NCAA Storm Brewing

A few more portal offerings:

• Safety Leonard St. Gourdin – UMass
• Defensive lineman Jaylin Rainey – Samford

• Linebacker Marques White – McNeese State

• Running back Joey Richmond – WPI

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The transfer portal is a huge issue for the NCAA but so is NIL. NCAA President Charlie Baker, a junior varsity basketball player at Harvard long before serving as governor of Massachusetts, is proposing a sea change in college athletics. Here's the headline from a column posted by Inside Higher Ed (LINK):

‘Revolutionary’ or ‘Reactionary’? NCAA Chief’s New Model for Big-Time Sports; Charlie Baker’s plan would let Division I colleges compensate players directly and give sports powers enormous latitude to set their own rules if they invest significantly in athletes.

From the story:

"(I)t would acknowledge the long-standing thirst of the association’s 40 to 60 most powerful football-playing members for more control over their own fates, separating them more formally from the 200 to 300 other institutions that also compete in Division I basketball, and even from the rest of the 130-odd universities that currently play in the Football Bowl Subdivision.

And . . .

Many observers have speculated that the logical endgame of that winnowing process is a few dozen universities setting up their own megaconference(s), possibly outside the control of the NCAA, in ways that would allow them to share television resources only among themselves and, possibly, undermine not only the NCAA’s extremely lucrative Division I basketball tournaments but also the association itself. The Knight Commission, a sports reform group, several years ago endorsed a version of this proposal that would create a separate organization to govern big-time college football and a playoff tournament but leave the sports powers within the NCAA for all other sports.

From the Washington Post (LINK):

The crux of Baker’s proposal: to allow all Division I schools to compensate athletes directly through name, image and likeness (NIL) deals and remove the cap on education-related payments that athletes can receive. Baker also pitched a new subdivision within Division I that would allow well-resourced schools, should they opt into it, to form their own set of rules to better suit their investment in athletics.

And . . .

While each school has a varying number of sports and athletes, an athletic department with 400 athletes would have to pay a minimum of $30,000 to at least 200 of them. That would start the entry fee to this subdivision for that school at $6 million. Schools in the subdivision could also enact their own policies separate from the rest of Division I, whether they address NIL, scholarship limits, transfer rules and so on.

USA Today does a pretty good job of simplifying Baker's proposal HERE.

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While you weren't looking, the FCS playoffs have continued apace and two northeastern schools are still alive. Here's the bracket (click to enlarge):

If that's hard to read even after enlarging, Villanova will be visiting No. 1 South Dakota State Saturday at noon on ESPN in the quarterfinals and Albany will visit Idaho Saturday at 10 p.m.. The semifinals are next weekend and the championship game Jan. 7 in Frisco, Texas.

The last team from the northeast to win the title was Villanova, which in 2009 defeated Montana in the championship game, 23-21.

South Dakota State defeated North Dakota State in last year's championship game, 45-21.

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EXTRA POINT
Candles went up in the windows yesterday as we make our way toward Christmas. Gotta say, having a timer in each one so they come on automagically at sunset and turn off right about bedtime is a game changer. I grumbled every time when I wandered around the house loosening the bulbs or unplugging each candle