And those academic students can get a free ride for their degree as well as work internships and projects that pay them actual money.

        Haven’t realy put much thought into it but it seems to me the move to paying SAs is making them more like actual students in the pay department.

        • That’s a good point, let them participate in the same types of programs. If there’s nothing that pertains to their major let them help coach the local middle school team for some part time cash. At least it gives back to the local community.

  2. There isnt a good reason. It will be interesting to see how they hammer this out to make it fair. I foresee many law suits from group of 5 schools about fairness in recruiting and pay.

    • What about my idea of contraction — the smaller p5 schools leaving the major conferences.
      Rather than be punching bags they should just leave and go back to the old ways, and let the 10 schools this benefits form the shit-show that will be the WWF of football.

      • My first reaction to this was: “Here’s NFL’s developmental league of 10-12 teams.” The schools that benefit will have even more vicarious, obnoxious, entitled fans.

        I’d appreciate it if smaller schools would leave and not just “go back to the old ways” (which were affected by media bias in rankings) but rather adopt a playoff system based on records with a reasonable seeding process (geographic?). No media polls affecting seeding. You could still have media “power polls,” which should sate the average fan’s appetite for rankings and subsequent debate.

        I don’t see the NCAA having either the discipline or the leadership to pull this off though.

        I’ll likely watch even less than I do now.

  3. Some NCAA improper benefit rules are absurd, such as the one at Mary Hardin Baylor where the coach loaned a player his old car and Baylor got stripped of their title. There needs to be reform. However, the big concern will be what Nike will do to buy wins. In no way should Nike be allowed to give endorsements to players. OSU won’t be competitive at anything if Nike is allowed to do so.

    • Except Phillip already does this. There are UO Nike exclusives on the secondary market. I doubt they fell off the delivery truck.

      I get why students would want to make money off their name and likeness, and I get small schools ie OSU will get the scraps. Question is what is the correct balance?

      Draft won’t happen, but every team already has limits on scholarships and number of players. So the top 250 kids will go to the top 10 teams every year? Maybe. But not like that doesn’t happen already and they’ll be buried on the depth chart, unable to capcha that lucrative $$.

      Theoretically this could help players in sports other than football and mens bball.

  4. I think allowing players to profit off their likeness could level the playing field some. I am not sure it could ever be implemented in a way in which there wouldn’t be cheating though. I think at a minimum kids shouldn’t be allowed to profit off likeness until they have actually played a game. Think of it this way, who is gonna make more? The star at OSU or the Bama backup? Guys like Cooks, Stroughter, Haas would have cashed in at OSU. If they had gone to a bigger school they would not have had the same numbers and same appeal.

    • That’s true. Gives me some hope.
      Still think this will be very bad…

      It would give me more hope if we saw a reduction in scholarships along with it. My idea from years ago that if you finish in the top 25 you get scholarship reductions seems even more relevant now. Say you’re top 5 — you lose 3 scholarships the next year. Top 10, you lose 2. Top 25 you lose 1. Something like that. Could work on the math to whatever creates the most parity. This would be a lot like the NBA draft where the bad teams get more lottery picks (I think? I haven’t watched NBA in like 20 years) only in reverse.

      • Will scholarship spits still have value?
        Guys already walkon at Bama vs taking scholarships at other schools.
        If Bama needs somebody to play for them, what would there be to stop a booster from buying a 200k autograph from a player to help offset the cost of attending?

        The only thing that would stop the booster would be a booster from another school with deeper pockets.
        And maybe that’s already the model behind closed doors, but now there’s no risk so more boosters may be willing to play ball.
        National title goes to the highest bidder!

    • I also like the idea of ever dollar of endorsement is a dollar less on your scholarship until it evens out to zero. No rule infractions on schools whose players don’t report endorsements if the govt enforces tax fraud penalties.

  5. There will be very few who can make a large profit.

    I’d say maybe 10 percent of athletes could make decent coin. for everyone else, nothing will change. We’ll see how companies treat the athletes bc the athletes won’t have much leverage. Do they sign athletes into long term deals that under pay them once they turn pro? Probably.

    Maybe athletes with endorsement deals offsets the amount of scholarship money they get? In that sense it could save OSU money.

    Smaller sports like baseball could benefit some as guys with deals could give scholarship money to guys who need it.

    Hard to say where the NCAA will land on rules. Haven’t seen any real good thoughts around it.

    • I guess that depends on definition of large profit but I would say .3% makes more than 30k a year. That corresponds to about 3 players per division 1 team. To put that in perspective about .6% of football players go to the NFL every year (practice squads included). Basically I don’t think this makes any impact at all except for super stars. If they really want to address the problem profit sharing by the universities distributed to all players makes more sense.

  6. There really isn’t competitive balance in FBS football now. UCF (and Appalachian State this year) are the perfect examples of how flawed the current system is. This will just make it worse.

    I think we’ll muddle through a few painful years before the have-nots decide they want to form another division where they can compete for something. Unfortunately, from a media attention perspective, this will water down the “importance” of that division’s competition (think current FCS prestige level).

    It’s also important to point out the NCAA has explicitly said schools won’t be directly paying athletes. This is can-kicking, in a way, as they’re opening the door to endorsements, etc., but not direct pay-for-play. And you can bet the NCAA/schools will be getting a cut of whatever the players generate.

    So what we’ll have is a college football world with little competitive balance (which we already have), where the top programs are able to compensate players under the table (which they already do) to maintain their prestige. The only difference is you’ll have outliers e.g. guys from smaller programs that make a name for themselves and are able to cash in on the notoriety.

  7. It would be interesting to see who paid the California politicians to suddenly care about college athletes. There has to be some angle, politicians don’t do anything unless a lobbyist pays them to do it. It probably wouldn’t be difficult to look up who backed the bill then connect the dots to who dumped $$ on them to do it.

  8. I definitely see the small schools and markets being left behind. You’ll have a group of Oligarch schools, which either have large markets (LA) or more resources for athletics (Alabama, Notre Dame). It will create a situation where you have the Oligarch schools who always get the top recruits, I mean um…employees, and they will always be in the discussions regarding playoff and championships. Smaller market schools will not be able to compete.

    If you’re an 18 year old kid, of course you’re going to want to go to the school who will pay you the most, and provide the best living amenities at the lowest cost. Even better if you end up in a large market with good weather.

    The NCAA has been making A LOT of money off of college football. I’m not even sure the schools, let alone the athletes, are getting their fair share of those dollars. The NCAA will have to do something seismic in order to create a balanced playing field for college athletics. Otherwise, schools like OSU, WSU, etc. may look to make an exit from big money athletics in the next 10-20 years.

    BTW, I think we can also thank the NFL for never creating a minor league system and letting the NCAAF prop them up. If the NFL had created a real minor league, then NCAA could have avoided a lot of this.

    • I think the medium markets stand to gain more. If I own a company in LA I am paying a NBA, NFL or MLB player to sell my product. In a decent sized town with no other sports teams the college QB is the most recognizable person.
      I think OSU might not be as bad of a spot as people assume. Shoot even something like the Oregon Dairy Council you’d think would be all over using some o-linemen to sell their messaging, and you know the council is probably like 90% OSU grads.

    • I personally think a minor league system that uses the existing infrastructure built by the collegiate system is the way they’ll need to go.
      Minor league system can pay it’s players a minimum salary which amounts to room/board for 4-5 years at the institution the athlete chooses. The athlete could make more, but not less, than the typical attendance costs.
      Then, the athlete can choose to either go to school now, go to school later, or not at all. Maybe put a 2 year cap on guaranteed money.
      Then, the minor league teams would have to contract with the schools to play at the stadiums/share revenue.
      Just spitballing of course. But I dont see any reasonable way the NCAA can maintain any amount of control over athletics anymore.

  9. Side topic – how fun is it going to be to see team USA play at Gill. I would highly suggest going to the game. Beavs will get blown out but it’s one of those games as an athlete you can see how much you need to step up your game to be a pro.

    Hopefully it inspires the women to step up their game and fuel a final four run.

    • Very true! Rueck will use film from this experience to motivate and teach, his excitement shows in interviews.

      And how about the fact that Team USA plays two of its four exhibitions in Oregon, amazing what a “small market” state with a jealous Phil has done in the field of WBB. CW in WBB will be epic……..says Cap’n Obvious!

  10. Someone mentioned the idea of having a group of teams specifically set up as an NFL feeder league. I could see major college programs “sponsoring” teams for this in partnership with NFL parent organizations. There’s bound to be an educational stipend for developmental players and college/NFL partners could tout the chance to get a degree at their specific university while also being developed within the specific NFL farm system. The university would also lend their branding so they could capitalize on their existing fanbase. This would actually give you a reasonable chance at having a minor league that makes money on its own merit, rather than losing it.

    The only obstacle would be the universities would have to give up the “amateur” facade, which they still seem to be clinging tightly to.

  11. I actually think this is great news for college athletes that aren’t on full rides, but still have to commit the same amount of their time to working out and practicing that the full ride athletes do.

    It SHOULD make marketing the “non-prestige” sports easier for the NCAA and universities because they can tout their stars and develop more of a brand with their help. This should also increase the size of the overall pie to help the athletes in those sports.

  12. At first I was with you angry, thinking that college sports will cease to exist as we know them. But after thinking about it some more and reading the comments I’m beginning to wonder if much will change, especially if there are roster limits. If there are roster limits then it’s not like the big dogs will be able to gobble up any more top end talent than they already do, right? if Kentucky basketball wants to basically arrange for everyone on their roster to make a million bucks a year, there are still only those few roster spots available, and they will probably only be filled with the same type of players who already fill the Kentucky roster. Teams like OSU will still have to build with the under-the-radar players who hopefully fit the “low-ego, high-output” model as opposed to the one-and-done type players who are only interested in fame, glory, and money. And I really like the earlier comment about the star at OSU being able to make more than the back-up at Alabama. . .although that might not be true as teams like Alabama might just work the system to pay everyone on their roster a ton of cash.

  13. I heard of this announcement; I don’t know that I can formulate a strong argument that illustrates how this announced change will improve college sports (and football specifically) in the future.

    My immediate concerns:

    Regardless of past pay/gifts-for-play scandals, this overtly injects money into the system. Injecting money into the system with little regulation or oversight will be readily taken advantage of. You will have agents. And lawsuits.

    You will have young adults who will be held accountable for reporting their finances (they may be taxed on this “new money”). Not every uni student living independently for the first time is a model of fiscal responsibility.

    This quickens the end of the view that receiving a university degree is a privilege (if that is important you.)

    What happens with the rather frequent cases where the “well-paid” student athlete is awarded scholarship, but puts it at risk later in their career due to not meeting the institution’s academic requirements?

    Besides these, I share a lot of the similar concerns regarding how this will affect college sport culture with increased premium placed on how an athlete “markets” themselves, commodification of their image and subsequent establishment of athlete icon “factories” (similar to what has happened in the fine art world), as supposed to measure of talent.

  14. Good thoughts on here. I’m leaning towards the what will really change idea, maybe the money is easier to track as opposed to pretending money isn’t handed off. I saw the quacks are coming out with a “Nike” armored money truck. Lost of feathers, kinda similar to the dog mobile from Dumb and Dumber.

    Curious what is done with the money. How is it taxed? Do the players get the money right away? Are the taxes based on the state of the college (kids might not want to attend schools with income tax). Can they be taxed based on where the company is from giving them the endorsement? Can players gift money to other players? Let’s say the qb get’s a big endorsement, wants to buy the O-line watches. Is that allowed? I’m sure the NCAA will not think all this through and it’ll be a mad house.

    The Buckeyes are wondering if boosters can just give their players tattoos instead of money.

      • I think we would have to turn football into a 5 man game. The assumption with this thinking is that players would make enough to cover the taxes and that would probably only be true for less than 1% of players. How many players names do you know off hand outside of OSU? Probably less than 100. There is 11,000 scholarship division 1 football players a any given point. 100/11000 is .1% of all players who have enough name recognition to likely cover taxes on a scholarship.

        I mean I know college is all about creating a generation or two of sweet sweet debt but that might be too far!

      • Are students on full ride academic scholarships paying taxes on that scholarship value? When they work for the university on a project or are on an internship are they paid do they pay taxes?

        • No scholarships are tax exempt and the vast majority of higher education are exempt from paying federal and state taxes. Pretty much they just hand them out like candy until they are not making enough money to cover expenses…or more debt than they like i guess.

      • And that answers your question about who lobbied for this in the CA government. Someone that pointed out they’re missing a potential source of tax revenue.

      • I heard that the tax angle before and that would certainly explain the CA politicians getting their panties in a wad about this issue.

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    This will be a wall of text so feel free to just scroll on by!

    First I will say this is the end of college football as WE KNOW IT but its more like the final nail in the coffin not the start. As soon as schools started taking million+ endorsement and licensing deals college football as an amateur sport died. Once the money is on the table and it becomes big business you can start breaking down wins and recruitment as $/per win and $ invested/scholarship athlete. Broadly you can figure out the top 40 teams at the end of the year because 35 of them or so will be the teams that spend the most per win or how much they invest in each athlete. This capitalistic driver in the sport has already created a playing field that is obviously unfair with the same teams endlessly winning most of the games. People will argue reputation or whatever is the bigger factor but its not, they spend more money so they get better results. 40% or more of most teams income come from licensing and endorsement deals. This is inversely proportional to the size of the fan base. The more fans a team has the more it makes on licensing and the opposite is true. This means that the idea that “butts in the seats” brings money to the bank is much less true today than it was 40 years ago. Even Oregon state makes about $46,00,000 on its licensing and endorsements for football which is more than half of our total income (some around $80 million). So already the bigger the fan base the more advantage you will have in how much you can invest. It has very little to do with how many people show up to games and much more to do with how many shirts you sell and how often the teams image is used.

    So to me football is already unfair and broken due to outside money. All thats changing with this rule is how the money is distributed. If I make a very obtuse and inaccurate assumption I can say that the amount a player is compensated is the amount of investment a team puts into each player. If we assume that all dollars earned are invested in football then we can say that each beaver player is “compensated” ~$80,000.000/85 = $94118 per year. This isn’t really how it works but for illiustrative purposes lets play it that way.

    I have always preferred a model that is profit sharing. Players should be compensated at a base percentage for licensing deals. Lets say 3% of the $46 million OSU brings in on licensing and endorsements is redistributed to the players as a yearly stipend. Because I think kids are stupid I would argue that 30% of that should be put into 401k programs since they are working. That would cost OSU 1.4 million a year but give the players an additional $12000ish to do with as they will and $4000 into retirement per year. For players who are megastars that sell shit loads of jerseys and can do some ads they should do a 50% profit share deal with the university (they are compensated but the university is the reason they are famous so share ffs).

    Now this still makes things incredibly unfair so I think ALL Division 1 football should have an investment cap per year not counting capital projects (facilities). This would set a set stipend for all programs for players and also cut down the already unfair spending that exists. Sure people might have shiner gyms or whatever but thats small potatos compared to salaries, equipment, recruiting budgets blah blah blah.

    If schools make more than the cap then they should put 50% into paying the education/state funding that exists at most schools and 50% should go to a fund that redistributes money back to all the schools in the division 1 umbrella. Terrible capitalism but it will make sure all programs can continue to operate. Might even be nice if some of the overflow can go towards workers comp for players who get injured for life guaranteed by the NCAA.

    None of that will happen though, we will just continue spiraling into an unfair capital driven system where the richest teams win more and more and the rest either enjoy mediocore existance or close the programs as they are unbearably expensive.

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    They are going to kill the golden goose. I am a college sports nut, but if it wasn’t for Green Bay, I would not pay any attention to anything pro.
    The conference realignments was the beginning of the end.

  17. https://sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/finances/

    Angry might want to add this to the top post so people can get perspective. If you click a team it will show a breakdown of profits and expenses since 2005. It really puts into perspective that donors and ticket sales are pretty minor. for the vast majority of teams. Even highly donor compensated programs like Oregon make about half as much on contributions compared to licensing.

    Edit: I did a quick search and the only teams I could find that made more on tickets than licensing was the Dakota schools.

      • I havn’t been able to figure out out really. It might be a mix of bowl payouts, neutral site payouts and body bag games (being paid for away games). It doesn’t jive though cause OSU had almost 7 million in 2018 and that doesn’t match any of those. I have no idea really, maybe thats youtube profits or something!

        Edit: NM i found the methodology:

        Other: Amount that the athletics department transferred back to the school and — under a 2015 change in the NCAA’s reporting system — is recorded as a revenue loss. All other sources of revenue, including game guarantees, school-specific revenue from bowl games, support from third-parties guaranteed by the school such as TV income, housing allowances, etc.; revenue from sports camps; income from athletics restricted endowments and investments that are used for operations in the reporting year.

  18. I haven’t given it much thought yet because I expected it would be a protracted fight by the NCAA. I’m a little surprised they capitulated if that’s what has happened. My first thought is that the athlete will have to become “good” for anyone to care about having the name on a jersey, so won’t the initial recruitment/admissions process be the same? Isn’t it a crap shot except I guess for some of the elite athletes that know they will be great in college? One and done basketball players? It seems like it will be a big mess and difficult to administer, yet something bugs me about Dabo Swinney, who makes 9 million a year saying he might retire if paying college athletes happens. Easy fo him to say!

  19. Have seen alot of talk from college and highschool athletes how they’re excited to once again be able to have themselves show up in the NCAA videogames.
    I still don’t know how this would be possible though? Schools never were able to profit from the likeness of athletes, in the sense that they cannot print up a shirt that says “Luton” on the back and sell it. they also cannot allow a video game manufacturer to create a player named Luton in their game.
    The way they got around this, was the video game manufacturers would create generic players and rosters that closely mimicked the actual college rosters (Same jersey numbers, similar skin/hair/measurables) but without actually putting a name with the generic players.
    Then, users of the games could edit the missing attributes and put “Luton” into the game as a name for the tall, white #6 quarterback at Oregon State.

    Then Ed Obanon filed a lawsuit against the NCAA arguing those closely mimicked players were too similar to actual players, and won the lawsuit.

    But now, even though players can profit from their own likeness, that doesn’t change the fact that the NCAA cannot profit from their likeness. So how would this rule change allow EA sports to start using players names in conjunction with their schools?
    One thing that remains to be seen. Will the NCAA change their own rules and start selling merchandise that allows them to profit off of a players name now? Will we start seeing profit sharing between school and athlete, where they’ll start selling authentic “Luton” jerseys and allowing Jake to reap the benefits?
    The NCAA isn’t going to let untapped revenue escape them. What’s their angle now?

    • The NCAA would have to arrange something where they pay some kind of royalty to players for their likenesses (which they would probably pass on to EA in licensing fees). IIRC, the payout to former athletes from the O’Bannon suit wasn’t very high…EA/NCAA can surely afford it.

      In my experience (albiet in different industries), licensing fees are usually flat, not proportional to the revenue they help create, so the NCAA would just charge a flat license fee to EA. The NCAA and EA both have motivation to do this, and now that the NCAA has opened the door to letting players profit from their likeness, the players have motivation, too. It’s now just a matter of figuring out the mechanism and getting universal (or near-universal) buy-in.

      • As soon as the NCAA signs off on paying royalties to players for something like an EA sports video game, they’re essentially signing off on selling licensed merchandise with player names on it.
        I don’t see how they could allow one but not the other.
        So I guess that is my question or point. They will either need to be all-in or not all-in if with merchandise/products that contain the combination of school logo and player likeness. And at that point, if they go all-in, then players will probably need to form a union to represent them.

        Long story short. I dont think the idea of an NCAA video game featuring actual player names will be a thing unless the NCAA completely sells out and opens all floodgates.

        • They could have some sort of video game-specific agreement that grants them rights to license athletes’ likeness in exchange for $x and send it out en made and to football programs. There’s no way EA gets the rights from every player individually, so it would have to come from some sort of collective effort.

          I’m telling you, it makes sense for all parties involved. Where there’s a will (and money to be made), there’s a way.

        • That’s where a union would have to be formed on behalf of the athletes. They would be stupid to trust the NCAA would negotiate a beneficial deal for them on their behalf.
          And once a deal is brokered to license an NCAA product with player likeness in conjunction with a university’s logo, there would be no reason to limit that deal to a single video game manufactured by a single gaming company. The floodgates would be opened

          • The school’s AD could act on the players’ behalf. Or it could be done on a conference level. After the O’Bannon case, the NCAA knows it has to put together a good enough deal for the players or they won’t get enough buy-in to make the deal worth it for EA…that or the NCAA will end up right back in court again.

            I don’t disagree that a Union is inevitable, but ultimately, the only thing holding this up is the schools’ desire to maintain the “non-professional” facade. Someone will figure out a way to make more money AND save face. That’s what they’re already trying to do with this announcement.

  20. Don’t know how to paste photos. Someone please link the dan mullen quote about a program in Georgia and oregon that already play players.

    • Los Mochis win and Luke gets the W, now 3-1 on the season. You’re doing pretty good when you give up one ER in 6-2/3 and your ERA actually goes up.

  21. OT – Cooks has had more concussions than I realized. Four since the super bowl, 2 in a month? I was thinking he may need to retire, but it sounds more probable now in consideration of his long term health.

    https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2019/10/29/brandin-cooks-heads-to-pittsburgh-to-see-a-concussion-specialist/

    I know there’s a need to diversify programs, and not be inbred, but if he were to retire, he’d be a great addition to the OSU staff at some pont; perhaps contributing as a WR coach and to offensive playbook in general. Having played with Brees, Brady, and an emergent Rams offense (at least last year), he’s been around some of the most effective pro passing games in recent history. Would probably be a great recruiter, if he isn’t soured on the game after his concussion prognosis, which would be understandable.

    Always one of my favorite OSU players. I hope he takes care of his brain.

    Luck O’ da Beavs? Plays with HOF QBs Brees during their “down” period when defense is poor, goes to SB with HOF QB Brady, gets concussion, they lose, then goes back to SB with Rams, but loses to Patriots.

    • Good call and his wife is from Albany so maybe they would want to live local? At least by a positive influence in Corvallis somewhat like Bernard.

      Glad he got paid.

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    This is the last time I’ll mention this unless something changes (I didn’t want to mention it but needed to let you guys know I might be gone a while), but both biopsies on my brother came back “okay” — they want to monitor and test annually but see nothing cancerous as of yesterday. It still doesn’t explain some of his symptoms, so he needs further tests. But overall very good news. Thanks, all. We closed on a house so might be a bit ghost due to moving and doing some repairs over the next month, but otherwise things are looking pretty normal here, and I plan to be present for the remaining 5 Beav games. Go Beavs, fuck cancer and cancer scares, and how about a good streak for us all.

  23. Coach Smith tweeted “Dam Right” this morning.
    Coincidentally, Alton Julian has said he plans to make an announcement today. I’ll let you do the math

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    Record Alert: Ham is 3 sacks from tieing the single season sack record. Side note – Swancutt was a monster, 11.5 sacks soph, junior and senior year.

    • I think he will break it. He’s confident, pretty relentless, and that relentlessness pays off, even with mobile QBs.

      Riley Sharp should end up w/6 or more.

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      It’s always nice to know that local media uses the free beavrecruiting info as a “finder” for their content.

      Makes me question whether I should be blocking all members of the media who follow me, or if I should just accept that this is going to always be the case and it’s for the greater good?

      I know for a fact, some media members that I have blocked in the past have created “burner” accounts to follow me, so there’s really no way to stop them if they don’t want to take the hint.

      • If you broke the news, they would need to credit you as the source. The kid is the one announcing it so you can’t do much about it. You could not retweet it but then what’s the point of the beavrecruiting account. I would unblock all the media people.

        It is what it is, but maybe fans in general will now look to you because you find announcements faster than them. I certainly do.

      • I mean the point is to just give the beavers a bigger presence on social media and give an easy link between the program and kids looking for a place to land right? If thats the case then I think it does exactly what its supposed to. You know after these kids commit the first thing they do is spend a day or two looking at news stories and tweets about it. Seems like the more eyes your tweet touches the bigger the impact for future recruiting and commit buy in.

        I know I wouldn’t be impressed if I committed and announced via twitter and the response from the fan base, current players and former players was crickets lol

    • I like the length. I remember one of Smith’s first comments on how we are going to recruit was about getting length on defense because it is so disruptive. From the guys I think will end up in the secondary…Julian is 6’3, Hardge 6’1, Rejzohn Wright 6’3. Last years Forest 5’11, Nahshon Wright 6’4, Russel 5’11, Austin 6’1, Arnold 6’1. I don’t see us having the nightmares of 5’8 corners that we did under Riley.

      DE and LB is full of height now too.

      • Seeing Poyer stay in the NFL at safety reminds me how long its been since the Beavers had a really good CB. I’m sure I’m forgetting someone – Steven Nelson was pretty good – but the recruiting results there now sure looks like progress.

      • Nuke, got your email. Sent it to my wife as she is handling this as I’m on the road most of the time for work. Very appreciative of you willing to give us advice!

  25. Seems like the staff is going hard after several JC DB’s. Does this mean Adams doesn’t have much confidence in the existing young guys, or is it a depth issue?

  26. A part of this pay-for-play that hasn’t been brought up (unless I’ve missed something), is taxing the income, and then how scholarships do or do not fit into that. Any implications there?

    Also, if the athletes are getting paid, is there going to be a one-and-done model? Its not as easy for football players to go pro at a young age, because there’s usually more development needed (size, weight). But there are a few outliers that could do it. Maybe a two-and-done?

    • Athletes aren’t getting paid to play. The rule changes would allow athletes to make money on the side while playing.
      For instance, a normal college non-athlete student can get a job while attending school, or sell something they’re created(like a musician selling their music on soundcloud, or an artist selling a painting) with no repercussions. Under the current rules, however, an athlete would have to forfeit their scholarship if they made any type of money on the side. This means they can’t even work a few hours per week at Starbucks for a paycheck.
      Under the new rules, they would be allowed to earn money on the side via employment, or selling autographs, or merchandise….basically whatever they can think of as a way to earn a living would be allowed.
      This does not mean the school or the player would be allowed to cross market. The school won’t suddenly be allowed to sell a Jake Luton jersey. And Jake Luton won’t be allowed to sell an Oregon State jersey. The 2 can’t/won’t be combined. At least until further rules are changed.
      Scholarships are still not taxable, so no tax implications there.
      Any outside income earned by the student would of course need to be reported with their income taxes. But that rule applies to every person in this country, so no special treatment there.

      The biggest loophole, in my opinion, is that we’re essentially saying anybody can legally pay a prospect for something in return. If an oregon booster wants to pay a player $200k for an autograph and a wink that the player will attend oregon, it won’t have to be as secretive as it currently is. This stuff is already happening, but the people involved don’t advertise it because they don’t want the players to lose their eligibility. Now, the players don’t have the same level of risk, so you’re essentially making it less risky to pull off handshake deals. This means more people will be willing to engage in these shady deals and the teams with the deeper pocketed boosters will remain the teams that attract the best talent, by a landslide

      • The school won’t suddenly be allowed to sell a Jake Luton jersey.
        What prevents Jake from selling to the school the rights to his signature for use in producing jerseys for sale? Granting a license?

        Your last sentence address’ the heart of the matter and the reason the details of this move are filled with pitfalls.

        • “What prevents Jake from selling to the school the rights to his signature for use in producing jerseys for sale?”

          I don’t know how they would be able to pull that off without calling it “pay for play”? That’s essentially what it is. Or at least, pay for enrollment at a specific school. At that point, they might as well have the schools make checks out to the players they want the most.

      • “If an oregon booster wants to pay a player $200k for an autograph and a wink that the player will attend oregon, it won’t have to be as secretive as it currently is.”

        Ok, so then that player reports the $200k income and pays taxes on it. Or not. My cynical reaction is do the richer schools also provide not just a barber shop, but tax prep services? Do the kids that stand to benefit the most now factor a state’s income tax into their decision?

        If a player is paid not with cash, but a gift, do they report the value of that gift?

        Maybe all of these are non-factors and I’m overly cynical. I (humorously) picture a kid using redshirt because he’s doing some time for tax evasion…or a school helping to avoid a kid pay taxes gets busted.

        • @objcritic: basically what I brought up earlier in the thread:

          “Curious what is done with the money. How is it taxed? Do the players get the money right away? Are the taxes based on the state of the college (kids might not want to attend schools with income tax). Can they be taxed based on where the company is from giving them the endorsement? Can players gift money to other players? Let’s say the qb get’s a big endorsement, wants to buy the O-line watches. Is that allowed?”

          Same idea as NBA players in free agency. Would you rather sign in Portland or Texas. Better tax advantages in Texas.

          However, students don’t have residency right away which is where the out of state tuition comes in so when are they considered a resident of the state. I think it takes a year. So do these players start establishing residency senior year of high school, then wait to start “making money” until their residency has been established?

          • Usually for graduate students, they are given a grace period of a year to establish residency where tuition is discounted to an in-state level during their first year in the program, after that tuition is increased to out of state levels if residency is not established.

      • I think players can still have side hustles like working at a Starbucks, they just can’t make above market wages or work in areas that use their athletic expertise. Could be wrong on that though, that is just how I understand it

        • You’re right. Probably a bad example if the athlete wanted to just get a normal wage while working 10 hours per week at Starbucks.
          But if Starbucks were to promote the fact that Jake Luton is making drinks between the hours of 2 to 4 every weekday, I believe that would be disallowed under the current rules. Anything related to his likeness that could be used to promote a product or service is not kosher.

      • “Under the current rules, however, an athlete would have to forfeit their scholarship if they made any type of money on the side. This means they can’t even work a few hours per week at Starbucks for a paycheck.”

        Truly? I had no idea. Too complicated for me but I believe we are about to see a whole new level of middlemen (middlewomen? but that sounds as though they are fat): accountants, advisers, publicists, legal specialists, influencers . . .

  27. This all might be a scam to prop up housing prices (and other “assets”). Big criticism is “millennials can’t afford housing”…well, States like California needs young buyers to prop up current prices, and if young buyers can’t due to poor incomes and student debt, this is a way to get them into the Ponzi.

    If housing drops, so do property taxes, and States like CA can’t afford that.

    • In Oregon most houses would need to drop 30 to 50 percent in value before the tax rolls would be effected. Here taxes go up 3 percent a year regardless, more if a bond measure is passed.

      • Where does that 3% thing come from? Aren’t property taxes assessed based on the land value in the counties? I’m not aware of a mandatory tax increase, that sounds like the kind of thing that voters would reject instantly here haha

        • I actually emailed this question to Multnomah Assesment and Taxaition this week. Our market value according to taxes dropped quite a bit, bonds changed little and our taxes went up.

          I asked them why and got the answer: the state law allows Multnomah County to raise prop taxes up to 3% annually, so we always do. And they they linked the law.

          Pretty bogus. Can request to have a city appraiser come out and re-appraise, but they prob just raise it more.

          • Oh I gotcha. So it’s a cap law on maximum increase not mandatory increase. Multnomah probably justifies it by the disparity in land value and tax. Gotta rabble rouse at a commissioner meeting

    • Yeah I’m a millennial making 6 figures…can’t afford house. That said Oregon’s medium housing change is going to change alot of that and I’m working on some sweet designs.

      Not sure how acouple thousand athletes in CA getting some YouTube money would help housing affordability lol.

      • What’s “Oregon’s medium housing change”?

        Well if they get 200k to sign an autograph they can definitely do two of those and buy a house. I don’t think there’s any way this change doesn’t result in wealthier, younger athletes.

      • I definitely don’t make 6 figures but we own a home in a rural area in a bedroom community. The first house I bought was on my own and it was a POS. There are affordable places. Not calling you out specifically NuclearBeaver, but some by choice can’t afford a house due to life style, etc. Some have to live in a certain area for their career which makes it tough.

        • Sure, I have already bought and sold one house in my life, same deal you had. It can be a big hit to health and families having to commute an hour a day. In bend POS starter homes are 350-400 now.

          Personally I have a health condition that do any agree with driving and I need to be close to good doctors and specialists.

          • Starter homes in the entire West are nearing those prices.
            Cheap credit and Millenial (largest generation ever I think?) demand + speculative money due to rates too low, too long. Federal Reserve is an absolute joke.

          • Its not just that. Foreign and non-local ownership has exploded in the US over the last 30 years. Significant portions of rental ownership are owned by parties that do no care about the local community or gouging. There is houses sitting empty all over the US because they are investments or secondary houses owned by older generations. HUD estimates that in 2013 there was about 6 million second homes in the US. Those are non-rental homes. HUDestimates that the combined 2nd home and rental home market as upwards of 20 million homes in the US. Considering there is 300 million of us and not many of us live alone its not a crazy claim that 15-20% of the houses in the US are either mostly unoccupied or used as rentals.

            3-5% down payment loans have done their damage in many ways but little of it is my generation getting into housing on the cheap, it has mostly benefited people by getting multiple properties as investment or rentals using the equity they already have.

            350-400 isn’t really a starter home, thats a POS in Bend. Real starters are more like 500.

            Edit: 3-5% down payment loans not interest.

          • Yeah, there are definitely all the issues you said. Also, banks are still sitting on ’08 properties with buyers in them who haven’t paid the mortgage in almost a decade. They refuse to foreclose because the home’s value is going up so much; they don’t want to put the excess inventory on the market.

            We also know people who bought recently and right off the bat need to rent out a room (just to meet their mortgage). We don’t have a real “supply” problem, but we have an “unqualified person sucking up supply” problem. Get the people out of the homes who shouldn’t be in them, and you’ll see supply quickly correct, and you’ll realize it was never a supply problem to begin with. Total distortion.

            There are a ton of malinvestments and distortions in housing due to the Federal Reserve.

          • I think allowing low down payments is probably one of the biggest mistakes the US ever made in housing (for people not banks and investors of course). It allows rampant use of equity and it also doesn’t protect the unwise or inexperienced. You can get into a 250k house with a 3% down payment of 7500 + a couple thousand in fees. Then you end up paying an absurdly high mortgage with insurance and all sorts of adders for the next 30 years. We are told constantly that getting in houses is what we have to do but its a terrible idea to take so much on as liability. The average first time buyer entering the market will pay 60-70% of the original asking price in interest and another 20-40% the original asking price in fees, insurance and taxes if they stay there for 30 years. With low down payments you can expect a 250k house to cost 600k at the end of 30 years.

            That shit is bananas but unless you enjoy looking at the projections and ignoring pressures of standard life path then its easy to fall into.

            It takes experience, research or a good advocate to really have a firm idea of what you are doing buying a house. I know when I bought my first property I was surprised by some of the costs and process despite putting in hundreds of hours of research and having parents who have bought and sold upwards of 20 properties in their lives to lean on. If a person like me misses details i’m sure most first time buyers do too.

            Note: Millenials are the largest living generation in the US at around 75 million (depending on how you count them). Boomers peaked at about 80 million.

          • Yeah. It really is a problem that people don’t understand economics. They crazier thing is they’ve been able to make money despite knowing nothing. Greater fool theory, and there are a lot of fools lined up behind them. We bought recently so technically we’re greater fools, but we did about the best we could given we had to buy.

            We put down almost 30% because that figure got our mortgage + property tax + utilities under local market rent + utilities. I also negotiated a fantastic rate of 3.25%, used just one realtor instead of two and negotiated her fee to 50% discount, negotiated closing costs to about 2k. All of this is possible if you’re a good negotiator. The average buyer just accepts all the figures thrown at them, and they have no clue how the smallest interest rate difference compounds. People are happy at 3.8%, but the difference between that and 3.25% is tens of thousands. It’s the difference between being house poor and treading water and having true wealth (i.e. increase in purchasing power). Even if housing drops we should be okay because we got our all-in costs under market rent.

            If you can’t do this, you shouldn’t be messing with houses. The thing is, people who have done it have benefited, so they will continue to do it since past success guarantees future returns in the novice’s mind. There is a mindset that homes can’t drop. These people who don’t belong in the homes are driving up prices for people who do belong in the homes. It will unfortunately take recession to wipe all these people out and get sustainable buyers who can actually afford the property in these properties. We’re just moving into our first home but already saving to buy a rental when these people inevitably get wiped out. I think it might take another 2 to 5 years based on the variables I think are most important.

          • Oh yeah that’s awesome strategy and thinking, well done.

            I’m about a year from being debt free then stacking cash to take advantage of the cottage housing section of the medium housing zoning. If can get.thibgs together smoothly I should own an acre with 6 custom pole homes (1800 sqft two levels). We would love in one and be able to rent the rest out for as low as $900 a month and still live mortgage free.

            With my arthritis I might only have another 20 years of production in me so getting secondary income is critical.

          • Nice, good luck with those goals.
            I’ve never had debt in my life other than student loans that I paid off in like 2 years, and I didn’t want to be buying at these high prices taking on so much debt, but we had to do it due to life. We want a kid and all that crap. So you can’t wait around forever timing things and instead just have to make the buy the least painful possible.

          • I’m thinking you are talking IPO stock valuations and the immediate crashes? To me the public stock market is a bad place to ask for investment for a company that has extreme growth and negative profits. Uber, Lyft and Peloton are the recent ones that come to mind. All of them are “winner take all” strategies where to be viable in the long term the have to dump enormous sums on global growth. This is fine when your investors are private because they understand the issues the company faces and accept the risk. When a company like that jumps on the public market before it has stopped throwing money on the bonfire and become sustainable its asking the public sector of investors to take a HUGE leap of faith. For most people on the public market you are talking about their retirements or money they want to grow not shit they are ready to gamble big on. Normies go to vegas with money they are fine losing not the stock market. So when the companies jump out with these huge valuations the far more conservative public market is basically saying, “Nah bruh, you have no profits and we don’t understand your strategy, not for me”. In the end it doesn’t hurt joe schmo but the venture capitalists are losing horribly because they are not patient enough to wait for their returns.

            The bonds I am assuming inverse yield curve? I think its one of the best indicators of incoming recession and I don’t really see any reason to ignore it. People are holding onto their capital and equity (learned from 2008) far more than the last inverse yield curve and corporations are contracting spending and paying off liability. So the only real way to fix the curve is for consumer and corporate spending to go nuts. I don’t see that happening with the instability in the world in basically every aspect of the “power gears”. The power clock is topsy turvy and theres no way the financial market will be saved from a correction. So basically there should be a recession either during or after the next election season. The only other way to stem off a recession is to have the government invest large amounts of money. Unfortunately the government is running a trillion dollar deficiet to the tax cuts and spending increases so thats not really viable.

            Ah kids! Good luck with that adventure! I have 2 and the third (and freaking last dammmmittt) is in the oven. Feel free to hit me up if you have any questions about any of that bullsh…miracle of life.

          • I was more curious your take on the overall stock market. P/E ratios of many desirable companies is about 2x what they should be, and the overall market P/E is 22.82 with historic norms at 15.76. Since you’re a math guy, I was wondering your take on all that. And this after record share buybacks, which makes the P/E better than it should be. Revenue growth is almost 0 since 2014. It’s a few weighted stocks raising the indexes. To me this looks like disaster…seems wise to consider a short once a “China Trade Deal” is announced and we get the final blow off top.

            With bonds I was just curious your take. Given inflation is much higher than the reported 2%, a 1.71% yield over ten years seems like a bad joke. Just shows the distortions clearly.

            If you don’t follow it closely no big deal I was just curious since you seem like a math guy.

          • I don’t have any money in the game minus retirement so all I really pay attention to is the fees on my index fund haha. In a generic sense my take is you are absolutely right and its a massive disaster. Warren Buffet is a good person to pay attention too when the stock market gets off balanced like this. Value vs stock price is getting trickier and trickier as the biggest companies in the world really don’t have much in terms of assets. It used to be simple you could just look at revenue + assets – liabilities = value. If the stock price was much lower than your estimated value you buy and higher you sell. These days the idea of estimating a company like Amazons actual value is laughable. Its assets and liabilities change constantly and its name is worth more than anything.

            So yeah when the amount people think something is worth is way higher than reality the only real hope is that nobody pays attention. Usually the tipping point is when asset managers with massive buying power or the ultra rich start pulling huge amounts of shares out of over valued companies. They are pretty good at it so they try not to make any stock drop more than like 1% in a day but if everyone catches on that large holders are pulling out it causes a selling panic and everyone tries to pull out of the market before the sharks do.

            The stock buy backs are an absolute disaster for the markets. IMO its healthy for companies to hold control and value centralized so that they can make smart moves for the company instead of the investors. That said the markets completely rely on investor opinion so its just adds more kindling to the fire. It also goes counter to the entire point of the tax cuts where the claim is that if you cut taxes to corporations then they will invest more…no instead they bought back huge amounts of ownership and contracted their expenditures so that they could maintain a good stock price despite limiting ownership of investors. At some point the companies will start spending again but don’t count on it while the US is using tariffs and twitter as economic bargaining chips while proving itself unreliable as international and corporate partners pulling out of agreements and policies left and right.

            So I guess despite P/E ratios being a math guy thing I think understanding where we are going and what to be ready for is more of a socio-economic question for fireside philosophers and yale stoners. When it comes down to it the US is unstable with no clear vision which means at some point someone will blink and reality will crash down on the stock market. My advice depends on your age. If you have money in the game that isn’t in a fund then I would consider either pulling out or atleast sticking to blue chip companies that are going to weather any storm. Put your money in stocks that you are confident will rebound after a crash (you know the companies that will own the world in a couple decades). If you are worried about retirement then its all about diversifying. Bonds are obviously a terrible investment right now but they don’t suffer 50% losses ever. So diversifying your profile is smart if you feel like something bad is coming. Personally I went 50% bonds about a month after the bond yield curve inverted. It may be a chump move if the longest lasting bull market keeps being a bull market for years somehow but I would rather say, “ahh damn i missed out” than, “OMG I lost half my retirement”. I’m only 30 though so it goes against all practical advice to do what I did but I don’t really care. If you are 40+ you should be conservative and if you are 50+ proceed with extreme caution when the bond yield curve inverts.

          • What’s interesting is that due to the Federal Reserve artificially pinning interest rates too low, too long, we now have people buying bonds for capital appreciation (i.e. the bond’s face value increases) instead of yield. And people are buying stocks for yield rather than appreciation. The entire financial market is upside down, and this increases risk tremendously having bonds as a capital gains vehicle (obvious because that trade gets crushed once rates rise) and stocks as yield vehicles (obvious since dividends get cut in any downturn). This is all so dangerous. I might go short in the next few months. I’ve already pulled out all money out of my 401k. The next move is timing the short.

            Have you followed the FED repo thing? They’re injecting billions because of liquidity issues in money markets. Things are breaking all around us, and yet people continue to whistle past the graveyard…

          • Damn timing a short is a bold move but it’s a gamble that can make you very rich haha. Many of the big wealth families started off of a crazy short (looking at you Kennedys). I don’t pay enough attention for those kind of games and I don’t have the money for it.

            I wish the feds had enough balls to contract the markets with higher rates. They are so focused on inflation and not ruffling feathers with the rich (private and corporate) that they are ignoring fundamental economic health like not having trillions of dollars of private and corporate debt, that low of interest rate is too low of fruit to not get greedy. I hadn’t heard about investing in bonds as capital appreciation, that sounds straight up dystopian to me haha.

            I looked into the repo thing a bit mostly cause I had no idea that kind of lending even existed. The whole premise is flawed to me since it’s huge amounts of capital moving around..seems like more than can be easily tracked. If you are playing hide the banana with billions of dollars every night someone might poke the wrong hole and get fucked…well tax payers is who usually.

            All I know is next time some big company like GM tanks their stock in bankruptcy I’m dumping as many bucks as I can find into their stock as soon as I can. Apparently saving corporations is a public responsibility now that everything is too big to fail!

          • What did the Kennedy’s short? I don’t know the story…

            I don’t view a short as risky. In fact it’s very safe if you use options (the option price is the max loss). You just have to know how to buy a cheap option. You can get some good ones for like $10 to $20 to control 100 shares.

            If you’re thinking of selling on margin yes that’s super risky.

          • It’s one of those rumor/myth things but the story is that Joe shorted a bunch of grain and glass works (bottle) companies at the end of prohibition to basically launder his bootlegging cash.

            Legend is he had inside info/political connections that let him know that the initial vote to pull back prohibition would fail. Lots of people thought it would pass so the stock prices for grain companies were sky high with the idea that America would be brewing shortly.

            Boardwalk empire die an entire Joe Kennedy storyline about it, kinda fun. Basically non of that is confirmed lol

        • I did the same thing this week. I took my entire 401K (and all other investments) out of the market and put it into cash. This giant bubble is about to pop and those that are liquid will have an amazing opportunity to increase their wealth exponentially (if you have little to zero debt).

          This whole Repo situation is a giant Red flag but nobody seems to care let the good times roll. That is usually when the house of cards comes tumbling down.

          • Yep. A lot of whistling past the graveyard going on.
            Gold is the only asset not in a bubble, and ironically it’s the one that should be given the #1 risk is currency devaluation.

            Acknowledging this fundamental reality made me a Bircher, whatever that is, to Jack.

          • Yes very true. Those with little to no net worth get hurt the most.

            Much like 2007/8 the little guy gets crushed and the super rich acquire even more wealth. Huge corporations deemed “to big to fail” can make risky / reckless business decisions with the peace of mind knowing the US taxpayer will be there to bail them out.

  28. AB, I don’t have twitter to link the video but if you look up Jay Bilas on twitter he has a good piece a little over 2 minutes long from October 30th explaining what the ncaa is really doing by making the announcement about collegiate athletes making money off their likeness. He mentions Miles Brand (duck connection) in the piece.

    In conclusions it sounds like his opinion is nothing will come of this but it’ll satisfy some states that the NCAA is working on something.

    • I don’t see how nothing will come of this. States have already signed bills into law to allow it. The NCAA will come to a crossroads when those laws go into affect. They either have to kowtow to those laws or they have to penalize some of the most powerful schools in the power 5.

  29. OT: Next year “For the Right to Wear Orange and Black II” – OSU Beaver kicks off the season against OSU Cowboys on Thursday night, September 3. Game moved up from Saturday the 5th, probably for broadcasting considerations.

    • OkayState has a big history of trying to get into prime time in the first week or 0th week of the season. I think they have started the season ‘early’ for 7 of the last 8 years or something.

    • Are fucking kidding me? My sister got her PhD in Stillwater and her first teaching job at Oregon State. She is reason I became a Beaver. We have been planning on meeting there for the game for a couple years. Minnesota always opens on that Thursday night. GD SOB!!!!

  30. OT, looking ahead to UW: Angry, you’ve said this is a terrible match up for Beavs. Maybe a blowout game? Is that due to the UW offensive and defensive lines, RB, overall depth?

    What do others think? I’m considering attending, but I don’t like the idea of attending a game that may be completely non-competitive as have recent games against UW. Its not worth the travel, traffic, etc.

  31. Nice to see Anderpants underachieving at Utah St. It looks like he’s working his magic with QB’s again. Jordan Love who was supposed to be a superstar is under 60% completion rate and has as many interceptions as TD passes. Wait sorry I forgot, GA is not “involved” in the offense. BYU/Utah St. tonight, tough to root for either. Delusional fans versus whack job coach.

    Speaking of delusional fans, #TPB trailing Purdue 14-10. It’s fun to read the Nebraska newspapers after each Husker loss. What’s the statute of limitations on Smilin’ Mike being the scapegoat?

  32. I have a game thread scheduled to go up at 1:20 Pacific. Headed out for a pre-game hike; if it doesn’t trigger a mod can go in and manually post it.

    • Preemptive “First!”

      No need for anyone to post that when the thread goes live! : )

      Go Beavers! Eat in the desert! TFLs for lunch, sacks for dessert….

  33. Came across an angle on the NIL ruling. Does the potential of SA’s who get no $$ blocking for a “star” who is making big money open the door for gambling scandals? Seems possible.

    And, here is Lovable Leach on the topic. He concludes this about politicians involvement: “So I think they need to be very careful with this. The other thing is, is I don’t know that they know what they’re getting into. And I’m absolutely certain the politicians virtually have no idea what they’re getting into, because they’ve done a fairly pathetic job of doing their day job,”

    https://247sports.com/college/washington-state/Article/Mike-Leach-Washington-State-Cougars-football-bidding-war-California-Fair-Pay-to-Play-Act-NCAA-Board-of-Governors-137816391/

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