Chansky's Notebook: Fight For the Almighty Dollar

Can lavish facilities trump the glut of NIL money?

Carolina is in the closing stages of another multimillion-dollar expansion to its football center. From advance reports, the Tar Heels will have a Disneyland type of training and conditioning addition to the Kenan Football Center that was completed just as Mack Brown left UNC for Texas in 1997. Upon Brown’s return, there have been regular upgrades to the locker room and weight room and players’ lounge to the tune of about $5 million.

When this latest expansion opens in 2023, Carolina will have among the best football facilities in the ACC and perhaps the country. Brown acknowledges that virtually everything being done to the facility is geared to attracting high school- and college-age recruits.

For example, the small theater that used to show visitors and recruits highlight films has been turned into a footwear vault, displaying every new model of Nike and Jumpman shoes that come out of Oregon.

We can only hope that the current NIL controversy will be reined in to make facilities count as much as they cost.

Right now, the millions of dollars raised by boosters and alumni-led corporations has become the most important part of the recruiting pitch.

Conferences and universities across the country are finally admitting the NIL system is out of control, and not leaving anybody in charge has made it legal to buy athletes with money they would make from their NIL rights.

Tougher legislation is being drawn up to regulate who is getting how much and what they do for the monthly deposits into their bank accounts.

Athletic directors and coaches are hoping that the NCAA gets back involved and will vigorously enforce the rules as clarified. But that will be extremely difficult since the proverbial toothpaste is almost all out of the tube.

And those athletic supporters who are raising and paying millions for recruits to come, players to stay and transfers to jump will claim they are within their legal rights and certainly file lawsuit after lawsuit if NIL is suddenly contained the way it should be.

New and upgraded elements to the physical plants will still attract high school athletes looking for scholarships and a college education. However, the best of the recruits will be looking for cold, hard cash that other 5-stars have made during their short stays in college.

All of a sudden, the arms race for facilities has stiff competition from the almighty dollar going elsewhere.

Featured image via UNC-Chapel Hill

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Chansky’s Notebook: Fight For the Almighty Dollar

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