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Is the LOI an Archaic notion soon to be forgotten?

DanL53

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Sep 12, 2013
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For those who didn't hear, one of the last remaining five stars, Stephen Zimmerman, picked UNLV today over Kansas, Kentucky, Duke and everybody else!

(Side Note...UNLV, Auburn with Pearl, getting into the five stars in one way or another lately...it's like seeing a ghost.)

Anyway, the point to the post is that Zimmerman is not signing an LOI. See link.

http://lasvegassun.com/news/2015/apr/16/zimm-city-bishop-gorman-big-man-picks-unlv/

So when does this practice of just taking kids at their word trickle down to the Iowa level programs? Will it trickle? Things trickle, this looks like a trickling type of thing.


More: http://lasvegassun.com/news/2015/jan/11/old-school-commitment-bishop-gorman-star-wants-pla/


This post was edited on 4/17 1:16 PM by DanL53
 
Maybe for the elite prospects this is possible but this won't trickle down to the major or mid-major prospects. The schools could just as easily walk away from the prospect. Its an insurance policy for both parties.
 
Considering they bind the athlete to the school but not the school to the athlete and the fact that they aren't required, makes me wonder why athletes sign them. The scholarship/financial aid agreement is what binds the school, not the LOI.

And yes, the LOI is archaic.
 
Malik Newman committed/agreed to play for Mississippi State without signing an LOI last week. If Ben Howland had insisted on the LOI, Newman would have gone to Kentucky, or Kansas, or ...

At first it will be the top 100 or so players who will refuse to sign, and the schools will be so happy to get them they won't make a deal of it.

How would you like to be a Connecticut or Florida LOI signee as Kevin Ollie and Billy Donovan flirt with the Oklahoma City job? An LOI means the player has to go to the school, even if the coach that recruited him isn't there. Brad Stevens hosed his Butler recruits when he took the Celtics job on July 3rd, 2013.

Expecting a kid to pick a school, and not a coach, is gobbly gook. What if Donovan leaves, and Florida's A.D. picks a Tony Bennett style coach, who wins games, but does it scoring in the 50's and 60's? Because 4 high school seniors signed a piece of paper in November, they have to show up in Gainesville, but the coach who recruited them gets to bail in May, and they have to play a style of play they aren't suited for, at least for a year, and then they have to sit out a year when they transfer? That's a hardship that athletes and parents aren't going to stand for, there will be lawsuits, and the power conferences will capitulate.

Either the language in the LOI has to change, or the whole concept is going to be history. I predict Donovan's eventual departure is going to shine a light on the problem, and begin a national discussion that will groundswell over time into some type of reform.

LOI's have never favored the player, and have always provided more protection for the school. They were created by a Texas Tech professor in the late 60's because the Southwest Conference football schools were offering scholarships to everybody before there were any real scholarship limits. Texas' Darrell Royal was hoarding athletes so they couldn't play against him for SMU (Hayden Fry), Baylor, Texas Tech and the rest. It brought some sanity to the situation, but the NLI solved a problem for the conference and the schools, more than it did anything for the athlete.

The more money everybody makes (Networks/Conferences/Schools/Shoe & Athletic Wear Companies, ...) the more hypocritical and outdated the paradigm of amateurism and the student/athlete from the '50's/60's/70's becomes. There is a revolution a brewing. The athlete will always get the short end of the stick, but since the stick has migrated from a tooth pick to a two by four, that short end will progressively contain increased advantages that would make athletes from previous eras quite envious.

See former Duke player and future D1 college basketball coach Nolan Smith's ideas for reform. This is the future, it's not far away, and it's for the better.
https://medium.com/the-cauldron/col...-could-be-better-for-its-players-bd5c8c59fcdc
 
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they don't favor the player, but they also aren't required to sign them. it's a way to reserve your seat on the bus. if a coach is looking at two players for one spot, do you think they will take a kids word over a signed document from the other guy, assuming they are evaluated equally?
 
Malik Newman committed/agreed to play for Mississippi State without signing an LOI last week. If Ben Howland had insisted on the LOI, Newman would have gone to Kentucky, or Kansas, or ...

At first it will be the top 100 or so players who will refuse to sign, and the schools will be so happy to get them they won't make a deal of it.

How would you like to be a Connecticut or Florida LOI signee as Kevin Ollie and Billy Donovan flirt with the Oklahoma City job? An LOI means the player has to go to the school, even if the coach that recruited him isn't there. Brad Stevens hosed his Butler recruits when he took the Celtics job on July 3rd, 2013.

Expecting a kid to pick a school, and not a coach, is gobbly gook. What if Donovan leaves, and Florida's A.D. picks a Tony Bennett style coach, who wins games, but does it scoring in the 50's and 60's? Because 4 high school seniors signed a piece of paper in November, they have to show up in Gainesville, but the coach who recruited them gets to bail in May, and they have to play a style of play they aren't suited for, at least for a year, and then they have to sit out a year when they transfer? That's a hardship that athletes and parents aren't going to stand for, there will be lawsuits, and the power conferences will capitulate.

Either the language in the LOI has to change, or the whole concept is going to be history. I predict Donovan's eventual departure is going to shine a light on the problem, and begin a national discussion that will groundswell over time into some type of reform.

LOI's have never favored the player, and have always provided more protection for the school. They were created by a Texas Tech professor in the late 60's because the Southwest Conference football schools were offering scholarships to everybody before there were any real scholarship limits. Texas' Darrell Royal was hoarding athletes so they couldn't play against him for SMU (Hayden Fry), Baylor, Texas Tech and the rest. It brought some sanity to the situation, but the NLI solved a problem for the conference and the schools, more than it did anything for the athlete.

The more money everybody makes (Networks/Conferences/Schools/Shoe & Athletic Wear Companies, ...) the more hypocritical and outdated the paradigm of amateurism and the student/athlete from the '50's/60's/70's becomes. There is a revolution a brewing. The athlete will always get the short end of the stick, but since the stick has migrated from a tooth pick to a two by four, that short end will progressively contain increased advantages that would make athletes from previous eras quite envious.

See former Duke player and future D1 college basketball coach Nolan Smith's ideas for reform. This is the future, it's not far away, and it's for the better.
https://medium.com/the-cauldron/col...-could-be-better-for-its-players-bd5c8c59fcdc
I read it. I know college players, who devote so much of their time, are criticized, etc. deserve much, but this scenario sounds like the beginning of the end for COLLEGE sports. Maybe D3 will hang on. I notice it didn't have the players pick the coaches, hire the college presidents, our give their own grades (if they go to school), maybe that's coming too.
 
I read it. I know college players, who devote so much of their time, are criticized, etc. deserve much, but this scenario sounds like the beginning of the end for COLLEGE sports. Maybe D3 will hang on. I notice it didn't have the players pick the coaches, hire the college presidents, our give their own grades (if they go to school), maybe that's coming too.

There will always be college sports. There is too much money in it. It's reality show TV with national and regional interest that people just have to watch. It's imbedded in the culture and fabric of life. It's never made sense. Higher education and athletics are mutually exclusive enterprises that got enmeshed 120 years ago. It may be the end of college sports as we have known it, but that doesn't have to be a bad thing. Just different and more fair.

D3 will always exist. It has its place. Being on television just isn't one of them.

Players already pick their coaches.

Being against empowering collegiate athletes in 2015 would be like being against free agency during the early '70's (Curt Flood and Andy Messersmith). People said ball players should be happy with what they have, and shouldn't rock the boat. Those people were on the wrong side of history.

Somehow the owners found a way to increase salaries, and still make more money. The world changed (player mobility/more $/union power) but it didn't come to an end.

Nobody likes that marquee college basketball players have no intention of graduating. The PAC 12 is floating Freshmen ineligibility. Sounds great, but if adopted, per the current NBA rules, 18 year olds will simply go overseas for a year, and March Madness will have a real D3 look to it. There goes the Werner Ladder account, and Buick and Nike and ...

Sadly, worse than naming their own grades, I bet most early NBA draft entrants didn't step foot in a classroom after Christmas, or at least, since mid March. Why do we never hear if Kentucky's or Duke's or anybody's early entrants finished their spring semester? Are Okafor and Winslow and Jones on Duke's campus? The Harrison's at Kentucky?

Reform will be messy. It's needed. But restricting student athlete's rights isn't the solution. It's the problem.
 
There will always be college sports. There is too much money in it. It's reality show TV with national and regional interest that people just have to watch. It's imbedded in the culture and fabric of life. It's never made sense. Higher education and athletics are mutually exclusive enterprises that got enmeshed 120 years ago. It may be the end of college sports as we have known it, but that doesn't have to be a bad thing. Just different and more fair.

D3 will always exist. It has its place. Being on television just isn't one of them.

Players already pick their coaches.

Being against empowering collegiate athletes in 2015 would be like being against free agency during the early '70's (Curt Flood and Andy Messersmith). People said ball players should be happy with what they have, and shouldn't rock the boat. Those people were on the wrong side of history.

Somehow the owners found a way to increase salaries, and still make more money. The world changed (player mobility/more $/union power) but it didn't come to an end.

Nobody likes that marquee college basketball players have no intention of graduating. The PAC 12 is floating Freshmen ineligibility. Sounds great, but if adopted, per the current NBA rules, 18 year olds will simply go overseas for a year, and March Madness will have a real D3 look to it. There goes the Werner Ladder account, and Buick and Nike and ...

Sadly, worse than naming their own grades, I bet most early NBA draft entrants didn't step foot in a classroom after Christmas, or at least, since mid March. Why do we never hear if Kentucky's or Duke's or anybody's early entrants finished their spring semester? Are Okafor and Winslow and Jones on Duke's campus? The Harrison's at Kentucky?

Reform will be messy. It's needed. But restricting student athlete's rights isn't the solution. It's the problem.
Everyone, or should I say, many, seem to think D1 sports all make money. Many don't. Many don't have this TV money that's floating around. And even the big time conferences have the haves and the have-nots. Plus the haves are endlessly asking alumni and non alumni big-wigs for donations. You can call that making money, but I don't.
 
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Good point IamHawkeye. As to college athletes the vast majority of them will be relying on their education, not their sports skills, to earn a living after college.
 
There have always been haves and have nots. There always will be. But citing that is not a reason for the haves to hoard their resources and not share it in a more reasonable manner with the people who make it all possible.

Hy-Vee is an employee owned cooperative. But, they shouldn't give their employees anything that Fareway can't give their employees, because all grocery store workers should all be treated exactly the same?

The big paradigm shift that needs to happen in collegiate athletics is away from the current one emphasizing "equal," to one that values what is "fair."

All scholarship athletes should get scholarships. But if your sport packs 77,000 into Kinnick Stadium at $50 a ticket, seven times a year, and plays on national and regional TV 12 times, or sells 15,000 tickets fifteen times a year at $20 a pop in Carver, and gets millions of viewers on ESPN/FOX/or the Big Ten Network, maybe you've earned something the golf and gymnastics or cross country athletes don't get.

Any school in a major conference that has a television network has plenty of money floating around (Big Ten, Pac 12, Big 12, SEC, ACC).

There already is a demarcation between the money makers and the not money makers. It is called the power 5 conferences. D1 has 120 football schools. Sixty make money. The rest, like the UAB's, Middle Tennessee States, and Sacramento States of the world, don't. They will likely form a middle tier between the Football Championship Series schools (formerly known as 1AA, like UNI) and the power 5 conference schools, or eventually just meld with the FCS schools to form one, second tier.

Why should an Alabama football player involved in a billion dollar enterprise get the same $ (nothing) as an Idaho State football player involved in a half a million $ enterprise? Nick Saban makes 7 million. The Idaho State coach, barely six figures. Alabama doesn't compete with Idaho State in football. Why should Idaho State's inability to recompense its athletes be a reason to short change the Alabama player who is integral in generating a sea of money that goes to everybody but him?

Major college athletic departments are non profit organizations, which means they spend everything they make. They pump money into facilities and weight rooms in a crazy arms race, and pay gargantuan salaries to coaches and ballooned coaching staffs. The reason Nick Saban, Jim Harbaugh, Urban Meyer, and yes, Kirk Ferentz, get exorbitant salaries is because the cartel doesn't pay its athletes. The money is there for athletes in the revenue generating sports (football and basketball) to be recompensed in some fashion. It's simply a matter of re-allocating resources. Hayden Fry and Tom Davis' salaries in the early 90's barely surpassed $100,000. There is no reason any head college football anywhere needs to make more than a million.

These student athletes are working 30 to 40 hours a week, in season, before attending classes and doing homework. They aren't allowed to work, so, unless their guardian has disposable income, many don't have money to take their boyfriend or girlfriend on a date.

The power 5 conference athletic directors know this, and will address it with a cost of attendance stipend beginning this August. It has its flaws, but is a step in the right direction, and will be perfected in time.

Finding a way for cash to find it's way in the hands of student athletes wasn't some benevolent and magnanimous act by college athletic administrators. Northwestern's unionizing effort got the ball rolling. The fact AD's proactively proposed paying athletes is proof the money is there, and is an obvious attempt to forestall eventual legal trouble.

Regarding DanL53's point citing the majority of athletes relying on their degrees, not their sports skills to make a living after college, I would posit, that's an additional reason some athletes should receive $ upon graduation.
The majors and classes they are allowed to take are often limited because they conflict with afternoon practices, and athletic department personnel steer them into easy majors to keep them eligible. Most revenue producing sports athletes exit with degrees in something like Exercise Science, or some other useless thing, even though, for many, if all they had to do were to be a student, they would likely major in something else.

No amount of money will make things equal to compensate for the potential disparity in income impacted by the professional opportunities affected over a 40 year career based on one's education study, but, a stipend could be justified based on the system's proclivity for inherently negatively affecting, such.

Finally, money athletic departments receive from donors is real money. Why can't that count as profit? Every new building on any campus in America is built with donor money. So, the Tippie School of Business is a legitimate way to attract business students considering Iowa vs another institution, and the U of Iowa Foundation is literally the life blood of the university, but athletic department donors doing what they can to attract student athletes is somehow different, and can't count towards a bottom line?

That's bogus. I know Sally Mason would agree with me.
 
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Everyone, or should I say, many, seem to think D1 sports all make money. Many don't. Many don't have this TV money that's floating around. And even the big time conferences have the haves and the have-nots. Plus the haves are endlessly asking alumni and non alumni big-wigs for donations. You can call that making money, but I don't.

2 days after I wrote a post responding to your thoughts, above, Jay Bilas makes my point better than I, at the 12:15 mark on this podcast, through 13:45
http://coachingulive.com/coaching-u-podcast-jay-bilas/
 
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