A Must Read . . . Dark Money is Now Out in the Open and Unregulated. That is the Problem.

Several great lines in this article:

New Year’s Day used to feel like an even better version of Super Bowl Sunday. But nostalgia is not a business model. It is not a legal framework. It is not a serious answer to the problems inside college athletics.

The amount of money being spent on ever larger support staffs, head coach buyouts, long-term coaching contracts, recruiting departments, roster management departments, nutrition staffs, analysts, consultants and the continuing facilities arms race are just as big a problem as NIL spending.

When schools were building palaces for football players to walk through, that was called commitment. When coaches started earning salaries that would have been unthinkable a generation ago, that was called the market. When buyouts became the price of bad decisions, that was called business. When conferences chased television money across the map, that was called survival. When athletic departments hired more staffers than most fans could name, that was called keeping up. But when players started getting paid in a way that was no longer hidden, suddenly college sports had lost its way.

Flock Talk: Money Was Always the Problem ~ Duck Sports Central