re: JFF on the Cover of Time-"It's time to pay college athletes"

quote:

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Who gets "likes" on Facebook is hardly a good judge of fandom. Facebook isn't even a place I would think most college football fans necessarily spend a lot of time.

Here is a much more scientific study from the NYT:
LINK

I won't argue that Texas has more casual fans than A&M but I will disagree the divide is some massive chasm, it has also closed considerably in the last year and with A&M in the SEC and Texas in the Big Joke the roles may reverse as they did in the late '80s and early '90s. You couldn't find anyone wearing Texas gear back then while you had A&M stuff everywhere.

The point though is that A&M would certainly not get steamrolled by Texas in recruiting because of popularity. It's just a foolish and uninformed statement.

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I'm not sure about that study, that showed Auburn as having the largest fanbase in the SEC. It seems quite clear they were using some very large assumptions themselves.

Facebook has about 1/2 the US population as users. That's a large enough grouping for a very valid statistical analysis; a LOT larger than the polls used to dictate politics and a lot of other things.

Regardless, my point doesn't really change. Even if you win plenty of these battles, you're still talking about turning college football into a monetary bidding war. The absolute destruction of parity and obliteration of amateur athletics.

Are we talking a monetary cap, so that smaller schools don't get railroaded? Will there be blocks on transfers, or will we truly be "free market" and open up transfers to any school, and let other schools actively reach out to players? Nothing stops a recruiter from emailing me, even though I'm gainfully employed. Are you willing to engage in a bidding war for your best athletes? What's to stop schools from simply "running up the price"? What's A&M's limit for a JFF? 10 million? 20?