Proud that the pendulum has swung the other way, and athletes have power to move and profit? Yes, I am. That's the way it should have been all along.
There's no reward for propping up a dinosaur, alarson. You know that, right? Nobody's going to give you a pat on the head for clinging to a corpse. That only leaves you bitter and relegated to the dustbin of history.
It's time to move on.
Time to embrace it and advocate for tweaks that could make it better than an arms race ISU has a century of struggling with.
The old way had tremendous barriers. History and tradition and location. Near monopolistic. Fates determined last century when state funding made winners. Give me change.
Not just ISU wants reasonable NIL and pay to play. Every non-blueblood wants it. KU has things money can’t buy. ANY structure will be an advantage to blueblood, but one that isn’t nearly completely dependent on tradition less so. If not completely unregulated and unreasonable, it’s an increase in competitive balance.
ISU may be near the bottom of the large middle class that could benefit…ironically because of decades of the barriers. But it’s coming either way.
We need to stop being foolish about wanting players to falsely be commodities that shouldn’t get paid just because it’s cheap, or that it’s any worse ROI than the millions we spend on college athletics ecosystem.