BMatt’s Monday musings – AuburnSports

CHESTNUT | Last week, college athletics took an important and necessary step toward its future by approving approximately $15 billion to settle the House, Hubbard and Carter antitrust cases.

However, it is a step into a dark and gloomy maze-like future with no apparent ending.

And honestly, that’s okay.

The settlement, which must be finalized by a judge, includes approximately $2.8 billion in back compensation to be paid over 10 years to athletes who played in 2016-2020 and a new revenue-sharing model that will take effect in the 2025-2026 season.

To start, the revenue share will be approximately $22 million, which includes stipends.

The settlement will also eliminate scholarship limits and provide full scholarships to all players on the roster. New roster limits for individual sports will need to be finalized, but this is a big boost for sports like baseball, which previously had to split 11.7 scholarships among about 30 players.

And yes, more problems remain, starting with the exact impact of Title IX on income distribution. This issue could spark a new round of lawsuits, and what will it mean for Olympic sports?

There are NIL and NIL collectives. The NCAA wants to bring them in and regulate them strictly. The courts and some boosters see it differently.

While revenue sharing should provide some stability and consistency in how athletes are compensated, it is likely that some, perhaps even many, schools will feel they must continue to pay top football and men’s basketball athletes even more to win these key recruiting battles and retain those players for as long as possible.

NCAA management, conference commissioners and school athletic directors have continually called on Congress to pass laws to better regulate antitrust issues in college athletics and prevent athletes from becoming employees.

This still seems unlikely to me given more lawsuits, including the Johnson case, and several rulings and pending rulings by the National Labor Relations Board that could grant athletes employee status in the near future.

For now, there are many unknowns about the future of college athletics, and it is impossible to predict what it will look like in five or ten years.

Despite everything, I see a lot of positives. First, it’s high time college athletes started being compensated for their $14 billion in annual revenues and growing every year.

I see benefits for athletes becoming employees, which would give schools the ability to collectively bargain and create enforceable contracts that could benefit college sports and be a way to reduce transfers and stabilize rosters.

With so much money and history involved, I’m quite confident that all parties involved will eventually reach a fair resolution.

And while the structure of college athletics is in constant flux, the big games, the upsets, the pageantry, the rivalries and everything that makes college sports great will continue.

Any changes and uncertainty should not distract you from your favorite sports and competitions.

*** Monday’s thoughts are brought to you by Uncle Keith’s Red Sauce. I was a customer before I invited them as a sponsor, and I was hooked at the first taste. It is available in the original and popular version and can be found at Publix throughout Alabama, along with select Piggly Wiggly’s, Renfroe’s, Kroger’s in Auburn/Opelika and online. Uncle Keith’s Red Sauce was born right here in Alabama. ***

Today’s musical journey takes us back 42 years to the release of the hit film in the franchise, which featured a new theme song based on a line from the film. On May 28, 1982, the film Rocky III starring Sylvester Stallone appeared in theaters. It features the new Survivor song “Eye of the Tiger,” which Stallone asked Stallone to write and record for the film after being denied permission to use Queen’s “Another One Bites The Dust.” In the third film in the series, Mr. T plays Clubber Lang fighting Rocky, who is now trained by his former adversary, Apollo. It grossed $270 million worldwide, the second best gross of 1982 behind E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The song spent six weeks at number one on the Billboard 100 and was the second best-selling single of 1982. It won a Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals and was nominated for Best Original Song at the 55th Academy Awards, losing to “Up Where We Belong” from “An Officer and a Gentleman.” The song “Eye of the Tiger” was written by guitarist Frankie Sullivan and keyboardist Jim Peterik and featured a riff that matched the beat beats during the film’s opening montage. The band sent Stallone a demo, which he eventually used in the film, while the band re-recorded it for a single and album. “Eye of the Tiger” was used as the intro song for Auburn Football in the 1990s and was a staple of the Australian team’s performances for decades.

Survivor was founded by Sullivan and Peterik in Chicago in 1978. The group’s name comes from Peterik missing a plane trip to guest star with Chase in 1974. The plane crashed, killing Bill Chase and most of his team. Peterik was referred to as a survivor in the liner notes of his 1978 album Don’t Fight the Feeling. Two of Chase’s former band members, drummer Gary Smith and bassist Dennis Keith Johnson, were added to Survivor along with vocalist Dave Bickler. For over four decades, the band had over 20 members, with only Sullivan remaining from the original group. Survivor’s first two albums, 1979’s Survivor and 1981’s Premonition, produced no hits. Their breakthrough came with “Eye of the Tiger”, the band’s only No. 1 single on the charts, and their fifth album, 1984’s Vital Signs, which featured two top ten singles: High on You” and “The Search is Over”, as well as another hit “I Can’t Hold Back”, and coincided with Bickler being replaced by Jimi Jamison as vocalist. They almost had another No. 1 single with 1985’s “Burning Heart,” which was also commissioned by Stallone as part of the Rocky IV soundtrack. The last top 10 single came in 1986 with “Is This Love.” Survivor produced eight albums and remains active to this day. Jamison died in 2014.