Outgoing AFCA executive director Todd Berry held his final State of the Game press conference on Thursday before handing the baton to Craig Bohl and hit on a number of topics. Pretty much all of them hit on the topics of the day: NIL, the Portal, and the calendar.
Let's get right into it.
-- The AFCA supports federal legislation to manage NIL. Berry doesn't want Congress writing NIL policy so to speak, but to create a national standard for what NIL is and is not. "Certainly we can build up to some 30,000 foot view of what NIL is," Berry said.
A patchwork of different laws has placed athletes in a vulnerable position where laws may be different in their home state than where they've signed to play in college. "I don't think it's healthy for the student-athletes," he said.
-- Pursuant to that, the AFCA would like the NCAA to have subpoena power to limit tampering. "There's no transparency about what is happening. You've let other entities outside of the universities basically run college football," Berry said. "While I'm not suggesting that these entities are running college football, if we don't get ahead of it, they will."
-- When asked, Berry said the idea of an NIL 'salary cap' was not realistic. Most of the NIL "market" is based around personal appearances, and placing a dollar sign around that is not enforceable. "I wouldn't pay a nickel to have dinner with Justin Bieber. Someone else would pay a million dollars. And that's fine," Berry said. "But that's the problem with the NIL space.
-- The AFCA would like to raise the bar on academic eligibility for transfers. A U.S. district judge last month struck down the NCAA's ability to restrict multi-time undergraduate transfers. In light of that, the AFCA would like the NCAA to increase academic requirements for players to be immediately eligible upon transfer.
"Every data point suggests that when you transfer, you lower your chance to graduate. A higher academic standard in terms of GPA and hours to transfer. We understand that we don't need to be restrictive, so if someone is beneath the lines we've drawn, let's let them not be immediately eligible," Berry said.
Players who are not immediately eligible would, or at least should, get that year back upon graduation, in Berry's view, and the "problem" of increasing the numbers of 6th- or 7th-year college players did not outweigh the benefit of pushing more players to graduate. "That should be a win," Berry said.
-- On the calendar, the AFCA wants Early Signing Day moved up, but not too much. August has been a commonly-thrown-around date as an alternative to the current period beginning the third Wednesday in December, but coaches are concerned about the side effect that would have on high school football. Instead, the AFCA supports the dead period immediately following the regular season, and before the Portal opens.
In 2023, that would have been Nov. 27-30.
However, Berry stressed that change is difficult in this space because, in typical college sports fashion, not even the NCAA controls the National Letter of Intent program. That's under the authority of the conference commissioners. "It's hard to be able to move fast because you have multiple entities that are responsible for different things," Berry said.
-- The AFCA would like to see the winter Portal window shrunk from 45 days to 30. "It would be helpful as a student-athlete to make decisions by knowing who else is in the Portal," Berry said. "Thirty is very, very reasonable based on the data we've collected over the past two years."
-- The IAWP rule needs to go. "We all recognize that NIL are why players are moving. It's not all of a sudden because I've hired the uncle. Consequently the IAWP rule is unbelievably problematic. It's archaic at this point in time. We need to lose the IAWP legislation. It's no longer effective," Berry said.
-- On the topic of sign stealing, instead of helmet technology, Berry preferred wearable technology that all players could wear. "About half of our FBS group are already using them in practice," Berry said.
On helmet speakers, Berry said the NCAA and college football would not want to "play Kingmaker" in regards to which helmet company wins the contract and thus becomes the dominant player in the space.
-- In regards to the NCAA's proposal to allow schools to pay athletes through an "enhanced educational trust fund," Berry essentially shrugged. "That's really outside of our purview. Those are decisions that need to be made by athletic directors, university presidents and conference commissioners," Berry said.
He was more concerned about regulation and transparency in NIL. "That's really not going to change the NIL space. Regardless of the revenue generation, if we're thinking that's going to be a replacement for NIL, I would suggest that's probably not the case. That booster can still work outside the university. If we're trying to corral the outside entities, that's probably not going to do that."
He's right in that regard. Boosters have always paid players under the table, and now pay them over the table through NIL. That market won't go away if colleges can suddenly pay their players salary, it would simply become a sweetener to differentiate their school from the competition in recruiting.
But I found Berry's lack of interest in a topic that Jim Harbaugh felt strongly about to pound the proverbial table about as recently as this week a bit puzzling.
-- Coaches are not in favor of moving to an NFL-style challenge system. Berry said that coaches said they weren't always in position to get a good enough look to make an informed decision on whether to throw a challenge flag or not, but I think the real reason is they'd simply like to outsource that mental burden to the officials. Which is fine.
-- Finally, on the AFCA transition of power. Berry said he will work through the end of of the month before passing the baton to Bohl. The AFCA Board of Trustees formally appointed ex-North Dakota State and Wyoming head coach Craig Bohl as their next executive director during the convention earlier this week in Nashville.
As always, stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.