In my mind the NCAA basketball scene is starting to look heck of a lot more like the English soccer pyramid, with the power conferences raiding mid-majors for battle hardened players. It’s getting crazy ridiculous. So, what if we threw in a buyout clause for players to enter the transfer portal? I know that this is a bat guano crazy idea, but it could actually work. Schools would negotiate a fee when a player decides to bounce, making it a little more like the transfer system in soccer. Might even help mid-majors get some cash out of the deal while making the whole thing a bit more structured.
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It’s gotten out of hand. The haves have always had an advantage but the lower tiers used to have a fighting chance because they could keep those with less superstar talent for four years while the majors lost them to the pros.
I don’t know what the answer is. I didn’t like the old system where colleges made fortunes through exploitation but the current system seems unregulated.
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Earlier this week I did see the idea of transfer fees making its rounds on YouTube, but I paid it no mind after figuring it was just more alarmist click-bait and fodder for flavour for the week.
That reality and the timing of such discussion tells me, fundamentally no different than the days of print newspapers especially in the summer, that whoever is putting out that content is probably missing a real story somewhere in sports and mailing it in to some degree. I don’t see those doing so in modern media, operating as if still in 2005, as going to be successful with such antiquated methods.
Also I feel that such an idea for college athletic departments to pay transfer fees is the cart well ahead of the horse, for the entire compensation model for college athletes continues to be refined and defined each year as various litigation winds its way through the courts with also various settlements in the works still far from implementation, as in when the college athletes get the additional money.
If you have ever benefited from a legal ruling or settlement, those weeks or months to receive your due payment after a favourable ruling via trial or hearing or via a settlement feel like months or years.
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I would get rid of the transfer portal altogether. Have a high school draft for the colleges. If the kid doesn’t report to the school then s/he has to play water polo or something else in a lower division. If s/he doesn’t report to Junior College, his/her rights get sent to either Canada, Mexico or Japan. Have the school give the kid money for scholarship etc. Let the kids get sponsorship money.
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After decades of being abused and exploited by the NCAA the players finally have some control and you propose taking it away … 
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I think you are distorting his message when there is more to it, for he is suggesting a change to the payment model.
In the meantime, much continues to be worked out via the House settlement and other litigation still in progress and expected to be finalized in April 2025.
Sponsorship money as mentioned at the end is already at hand via NIL.
The NCAA has zero say in that matter any more if they had any say at all in some regards, not that the NCAA did not try to interject itself also into the matter to regulate also NIL pay in its typical overzealous fashion with regards to the matter of compensation of athletes since day one.
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Money going to the student first then to be spent on scholarship, instead of simply a scholarship and routine student expenses like room and board and books and various fees for which the school takes care of the accounting internally, is simply not going to be the case, including via current tax law, for which the money otherwise going directly to the student, other than via otherwise an academic grant, would be taxable income.
Schools funding the attendance by the student, whether or not athlete, is working just fine under the current system.
It’s been simply payment of athletes, formerly and in misleading fashion called student-athletes, that finally has been dealt with in a better capacity though not without new issues and forthcoming issues.
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One consideration here is that this concern is a throwback to those of us over a certain age, say perhaps 30.
I’m not sure just how many care as much about March Madness who are under 35 or so but for perhaps former players or recreational players and perhaps if they are gamblers betting on basketball anyway.
Within three years, nobody but those of us much older are going to remember or care about “Cinderella” of yore, like especially at CBS and in the sports media covering the games.
I lost interest myself around the time of the stupid “one-and-done” rule, no longer as applicable with regards to the NBA, when it was painfully obvious that the teams with such players had the heavy odds to win anyway and then that was it for one season.
Carmelo Anthony then of Syracuse in 2003 comes to mind.
A whole lot of fans lost interest during that entire decade and never looked back from the days of filling out brackets in pools.
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My son went to a mid-major school and when one of the top recruits in the country signed with them, we were ecstatic.
Turns out, he went there because his dad was the coach and Junior ended up “injured” most of his lone season before going in the NBA draft.
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