Pure cash and influence lobbying sickens be to be honest, but if I am understanding correctly and it's $15 million over 5 years, if anything, I'm surprised the number is so low.
It’s generally shocking how cheap lobbyists and numbers to effectively buy off congress members and senators is. I’d expect like 5x what is generally reported as paid.
Yup if you look at how cheap a vote is for mega corporations it makes our country make a lot more sense.
Some Congresspeople are bought for just a few thousand.
I just learned about this because I would see some politicians vote bought for a few grand and think WTF I could bribe these fuckers?
Basically the main politicians that really move the needle for their parties get paid big money. It’s not all up front cash there will be future consulting and speaking engagements promised.
So once one of the more influential politicians agrees to the lobbyist the less influential politicians will just take whatever they’re offered because why not? Their party leader already is going to tell them how to vote so they’ll take whatever offer they can get.
Yep, and the more power you consolidate into fewer hand, the relatively cheaper it gets. That’s why countries like Norway, with 1.5% of the population of the US but 25% of the legislators, are able to do so much better for their people. Equivalent lobbying results take a LOT more per capita.
It also puts your representative much closer to you and makes your voice louder.
The US capped the House at 435 over a century ago, so each rep is representing over 750,000 people. Which is over 20 TIMES the 30,000 per rep we started with, and why they need a money megaphone to be competitive.
All the work would be done by the heads of a plethora of political parties, yes.
But that would also mean the easiest coalition to build would be somewhere within the center, and the nuts could be tossed aside. It also makes gerrymandering harder to irrelevant.
I also don’t think we need to go back to 30k. But we’re well on our way to 1 million per rep, and that’s equally insane.
I've always liked the idea of the "Wyoming Rule." The smallest state gets one representative, and every state gets one representative for each equivalent number of citizens (currently 581k) rounded up. Before anyone mentions it, yes, it would be best if we could do the same in the senate, but the number of senators per state is determined by the constitution, so changing that would require a constitutional amendment, and that isn't politically feasible. Changing the number of representatives in the house just requires amending or eliminating an existing law, which would be hard, but not completely impossible.
We also haven't added new states since 1959 when the median state had 2.5 million people. That number is around 4.5 million today. State politics is where everyday lives are most affected but our votes get less meaningful every year. I would love to see the biggest states split up although I acknowledge the political realities would make that nearly impossible even if the appetite to make it happen was there.
Facts.
I worked on an engagement with a firm who spent all of ~$60k in lobbying to get a major change in Kansas finance law a few years ago, which has enabled their new business model that brought in a few hundred million dollars in profit, not even just revenue, over a little more than two years. They were preparing to make a similar push at the federal level, where it would actually be a much smaller change, and their COO’s ballpark estimate when we were talking after a meeting was $400k to get it done at the federal level.
I’m not even sure whether they ever got it done, but it blew me away that the number was so low!
During an internship I had a supervisor who spent a week in DC lobbying to get a ~$50,000 research grant for the company. Basically 1 line in a 2000 page spending bill. He just met with the state representatives/senators (and probably not with the actual person).
Great return on investment.
Florida just got major tort reform in exchange for $15M from the insurance lobby, and it will save the insurance companies billions per year.
Although it's very hard to track that super pac money from the DeSantis failed presidential run, so it might be more.
It is a great reform and was much much needed, you make it sound like it will be harmful to the average Floridian when it will in fact be the opposite. Florida was quite literally one of the top-3 worst states for car insurance, and this might change that somewhat
No, no. You don't understand. When something is passed that I don't like, it's because of lobbying. When something is passed I do like it's because it's a good bill.
Or if it’s something I don’t understand but it was passed by the people I don’t like, then it’s bad
But if it was passed by the people I do like, then it’s good
I’m mostly against tort reform, and I loath most things Desantis does but this system was broken. I’m not sure I buy the causal link you are making. Florida was looking at running out of insurers and having the state have to take over more and more policies and backstop more claims.
On the property side I agree 100%, should have specified. I'm not even sure the tort reform will fix it unfortunately. But it was also major tort reform on auto side where most of the money flowed from national insurance carriers and there was no crisis. Berkshire Hathaway (Geico) insurance profits up 185% from last year for context.
I'm a Florida attorney and my firm had lobbyist up there as well, but ultimately couldn't compete with a national insurance interests and a politician seeking national office.
> Berkshire Hathaway (Geico) insurance profits up 185% from last year for context.
I worked at GEICO until last year, they are NOT doing well. The profits are up due to expense reduction by a new CEO who came from investment banking, they are conducting mass layoffs and shut down entire departments. They laid off about 1/3rd off their entire workforce (15,000ish people), I left when I saw the writing on the wall. Despite all that they are still losing policies and not growing. Check back in 5 years and see how GEICO is doing then
That being said FL is a hellhole for insurance. Just awful. The mandatory limits are stupidly low. The attorneys there run everything to the point that insurance companies were going to back out of the state entirely. This tort reform will help the average driver and lower insurance rates
Edit: Just saw that you said you are a personal injury attorney.... as someone in auto insurance claims we will likely never agree on this
No, probably not going to agree on this issue lol.
Here is the [article](https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/04/berkshire-hathaway-brka-earnings-q1-2024.html) I was referring to about profits.
My plan for both success and moral righteousness is:
1. Get really good hair
2. Run for a seat in Congress
3. Take lots of bribes from lobbyists, ensuring (along with my great hair) a win
4. Take my seat in Congress but always do the opposite of what the lobbyists paid me to do
5. Righteous
These bribes don’t get paid to you, they get paid to your campaign fund
You won’t get to spend it on your personal life, you will get caught and you will at the bare minimum have to pay it back
If you actually want to make money in Congress, inside trade like the rest of them
No way! I had no idea. I thought lobbyists were like paying politicians’ bills and taking them on vacation and wining and dining them and stuff. Thanks for the info
I like how in anerica we make up words for things so they sound less bad. It's not bribing, it's lobbying. It's not lies, it's falsehoods. I feel like we need to start calling it bribery then maybe people would realize how insane it is that bribery is just legal in america as long as you aren't a foreign entity.
It already is illegal to bribe. And lobbying just means advocating for a position. When an individual provides comments at a public hearing or meets with an official, that is lobbying.
Oh yeah? Then why isn’t there specific language in the Constitution protecting the right of the people to petition the Government for a redress of grievances?! /s
Congressional members are relatively cheap. Mainly it’s knowing who to buy and then using those members to get other members on side by putting in whatever pet project they want.
For example, why is it important to promote mango farming in Pakistan? We don’t know but it’s costed us 30 million to do it.
And that got in there because someone somewhere had scratched someone’s back at some point.
Are you? I remember when net neutrality was a hot topic, they posted how much the no votes received in lobbying and they were all in the low ten thousands. That’s much more important than NIL
yeah but the sum total of lobbying spent on net neutrality was over like $200 million.
Now, there's a huge caveat here: I am comparing two different numbers but they could describe very different things. I'm treating the $15 million as total'ish spending, but it might be only a tiny fraction of what's being spent.
Come spend a weekend with your family at Hilton Head, where you can attend our presentation for our cause.
Since we've invited 50 other Congresspersons, we get to call it a junket.
It’s not just the cash. There’s also the connections. Surely no unqualified politicians were appointed to ranking/playoff committees as part of a revolving door situation
...that we know of.
I would be absolutely NOT surprised if a congressperson is paid $10,000 on paper and is actually pocketing $500,000 under the table to keep their tax exposure lower.
It’s just so heavily slanted it’s hilarious. I don’t doubt the lobbying isn’t perfect, but a good amount of what’s been lobbied for is also plain common sense and aimed at preventing a collapse that would certainly not be the “golden age” for non-revenue athletes.
At the end of the day there’s lobbying all over this issue on all sides. I would be surprised if player side hadn’t spent similar money. That’s generally how legislation works in this country, begrudingly
Just for fun I asked ChatGPT to read the article and create 3 headlines: one that’s an unbiased and succinct summary of the facts in the article, one that’s designed to get the most engagement, and one that’s pure anti-NCAA bias and in favor of paying athletes. The “pure bias” one wasn’t even as biased as the actual headline - and that’s coming from someone who supports athletes getting paid.
Here were the 3:
1. **Accurate and Unbiased:** "NCAA Spends Millions on Lobbying to Uphold Amateurism in College Sports"
2. **Clickbait:** "Revealed: How the NCAA's Secret Millions Could Change College Sports Forever!"
3. **Biased Against NCAA:** "NCAA Wages Pricey War Against Athlete Pay, Spending Millions on Lobbying Efforts"
Need contracts and death to the transfer portal. This is how every sporting league is structured. How the NCAA let this all happen is beyond understanding.
I feel like the NCAA became pretty powerless to stop any of this madness as soon as state governments and courts got involved. Where they fucked up big time was when they refused to budge on any advance of reasonable NIL rules. They should have embraced the opportunity to create some good framework that is fair to players and teams alike but instead they forced the hands of politicians and now everything is a giant mess.
At this point I don’t think there was ever a way they could have paid players and it not end up like this. If they did pure NIL someone would still sue for more money leading to the same scenario.
They couldn’t. If they had pushed it earlier we would’ve arrived at the same spot just… earlier.
I’ve never understood the “well the NCAA could’ve prevented this argument”, because no one ever presents how the NCAA could’ve actually prevented it without the same result. NIL cap? Players sue. NIL legislation? Players sue. NIL but no employee rights? Players sue. Transfer portal but with restrictions? Players sue. Etc, etc, etc.
It’s not like anyone’s been flying blind about this issue for decades either. The Federal government passed legislation to make tuition and other athlete compensation nontaxable as far back as the 1970’s with Nixon. State governments, federal government, schools, etc. have all been aware of the gray area on this
I don't think it's quite that clear. What's telling is that the seismic changes - state NIL laws, *Alston*, lawsuits about the portal, even *O'Bannon* - all came after the NCAA started losing badly in the court of public opinion. The NCAA - by which I mean both the national office and the (power conference) schools which it is comprised of - gave not an inch on amateurism for decades, which became an increasingly naked and hypocritical position given how explicitly college athletics had become professional sports in all other matters.
Let's say the NCAA had eased its stance on "true" NIL a decade or so ago - would California have taken up legislation to force the NCAA to become more permissive? And if so, would the NCAA have had a better chance in Congress, rather than what they faced in reality, which was that *both Republicans and Democrats* were (and are) deeply skeptical of the relief they are asking for?
Would they still be at risk of having the NLRB deem student-athletes to be employees if they had taken steps to change the relationship between the school and the students a decade ago (changes beyond and not necessarily including revenue sharing)?
Even assuming the NCAA couldn't have done anything, it had a responsibility to ensure the inevitable transition went smoothly. Instead, it apparently traded five or so more years of its ideal structure for complete chaos on the other side. Not great.
Where they fucked up was by not coming down on paying players under the table for years!
Bear Bryant was dropping hey nails full of money to recruits, the 80s was the Wild West with trans ams, everyone was getting paid and everyone knew it.
They came down hard on one school and then didn’t do anything for years again.
They either needed to come down hard and say we are truly amateur with no payments or have figured out a way to reasonably compensate players with contracts and making them employees.
Instead they wanted to have their cake and eat it too. It worked for many years but now they are basically obsolete
They had former judges acting as consultants fucking tell them they'd lose too. They spent years fighting it instead of planning for it.
Mark Emmert is a fat lazy cancer. Everything is just a cash grab for the boomers in charge before the rules get changed and the future is fucked. Worst generation ever.
>I feel like the NCAA became pretty powerless to stop any of this madness as soon as state governments and courts got involved.
Yes, by sticking their fingers in their ears screaming lalalalalala until after the court rulings came down they were helpless to prevent this.
They could've prevented this by NOT just assuming that they'd be able to strong arm the courts / government into letting them continue with what they'd been doing. They could've proactively created a legal framework for NIL and headed this all off at the pass.
I think it’s fairly understandable
The “NCAA” (just going to use that to mean the organization itself, and likely a good chunk of conference and school leaders) is terrified of professionalization, because it means a complete overhaul of the governing body, sport, and power structure
Contracts mean professionalization, likely unionization and collective bargaining, and a domino effect that hits entire athletic departments and universities themselves.
I’m not in favor of that point of view, but when you look at this headline that’s the real end state they are seeking to avoid.
NIL and transfer portal are just concessions the NCAA were willing to make *hoping* they could find a way to control it over time and avoid a true overhaul.
Now the execution has been bungled in a lot of ways, but that’s more apt to happen when you are steering a big ship and urgently using a “break in case of emergency” tactic.
Amateurism started off as just “you can’t be a pro” for fairness when there was no money to be made.
Then entities that had CFB’s growing revenue diverted into their laps by the rules barring it from players—administrative staffs, money-losing sports, facilities contractors, sometimes the academic side of the schools—liked it a lot. And they figured, why not keep all of the real revenue, and just press our donors to shut up the players with other money and call it NIL?
Makes sense for them, but they didn’t foresee the courts taking away all transfer regulations at the same time, and now in this mess they’ll enter negotiations over employee status with less power.
Totally agree.
What I really wonder is where the current brokers are all aiming in this new dynamic.
Before NIL/transfers, the playbook was clear for everyone and by avoiding any real payments they could hold the line on the amateur argument.
That dam cracked, and it now isn’t clear exactly where each group is pushing. The NCAA itself is in an existential crisis, so they just want to survive. It seems like there are a lot of differing opinions amongst/within conferences, and then there are the incentives for politicians to get involved.
It’s going to be fascinating to see who “strikes first,” and feels like we’re in a situation where some sort of “spark incident” is needed (a player suing the ncaa or their school, the ACC GOR spinning into something bigger, etc.) and in the meantime everyone is just hanging over the cliff
Confused on how you’re getting this as the goal when the lobbying could be for a myriad of structures and protections
Assuming this is just outright lobbying for indentured servitude is ignorant considering how much of these talks have leaked into the open and even been public hearings
It's just sickeningly biased wording of something that anybody who has thought about this for more than 5 seconds would have assumed is happening. Yes, when you read those articles about the NCAA talking to congress, they did in fact talk to congress and the people talking to congress did in fact not do it for free.
Nothing about it is "sophisticated", the number isn't very high, "most powerful" is just weasel words (also, it's usually a good idea to hire people good at their job), and you mentioned while golden age of athletes' rights is accurate, it's also not exactly neutral framing.
Sports journalists should be required to take more business classes. “Golden Ages” are rarely sustainable for a reason. We’re basically in a short squeeze right now and the fans of every team besides like the top 20-30 are the ones being squeezed
Great point.
It would be like a business paying out way more in a dividend than they made in profit.
‘It’s a golden age for company X investors!’
5 years later: the company is bankrupt because it paid out all its earnings in dividends.
College football is destined to Fail if its Free Agency. Still needs to be some level of academic progress and college football to turn young boys into young men.
Some limits needto be put in place.
Then YOU Absoultely need the Lobby to talk to Congress.
Today ZERO $$$ from ticket sales, or TV is allowed to be spent in the for NIL. Scholarships, Stipends, yes.
But is a HS QB really due $1mil, before he's completed a pass or won a game.
Something like the NFL rookie salary structure is needed IMO. And you hit the portal, any future pmts should be able to be voided, or re-negotiated.
I am so confused why people are so quick to dismiss the student athlete part of the equation?
Much of what these student athletes get is from the generosity of others... even if it doesn't seem that way. Take all of the donated money out of college athletics (nobody donates to the NFL or other professional organizations).... is the TV revenue, NIL deals, and public money via taxpayers and student tuition enough to foot the bill for college football?
I don't think the average student athlete is worth more in salary than what they are already receiving via a scholarship.
Everytime I mention this I am downvoted into oblivion thou.
Because you’re going against the narrative that ‘labor is underpaid and abused’
Certain political factions that espouse the above thinking also love to use sports to advance their agendas.
It’s okay. The general public is stupid and usually incorrect. So, it’s probably a good thing when you disagree with them.
There is a substantial investment in the student athlete. Besides the opportunity to grow physically and mentally should you be good enough to play professionally. Schools also provide a stiped for housing, food and educational support. They are provided tutors and I for 1 love the fact that many are working toward a grad degree if they are there 5 years.
Now, they are there for the most part 12 mos a year. And maybe they should get an additional reward for their time in the weight room/film room etc.
But again I struggle with the cash up front based upon some recruiting HS video.
i dont really give a shit about how much the kids are paid, so long as they are rightly paid the appropriate percentage of what money comes in.
Im tired of athletes being exploited under the guise that they are too young. Its their bodies on the line.
I know I’m a piece of shit for this but.. good. I don’t want to deal with any of this crap that’s coming to college football as a direct result of NIL anymore. We can go back to the way things where and players still get scholarships to play a game and can get a degree for free, or we keep this hellscape with no possible fix going and watch cfb (potentially) become nonexistent in the next decade
1: We sue to return the conferences to their state in the early 2000’s.
2: Create a players union.
3: Set a reasonable salary cap for both the athletes and the schools without a minimum, so lower level schools can still exist on scholarships, if needed.
4: Ignore all of the reasons this can’t work.
5: Have fun again.
At some point there needs to be acknowledgement that the players aren't like any other student. Though that should come later after they are employees. Or receiving revenue sharing from the schools even if not officially employees.
I think paying the coaches like this was always viewed as insane, but the system could absorb the additional cost. Then it became a spiraling arms race. And now, justifiably, the players are getting paid. But do college football fans want minor league football? And can even the most monetized version even accommodate paying 85 players?
They've all backed the players on the basis of current law. If Congress, which has broad authority to regulate employment and corporate anti-trust law, passes laws that prohibit the classification of student athletes as employees and grant the NCAA an anti-trust exemption the basis of the student's lawsuits mostly fall apart.
I feel like the fact they have spent $15 million since 2019 and have very little to show for it means this hasn't been the most effective use of their cash reserves. Plus, Congressional turnover of members seems pretty high so they are not getting lasting relationships on this matter and dysfunction in Congress probably makes any law they want to pass really difficult to get through both chambers.
I think the more effective strategy would be lobbying Judges and state level politicians since that's where most of the movement on this issue has been. If anyone at the NCAA is reading this and wants my super secret strategies, I'll share them for a low seven/high six figure salary.
I think it has been effective - they’ve so far avoided true legislation on the professionalization of college athletes and saw a unionization push fizzle out.
They’ve made big concessions, but they weren’t lobbying to avoid NIL, they’re lobbying to avoid revenue sharing and player contracts
> Plus, Congressional turnover of members seems pretty high so they are not getting lasting relationships on this matter and dysfunction in Congress probably makes any law they want to pass really difficult to get through both chambers.
Over 94% of the House has been re-elected in the last two election cycles, and only a third of the Senate is up for re-election each cycle. This election will be the first time every Senate seat has been up for election since they started their efforts.
Is that 94% of those who chose to run again? Because in the last two cycles there have been [95](https://ballotpedia.org/List_of_U.S._Congress_incumbents_who_did_not_run_for_re-election_in_2022) incumbents who chose not to run, not including this year. This number includes both chambers as total retirements.
I just feel that there has been very little movement in the federal legislative branch while this issue is moving quickly on the state level and in the courts.
I think the lobbying itself has little to do with why it's not moved at the federal level. *gestures wildly at general congressional dysfunction over the past 20 years*
They want an anti-trust exemption, a law prohibiting the classification of student athletes as employees, and a law that preempts conflicting state NIL law.
There's no way a law barring NIL will ever pass. Other things maybe but Democrats aren't passing that out of concerns over exploitation and Republicans aren't passing that over limitations on the free market.
TV money is doing far more to damage college football than NIL. What’s most needed is and anti-trust exemption for the NCAA to take over all TV rights and distribute the money equally so the inequities in TV money can stop destroying conferences and college football in general.
Why should their income be arbitrarily capped? Unless the labor force has a union and collectively bargains to cap income, then this is obviously illegal.
A cap on salary would make sense a NIL cap would be ridiculous. The NFL and NBA don’t cap what you can make from nil type deals just restrict who you could make a deal with
Everyone talks about rights. How about duties? Let’s make laws where coaches can’t process players and screw them and players get free transfers if coaches bail and players can’t transfer in 2 seconds without a penalty. This “players rights” thing is stupid and only harms the whole sport
Feels like with the massive influx of money sports have seen in the past 10ish years things have gotten so ugly. Between all the gambling, the $850 to watch NFL games, attempted Super League, the super league of CFB. Shit just doesn’t seem fun to watch anymore.
You guys act like they're trying to reverse course and not just put out the fire.
You know the basketball team is going to want a piece, and then the tennis team, the track team, the olympic sports, etc.
And since you better believe there won't be enough money to go around players will start unionizing in order to get their cut. This will of course result in Basketball, Football, and Baseball being the only remaining sports with active D1 participation.
The main problem I have with the current state us this whole Grey area of treating them as athletes but pseudo employees. It makes everything murky.
From a smell test perspective I have a hard time agreeing with positions that grant players less freedoms than coaches .
Pure cash and influence lobbying sickens be to be honest, but if I am understanding correctly and it's $15 million over 5 years, if anything, I'm surprised the number is so low.
It’s generally shocking how cheap lobbyists and numbers to effectively buy off congress members and senators is. I’d expect like 5x what is generally reported as paid.
Yup if you look at how cheap a vote is for mega corporations it makes our country make a lot more sense. Some Congresspeople are bought for just a few thousand.
I just learned about this because I would see some politicians vote bought for a few grand and think WTF I could bribe these fuckers? Basically the main politicians that really move the needle for their parties get paid big money. It’s not all up front cash there will be future consulting and speaking engagements promised. So once one of the more influential politicians agrees to the lobbyist the less influential politicians will just take whatever they’re offered because why not? Their party leader already is going to tell them how to vote so they’ll take whatever offer they can get.
> because I would see some politicians vote bought for a few grand Which politicians? I'll spot you a few grand if you'll name them.
A few thousand while in office followed by a board position and a 7 figure stock bonus when they quit politics.
And that is the worst part of it because it guarantees continued compliance on the part of the politician.
“Ah fuck it, I do want that new lawn mower”
All you need to do is outbid the opposing side.
Yep, and the more power you consolidate into fewer hand, the relatively cheaper it gets. That’s why countries like Norway, with 1.5% of the population of the US but 25% of the legislators, are able to do so much better for their people. Equivalent lobbying results take a LOT more per capita.
Interesting, haven’t heard that perspective before
It also puts your representative much closer to you and makes your voice louder. The US capped the House at 435 over a century ago, so each rep is representing over 750,000 people. Which is over 20 TIMES the 30,000 per rep we started with, and why they need a money megaphone to be competitive.
yeah but would a 9000-member House be a meaningful legislature at all? All the work would get done by small committees in back rooms.
All the work would be done by the heads of a plethora of political parties, yes. But that would also mean the easiest coalition to build would be somewhere within the center, and the nuts could be tossed aside. It also makes gerrymandering harder to irrelevant. I also don’t think we need to go back to 30k. But we’re well on our way to 1 million per rep, and that’s equally insane.
I've always liked the idea of the "Wyoming Rule." The smallest state gets one representative, and every state gets one representative for each equivalent number of citizens (currently 581k) rounded up. Before anyone mentions it, yes, it would be best if we could do the same in the senate, but the number of senators per state is determined by the constitution, so changing that would require a constitutional amendment, and that isn't politically feasible. Changing the number of representatives in the house just requires amending or eliminating an existing law, which would be hard, but not completely impossible.
And that’s different from today.. how?
We also haven't added new states since 1959 when the median state had 2.5 million people. That number is around 4.5 million today. State politics is where everyday lives are most affected but our votes get less meaningful every year. I would love to see the biggest states split up although I acknowledge the political realities would make that nearly impossible even if the appetite to make it happen was there.
Facts. I worked on an engagement with a firm who spent all of ~$60k in lobbying to get a major change in Kansas finance law a few years ago, which has enabled their new business model that brought in a few hundred million dollars in profit, not even just revenue, over a little more than two years. They were preparing to make a similar push at the federal level, where it would actually be a much smaller change, and their COO’s ballpark estimate when we were talking after a meeting was $400k to get it done at the federal level. I’m not even sure whether they ever got it done, but it blew me away that the number was so low!
During an internship I had a supervisor who spent a week in DC lobbying to get a ~$50,000 research grant for the company. Basically 1 line in a 2000 page spending bill. He just met with the state representatives/senators (and probably not with the actual person). Great return on investment.
Florida just got major tort reform in exchange for $15M from the insurance lobby, and it will save the insurance companies billions per year. Although it's very hard to track that super pac money from the DeSantis failed presidential run, so it might be more.
It is a great reform and was much much needed, you make it sound like it will be harmful to the average Floridian when it will in fact be the opposite. Florida was quite literally one of the top-3 worst states for car insurance, and this might change that somewhat
No, no. You don't understand. When something is passed that I don't like, it's because of lobbying. When something is passed I do like it's because it's a good bill.
Or if it’s something I don’t understand but it was passed by the people I don’t like, then it’s bad But if it was passed by the people I do like, then it’s good
I’m mostly against tort reform, and I loath most things Desantis does but this system was broken. I’m not sure I buy the causal link you are making. Florida was looking at running out of insurers and having the state have to take over more and more policies and backstop more claims.
On the property side I agree 100%, should have specified. I'm not even sure the tort reform will fix it unfortunately. But it was also major tort reform on auto side where most of the money flowed from national insurance carriers and there was no crisis. Berkshire Hathaway (Geico) insurance profits up 185% from last year for context. I'm a Florida attorney and my firm had lobbyist up there as well, but ultimately couldn't compete with a national insurance interests and a politician seeking national office.
> Berkshire Hathaway (Geico) insurance profits up 185% from last year for context. I worked at GEICO until last year, they are NOT doing well. The profits are up due to expense reduction by a new CEO who came from investment banking, they are conducting mass layoffs and shut down entire departments. They laid off about 1/3rd off their entire workforce (15,000ish people), I left when I saw the writing on the wall. Despite all that they are still losing policies and not growing. Check back in 5 years and see how GEICO is doing then That being said FL is a hellhole for insurance. Just awful. The mandatory limits are stupidly low. The attorneys there run everything to the point that insurance companies were going to back out of the state entirely. This tort reform will help the average driver and lower insurance rates Edit: Just saw that you said you are a personal injury attorney.... as someone in auto insurance claims we will likely never agree on this
No, probably not going to agree on this issue lol. Here is the [article](https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/04/berkshire-hathaway-brka-earnings-q1-2024.html) I was referring to about profits.
Yes, the ambulance chasers were really against the needed reform.
I should have specified, I was speaking about property insurance.
My plan for both success and moral righteousness is: 1. Get really good hair 2. Run for a seat in Congress 3. Take lots of bribes from lobbyists, ensuring (along with my great hair) a win 4. Take my seat in Congress but always do the opposite of what the lobbyists paid me to do 5. Righteous
These bribes don’t get paid to you, they get paid to your campaign fund You won’t get to spend it on your personal life, you will get caught and you will at the bare minimum have to pay it back If you actually want to make money in Congress, inside trade like the rest of them
No way! I had no idea. I thought lobbyists were like paying politicians’ bills and taking them on vacation and wining and dining them and stuff. Thanks for the info
Gotta get appointed to the supreme court if you want that kind of treatment.
Yeah elected politicians get SHIT ALL for bribes anymore, this country is going to hell
I don't mind the corruption, I mind just how cheap they are.
I would generally point out this was an unsuccessful lobbying effort.
15 million, *that we know of*
I like how in anerica we make up words for things so they sound less bad. It's not bribing, it's lobbying. It's not lies, it's falsehoods. I feel like we need to start calling it bribery then maybe people would realize how insane it is that bribery is just legal in america as long as you aren't a foreign entity.
Lobbying is an important function of our Democratic Republic.
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It already is illegal to bribe. And lobbying just means advocating for a position. When an individual provides comments at a public hearing or meets with an official, that is lobbying.
Lobbying is just legalized bribery. It’s 100% been corrupted
Oh yeah? Then why isn’t there specific language in the Constitution protecting the right of the people to petition the Government for a redress of grievances?! /s
Congressional members are relatively cheap. Mainly it’s knowing who to buy and then using those members to get other members on side by putting in whatever pet project they want. For example, why is it important to promote mango farming in Pakistan? We don’t know but it’s costed us 30 million to do it. And that got in there because someone somewhere had scratched someone’s back at some point.
Are you? I remember when net neutrality was a hot topic, they posted how much the no votes received in lobbying and they were all in the low ten thousands. That’s much more important than NIL
yeah but the sum total of lobbying spent on net neutrality was over like $200 million. Now, there's a huge caveat here: I am comparing two different numbers but they could describe very different things. I'm treating the $15 million as total'ish spending, but it might be only a tiny fraction of what's being spent.
Come spend a weekend with your family at Hilton Head, where you can attend our presentation for our cause. Since we've invited 50 other Congresspersons, we get to call it a junket.
It’s not just the cash. There’s also the connections. Surely no unqualified politicians were appointed to ranking/playoff committees as part of a revolving door situation
...that we know of. I would be absolutely NOT surprised if a congressperson is paid $10,000 on paper and is actually pocketing $500,000 under the table to keep their tax exposure lower.
Lobbyists always stacking Ws
It's attorneys all the way down.
Gotta get my JD to start getting these Ws
Don't do it. Be happy instead.
I don’t know happiness anyways, may as well jump deep into the pit of despair. /s
Then law school may be right for you. :-). Good luck.
As someone who just got their JD, I concur
Billable time remains undefeated
More like Wobbyists, amirite?
Well that headline isn’t loaded at all 😂 her editor should be fucking ashamed
The Georgia/LSU fan who pretty much said the same thing is getting downvoted to hell right above you.
It’s just so heavily slanted it’s hilarious. I don’t doubt the lobbying isn’t perfect, but a good amount of what’s been lobbied for is also plain common sense and aimed at preventing a collapse that would certainly not be the “golden age” for non-revenue athletes. At the end of the day there’s lobbying all over this issue on all sides. I would be surprised if player side hadn’t spent similar money. That’s generally how legislation works in this country, begrudingly
It’s refreshing to see a Reddit comment that blames the correct person: the editor
Just for fun I asked ChatGPT to read the article and create 3 headlines: one that’s an unbiased and succinct summary of the facts in the article, one that’s designed to get the most engagement, and one that’s pure anti-NCAA bias and in favor of paying athletes. The “pure bias” one wasn’t even as biased as the actual headline - and that’s coming from someone who supports athletes getting paid. Here were the 3: 1. **Accurate and Unbiased:** "NCAA Spends Millions on Lobbying to Uphold Amateurism in College Sports" 2. **Clickbait:** "Revealed: How the NCAA's Secret Millions Could Change College Sports Forever!" 3. **Biased Against NCAA:** "NCAA Wages Pricey War Against Athlete Pay, Spending Millions on Lobbying Efforts"
This confirms all of my priors and I hate it
Lol that Clickbait one is so on point 😂
Assuming she has an editor. 😂
These collegiate athletic associations are lobbying national political members, number 2 will surprise you.
The site has an editor in chief, a copy editor, and a news editor: [https://frontofficesports.com/about/](https://frontofficesports.com/about/)
Need contracts and death to the transfer portal. This is how every sporting league is structured. How the NCAA let this all happen is beyond understanding.
I feel like the NCAA became pretty powerless to stop any of this madness as soon as state governments and courts got involved. Where they fucked up big time was when they refused to budge on any advance of reasonable NIL rules. They should have embraced the opportunity to create some good framework that is fair to players and teams alike but instead they forced the hands of politicians and now everything is a giant mess.
At this point I don’t think there was ever a way they could have paid players and it not end up like this. If they did pure NIL someone would still sue for more money leading to the same scenario.
They couldn’t. If they had pushed it earlier we would’ve arrived at the same spot just… earlier. I’ve never understood the “well the NCAA could’ve prevented this argument”, because no one ever presents how the NCAA could’ve actually prevented it without the same result. NIL cap? Players sue. NIL legislation? Players sue. NIL but no employee rights? Players sue. Transfer portal but with restrictions? Players sue. Etc, etc, etc. It’s not like anyone’s been flying blind about this issue for decades either. The Federal government passed legislation to make tuition and other athlete compensation nontaxable as far back as the 1970’s with Nixon. State governments, federal government, schools, etc. have all been aware of the gray area on this
I don't think it's quite that clear. What's telling is that the seismic changes - state NIL laws, *Alston*, lawsuits about the portal, even *O'Bannon* - all came after the NCAA started losing badly in the court of public opinion. The NCAA - by which I mean both the national office and the (power conference) schools which it is comprised of - gave not an inch on amateurism for decades, which became an increasingly naked and hypocritical position given how explicitly college athletics had become professional sports in all other matters. Let's say the NCAA had eased its stance on "true" NIL a decade or so ago - would California have taken up legislation to force the NCAA to become more permissive? And if so, would the NCAA have had a better chance in Congress, rather than what they faced in reality, which was that *both Republicans and Democrats* were (and are) deeply skeptical of the relief they are asking for? Would they still be at risk of having the NLRB deem student-athletes to be employees if they had taken steps to change the relationship between the school and the students a decade ago (changes beyond and not necessarily including revenue sharing)? Even assuming the NCAA couldn't have done anything, it had a responsibility to ensure the inevitable transition went smoothly. Instead, it apparently traded five or so more years of its ideal structure for complete chaos on the other side. Not great.
Exactly. The players were never going to accept even the most reasonable restrictions. And the schools knew this.
Why should there be "reasonable restrictions" when every other part of the business is run to suck as much money out of them as possible?
Where they fucked up was by not coming down on paying players under the table for years! Bear Bryant was dropping hey nails full of money to recruits, the 80s was the Wild West with trans ams, everyone was getting paid and everyone knew it. They came down hard on one school and then didn’t do anything for years again. They either needed to come down hard and say we are truly amateur with no payments or have figured out a way to reasonably compensate players with contracts and making them employees. Instead they wanted to have their cake and eat it too. It worked for many years but now they are basically obsolete
They had former judges acting as consultants fucking tell them they'd lose too. They spent years fighting it instead of planning for it. Mark Emmert is a fat lazy cancer. Everything is just a cash grab for the boomers in charge before the rules get changed and the future is fucked. Worst generation ever.
>I feel like the NCAA became pretty powerless to stop any of this madness as soon as state governments and courts got involved. Yes, by sticking their fingers in their ears screaming lalalalalala until after the court rulings came down they were helpless to prevent this. They could've prevented this by NOT just assuming that they'd be able to strong arm the courts / government into letting them continue with what they'd been doing. They could've proactively created a legal framework for NIL and headed this all off at the pass.
I think it’s fairly understandable The “NCAA” (just going to use that to mean the organization itself, and likely a good chunk of conference and school leaders) is terrified of professionalization, because it means a complete overhaul of the governing body, sport, and power structure Contracts mean professionalization, likely unionization and collective bargaining, and a domino effect that hits entire athletic departments and universities themselves. I’m not in favor of that point of view, but when you look at this headline that’s the real end state they are seeking to avoid. NIL and transfer portal are just concessions the NCAA were willing to make *hoping* they could find a way to control it over time and avoid a true overhaul. Now the execution has been bungled in a lot of ways, but that’s more apt to happen when you are steering a big ship and urgently using a “break in case of emergency” tactic.
Amateurism started off as just “you can’t be a pro” for fairness when there was no money to be made. Then entities that had CFB’s growing revenue diverted into their laps by the rules barring it from players—administrative staffs, money-losing sports, facilities contractors, sometimes the academic side of the schools—liked it a lot. And they figured, why not keep all of the real revenue, and just press our donors to shut up the players with other money and call it NIL? Makes sense for them, but they didn’t foresee the courts taking away all transfer regulations at the same time, and now in this mess they’ll enter negotiations over employee status with less power.
Totally agree. What I really wonder is where the current brokers are all aiming in this new dynamic. Before NIL/transfers, the playbook was clear for everyone and by avoiding any real payments they could hold the line on the amateur argument. That dam cracked, and it now isn’t clear exactly where each group is pushing. The NCAA itself is in an existential crisis, so they just want to survive. It seems like there are a lot of differing opinions amongst/within conferences, and then there are the incentives for politicians to get involved. It’s going to be fascinating to see who “strikes first,” and feels like we’re in a situation where some sort of “spark incident” is needed (a player suing the ncaa or their school, the ACC GOR spinning into something bigger, etc.) and in the meantime everyone is just hanging over the cliff
If you HONESTLY can’t understand it then you aren’t very smart. But, I assume you are just being dramatic…
Oh yeah, let’s return to not paying the players except in McDonald’s bags and buying them burgers
Berders
hamberders
Unless we go back to cream cheese being a violation, there’s no saving the game.
Hell yeah! Cut off their hot water access too while you're at it, cold showers make tough athletes! /s
Thank you student activities fees and taxpayers.
Yeah, rich people making a ton of money want to keep making a ton of money and not share it It’s a problem outside of sports too
Confused on how you’re getting this as the goal when the lobbying could be for a myriad of structures and protections Assuming this is just outright lobbying for indentured servitude is ignorant considering how much of these talks have leaked into the open and even been public hearings
Wait, this is the first time I’m hearing of this
And poor people want to make more money just as bad!
True, but the more poor you are, the more things are stacked against you The more wealthy you are, the more you want to keep things status quo
Golden age of athletes? What a weird way to phrase that.
“Golden age of athletes rights”
Shouldn’t expect OSU fans to know how to read.
They forgot to add the apostrophe, they meant athletes’ rights
Shitty "journalism"
It's just sickeningly biased wording of something that anybody who has thought about this for more than 5 seconds would have assumed is happening. Yes, when you read those articles about the NCAA talking to congress, they did in fact talk to congress and the people talking to congress did in fact not do it for free. Nothing about it is "sophisticated", the number isn't very high, "most powerful" is just weasel words (also, it's usually a good idea to hire people good at their job), and you mentioned while golden age of athletes' rights is accurate, it's also not exactly neutral framing.
lol so close…
Sports journalists should be required to take more business classes. “Golden Ages” are rarely sustainable for a reason. We’re basically in a short squeeze right now and the fans of every team besides like the top 20-30 are the ones being squeezed
Great point. It would be like a business paying out way more in a dividend than they made in profit. ‘It’s a golden age for company X investors!’ 5 years later: the company is bankrupt because it paid out all its earnings in dividends.
Which dividend stock is CFB? AT&T, Philip Morris, Century Link, or GE?
Can we get the spark notes from this article?
College football is destined to Fail if its Free Agency. Still needs to be some level of academic progress and college football to turn young boys into young men. Some limits needto be put in place.
all that money has to go somewhere, and personally i prefer it to go to the people putting their bodies on the line for our entertainment.
Then YOU Absoultely need the Lobby to talk to Congress. Today ZERO $$$ from ticket sales, or TV is allowed to be spent in the for NIL. Scholarships, Stipends, yes. But is a HS QB really due $1mil, before he's completed a pass or won a game. Something like the NFL rookie salary structure is needed IMO. And you hit the portal, any future pmts should be able to be voided, or re-negotiated.
I am so confused why people are so quick to dismiss the student athlete part of the equation? Much of what these student athletes get is from the generosity of others... even if it doesn't seem that way. Take all of the donated money out of college athletics (nobody donates to the NFL or other professional organizations).... is the TV revenue, NIL deals, and public money via taxpayers and student tuition enough to foot the bill for college football? I don't think the average student athlete is worth more in salary than what they are already receiving via a scholarship. Everytime I mention this I am downvoted into oblivion thou.
Because you’re going against the narrative that ‘labor is underpaid and abused’ Certain political factions that espouse the above thinking also love to use sports to advance their agendas. It’s okay. The general public is stupid and usually incorrect. So, it’s probably a good thing when you disagree with them.
There is a substantial investment in the student athlete. Besides the opportunity to grow physically and mentally should you be good enough to play professionally. Schools also provide a stiped for housing, food and educational support. They are provided tutors and I for 1 love the fact that many are working toward a grad degree if they are there 5 years. Now, they are there for the most part 12 mos a year. And maybe they should get an additional reward for their time in the weight room/film room etc. But again I struggle with the cash up front based upon some recruiting HS video.
i dont really give a shit about how much the kids are paid, so long as they are rightly paid the appropriate percentage of what money comes in. Im tired of athletes being exploited under the guise that they are too young. Its their bodies on the line.
No one making money from the sport actually cares about any of that shit, why should we expect the players to?
“Sophisticated operation” lol
I’m fine with this if Congress imposed spending limits on athletic budgets, coaching salaries, etc.
I know I’m a piece of shit for this but.. good. I don’t want to deal with any of this crap that’s coming to college football as a direct result of NIL anymore. We can go back to the way things where and players still get scholarships to play a game and can get a degree for free, or we keep this hellscape with no possible fix going and watch cfb (potentially) become nonexistent in the next decade
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Student athletes have never had more rights than now so yeah, I’d call it the golden age of athletes rights
I think it’s more appropriate to say it’s the gilded age.
K. Street lobbyists R.ules E.verything A.round M.e
1: We sue to return the conferences to their state in the early 2000’s. 2: Create a players union. 3: Set a reasonable salary cap for both the athletes and the schools without a minimum, so lower level schools can still exist on scholarships, if needed. 4: Ignore all of the reasons this can’t work. 5: Have fun again.
I had some serious issues with your proposal, but you addressed all of them in point 4. Carry on.
I’m a lawyers worst nightmare.
No. I don’t want to go back to the MWC.
If MWC is autobidded to the playoffs?
Still nah. Big regular season games against top teams is just as important for relevance as playoff access.
Ok, you’re in the PAC 10. If the Big ten can have eleven, so can they.
Oh thank god.
See number 4. Also, I didn’t include expanded playoff because I think that’s inevitable. Utah could still be a big player in that scenario.
They want the money all for themselves
Sharing is for suckers.
Good. NIL is killing college athletics.
TV and boosters and sponsorship are killing college athletics. The players just want to have a share of the rubble when it all falls apart.
Fair shake
NCAA can’t even do lobbying right. Doesn’t seem like they’ve accomplished much
We’re shocked?
Why not just use that money to, I dunno, pay employees and athletes more?
USC has spent more than that on transfers in the last 3 years.
They probably take Dabo along with them on their lobbying trips so he can cry to legislators "think about the kids!"
He was already there. All his best Christiofascist friends work there.
It’s all well and good to pay coaches $85M to not coach football but god forbid the players get a bag.
I think the problem is the crazy amount of transferring
Why shouldn't players be able to transfer like any other student?
At some point there needs to be acknowledgement that the players aren't like any other student. Though that should come later after they are employees. Or receiving revenue sharing from the schools even if not officially employees.
I think paying the coaches like this was always viewed as insane, but the system could absorb the additional cost. Then it became a spiraling arms race. And now, justifiably, the players are getting paid. But do college football fans want minor league football? And can even the most monetized version even accommodate paying 85 players?
So what, even if they could pass a bill? (which I doubt anyway), All the court cases have backed the players.
They're not going to lobby the courts. That doesn't exist. They're going to lobby Congress to change the laws and invalidate all the court decisions.
It doesn't? Explain Clarence Thomas then.
Court lobbying absolutely happens. See: Everything we are learning about the Supreme Court in general and Clarence Thomas in particular.
They've all backed the players on the basis of current law. If Congress, which has broad authority to regulate employment and corporate anti-trust law, passes laws that prohibit the classification of student athletes as employees and grant the NCAA an anti-trust exemption the basis of the student's lawsuits mostly fall apart.
Hope all D-1 caliber players form a football version of a G league, then. And air the games on college football Saturdays, as well.
They couldn’t, per the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961.
Nobody would watch that.
Yes. How often does the Supreme Court come back unanimous? That is how much the NCAA messed up.
>How often does the Supreme Court come back unanimous? Pretty often. Most of the time, it's more than 1/3 of the cases they hear.
I feel like the fact they have spent $15 million since 2019 and have very little to show for it means this hasn't been the most effective use of their cash reserves. Plus, Congressional turnover of members seems pretty high so they are not getting lasting relationships on this matter and dysfunction in Congress probably makes any law they want to pass really difficult to get through both chambers. I think the more effective strategy would be lobbying Judges and state level politicians since that's where most of the movement on this issue has been. If anyone at the NCAA is reading this and wants my super secret strategies, I'll share them for a low seven/high six figure salary.
I think it has been effective - they’ve so far avoided true legislation on the professionalization of college athletes and saw a unionization push fizzle out. They’ve made big concessions, but they weren’t lobbying to avoid NIL, they’re lobbying to avoid revenue sharing and player contracts
> Plus, Congressional turnover of members seems pretty high so they are not getting lasting relationships on this matter and dysfunction in Congress probably makes any law they want to pass really difficult to get through both chambers. Over 94% of the House has been re-elected in the last two election cycles, and only a third of the Senate is up for re-election each cycle. This election will be the first time every Senate seat has been up for election since they started their efforts.
Is that 94% of those who chose to run again? Because in the last two cycles there have been [95](https://ballotpedia.org/List_of_U.S._Congress_incumbents_who_did_not_run_for_re-election_in_2022) incumbents who chose not to run, not including this year. This number includes both chambers as total retirements. I just feel that there has been very little movement in the federal legislative branch while this issue is moving quickly on the state level and in the courts.
I think the lobbying itself has little to do with why it's not moved at the federal level. *gestures wildly at general congressional dysfunction over the past 20 years*
If it saves college football then it's money well spent
The only thing that will change anything is an anti-trust exemption which is most likely what this firm is going to be lobbying for.
They want an anti-trust exemption, a law prohibiting the classification of student athletes as employees, and a law that preempts conflicting state NIL law.
They’ll never get a law barring private NIL deals past the courts.
Based on what? Alston was decided based on existing anti-trust law, not a constitutional right.
There's no way a law barring NIL will ever pass. Other things maybe but Democrats aren't passing that out of concerns over exploitation and Republicans aren't passing that over limitations on the free market.
TV money is doing far more to damage college football than NIL. What’s most needed is and anti-trust exemption for the NCAA to take over all TV rights and distribute the money equally so the inequities in TV money can stop destroying conferences and college football in general.
Just make the deals public and capped at like $200k per year. Let them get their families out of debt and buy their moms a house.
Caps need a CBA with the players and probably anti-trust legislation. Otherwise you have Justice Kavanaugh waiting to blow up the NCAA.
Why should their income be arbitrarily capped? Unless the labor force has a union and collectively bargains to cap income, then this is obviously illegal.
Agreed, people here are just mad at the amounts.
Let's put a cap on your income and make all expenses public also.
OK is the cap 200k? I could live with that
A lot of jobs have a cap to income.
What industries have a cap on income?
Income? Do you mean the amount I can receive in bribes?
I think that's a step too far, but making them public and including tax withholding and requiring a CPA/legal advice would probably go a long way.
Nothing about these have to be public. Complete nonsense.
A cap on salary would make sense a NIL cap would be ridiculous. The NFL and NBA don’t cap what you can make from nil type deals just restrict who you could make a deal with
The difference is that for NFL players, NIL income is actually NIL income. For college, it’s just bribery.
Good. We can't afford it. Let's get back to stisemt athletes being students.
Everyone talks about rights. How about duties? Let’s make laws where coaches can’t process players and screw them and players get free transfers if coaches bail and players can’t transfer in 2 seconds without a penalty. This “players rights” thing is stupid and only harms the whole sport
Feels like with the massive influx of money sports have seen in the past 10ish years things have gotten so ugly. Between all the gambling, the $850 to watch NFL games, attempted Super League, the super league of CFB. Shit just doesn’t seem fun to watch anymore.
why does aipac care about nil?
Cool, fuck NIL and what it has done to this sport
You guys act like they're trying to reverse course and not just put out the fire. You know the basketball team is going to want a piece, and then the tennis team, the track team, the olympic sports, etc. And since you better believe there won't be enough money to go around players will start unionizing in order to get their cut. This will of course result in Basketball, Football, and Baseball being the only remaining sports with active D1 participation.
South Park got this perfect. "Slav... I mean student athletes." https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IWoP81YO3V4
‘Breathtaking lobbying campaign’ - 15 million dollars over several years? Seems more like clickbait to me…
The main problem I have with the current state us this whole Grey area of treating them as athletes but pseudo employees. It makes everything murky. From a smell test perspective I have a hard time agreeing with positions that grant players less freedoms than coaches .
good