The reality some of us need to let sink in

[Ute Dub]

There is no cap in College Football NIL. The rich will get richer and will buy wins unless they’re not efficiently managed. Utah will have to be perfect in order to compete at the highest level. Perfect execution, perfect recruiting of diamond in the rough players, and perfect coaching. That’s not sustainable. There will be some down years. It sucks because Utah was beating the odds and just started to get recognition just to have the rules changed.
But this is what we wanted (some of us, not me). We wanted the players to get paid, despite them being hugely compensated above what their parents could provide with after tax dollars. Add the tuition and meal plans and tv exposure and stadium access, a parent could never replicate that with after tax dollars, but it wasn’t enough.
So we have to accept the reality of what we created. We wanted it. We asked for it. We didn’t think it through. Now we have to live with it. So we might stop complaining when Utah isn’t perfect. There’s going to be ups and downs, but we’re not in the fortune two conferences at the moment.

At least the NFL protects its franchises and their draft pics for a few years so the team can realize some ROI on its invested time and risk taken when selecting a player. At least the NFL is for parity with a salary cap. And this is what annoys me the most. If I’m to contribute to the Crimson Collective, how far up is this thing going to go? By contributing, I’m adding to the competition to bid against myself and drive the cost up and up and up. When will it end?

[coachklein]

It’s not like Arizona or ASU have bigger payrolls than Utah. And we aren’t competing against Alabama, Ohio State and Texas every week.

And NIL doesn’t buy wins. Look at USC. Does it help? Yes. But you still need to develop players, manage a locker room, and create a game plan that molds to your personnel.

NIL is being used as an excuse to overlook poor management and execution this season.

[Ute Dub]

I think there are some more built in excuses than what you would think for this year that is outside of coaching. Last week you were down 2 D-Line starters, 2 starting linebackers, a starting safety and a starting corner. Then take a broken Cam and what do you have? A 9 point loss with your QB throwing 3 int’s.

I’m more addressing the fans that say we have to be 12-0 every year or we Weill fall behind. Well, look at AZ state. The portal allows you to catch up fast..

[2008 National Champ]

12-0 every year is a strawman argument. You’re better than that 🙂

I think you need to have two things to attract 2nd tier talent consistently which is something Utah currently aspires to:

1 – You need to be a place kids want to play. I define that as consistently winning more than you lose, competing for conference championships regularly, and a place that gets a lot of exposure. There are other sub points to this like putting kids into the league, having an exciting scheme, for some people it’s uniform combinations or not playing all your games at night because friends/family/scouts don’t watch.

2 – You have to have a good NIL structure. The numbers being thrown around are ridiculous. No school is paying 85 scholarship players a million each. If you can come up with 10 MM, you can pay 50k each and still have close to 6 MM to allocate to your starters which should be more than enough for a competitive P4 school. If you can only come up with 5 MM per, just cut the numbers in half. But you shouldn’t be shopping at the bargain basement, even at that level.

Talent acquisition is always the lifeblood of any organization. Spend wisely, which includes not allocating half of your budget to one player. And never listen to your fans who can’t see far enough past admittedly flawed recruiting rankings to understand that just because a kid goes elsewhere, it’s not always because you didn’t hand them a blank check.

[Ute Dub]

How is it a straw man when I mention in the first post that Utah has to be perfect to compete with the top competition?

[2008 National Champ]

I put the smiley to show that I was joking about the straw man argument / hyperbole. Not everything we say to each other on here needs to be treated as a declaration of war.

[RoboUte]

A&M proved that raw dollars don’t translate to wins but I’d be surprised if it didn’t help.

[The Miami Ute]

As the famed American philosopher David Lee Roth once said, money doesn’t buy you happiness but it can get you the parking spot next to it.

[MotherJabubu]

When the dust settles with NIL the distribution of players will more or less be the same. Some universities who can pony up a bit more may grow in power, some less.

The real problem is that it’s going to become much easier for the bigger programs to poach our best players. Breakout defensive stud sets our sack record? Well, we are already paying x y and z player and can’t throw the 1 million at him that Texas/whoever is going to be able to. bye bye

[SalUTEtheU]

Does anyone feel like there is more parody in college football this year? This is the first year in a long time where I felt like the National Championship is wide open. Obviously Texas looks really good, but every team outside of that look beatable.

[Ute Dub]

I agree with what you’re saying. Weird, that since NIL was made “Legal”….Alabama and Clemson have come way back to the rest of the pack. Weird, right? Almost as if they were doing NIL long before everyone else. Also, there seems to be a smoothing of talent across the board with the portal allowing players to get playing time earlier than before.

[Rick Walker]

I feel like Clemson has less to do with NIL and more to do with Dabo’s stubbornness to not use the portal. Clemson literally has 0 transfers on their team which is insane to me.

I do agree with Alabama, NIL is essentially what pushed Saban to retirement.

[Utegator]

Clemson was irrelevant until they had 2 really great QB recruits, Deshawn Watson and Trevor Lawrence. They have struggled since they left. Utah is historically bad at QB recruiting and development. You cant win games on a high level without QB talent.

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