In this week's 3-2-1 Column, we're thinking about the new era of college sports and what it means for Pitt. Plus: Nate Yarnell, Pitt hoops and a lot more.
THREE THINGS WE KNOW
The new era is here
And here we go into the future.
Whatever that might look like.
Actually, we’re getting a clearer picture of what the future will look like. It’s a picture that has come into focus over the last few weeks, as the NCAA looks to get off the hook in three antitrust lawsuits with a settlement that will be the most complete upheaval of the world of college sports that we have seen since…
Well, since like three years ago, when NIL went from a misprint of National Letter of Intent (NLI) to a near-total reversal of what had been one of the founding principles of college sports basically forever.
Namely, amateurism.
The Supreme Court’s ruling in the Alston case three years ago opened the door for student-athletes to receive money for the use of their names, images and likenesses; to paraphrase Hunter S. Thompson, now, less than three years later, you can go up on the steps of the Capitol building and look East across First Street, and with the right kind of eyes, you can almost see the place where the wave of college sports finally broke.
Or so we thought.
Because while Alston changed the game by dismantling the system that previously existed, the House case and its subsequent settlement is changing the game by creating a new system.
The crux of the new system is revenue-sharing. Estimated to be in the range of $20-22 million per year, schools will now be giving the student-athletes a piece of the pie.
Additionally, the NCAA and its members schools will be handing out some “back pay” for former student-athletes, and a dual-hit of unlimited scholarships and overall roster limits is also among the chief elements of the settlement.
All of that - the revenue-sharing, the “back pay” and the scholarship increase - adds up to a tidy sum, which Pitt will be on the hook for. More on that in a minute, though, because what Pitt has to adjust to is the same thing everyone else is going to have to find a way to adjust to:
The new era.
(SEC-related suggestion for a slogan for the new era: “It just costs more.”)
A friend said to me this week, “Well, I guess it’s better than the current situation.” And I think I agree with that. If nothing else, it appears that there’s at least some interest in putting some guidelines on NIL and how it’s used - as in, using it more for actual name, image and likeness representation and less as a pay-for-play enticement. That’s a step in the right direction, I think.
But my big question is, will this be the last step? We’re entering a new era, but is it the final era? Will this Era of Revenue-Sharing and Unlimited Scholarships and Managed NIL (ERSUSMNIL is a really catchy acronym) be one that we settle into for a few decades?
I have my doubts.
On one hand, the stability of it would be nice, particularly if the transfer portal stabilizes a little bit, which I think is possible if the “newness” of switching schools every year wears off.
On the other hand, it still feels like that model is unlikely to last. Notre Dame’s president acknowledged as much in a statement.
“The settlement, though undesirable in many respects and promising only temporary stability, is necessary to avoid what would be the bankruptcy of college athletics.”
The emphasis added was mine, and I think that section points to the fact that the obvious next step is still looming out there:
Student-athletes as employees.
I know the NCAA doesn’t want it and the schools don’t want it (in the Notre Dame president’s statement, he explicitly said that student-athletes should not be employees) but it feels inevitable, doesn’t it? That’s where this is all headed - a professional model with collective bargaining, contracts, buyouts and everything else that comes with the concept.
It has to get there, right? Revenue-sharing is a big step, but it feels like just that - a step. It’s not the landing. It’s not the destination.
The destination is a full and utter elimination of the concept of amateurism, at least in college football, and while plenty of interested parties don’t want that, I have a hard time seeing how they’ll stop it.
So, welcome to the new era. The next one will be arriving shortly.
What it means for Pitt
This is what actually matters, right?
What does all of this mean for Pitt?
I guess that’s more of a question than a thing we know, so perhaps I should have put this in the next section of the column.
But I actually kind of think I do know what it means for Pitt. Or at least I have some idea.
It means taking a bunch of money that was expected to be allotted for other things and redirecting it to the new expenses.
Most of the reporting has focused on a revenue-sharing number that’s somewhere in the neighborhood of $20-22 million per year. Each school will also lose a couple million that it would otherwise get from the NCAA’s annual distribution; the NCAA is holding that back to chip in on the “back pay” to former student-athletes who sued because they felt like they were screwed out of NIL opportunities. And then the decision to remove scholarship limits (while instituting total roster limits) is going to cost, too. Nobody really knows how much that number will be, largely because it seems like it’s still up in the air as to what the roster limits will be - the difference between having 90 scholarship football players and 120 scholarship football players is pretty significant - either way, it’s going to cost.
Let’s take the whole package and call it an even 25.
$25 million.
Some projections have it closer to 30, but 25 is nothing to sneeze at, so let’s theorize on that low end.
As succinctly as possible, that $25 million is money that was already expected to be allocated somewhere other than where it’s going. Without knowing specific numbers, I think it’s safe to assume that Pitt’s Athletic Department operates on some thin margins, and even if they do come out ahead in most years, I can’t imagine it’s in the neighborhood of $25 million.
And even if they did have a budget surplus of $25 million, I have to think that money would already be accounted for, because if there’s one thing athletics administrators like to do more than making money, it’s spending money.
If they were in the black to the tune of $25 million, they would have found plenty of ways to spend that money.
So the point stands: Pitt is going to be on the hook for $25 million that it probably doesn’t have laying around.
That’s going to present some challenges, and right now, it’s tough to imagine those challenges getting resolved without cuts.
Cuts to staff. Cuts to sports.
It’s not definite, but it’s almost hard to figure how how Pitt - and many, many schools like Pitt - will come up with that money.
The NCAA will get a bump in revenue from the extension of its contract with CBS-Turner for the men’s basketball tournament; that increase will start kicking in next year, and it will keep escalating, so that will help.
But I don’t see Pitt getting an extra $25 million from that - not all at once and not anytime soon. The University is still going to come up short.
More precisely, the Athletic Department is still going to come up short. And I don’t know how they’re going to make the numbers work. The University might help, but at some point, the Athletic Department has to figure out its own budget, and I’m afraid that’s going to mean a reorganization.
Just like everything else in college sports, Pitt’s Athletic Department is going to look really different in a few years. Or sooner.
The main thing is still the main thing
Ext: Angeles National Forest
Jim Harbaugh appears from the woods on a horse. He rides into Pasadena and dismounts with a look of recognition in his eyes. As he falls to his knees at the ruins of the Rose Bowl, he yells, “You maniacs! You blew it up!”
I don’t think Planet of the Apes ever explained why the maniacs blew it up, but I also don’t think it ever needed to. That movie came out in 1968, so Charlton Heston’s exclamation certainly would have been a widely-received reference to the tensions of the time.
When Harbaugh collapses next to the Rose Bowl at some point in the future, the source of the downfall will be similarly understood.
It was the cash.
I feel like I’ve written about this before: the endless pursuit of money and how the ever-present desire to get more of it has guided so much of what has happened in college sports over the last two decades.
I’m not naive enough to see the situation for anything other than what it is, but sometimes I just have to say it.
There really are no institutions except money. There is no tradition except getting paid. Nothing is off-limits. Everything worth having or doing can be monetized, and there’s no reason to have or do anything unless it makes money.
What is the most hallowed element in college sports? The Ohio State-Michigan rivalry? For enough money, they would drop it. Toomer’s Corner? For enough money, they would find a new location. That “Play Like a Champion Today” sign at Notre Dame? For enough money, they would splash a new phrase - and a sponsor - on that. White-out games? For enough money, they’ll make them purple.
Think about the Rose Bowl. One of the greatest traditions in college football and maybe all of sports. Something you always knew about and counted on and expected and looked forward to. The Big Ten and the Pac-10. Tradition. An institution.
It’s already half-gone - “You can have it when we don’t need those teams for the playoff” - and it won’t be long before it’s just another bowl game (if it’s not already). They couldn’t even make it mean something if they tried, since the maniacs already blew up one of the conferences that represented half of the tradition.
And to some extent, it has all been inevitable. If there’s an opportunity to make more money, why wouldn’t you make more money? The Rose Bowl made a lot of money, but a playoff makes more, so guess who wins.
In the last few decades we have managed to streamline the path to profit. We make decisions based on the most efficient way to make money.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. It’s a natural evolution. Once you see that a course of action generates more revenue, you naturally look for more similar paths.
So as the TV money grew, it was only natural for schools that were institutional to their conferences to look for more - even if it meant changing conferences. In terms of goals and motivations, there was revenue and then there was everything else.
And there can never be enough revenue, so everything else falls by the wayside.
If it’s possible for a poem from 1818 to be cliche, Shelley’s “Ozymandias” might be approaching that territory. And yet, here we are on the precipice of a seismic change in college sports, and it’s not hard to imagine a path that leads to something akin to the kicker of that sonnet’s musings on power, collapse and ruin.
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare the lone and level sands stretch far away
Maybe that’s a bit melodramatic. Personally, I tend to push back when people make broad declarations about the death of college sports and things like that. It’s too big of an institution, too entrenched, too established to truly collapse.
But if the traditions fade away, if the ties between alums and their schools get strained, if the royal blue and mustard are fully eclipsed by the green, then something other than collapse might happen.
It will be change - the kind of change that leaves the entire enterprise looking like something unrecognizable to those who grew up loving it.
TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE
What can Yarnell do for Pitt?
One of my mantras this offseason has been about the quarterback position, and it goes a little something like this:
Get just average play out of the quarterback, and 2024 will be a marked improvement over 2023.
That’s a little bit of a reflection on the schedule and opponents. It’s a little bit of a reflection on the roster itself. And it’s a whole lot of a reflection on last season, when bad quarterback play - let’s not mince words here - cost the team anything even close to a winning record.
Average quarterback play would have won at least six games in 2023, and maybe more. And average quarterback play should win at least as much in 2024, and maybe more.
So that’s what I keep saying: Pitt just needs average quarterback play this season, and Nate Yarnell should be able to provide it.
But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’m coming around to the idea that maybe Yarnell can do more than provide average quarterback play. Maybe I’m selling him short. Maybe he can be a positive for the team and not just a non-negative.
See, I started looking at some stats on Pro Football Focus. I know there are some issues with PFF’s methodology and evaluations, but let’s take them at face value because, trust me, it’s a lot more interesting to do so.
According to PFF, Yarnell dropped back 70 times last season. That’s not a very big sample size, but it’s what we’ve got to work with, so let’s work with it.
There were 22 quarterbacks in the ACC last season who dropped back at least 70 times (including Phil Jurkovec and Christian Veilleux, making Pitt the only team in the conference to have three quarterbacks with that much playing time in 2023).
Of those 22 quarterbacks, Yarnell’s completion percentage (65.1%) ranked second; his yards per attempt (9.4) ranked first; his adjusted completion percentage (where PFF basically removes spikes, throw-aways and drops from the data set) ranked sixth; his “big-time throw percentage” (a PFF stat that measures passes that are well-placed and generally further down the field) ranked third; his average depth of target ranked second; his pressure-to-sack rate (another PFF stat that measures how often pressures turn into sacks for a quarterback) ranked seventh; and his NFL passer rating ranked first.
That’s right: first. Ahead of Jordan Travis and Drake Maye and Jack Plummer and Haynes King and all the other guys who played quarterback in the ACC last season.
Again, small sample size, but still - there just might be something there to work with.
I think anybody who watched Yarnell play last season felt like he showed some positive signs. He was pretty calm and collected in the pocket (that pressure-to-sack rate stat is a good measure of that). He made good decisions, with only one interception in 63 attempts, and that pick came in the Duke game on a play where it looked like Kenny Johnson got a little too much contact from a defender.
But even if that interception was Yarnell’s fault, it came only after he had multiple positive plays undone through no fault of his own. Pitt was in the red zone at that point in the fourth quarter, and on first down from the 13, Yarnell threw a perfect pass to Malcolm Epps in the end zone, but Epps couldn’t pull it in for a touchdown. After a substitution penalty on second down, Yarnell scrambled to pick up 14 of the 15 yards he needed to get a first down, but it was all for naught as C’Bo Flemister was called for an illegal block.
That pushed Pitt back and ultimately set up the third-and-15 play when Yarnell was picked off.
The interception wasn’t great, but Yarnell made two quality plays before that, only to be let down by his teammates.
And that brings us back to the point: Yarnell can make winning plays. Even if Pitt might be able to win games with just average quarterback play, I think he’s capable of more than just average.
What about the receivers?
Of course, Yarnell needs somebody to throw to, right?
That’s a big question - maybe bigger than Yarnell himself. So who does he have? And can they produce?
I think it starts with Gavin Bartholomew. I don’t think he’s going to lead Pitt in targets, receptions, receiving yards or receiving touchdowns. He might not be better than No. 3 in any of those categories.
So why am I starting with him?
Because it’s his last year, and damnit, can they finally get him the ball?
Look at these career stats for Bartholomew:
37 games played. 92 targets. 66 receptions. 7 touchdowns.
2.49 targets per game. 1.78 receptions per game. One touchdown every 5.29 games.
That’s borderline malpractice. And while it’s mostly on Frank Cignetti - Mark Whipple managed to find 29 targets for Bartholomew even though he was sharing the position with Lucas Krull - it’s nonetheless ridiculous. And indefensible. And absolutely has to be corrected by Kade Bell.
Like I said, though, I don’t think Bartholomew will be the leading receiver. Who will? There are a few candidates.
Konata Mumpfield led the team in catches last year (but not targets; he trailed Bub Means by eight in that category despite catching three more passes). I could see Mumpfield in that spot again; I know there was a lot of talk this spring about him playing more on the outside, but I still think he’s a good option to get the ball quickly, especially in this offense, and I think that could lead to a lot of targets and catches.
At the same time, it was pretty clear that the coaches were forcing the ball to Kenny Johnson in the spring game. Maybe they did that because it’s an indicator of what they plan to do this season, or maybe they just did it to reinforce to him that he has a big role because, well, you never know who might need those kinds of reassurances.
Either way, he was heavily targeted, and that could carry over to this season. Johnson still has a lot to prove - despite the hype, he had 122 receiving yards last year; not exactly a ton - but he’ll be a main piece of the offense, I think.
And then there are the two guys who have experience in Bell’s offense: Raphael Williams and Censere Lee. They didn’t transfer to sit (and Bell didn’t bring them here to sit). I don’t know if they’ll be leading receivers, but again, there could be a volume element that gets their numbers up with a lot of quick, short passes.
I’m still coming back to the original question, though:
Even if we’re confident about Yarnell, does he have good options to throw to?
Mumpfield has been a short-yardage possession guy, Johnson has very little on his resume, Williams and Lee are transferring in from FCS and Bartholomew is a tight end.
There’s a lot of solid in that group. But is there enough good? And is there any great? I’m just not sure. It feels like a lot of WR2’s and WR3’s with no clear option for a WR1.
It would be good to have one of those. We’ll see if one emerges.
ONE PREDICTION
Pitt will make the Sweet Sixteen
I feel like the best time to make a semi-bold prediction about an upcoming season is no less than six months before that season will begin. So let’s make a prediction about Pitt hoops.
I think if you read things I’ve written on this site or watch some of the YouTube videos we’ve done this week, you know I’m starting to get a little googly-eyed about Pitt hoops this season. Not enough to actually use the googly-eye emoji, of course, but pretty darn close.
I talked in a video this week about how it just might be time to start overreacting to Pitt hoops, and as we sit here in late May, maybe it’s the three-day weekend talking, but I’m feeling it a little bit with these Panthers.
It starts at the top with Jaland Lowe. I think he’s in line for a really, really good sophomore season. His drives to the hoop were among last season’s highlights and I think he’ll only keep improving as a passer, a shooter and, crucially, a leader. I think this is Lowe’s team, and I think the players around him will follow him.
That group starts with Ishmael Leggett. Once he got healthy - or healthy enough - he really turned up his level of play. I think he’s going to enter this season intent on being a starter, and he’s going to keep elevating his contributions to make that happen.
Then you factor in the addition of Damian Dunn as a veteran guard who can bring physicality, spot-up shooting, defense and experience, as well as a talented freshman in Brandin Cummings, and this just might be the best back court Jeff Capel has had at Pitt.
Let’s skip the wings for a second and talk about the center. Capel sold me on Corhen when I spoke to the Pitt head coach a couple weeks ago. It sounds like the staff has a clear plan for how to use him and get the most out of his abilities, and the threat of a legitimate scoring presence down low should create major opportunities for the guys on the perimeter.
And then the wings. I’m more bullish than most on Guillermo Diaz Graham, I think, and probably a little less bullish than most on Zack Austin. Put me in the camp that thinks Guillermo’s shooting can travel from being a stretch five to an outside threat at the four. He’ll give up something on defense, but I think there are ways to cover for that with some of the other players they have. More important, though, is the scoring.
With Austin, I’m not sure what to expect beyond the Chaos Points - put-backs, fast breaks, etc. I don’t know if I see a role for him in the half-court offense, but at the same time, I think there are enough guys who will have roles in the half-court that I’m not quite as concerned if Austin just continues in his role from last season.
And then there’s Amsal Delalic. Maybe defense will be an issue. Maybe speed will be an issue. But the shooting…man, the shooting. The passing, too. It all looks so good. Maybe too good. But every time I start to think that I’m getting too worked up about the Bosnian Bomber, I remember that people smarter than me - like our own Stephen Gertz, among others - are equally smitten with his potential.
Delalic just might be a major steal in the recruiting process and a major contributor in the season. If he averages more than 10 points per game, this might stand as one of Capel’s biggest scores.
And if all of that happens, this team will be playing on the second weekend.
You’ve got a really talented back court, a center who can impact the game and wings who can shoot. And I think they’ll be pretty solid and maybe strong on defense and the glass.
It seems like a winning combination to me. So on May 24, we’ll call it:
Pitt’s getting to the Sweet Sixteen this year.
