“All Utah Scholarship Football Players Receive A New Truck “

“All Utah Scholarship Football Players Receive A New Truck”

“Every scholarship player on Utah’s football team is receiving a 2024 Ram 1500 Big Horn truck with the Night Edition package. The lease and insurance costs are being fully funded by donors of the Crimson Collective”

“Nearly 100 trucks are being delivered to athletes today”

“In terms of what the athletes will be doing to support the new app, For The Win 360°- Utah, the football athletes will work with the collective to develop new content.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristid...k-in-nil-deal/
https://www.tiktok.com/@thescore/vid...25799515540741

Truck retails for around $55,000, and to “earn” this perk 100 players have to help the alumni group develop an app. And keep in mind, this is Utah, not a school really noted as a top twenty football presence

What does this say about the current state of college sports? How do you think it reflects back upon the the mission of the institutions? If it came down to it, would you think the school would enforce an academic requirement if it might cause a top player to transfer?

 

It has been a fairly good football program for the last decade or so. Consistently ranked.

Here’s the last several years:

2022: 11
2021: 4
2020(pandemic year so it was a weird one): not in top 25
2019: 16
2018: got up to 17 before the end of season and were 20th going into their bowl game but lost and ended up out of the top 25.
2017: not top 25
2016: 23-21, depending on poll

So they haven’t been bad, been doing pretty good in fact, better than the other “big” school in Utah of BYU.

To answer some of your questions:

1. The players are finally getting paid and paid well.
2. I think it doesn’t reflect anything other than the football program is doing well.
3. They already have academic requirements, and transferring from school to school and playing athletics is now easier in college thanks to the new rules and the portal. It’s how Colorado went from the worst to being talked about on the National stage, and the coach(mostly the coach, but he is the reason they got so many transfers from top tier schools).

 

it's payback for the brain damage football is causing players, dangerous sport

kinda odd schools still support a sport that damages so many brains

 

I say good for them. If the college alumni are willing to pick up the tab, let them enjoy the trucks.

For many years, young men played on college football teams and got nothing but scholarship money. If they were star players, the college got all the extra money while the students got nothing. The only way the players could collect on their performance was when they turned pro.

In the meantime, if they got injured with something like a knee, which could end their hopes of going pro, that was end for them.

No, if the kids can get some extra money and benefits while in college, which has nothing to do with sports betting, let them enjoy it.

 

Not really recognized as one of the top programs in the country, one of the elites, nor one with a rich history

I’d agree on the paying athletes, but this is not the way, and only endorses the pay to play mentality. You want a good team, buy it, same reason for years baseball fans hated the NY Yankees, cause they bought the best, difference being, they were professionals, supposedly, this is amateur athletics. Today star high school athletes are not beginning to hire agents

And I am sure they do have academic requirements, but what happens when the star player decides he ain’t going to class, does the school enforced those requirements, or turn a blind eye knowing if they got tough it will piss off the alumni group and motivate the kid to jump to a new school

As I implied, the mission of colleges, educate as their prime goal, is being challenged

 

Utah is NOW considered a Top-Tier Program.
2 straight Conference Titles and 2 straight Rose Bowl appearances and 2 straight Top 12 Finishes.

 

This ain’t just extra money, if every player is getting a $55,000 truck, what do they think the star players are getting? let alone what aspiring recruits might be promised?

I agree on athletes should be compensated, but this is endorsing the pay to play mentality, which challenges the purpose of the institution, to educate, not buy personnel for a football team. It professionalizes college sports, the schools having no more real relationship with the team than sponsors do on NASCAR teams. Want a good team, buy it

 

Appears we found a Utah fan, nothing personal, but when one thinks of top college football programs, if you asked the guy on the street, I don’t think Utah is going to come up on the list

And per thread, so you don’t see any possible problems here?

 

In todays college game, the players are getting agents in high school(some are anyway, not all of the kids are 5 star recruits, ask The Manning kid in Texas how much he got to go to Texas(he hasn’t accepted a dime until he gets starter role, that’s the family rule apparently, but they were talking millions).

Also, this has been going on a long time. They didnt always do anything about it(though SMU would like to have some words), and have now made it legal to do so. I don’t think it effects the primary goal at all, and in fact can help bring in better students.

 

Has been going on for some time, under the table, but never near the level it is now, and it is only starting, there are literally no rules, you can openly buy your team

Not going to draw better students, a kid looking for a real education ain’t going to a school who prioritizes paying athletes, if they did, Ivy League schools, or Stanford if you live out west, would be searching for better students, which obviously they are not

And I find it hard to believe this doesn’t challenge the academic reputation of the schools, as I said, why would a standout player even go to class, if the school tries to enforce academic requirements he’ll transfer, and then the big buck donors will come down on the school

With the big bucks involve, only a mater of time, I’ll say a decade, there will be one major college football conference made up of say twenty teams nationally, and, shortly thereafter the NFL will get involved full time

 

There are a few rules, but severely restricting an individual from making money off their own likeness seems pretty authoritarian to me. Never liked that they couldn’t. Some of these athletes are famous before ever joining college(see Arch Manning, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, the last two never going to college before becoming professional athletes as teenagers BTW).

I understand Nick Saban isn’t a fan. I think it’s because it makes him no longer the top dog in college football, and other schools now have a chance to win the National title.

One thing you may be overlooking, is this money does not come from the school. It comes from “boosters”. In this case, it’s the people funding the NIL deals.

 

Sports are money for colleges.
Private schools, like the Ivy League, give recruited athletes a bigger advantage, by far, than minority groups, underrepresented groups,disadvantaged groups ever did for admission.
Take Harvard. Less than 5% of applicants are accepted overall. A recruited athlete has an 86% chance of being accepted. If not for their sport they would have a 0.1%. Harvard has more student athletes than Alabama. Harvard offers more sports than Alabama even though Alabama is 5 times larger.
The answer to all your questions is money.

 

It comes from donors, hypothetically, but there is a fine line between what the schools can and can not do, but that is not what is the question here

Rather, for beginners, it will ruin college football as we know it today, going forward, it will become 100% professional, pay to play, the more you are willing to pay, the higher the potential your team will succeed. If you are a school that emphasizes academics, especially private schools, which colleges are suppose to do, forget it, the Vanderbilts, Stanfords, NorthWesterns, or Boston Colleges are finished. Only a handful of teams will actually have the chance to be number one

And you keep overlooking the effects on the school, as I’ve said, for example, what happens when the star player decides he is going to blow off school, to be held accountable to the school’s academic requirements, is the school going to overlook it, or, risk having the kid transfer seeing there is no penalty and suffer the wrath of the donors who paid to get the player. It is a decision schools will have to make

 

Ivy League schools do not make money off of athletics, and they don’t recruit for just athletics, kid has to have some prior academic success, plus, they don’t offer athletic scholarships. Reason they have more sports is because they offer the majority of all Olympic sports, Alabama doesn’t because overwhelming majority don’t make money

 

And SMU got the death penalty because of this.

 

Some "guys on the street" are clearly out of the loop (and haven't a clue)...

Not really.
NIL deals (for star recruits) have become the norm, and with the transfer portal "pay for play" is here to stay...

 

I’m not sure you understand the landscape of college football.

Texas boosters will, by far,(and I believe have so far) spent the most and it has done nothing for them. Players will still choose Alabama over UT. Lately, the landscape has been Alabama. Since this started, it’s been others. Just last year TCU was in the championship game. TCU! I think it brings more parity to college football, and unless you’re an Alabama fan….

Free agency in the NFL created more parity as well. The highest spending team rarely wins the Super Bowl, if at all.

 

Can you suggest an alternative sport to represent America then?

 

Do schools need to profit from sports?

Especially sports that damages so many brains

 

Its the responsibilities of the players to determine if the risk of such a thing occurring is worth it or not. Same thing with any sport of physical activity.

 

our children?

 

Depends on ages.

that's up to parents to choose. Not the state.

 

so should parents be able to choose if their kid smokes too

why should a parent be able to choose something for their child that causes brain damage? why should a school support it?

 

If you aren't able to see the benefits of sports and how the help kids grow, with the small exception to those genuinely injured for the long term, versus things like smoking then you are lost. That is not my fault. Think a bit longer on it, as the smoking comparison isn't rational as there are virtually no long term benefits to smoking tobacco.

 

Only the norm for the last two years, and look where we are, million dollar contracts and high school kids hiring agents, imagine where we will be in say ten years

Naive to think this doesn’t change the entire understanding of college sports. With the two money sports, any even trace of amateurism is gone, become professional, the common denominator for success is money,

And the question becomes what it the relationship with the school? Education, which is suppose to be the institution’s purpose, is gone, the star athlete isn’t going to held to any of the academic requirements other kids are if they don’t want be held. School has bought an employee, just like they would hire a janitor