Pittsburgh Panthers coach Pat Narduzzi has been around college football since his playing days in the 1980s with Youngstown State and Rhode Island. With decades of experience in the sport and familiarity with the NCAA, Narduzzi is hopeful changes are coming for the sport he loves.
After numerous lawsuits and a battle with the United States Supreme Court over student-athletes receiving compensation for the usage of their name, image and likeness, the NCAA made sweeping changes. The Division 1 Board of Directors approved of NIL deals for student-athletes in 2021.
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- Pat Narduzzi coaching record: 62-41, 2-4 in bowl games
However, the introduction of compensation for college athletes has created new complications. The frequency of players entering the transfer portal has increased and NIL deals are becoming a major part of recruiting players out of high school and currently in the portal.
Amid the ongoing debate over how the NCAA should handle it and a bigger spotlight on how much football players are being compensated, Narduzzi weighed in on the matter. Speaking to reporters at the ACC Media Day, the Panthers’ coach suggested there needs to be a salary cap because the current state of NIL creates an uneven playing field.
“There’s got to be a lid on it, right? I think everybody wants to play under the same rules. National Football League, they have a salary cap. I think you want to have some type of salary cap. This is what you are allowed to spend, but you can’t have universities that maybe have 75,000 students, those guys are all former alumnus at some point. When you have 16,000, all that thing is going to — it’s going to matter. It can’t be based on how big your university is because we’ll start building more dorms and what are we doing? We have education that is a priority, and we’re not going to have classes full of thousands of kids. We’re going to have small class sizes and, again, we’re going to have small alumni groups as they matriculate through the University of Pittsburgh. I think there’s got to be a lid on the thing”
Pitt Panthers coach Pat Narduzzi on Name, Image and Likeness deals
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Putting a defacto salary cap on how much one team can spend on compensating its athletes for usage of their name, image and likeness is a possibility. However, critics would counter that any restriction on how much the players make should be followed up with a cap on coaches’ salaries.
Much like with payments for top athletes, schools with the most boosters and financial resources can offer more money to head coaches and assistant coaches. It’s why the highest-paid coaches in the country are all working for some of the most well-known universities in the United States.
Why NIL was never going to be about fairness, equality in modern college football
Pat Narduzzi is making the point that the NCAA needs to think about competitive integrity. After all, more parity in college football and a wide cast of teams competing for a spot in the College Football Playoff is good for the game.
However, college sports haven’t worked that way for more than a decade. The reason programs like Clemson, Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State and Michigan are perennial powers in college football is because of how much the university and boosters invest in the program.
As Nick Saban told The Athletic in May, the current state of NIL doesn’t exist for there to be a level playing field. Some universities have vastly more resources than others and different boosters have individual preferences for how much they want to spend on their favorite team.
“If you think there’s disparity in college football now, there’s going to be a lot more in the future…I don’t think it’s going to be a level playing field because some people are showing a willingness to spend more than others.”
Alabama Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban on NIL, its impact on college football
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Spending on NIL deals is no different than what universities invest in their practice facility. The University of Georgia spent $80 million renovating their football facility, the Oregon Ducks are spending tens of millions of dollars on a new indoor practice facility, Alabama recently announced a new multi-million dollar renovation project for its weight room and both Clemson ($50 million in renovations) and Auburn ($91.9 million) have some of the most expensive practice facilities in the nation.
Narduzzi’s own school is aware of how important it is to invest more money into athletics. Pitt recently had its plans approved for a $240 million athletic center. It’s still not spending nearly as much as the top programs, but Pittsburgh will have far more invested in its athletic facility than dozens of schools across the country.
The purpose of NIL deals was to create a system where student-athletes could. be compensated without universities and the NCAA directly having to pay them from the annual revenue. The imbalance in which schools spend the most money is a byproduct of the business today. As long as salaries for coaches keep rising and the NCA earns more revenue, student-athletes will make more money through NIL.
NCAA revenue topped $1.1 billion in 2022