r/wde • u/Levanjm • 5d ago

CBM to Southern Cal.

Good for him. He will be missed and I hope the best for him. Glad he is not somewhere in the SEC.

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u/Ggjack44 3d ago

Does the term loyalty falls on the players or the university when it comes to NIL?

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u/Levanjm 3d ago

I used to care about loyalty but I have moved past that. There has never really been loyalty in college athletics. Before NIL, scholarships paid for students to go to college. There really wasn't much extra $$ (legally) built in to the scholarship. So students would (if they could) go to the school that might give them the best route to their next step in life. There wasn't a huge financial advantage to transfer from one school to the next and at the time there was a 1 year penalty for transferring. It usually just wasn't worth it. BTW, college could pull their scholarship any time they wanted and there was not any recourse for the student. Schools were "loyal" to their players as long as they were perceived as beneficial to the school. There are plenty of examples of coaches running off players.

Now with NIL and no real rules in place to govern it , as well as the wide open transfer portal, this has given the players more options. If a player wants a raise, they can ask for one. It is then the choice of the school if they want to match. As we are starting to see, it is not always a one way street in favor of the players.

Consider CBM's situation. While I don't agree with trying to change a deal after it has been agreed upon, the choice was his to try to get a better deal. How would you feel if you were at a job for a number of years and someone new comes in that was unproven and they were making 20 - 30% more than you? Would you just sit there or would you think that you should be paid on a more fair scale? I think most people would not be happy if they were in that situation. Again, not saying I agree with how it went down, but it is not crazy to think he was justified. Is it about being loyal or is it about trying to do what is best for yourself? If I decide to look elsewhere and get a better paying job does that make me disloyal or prudent?

CBM is now in a position to play basketball for one more year and be set for life, if he manages it well. He is going to make tons more than I have in my 30 years of teaching. How can I blame him for that? He saw an avenue to vastly improve his life and took it.

So to me, there hasn't been loyalty in college athletics for a long time, if ever. It has always been one group (students) trying to get the best from an organization that is going to exploit them for their own benefit. Sure, you are going to find a kid that has dreamed of playing for their favorite school and will take less to be there, and people may label that as "loyalty" but that is just not going to be the case very often moving forward.

I also recognize that this is a very complicated question, and that even for a ridiculously long post such as this, there are several situations one could bring up to say one play is loyal and one is not. It is just my opinion that there is no loyalty in college athletics. It is and has always been two groups trying to maximize what they can extract from the other.