UCF Sports Thread: 2025 Spring Football is Underway

[MasterGMer]

Yes, I agree and that is why we need to have a transportation tax. Orlando has so much public infrastructure to do. Public transportation is a huge issue also. Plus we may need to dive into Sunshine corridor


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[UCF]

UCF broke ground the Roth Tower project and will be ready 2026 football season. Thank goodness we got Orange County Tourism Tax to pay for the project. Football Gataway plus the entire football campus should be broken ground soon also. Exciting times

That tourist tax should be going to infrastructure and transportation projects, not the UCF stadium. I’m well aware they can’t by law but it doesn’t make sense and should not be the case.

I don’t disagree.

Under the current law, I also disagree with making that convention center larger. Keep it refreshed and put the money elsewhere to improve the image of the city. Perhaps a baseball stadium? Perhaps world class museum(s)? Etc.

For now, thanks for sending the money to East Orange County for the one spot that brings bed nights in that area. Funding for Olympic sport venues would also a great future idea.

[UCFJayBird]

UCF broke ground the Roth Tower project and will be ready 2026 football season. Thank goodness we got Orange County Tourism Tax to pay for the project. Football Gataway plus the entire football campus should be broken ground soon also. Exciting times

That tourist tax should be going to infrastructure and transportation projects, not the UCF stadium. I’m well aware they can’t by law but it doesn’t make sense and should not be the case.

i feel like you'll be pretty hard pressed to find anyone who disagrees with this. UCF and the fans will obviously take it, because for years we've seen hundreds of millions poured into an oversized convention center and a barely used citrus bowl (or whatever it's called these days), but I don't know of anyone who would disagree that tourist tax dollars could have a lot more beneficial use to central florida citizens if it were put into education, transportation, etc. I get using some of it to bolster more stuff to bring in more tourism and keep the industry strong, but right now they're just throwing money at so much stuff that's unnecessary because the badly written law says you can't use it for anything else.

I'm assuming the only reason it hasn't been a focal point of a political candidate is that the tourism industry would bury them in contributions to their opponent. The lobby is just too big to take on...i'm guessing. lol.

[Knightro]

Several UCF players who entered the portal when it opened have since withdrawn from the portal and will return to school in 2025.

-Kam Moore
-Derrick LeBlanc
-Nyjalik Kelly
-Antione Jackson
-DeMari Henderson
-Ja'Cari Henderson

[UCFJayBird]

Several UCF players who entered the portal when it opened have since withdrawn from the portal and will return to school in 2025.

-Kam Moore
-Derrick LeBlanc
-Nyjalik Kelly
-Antione Jackson
-DeMari Henderson
-Ja'Cari Henderson

Glad to see so many defensive guys coming back. Need some DL and OL transfers and returns. I can put faith in Frost to find underrated and underutilized skill players in the portal and have them flourish in his system. But need some big boys on the line.

I imagine we'll start seeing more and more names pop up as the money starts to get thinner at the top with big programs and donors blowing through so much.

I think I saw there are over 300 D1 QBs in the portal. That's INSANE. That's not including HS guys. So many players are going to find themselves out of D1 because they chased the bag. It'll work out for a lot of guys like Lee Hunter, but some are going in there thinking they'll have a $1m check handed to them and instead they're going to wind up in the G5 or FCS (or even out of college football altogether).

[UCF]

Grinch as DC seems like a complete fumble for Frost. Here’s hoping he figured out how to coach a defense.

[UCFJayBird]

Grinch as DC seems like a complete fumble for Frost. Here’s hoping he figured out how to coach a defense.

Yea i'm not sure how I feel. Sounds like he was considered a rising star while at Ohio State and then went and coached at USC with Lincoln Riley and flamed out pretty badly. He has experienced working with defenses that play with up tempo offenses, but that's not necessarily a good thing if they weren't successful while doing so, lol.

I expected a bigger name given we haven't really been throwing money at position coaches. I think they're trying to save money to throw into rev share.

[dsg2003mach1]

I think they're trying to save money to throw into rev share.

ive seen revenue sharing mentioned a few times about college ball in general lately, whats the basics of this? If Frost keeps expenses down does he get paid more?

[UCFJayBird]

I think they're trying to save money to throw into rev share.

ive seen revenue sharing mentioned a few times about college ball in general lately, whats the basics of this? If Frost keeps expenses down does he get paid more?

I'm not completely familiar myself. My understanding is that teams will be allowed to share a portion of their revenue with their student athletes, but it's capped at like 22% of the the average of P5 schools. So basically there's a "salary cap" for schools that make obscene amounts. The estimated cap in year 1 is somewhere around $20-25mil, and will grow a few percentage points per year the first few years before being reset. Schools will have to share the revenue with ALL athletes, but it's broken down so that certain programs get more funds. I think football will get like 75%, so like $15m to spend if the program is fully funded (meets the cap).

My understanding is that NIL will go back to being paid for services related to using a player's likeness for marketing efforts and such. So a player can still go out and get a deal with the local business to pay them, but gone will be collectives of alumni just giving money to players to come to the school. So it'll be progress in the right direction, but i'm sure still a lot of room for issues.

The revshare program begins July 1st. So until then, a lot of big schools have their collectives going out and saying "Well give you X dollars to come to our school in the spring, and then when revshare begins you'll get that share too" whereas UCF shut down the collective and is just promising revshare for next year.

So I think the thought is if alums donate to the athletic program instead of the collective, they can more readily fund the revshare program. Whereas schools like Ohio State have so much money they can do both until July.

[CZ Eddie]

Grinch as DC seems like a complete fumble for Frost. Here’s hoping he figured out how to coach a defense.

As a Longhorns fan, I can tell you that Grinch sucks.
His recruiting might not be terrible though.
I hope Grinch figures things out this time around or Frost won't be around for long.

Last name does not = style of defense

[MasterGMer]

ive seen revenue sharing mentioned a few times about college ball in general lately, whats the basics of this? If Frost keeps expenses down does he get paid more?

I'm not completely familiar myself. My understanding is that teams will be allowed to share a portion of their revenue with their student athletes, but it's capped at like 22% of the the average of P5 schools. So basically there's a "salary cap" for schools that make obscene amounts. The estimated cap in year 1 is somewhere around $20-25mil, and will grow a few percentage points per year the first few years before being reset. Schools will have to share the revenue with ALL athletes, but it's broken down so that certain programs get more funds. I think football will get like 75%, so like $15m to spend if the program is fully funded (meets the cap).

My understanding is that NIL will go back to being paid for services related to using a player's likeness for marketing efforts and such. So a player can still go out and get a deal with the local business to pay them, but gone will be collectives of alumni just giving money to players to come to the school. So it'll be progress in the right direction, but i'm sure still a lot of room for issues.

The revshare program begins July 1st. So until then, a lot of big schools have their collectives going out and saying "Well give you X dollars to come to our school in the spring, and then when revshare begins you'll get that share too" whereas UCF shut down the collective and is just promising revshare for next year.

So I think the thought is if alums donate to the athletic program instead of the collective, they can more readily fund the revshare program. Whereas schools like Ohio State have so much money they can do both until July.

In house NIL or collectives will most likely disappear. Why? Because NCAA is going to work with a 3rd party agency to approve NIL funds in case of Booster led payment.

[MasterGMer]

Grinch as DC seems like a complete fumble for Frost. Here’s hoping he figured out how to coach a defense.

As a Longhorns fan, I can tell you that Grinch sucks.
His recruiting might not be terrible though.
I hope Grinch figures things out this time around or Frost won't be around for long.

Last name does not = style of defense

I thought he turned around Washington State team in 17 and he was good at Oklahoma with Lincoln Riley. I really do not know and that is why I ask

[Knightro]

ive seen revenue sharing mentioned a few times about college ball in general lately, whats the basics of this? If Frost keeps expenses down does he get paid more?

I'm not completely familiar myself. My understanding is that teams will be allowed to share a portion of their revenue with their student athletes, but it's capped at like 22% of the the average of P5 schools. So basically there's a "salary cap" for schools that make obscene amounts. The estimated cap in year 1 is somewhere around $20-25mil, and will grow a few percentage points per year the first few years before being reset. Schools will have to share the revenue with ALL athletes, but it's broken down so that certain programs get more funds. I think football will get like 75%, so like $15m to spend if the program is fully funded (meets the cap).

My understanding is that NIL will go back to being paid for services related to using a player's likeness for marketing efforts and such. So a player can still go out and get a deal with the local business to pay them, but gone will be collectives of alumni just giving money to players to come to the school. So it'll be progress in the right direction, but i'm sure still a lot of room for issues.

The revshare program begins July 1st. So until then, a lot of big schools have their collectives going out and saying "Well give you X dollars to come to our school in the spring, and then when revshare begins you'll get that share too" whereas UCF shut down the collective and is just promising revshare for next year.

So I think the thought is if alums donate to the athletic program instead of the collective, they can more readily fund the revshare program. Whereas schools like Ohio State have so much money they can do both until July.

JayBird nailed it pretty good, with one very unfortunate thing he's leaving out.

The problem moving forward is that there's no actual guardrails in place to stop the biggest programs from just dumping more money in via the current booster funded NIL model on top of what will be the school funded revenue share model.

So if a huge school like Alabama or Ohio State or Georgia fully funds the $20.5M revenue share to the limit (all the top programs will fully fund), there's nothing actually stopping those from continuing to have boosters to donate even more money which can then be distributed to the athletes via NIL in the same way things are currently happening.

The NCAA is not going to be able to actually stop schools from spending well beyond the $20.5M "salary cap" provided the excess money comes from a different bucket.

Long story short...

The school itself pay out $20.5M to it's student athletes and then anyone else (aka boosters) can pay whatever they want on top of that.

Unfortunately, this is not some proactive kind of vision for a better world. This is something the NCAA came up with to protect some version of the current structure so that the whole thing didn’t come crashing down. This is the NCAA’s answer to avoid being sued out of existence.

College football as we know it has a very bleak future. We are very rapidly approach a point in time where a small group of schools break away from the NCAA and essentially become their own version of the NFL where it’s just the top 32 teams (or whatever number, maybe it's 64) playing each other every week and that's that.

[Knightro]

In house NIL or collectives will most likely disappear. Why? Because NCAA is going to work with a 3rd party agency to approve NIL funds in case of Booster led payment.

I will bet anything that I own that this doesn't end up happening in the way you're describing it.

The moment the NCAA tries to enforce any sort of "the maximum amount you can legally spend on players is the amount we say you can spend" is the moment the Alabama's and Georgia's and Ohio State's of the world band together and tell the NCAA...

"You know what? We don't actually need you at all. We're the commodity that ESPN and Fox and NBC and CBS are willing to pay for, so we'll just gather up all our friends and start our own thing without you. Bye."

The NCAA can and will do nothing to stop boosters from continuing to fund these schools.

[MasterGMer]

ive seen revenue sharing mentioned a few times about college ball in general lately, whats the basics of this? If Frost keeps expenses down does he get paid more?

I'm not completely familiar myself. My understanding is that teams will be allowed to share a portion of their revenue with their student athletes, but it's capped at like 22% of the the average of P5 schools. So basically there's a "salary cap" for schools that make obscene amounts. The estimated cap in year 1 is somewhere around $20-25mil, and will grow a few percentage points per year the first few years before being reset. Schools will have to share the revenue with ALL athletes, but it's broken down so that certain programs get more funds. I think football will get like 75%, so like $15m to spend if the program is fully funded (meets the cap).

My understanding is that NIL will go back to being paid for services related to using a player's likeness for marketing efforts and such. So a player can still go out and get a deal with the local business to pay them, but gone will be collectives of alumni just giving money to players to come to the school. So it'll be progress in the right direction, but i'm sure still a lot of room for issues.

The revshare program begins July 1st. So until then, a lot of big schools have their collectives going out and saying "Well give you X dollars to come to our school in the spring, and then when revshare begins you'll get that share too" whereas UCF shut down the collective and is just promising revshare for next year.

So I think the thought is if alums donate to the athletic program instead of the collective, they can more readily fund the revshare program. Whereas schools like Ohio State have so much money they can do both until July.

JayBird nailed it pretty good, with one very unfortunate thing he's leaving out.

The problem moving forward is that there's no actual guardrails in place to stop the biggest programs from just dumping more money in via the current booster funded NIL model on top of what will be the school funded revenue share model.

So if a huge school like Alabama or Ohio State or Georgia fully funds the $20.5M revenue share to the limit (all the top programs will fully fund), there's nothing actually stopping those from continuing to getting boosters to donate even more money which can then be distributed to the athletes via NIL in the same way things are currently happening.

The NCAA is not going to be able to actually stop schools from spending well beyond the $20.5M "salary cap" provided the excess money comes from a different bucket.

Long story short...

The school itself pay out $20.5M to it's student athletes and then anyone else (aka boosters) can pay whatever they want on top of that.

Unfortunately, this is not some proactive kind of vision for a better world. This is something the NCAA came up with to protect some version of the current structure so that the whole thing didn’t come crashing down. This is the NCAA’s answer to avoid being sued out of existence.

College football as we know it has a very bleak future. We are very rapidly approach a point in time where a small group of schools break away from the NCAA and essentially become their own version of the NFL where it’s just the top 32 teams (or whatever number, maybe it's 64) playing each other every week and that's that.

Upon the NCAA O'Bannon settlement, NCAA is going to work with 3rd party agency to approve NIL funds exceed a certain level, they are trying to deny the booster led NIL payment to the student-athletes. And that is why, in this case, UCF's In House NIL is not going to exist past July 1 2025 and the in house payment will be changed to Rev Sharing. And that is already announced by UCF AD

[Knightro]

Upon the NCAA O'Bannon settlement, NCAA is going to work with 3rd party agency to approve NIL funds exceed a certain level, they are trying to deny the booster led NIL payment to the student-athletes. And that is why, in this case, UCF's In House NIL is not going to exist past July 1 2025 and the in house payment will be changed to Rev Sharing. And that is already announced by UCF AD

I am willing to guarantee you this does not happen - the NCAA approving NIL funds that exceed a certain level and denying booster led NIL payments part.

UCF is ending their NIL program for a variety of reasons, but NIL payments from boosters becoming illegal is not one of them.

[CZ Eddie]

Grinch as DC seems like a complete fumble for Frost. Here’s hoping he figured out how to coach a defense.

As a Longhorns fan, I can tell you that Grinch sucks.
His recruiting might not be terrible though.
I hope Grinch figures things out this time around or Frost won't be around for long.

Last name does not = style of defense

I thought he turned around Washington State team in 17 and he was good at Oklahoma with Lincoln Riley. I really do not know and that is why I ask

He had a great first year with Riley in Oklahoma but it was his first year and he using the previous DC's players and everything was already set up for him.
It all went downhill from there.

[MasterGMer]

Upon the NCAA O'Bannon settlement, NCAA is going to work with 3rd party agency to approve NIL funds exceed a certain level, they are trying to deny the booster led NIL payment to the student-athletes. And that is why, in this case, UCF's In House NIL is not going to exist past July 1 2025 and the in house payment will be changed to Rev Sharing. And that is already announced by UCF AD

I am willing to guarantee you this does not happen - the NCAA approving NIL funds that exceed a certain level and denying booster led NIL payments part.

UCF is ending their NIL program for a variety of reasons, but NIL payments from boosters becoming illegal is not one of them.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5798062/2024/09/26/house-ncaa-revised-settlement-college-sports-nil-boosters/

[Knightro]

Upon the NCAA O'Bannon settlement, NCAA is going to work with 3rd party agency to approve NIL funds exceed a certain level, they are trying to deny the booster led NIL payment to the student-athletes. And that is why, in this case, UCF's In House NIL is not going to exist past July 1 2025 and the in house payment will be changed to Rev Sharing. And that is already announced by UCF AD

I am willing to guarantee you this does not happen - the NCAA approving NIL funds that exceed a certain level and denying booster led NIL payments part.

UCF is ending their NIL program for a variety of reasons, but NIL payments from boosters becoming illegal is not one of them.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5798062/2024/09/26/house-ncaa-revised-settlement-college-sports-nil-boosters/

I understand what is being said. I understand what is being negotiated.

I'm telling you it's not going to be enforced.

[UCFJayBird]

In house NIL or collectives will most likely disappear. Why? Because NCAA is going to work with a 3rd party agency to approve NIL funds in case of Booster led payment.

I will bet anything that I own that this doesn't end up happening in the way you're describing it.

The moment the NCAA tries to enforce any sort of "the maximum amount you can legally spend on players is the amount we say you can spend" is the moment the Alabama's and Georgia's and Ohio State's of the world band together and tell the NCAA...

"You know what? We don't actually need you at all. We're the commodity that ESPN and Fox and NBC and CBS are willing to pay for, so we'll just gather up all our friends and start our own thing without you. Bye."

The NCAA can and will do nothing to stop boosters from continuing to fund these schools.

Do we think the only way to legitimately stop this is something like Congress passing something that says all college football teams must adhere to certain guidelines and bylaws put forth by the NCAA in order to have a team? And then have the NCAA have a CBA of sorts for different divisions with much stricter oversight and guidelines that would probably hurt the bigger programs but level the playing field for smaller schools?

I doubt it ever happens because of politics, donations, lobbying, etc. But just curious what we think the actual solution is, if there even is one, regardless of how painful and unlikely it is to come to fruition.