I thought, great, we're retired. We get season tickets in a premium seating area. We give significantly to IFund. We've bought pavers at the Alumni Association and now Memorial Stadium. We have women's athletics in our will. We can afford it...but now you're asking for ICON? The pockets are only so deep. I have save something for my memory care.
And where does the money go? With ICON we knew we were helping all student-athletes with academic support. Now they're asking me to pay the players, in the case of the premier players more than the NFL (and NBA), a direct cash payment? I'm not only philosophically reluctant to do that, gee, ya know, enuf is enuf. I know I'm an oldtimer but I can remember freshman athletes living in the dorms. And the training table being double entrees in the dorm cafeteria.
The kids now are getting more than an education. They're getting worldclass pt from first tier trainers on world class equipments in luxury "performance center" accomodations. It't training for the NFL. And that's free. Belittle a diploma from potentially Gies or other premier academic study all you want, but man oh man.
If NIL guts the conferences, and the conferences get so huge that...
I'm ranting now. But the Dennis Effect, or the Dennis Syndrome, or whatever you want to call it, where players bail before the season starts, even "the players should get what's coming to them" believers should be be having second thoughts. It's unsustainable. And I don't know where it's going. Does anyone?