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Are we getting our money’s worth?

Righteous Red

Righteous Red

All Conference
Mar 27, 2018
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Here are the estimated cost for all the rosters in Power Conference. I may be wrong, but based on the physical position in each group, it appears that Texas has the top dollar roster followed Ohio State and Oregon. Using the same logic, it appears that the Huskers are near the top of the $30 million section. Teams like Virginia, Michigan State, Illinois appear both at the bottom of $30 million and top portion of $20 million.
Some of my observations:

* LSU at this point hasn’t performed at the $50 million level

* In about 3 short years Indiana has gone from $20 million level to $40 million, winning a Natty certainly has the bandwagon businesses and boosters jumping on

* Texas Tech while having a good season last year, doesn’t match their team price tag, ditto Florida

* South Carolina at top of $30 million doesn’t match their team performance

* Surprised with Georgia only being at top of $30 million, they seem to be over performing, likewise with
Utah at bottom of $20 million group, along with Washington, and Iowa

* Also surprised that Clemson and Florida State are in the $30 million level, thought they would be higher

Now the final question, does the cost of our football roster match our performance? Up to this point no, based on previous years. We have an opportunity this year to justify that. What is your opinion?
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If I could win the Powerball or Mega Millions, like a 500+ million jackpot, I'd invest it and find a way to put at least 50 million a year into Nebraska's NIL pot.

Because, while having a 40, 50+ million dollar roster isn't a guarantee of success, the truth is, in this iteration of college football, being able to pay the most elite players the type of money to get them to come to Nebraska is a great foundation to build on. I also think that even though the CFP is fairly new, there is already a strong correlation between $$$ spent on the roster and those teams making the CFP. And I don't think that is coincidental.
 
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Obviously the more money you can invest in your roster, the greater your likelihood is for success. But when your investment is in 18-22 year old young men, there is a greater risk than when (for example) a MLB team is investing in top-quality baseball players.

This is where the scouting and overall team-building philosophy comes into play. A roster full of expensive players doesn't necessarily equate to a great TEAM. For a recent example, Okie State, with a roster of $20M whupped up on an Oregon team with a $50M-plus roster. Yikes!
 
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No. We are not getting the results we have invested for. Based on the amounts listed above, we should be a ranked team. Perhaps on the fringes of the playoffs for the Natty.
I feel we should be ranked by the end of the year or I will be disappointed. Not angry if we go 8-4 and aren't ranked, but disappointed. 7-6? That would put us in the bottom half of the B1G and I'd be angry.
 
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Doc Fumble said:
Okie State, with a roster of $20M whupped up on an Oregon team with a $50M-plus roster. Yikes!
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That's more of an outlier than anything else. I think if those two teams played 10x, the Ducks would win at least 8.

But you're right about your other point: Just having a 40+ million dollar roster guarantees nothing. Coaching, the player's willingness to be coached, development, work ethic, effort--all those things are needed to formulate success.
 
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Doc Fumble said:
Not to down grade the others we got, the portal price we paid for Colandrea, Chambliss, and Gilmer has been VERY well spend IMHO.
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I think the verdict is still to be determined. Let's see how they fare against Mich St, Maryland, and Indiana. Those first three B1G games will, I think, provide enough data points to determine if the monies spent on those players were worth it or not.
 
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Husker99 said:
I think the verdict is still to be determined. Let's see how they fare against Mich St, Maryland, and Indiana. Those first three B1G games will, I think, provide enough data points to determine if the monies spent on those players were worth it or not.
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Oooh, you and your damn data points! They are a big part of why it feels different this season! :p ;)
 
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"Money can't buy happiness." ~ MTW 8:19

"Give me an unlimited bank account because I'd like to test that hypothesis." ~ Husker99​
 
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OK, at this point in time, no I do not think we are getting our money's worth. This season, somehow, feels different. I will not be at all surprised for this to be a great year. Of course, I might have drank the Damn kool-aid again. Trying to have zero expectatations.
 
College football truly is the minor league for pro football more than ever now. Talented players hire agents to guide them to where they can get the most money. Eighteen-year-old kids are becoming millionaires overnight. Teams with the big doners have a major advantage in acquiring talent.

But it can be a two-edged sword. In the past, the goal was to work hard, develop, prove his worth, get drafted and make a lot of money. Now they already have the money. For some that means losing that edge. They start enjoying the good life instead of putting in extra practices. Those hits that they used to laugh off are starting to hurt and they try to avoid them. They start to think they are too valuable to risk injury. That motivation to become a high draft pick is not as strong as it was before he got rich.

I will always take the 3-star with raw talent. Someone with a chip on their shoulder and something to prove. That player is always going to improve. The 5-star who thinks he is already at the top of the game and can coast has nowhere to go but down.
 
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Cigarman said:
College football truly is the minor league for pro football more than ever now. Talented players hire agents to guide them to where they can get the most money. Eighteen-year-old kids are becoming millionaires overnight. Teams with the big doners have a major advantage in acquiring talent.

But it can be a two-edged sword. In the past, the goal was to work hard, develop, prove his worth, get drafted and make a lot of money. Now they already have the money. For some that means losing that edge. They start enjoying the good life instead of putting in extra practices. Those hits that they used to laugh off are starting to hurt and they try to avoid them. They start to think they are too valuable to risk injury. That motivation to become a high draft pick is not as strong as it was before he got rich.

I will always take the 3-star with raw talent. Someone with a chip on their shoulder and something to prove. That player is always going to improve. The 5-star who thinks he is already at the top of the game and can coast has nowhere to go but down.
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I think you just summed up NIL issues perfectly! Throw in there that they will sell themselves to the next highest bidder at the first opportunity if it involves more $$$'s and you've summed things up 100%
 
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The new largesse hasn't created a split between haves and have-nots. It's just given that old split a bigger price tag.
There have always been a handful of programs with better facilities, better donor networks, better farm-team pipelines (looking at you, Nebraska Junior Varsity), better staffs, and better under-the-table arrangements. Amateurism in college sports was never real; it was a polite fiction.

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Virginia Tech cartoon about Virginia’s supposed payments to athletes. (1906 Virginia Tech yearbook)

Take the very first intercollegiate competition. It's generally accepted that the first intercollegiate sporting event was a crew meet between Harvard and Yale in 1852 on Lake Winnipesaukee, and by Ronald Smith's account in The Myth of the Amateur, it was far from amateur. The rowers received an eight-day, all-expenses-paid vacation, and the owner of the new Boston-to-Montreal railroad offered to bankroll the whole regatta just to get it staged. By the 1870s, some intercollegiate races were handing winners silver goblets worth over $500, real money at a time when the average laborer made about $300 a year. Ivy League schools didn't dominate that era on talent alone; they dominated because they could afford to.

Even critics of commercialization saw the hypocrisy clearly. Bill Tilden, who dominated tennis as both amateur and professional, wrote in 1926 that college football's commercialization "presents all the evils of professionalism" without paying the player who actually generates the value, so why not just pay him?

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(Sacramento Bee, November 14, 1932)

Every football dynasty we can name from the last century got there the same way: money, not altruism. A $500 million athletic budget today is just a matter of scale against the $1 million budgets of decades past. What's changed isn't the system, it's that the zeros got long enough to make us squeamish about it. Back in the 1980s, when Nebraska had a starting quarterback living illegally off campus in a car a booster gave him, we didn't howl about "value" or "deserving more for our money." We just thought: good, now maybe we'll win.

Letting the size of the budget manufacture our indignation doesn't make us principled. It makes us complicit. We get to enjoy the fully commercialized product and still tell ourselves it's the money that ruined the sport.
 
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Letting the size of the budget manufacture our indignation doesn't make us principled. It makes us complicit.
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This ^^ x 100 and I would like to add it also makes us hypocritical.
 
Chris said:
Related "Nebraska loaded up on older players this offseason. Is it making a difference?"
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Thanks for posting this, Chris. This was a good article by Mitch Sherman.

I'd like to point out a couple examples Mitch mentioned:

"Indiana leveraged a similar model two years ago. Last season en route to a 16-0 finish, its starters’ average age was more than 22 years. The Hoosiers’ lineup featured 17 players in their fourth years or older. They were the most experienced team, categorized by career starts, in the College Football Playoff."
and this one:
"(Nebraska's) model in the transfer-portal era grew from Michigan’s success in 2023. Thirteen players from the national-champion Wolverines were drafted into the NFL in 2024, including four fifth- and sixth-year seniors, such as linebacker Michael Barrett, who played in a school-record 64 games."

I remember after Michigan thumped us at home in Rhule's first year, he mentioned after the game to Husker fans something like, "What you saw out there with Michigan is the blueprint for the kind of team I'm expecting to build here."
 
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