In Reply to: Jarmond's Update Regarding the House vs. NCAA Class Action Lawsuit posted by Dr.Bruin on November 05, 2024 at 14:04:00
Two buried ledes:
1) Ucla athletics annual revenues are $100,000,000. That is one-third that of tOSU and the other top ten football programs that we allegedly compete against.
2) Martin's call to arms is to give to the broad, general NIL organization Champion of Westwood, while ignoring mention of the football specific NIL collective Bruins for Life.
Implications. First, at 1/3 the size and financial power of the top competitors, it is highly unlikely that Ucla will ever regularly and consistently approach the top of CFB again. A miraculous phase shift in NIL fundraising would now seem essential for football to remain a legitimate top level D1 program. Ucla seems incapable of sparking this shift.
The second-tier programs, now including Ucla, will drift further away from the championship level and will probably splinter off into their own lesser and irrelevant league. The pressure to do this will increase if the gargantuan media rights deals wither in size as we might expect they will once linear broadcast (cable) is replaced with streaming in 5 - 7 years.
Second, it's clear that Jarmond, Morgan Center and Ucla remain mentally in tow to the obsolete NCAA model that treated them so kindly for decades. This management approach is incorrect for football and it will diminish Ucla football, not enlarge it.
We see here in Jarmond's note that Morgan Center is concerned with maintaining Morgan Center and if that means football is downgraded, so be it.
Conclusion: Ucla has fiddled while Rome burned. Since the dawn of the big money era in CFB going back to the first BCS Championship in 1998, Ucla has ignored the increasingly commercial aspects of CFB and instead clung to the dying NCAA model, still being referenced by Jarmond in his note.
Bruin football is in jeopardy so long as Morgan Center is running it. There are a number of attractive alternatives to this arrangement and one of them will eventually be implemented either with Morgan Center cooperation or despite it. Allowing these inept government service bureaucrats to destroy the glorious Ucla football program would be a permanent and devastating mistake for Ucla and its brand but for its loyal football fans.