Tuition perhaps the wrong term- players paying to play.
New National Spring Prep League Introduced.
- Thread starter tom 48
- Start date
lightspeed84
Well-known member
The ironic thing about all of this, I have never heard a college basketball coach speak positively about AAU basketball. I do not think college coaches will endorse this system, as many of them have strong ties to high school programs.
The players they are targeting are 4 or 5 star recruits. They will already have multiple Power 5 scholarship offers. The lure here is NIL money.
Dayride
Well-known member
They will have to guarantee a lot of NIL money. The top recruit in the class of 2024's NIL value is sitting at 879K. No high school league would sustain that.
Don't ask me to make any sense of the business model but the pitch seems to be that the players will get the NIL money now while they're in high school.
The part they haven't addressed is education. How are students supposed to attend school and maintain their grades when they're traveling all over the country for games during the last grading period of 11th grade?
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Dayride
Well-known member
Kids do it for AAU bball. I am guessing they would break it down to 6 east coast and 6 west coast teams. Kids would only have 3 weekends of travel if they do a 3 game home and away schedule.
reganaustinjames
Well-known member
NIL values are like valuations for projects that ask for public funding (the Hall of Fame village being a great example); cut the number you hear by 90% and its still too high. LeBron's hypothetical NIL value 20 years ago wouldn't have come close to what you're suggesting.
I understand AAU basketball teams don't practice a lot but that wouldn't be an option here. The league's six-game season starts Friday, April 19 and ends Friday, May 24. Presumably the teams will practice 5-6 times a week starting around April 1st. If these are regional all-star teams, the total time commitment could easily eat up 5-6 hours a day after school. And for each of the three away games there would be one possibly two missed school days.
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Dayride
Well-known member
The practice time would be the same as a regular football season. Games could be played on Sundays allowing for travel time on Saturday fly back out Sunday night. Plus Sunday games would probably be the way they do it since some fields may be used on Saturdays for track and lacrosse for either small colleges or high schools.
Dayride
Well-known member
Lebron signed an 87 million dollar deal with Nike right out of high school. If NIL were around at the time he would definitely make more than Mikey Williams did with puma.
My point is that this isn't a "regular" high school football season. "Football camp" will take place during crunch time of junior year. Supposedly these will be regional all-star teams from large metro areas--Atlanta, Miami-Dade, Los Angeles. What time will practice start during the school week? 5:00 PM? Home at 9:00 PM? Based on the dates they announced, the games will be on Fridays. The last grading period of 11th grade is not an ideal time for a college-bound student to stumble academically.
I know this isn't a scam like COF/BS, USAA or PDI, but why is it that all of these ventures are started by people with no background in high school athletics or education? Why are they always broke salesmen or crazy sports parents, or both?
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Dayride
Well-known member
I highly doubt they will practice more than twice a week. Like you have said this guy is trying to make money. He is not going to spend it on renting practice spots 5 days a week. My kid used to have lacrosse practice from 6:30-8:30 daily (leave at 6 get home at 9). Plus they played games that started at 7 on weeknights sometimes over an hour away. All those kids still managed school and sports. I think they had at least 8 honor students on that team.
Here's a new interview with Brian Woods:
https://www.sbnation.com/college-fo...prep-super-league-brian-woods-interview-teams
He says they will start practices 2-3 weeks before the season and the on-field product will resemble "collegiate football." Some of the players will be 4 and 5 star recruits but others could be good athletes that haven't played football before (good luck not getting killed). Others will be international (Germany, Japan, Mexico). There will also be a middle school program that won't travel.
He acknowledged OHSAA saying Ohio players can't participate in this league and keep their eligibility but he just sloughed it off, along with eligibility concerns in other states over NIL. And he admits that some juniors coming to the league might forgo their senior school season.
Also, the coaches will be former NCAA and NFL head coaches.
https://www.sbnation.com/college-fo...prep-super-league-brian-woods-interview-teams
He says they will start practices 2-3 weeks before the season and the on-field product will resemble "collegiate football." Some of the players will be 4 and 5 star recruits but others could be good athletes that haven't played football before (good luck not getting killed). Others will be international (Germany, Japan, Mexico). There will also be a middle school program that won't travel.
He acknowledged OHSAA saying Ohio players can't participate in this league and keep their eligibility but he just sloughed it off, along with eligibility concerns in other states over NIL. And he admits that some juniors coming to the league might forgo their senior school season.
Also, the coaches will be former NCAA and NFL head coaches.
That seems to be a ‘best practice’ used by all the hucksters in this racket.
“Anything outside of the NIL, I don’t believe any of the state associations can step in and say if this player participates in the Prep Super League they would now be ineligible to play fall football. Somebody would have to show me how that could actually take place because there’s many clubs and travel sports outside of the school sponsored sports that take place every year and to single out football just because it might be you know, a source of a very sensitive topic, I think that just is is illogical on a lot of fronts.”
aka, I have no knowledge of how state associations work, the legal precedent to their rules, or anything about this topic at all. I just really want to make money.
So this guy based the whole plan around NIL and a mistaken notion that if it's independent of state associations the players won't jeopardize their eligibility but that's not true for Ohio, Georgia, Florida, Texas and Arizona. That's 7 of the 12 teams.
http://prepsuperleague.com/about/
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Sykotyk
Well-known member
People really seem to forget that most state associations were formed entirely for regulating football. And the brutality of that sport and the fairness of that sport.
The other sports are simple along for the ride in most cases. Some later associations were just following the lead of other states and not to keen on one sport over another. But football is the only sport that has extrascholastic prohibitions where other sports don't.
7v7 is allowed because states don't consider that football. Even if they're "teams". Other sports don't have prohibitions as long as the kid is an amateur (though NIL is an end around that as long as the team doesn't actually contract or pay them directly).
But football has was and always will be special in terms of the authority of the state associations. It's a brutal game and eligibility is based on only playing a maximum number of highly regulated and properly conducted games the entire year with notable dead periods to save the kids from overdoing it with football.
Basketball, baseball, volleyball, field athletics etc aren't in such a position.
He doesn’t even realize this is an issue that has been litigated before, and the state associations have won. Times change, maybe you can sue this time around and win, but at the very least that’s a big up front expense that you can’t bank 100% on going in your favor.
carnholio
Land-Grant Holy Land
Something something the definition of insanity.
So in Ohio you could find junior players that are already committed, may be planning on leaving school early to get to spring football on college campus, and are willing to forego their senior year of eligibility to potentially make some money. I guess if their college coach gave it the ok, it would be feasible for those young men.
Recruit-centric Prep Super League still on track to debut in April with loose NIL restrictions
The Cleveland franchise has been dropped but according to this article the first games will be April 27. But they're still looking for players and no coaches or rosters or schedules have been announced. One month from now . . . sure. And the start date has been pushed back a week from what he said last year. It's not happening.
The Cleveland franchise has been dropped but according to this article the first games will be April 27. But they're still looking for players and no coaches or rosters or schedules have been announced. One month from now . . . sure. And the start date has been pushed back a week from what he said last year. It's not happening.
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Quick change of tune from “no one can stop us from paying players” to “so these markets we can’t pay the players”