Photo by Vinnie Cammarano
Key Points
While looking at a somewhat disappointing selection of New York strip steaks, my thoughts naturally turned toward college football.
What if big-time coaches did their own grocery shopping?
Let’s say Jessica Cristobal has a hankering for prime rib and sends her husband, Miami Hurricanes head coach Mario, down to Aldi with a shopping list. Would he go to the meat department to pick the best of what’s available?
Or would he go around the store taking items that looked better out of other people’s shopping carts?
Not picking on Cristobal in particular, but that sort of shopping seems to be the way of the athletic world in these days of the transfer portal, and this is a good example. Miami happens to be serving up the most expensive chunk of prime beef in college football this year with $6.5 million quarterback Darian Mensah. He was once in Duke’s shopping cart, and before that Tulane had him in the bag.
The shopping analogy is fun, but flawed. The groceries are actually jumping from cart to cart on their own. And who could blame them, considering the numbers getting rung up on the cash register? If my figuring is right and the internet is nearly accurate, Mensah will have brought in$10 million by the end of his junior year.
Times have changed. Remember when there was a scandal over FSU players getting free shoes? SMU had its football taken away in 1987 because boosters funneled money to players. It was disgraceful then. Now it would be a good business model.
The top five quarterbacks ranked by NIL money will have $25 million funneled to them legally this year. But they’re making it easier on alumni by spreading it around and having attended a dozen different schools—so far.
The world in which this kind of money can change hands would seem to be way above my pay grade and generally none of my business—except I was one of that unfortunate 99 percent of students who had to major in something and take mandatory classes. One was economics.
A professor introduced the subject by stating, “all money has to come from somewhere.” He paused before adding, “OUT OF YOUR POCKETS.” Then he got out the old “guns and butter” chart to show that every penny that is spent on one thing is a penny that can’t be spent on something else.
He might have been on to something. The school I went to has an NIL budget for football of $33.7 million and just added a quarterback who is “going to cost some real money to keep.” Phase 1 of stadium renovations will cost $337 million, including a state-of-the-art sound system.
Meanwhile, I just got a letter with my alumni magazine asking me to dig into my Social Security check to make a donation because the school NEEDS money.
Needs? Really?
I might have wasted my college time getting an education, but even I’m not dumb enough to fall for that.