Pay The Man, Shirley - Direct Payments From The University Started July 1
Plus, Lobos/Aggies 2x a Year in Hoops?
Hello, All!
Back at it. Happy July 1st. We are halfway through 2025, and I don’t know… I feel that football and basketball are going to bring us a lot of good in the next several months. Let’s hope the best for Coach Sanchez and Coach Hooten, and the rest of the amazing teams of the Aggies.
I really appreciate the feedback I got from you all on my last column. I do feel that it was important to acknowledge something important regarding Pascal Siakam, and it’s funny, since I last heard from you, the Pacers, Siakam’s team has gotten worse to avoid the luxury tax on a season without their star and they lost a key player to Milwaukee today, so I think they will struggle, and who knows? Will Pascal be happy? Will Indiana blow it up this coming year and how will he feel? Will he be happy?
Amazing how things change out of nowhere in the NBA.
Anyway,
I redesigned the AGGREGATOR website and cleaned up some outdated stuff. While I still allude to the fact that this is a reader-supported column that was created by the lack of newspaper coverage, it’s not JUST about that anymore.
AGGREGATOR, my project, is an independent column about your favorite teams in your favorite city. There is no one with content like mine, and no message board, no two-bit Twitter group or no one else can say otherwise.
I will work hard for you, if you’ll have me.
For $5 a month or $50 a year for annual, you can support independent journalism and AGGREGATOR! :)
Also, I will have the LC Bulletin Nomination stuff on the bottom… Let’s get to business.
Direct Payments to Athletes Started July 1
It’s all so confusing to some, I get it, but I cringe at the phrase “New Era in College Football” as if Red Grange in the 1920s didn’t have money on his mind. Give me a break. :)
Here’s a cliffs notes version of what is happening as of today:
College athletes are finally getting paid directly by their schools. Starting July 1, schools that opted into the House v. NCAA settlement can now share their revenue, which is up to about $20 million a year per school with players across all sports. Football and men’s basketball will eat up most of that pie.
In NM State’s case, it will likely be mainly Men’s Basketball and Football.
How much is NM State going to share? Unclear, but I can tell you it’s nowhere near the maximum of $20 million, as I think if 10 Pan Ams full of people pitching in $5.75 would still not get there.
Reminder:
This is not NIL money (like those booster collectives). This is school money….real payroll-like cash, although players still aren’t technically considered employees.
As a workplace advocate in my spare time, I don’t like that part. Reminds me of the WWE and calling their employees “Independent Contractors” when they are the face of your product.
Each school can split the money how they want. Power schools like the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 are all in. Some smaller schools will opt out because it’s expensive. But any school that signs onto the agreement can do it. I believe I say somewhere over 80 percent of D1 Basketball Schools opted it.
Don’t think that number won’t drop next year when people in lower schools/conferences have an epiphany that it is too rich for their blood. Hoping NM State never gets there with that.
Who is watching the henhouse of NIL deals?
A new body called the College Sports Commission (CSC) now oversees this whole thing. They’ll police salary caps, run a NIL “clearinghouse” (with help from Deloitte), and make sure schools don’t try to cheat the system with fake NIL deals.
There’s an interesting story by someone in ABQ about UNM not being exactly transparent about their NIL stuff. You HAVE to read it!
Click Here!
Not saying it is shady, they are just not being transparent…
You can still do NIL, but it has to go through the new portal. Deals must show “fair market value” and a legit reason. Most legit deals with companies should be fine. Shady booster stuff? Not so much.
As for collectives… some will shut down, some will pivot to help players with branding and education. I am curious to see the next steps for NMSU and UNM with all of this.
Can players sign binding contracts?
Maybe. It’s unclear. Some schools are trying to enforce them legally. Lawsuits are already happening.
Long Story Short:
It’s a new era. (UGH) Schools are basically cutting checks now. But the system is still messy, still evolving, and we’re likely heading toward more lawsuits, more court battles, and possibly federal intervention down the road.
I think you can’t put the genie back in the bottle or the fecal matter back in the equine or something like that…. I think it is here to stay, and complain all you want, it’s only going to get wonkier and lead to more moments of schools dropping sports to pay football or other weird things.
Commentary:
I was talking with someone about $30/hr minimum wage in L.A. for fast-food workers, and then I think about the security at the Sun Bowl making $7.25 an hour and being unskilled as heck.
Funny how we think $30/hr, more than I ever made in my life is something we deem people not to be worthy of, and funny enough, when I go to the Sun Bowl and see the terrible security that works there, doesn’t enforce seat assignments, and let people in without scanning tickets, I say they don’t deserve the $7.25 an hour based on my interactions with them… But both things exist and there’s nothing I can do about it.
Payments for players reminds me of that. We find reasons to not like it and to make our feelings known in an obnoxious way. Now, all we can do is follow what the majority of schools who we compare ourselves to are doing. Yes, it’s like jumping off a bridge with your friends.
I am re-reading Rus Bradburd’s Big Time (more on that in a few days) and the prevailing thought in the book is we could see bizarre things happening at schools the way it happens to fictional “Coors State”
Honestly… Things may be totally different next July 1st. We have to go with the flow of it just being weird for a little bit.
Aside from the military academies and the IVY league, I believe Montana is the most notable school to not opt into revenue sharing, though they claimed they will next year.
That’s notable because that is where Aggies QB Logan Fife went to school last and Montana is perennially a power in FCS football.
Other than that, I could not find another school who opted out even the most narcissistic Aggies fan would think they were better than us on the fields and courts of play, so 319 Schools is a big whoop for me. The ones who opted in were always going to, NM State included.
But I caution that this year will be scrutinized to see the long-term viability of this thing for school in the mid-tier like NM State…
I also know from banking…. you put money at the center of something, you are bound to hear crazy stories come out from somewhere… Stay tuned!
NM State/UNM Home-and-Home Might Start Up Again?
Rarely do I want to piggyback off of someone’s work, but Nick Coppola got an interview with Acting AD Amber Burdge, a candidate for the full-time gig and there was something notable that came out of it.
There is going to be an article from Nick that drops in a day or two that goes deep with Burdge, who may be in her last days as AD, but something notable caught his and everyone’s attention.
Mutual Interest for the Aggies and Lobos to play twice a year.
The series will be one game this year, on November 15 in Cruces, after a December matchup last season, won by the Aggies in the PIT.
Eddie Nunez and Mario Moccia “came to an agreement” on making the 2 game series just one, shortly after the…unpleasantness between the two schools.
Sources tell AGGREGATOR that it was in fact Nunez strong-arming the situation down to one game, with another close source inside the program that mentioned Nunez wanted the games to go away entirely!
“Strong potential” is the word Amber Burdge uses in talking about rekindling two games a season.
Lobo fans on social media were largely against the proposal, citing NM State allegedly lowering the strength of schedule, and Fernando Lovo, the new Lobos AD mentioned to “lobogabe” an AGGREGATOR friend and UNM superfan on Twitter that UNM will make out their MW schedule and other things first before broaching the 2-game series.
Aggies fans, when not defending their school, were largely in favor of the return to the series.
Commentary:
I think it inevitably will happen as early as next year. Not because of the need to break bread necessarily, but more because NCAA now allows 32 regular season games, and it’s easy to plug in this as “the extra game” which allows both UNM and NM State to not schedule another scrub team that will make fans unhappy.
I am certain the games would have totally gone away if not for some hard work by Moccia to make it 1 game a year, and basically jointly deciding with Nunez that it has to be one.
No word on why Burdge’s enthusiasm is so strong about this, considering I am not sure if she will be privy to big day-to-day decisions while the search for AD goes on. So I am not sure she is a part of the negotiations, if there even is any.
But UNM and NM State would be silly to not want this game as it is routinely a decent walkup crowd to the arena which means more revenue, plus it fills the schedule hole.
Happy that Nick got Burdge to talk about it and I look forward to his article.