Money Matters; Stanford's New QBs

I never expected my blog to focus so much on money matters, but, unfortunately, that's what is now driving college sports.

Everything is about money. Little, if anything, is about education.

Conference Commissioners, University Presidents and Athletic Directors sold their souls to television many years ago. 

That's why we've had non-stop conference realignment as schools chase media dollars, resulting in the end of traditional regionalized competition and conference names that don't match the number of teams in the league.

We have schools traveling 3,000 miles across the country to play league games, including two right here in the Bay Area. Stanford and Cal are playing North Carolina and Wake Forest, but no longer play USC and UCLA. What sense does that make?

And the pursuit of the almighty dollar now extends to the players themselves, thanks to the House Settlement, which will distribute $2.8 billion in back pay for NIL (Name, Image and Likeness) compensation, and require schools to to share media revenues with their athletes.

The sad reality is that, for the most part, the players the NCAA still asks us to call "student-athletes" no longer care much about things like academics, how their school of choice might help them later in life, campus location and environment, mentoring, relationship with their position coach, etc.

Nowadays, any top high school recruit or athlete who enters the transfer portal is more concerned about, in order of importance, 1) how much money are you going to pay me to come? 2) will I play immediately? and 3) do we have a good chance to make the College Football Playoff (or in basketball, the NCAA Tournament)?

The House Settlement that took effect on July 1 requires schools to share up to a cap of $20.5 million this year But there are no requirements as to how that money is divided, so most schools are distributing 75% to football, 15% to men's basketball, 5% to women's basketball and 5% to all other sports.

Kansas State recently bragged that every athlete who participates for the Wildcats will get a rev share. What they didn't mention was that football players will probably receive five or six (or even seven) figure payments, while women's soccer players will be lucky to get 50 bucks.

This disparity was brought home last week with the signing of two top high school football recruits. 

Five-star offensive tackle Felix Ojo cast his lot with Texas Tech for a fully guaranteed three-year, $5.1M contract, according to ESPN and the Athletic.

Earlier, top-ranked offensive tackle Jackson Cantwell secured a $6M deal with Miami.

Mind you, these are 17-year old kids who won't play a down with Texas Tech or Miami until the fall of 2026. And these are linemen, not quarterbacks.

Plenty of money is also changing hands for players who are expected to shine this year.

The top quarterback in the transfer portal, Tulane's Darian Mensah, rebuffed Georgia and Ohio State and chose Duke, where he's getting a reported $4M deal.

The nation's No. 1 basketball recruit, A.J. Dybantsa, is not going to North Carolina or Kansas or Connecticut. He's going to BYU for a reported $5 million deal.

And so it goes.

Going forward, the enforcement of school payouts (by a new entity called College Sports Commission) will focus primarily on whether or not schools adhere to the $20.5M cap. 

Enforcement of third party deals will be handled by another new entity, a clearinghouse run by Deloitte known as NIL Go. 

Any new contract between an athlete and a third party entry worth over $600  must be approved by the clearinghouse, which is charged with ensuring that the athlete will actually do something for the money and that the payment represents "fair market value."

In every other industry in this country of ours,"fair market value" basically means whatever someone is willing to pay you.

That's why we have lousy football coaches making $6 million a year, and the  incompetent ADs who hired those lousy coaches making $1.5M.

The head of Texas Tech's collective, which has now merged with the Athletic Department, recently boasted that his group spent $55M on Tech athletes last year.

That included a $1.05 million deal for softball pitcher NiJaree Canady, who transferred from Stanford and led the Red Raiders to the finals of the Softball World Series, where they lost to Texas.

Canady recently re-upped for another year for the same paycheck. The deal was made before the House Settlement was approved, saving her the embarrassment of trying to convince NIL Go that the fair market value for a softball player is over $1M.

You can bet that the first time the clearinghouse turns down a deal for a star quarterback, a lawsuit will quickly follow.

And you can also bet that the clearinghouse will have almost no chance of surviving that legal challenge.

Let the games begin.

Stanford QBs: Stanford has quietly signed two quarterbacks from the transfer portal--former Oregon State QB Ben Gulbranson and former UCF (Central Florida) QB Dylan Rizk.

Both are solid players who can compete at the ACC level and were part-time starters at their previous schools. During his time in Corvallis, Gulbranson played in 18 games, completing 62% of his passes for 2,648 yards, 15 TDs and 10 interceptions. Last season he went 78-128 for 943 yards, 4 TDs and 4 INTs.

Gulbranson was planning to enter medical school, but decided to give football another shot.

Rizk has three years of eligibility remaining. As a redshirt freshman in '24, he completed 72 of 117 passes (61.5%) for 904 yards, five TDs and two interceptions,.

Gulbranson and Rizk will compete for the starting job with Elijah Brown, the five-star recruit from Mater Dei who, because of injuries and a logjam at quarterback with Ashton Daniels and Justin Lamson (both of whom have transferred out)  has only played in three games.

Whoever ends up starting will play with a below-average offensive line, a group of untested running backs, and a receiving corps decimated by graduation and the transfer portal.

So far, the pre-season magazines have all picked Stanford last in the 17-team ACC. The Cardinal has a tough schedule, witn non-conference games against Notre Dame and BYU, but in my mind has five winnable games--Hawaii, Boston College, Virginia, San Jose State, and Cal.

Note: The Inside Track will be on vacation next week. We'll return July 20.