Taking a break from my posting hiatus to share something I saw on Volquest. The one thing that he missed is that you also get good memorabilia from them as well.
I have no affiliation with Spyre or Vol Club but I'd encourage everyone to join.They're currently at 2,138.. if we get to 2,150 tonight, I might come out of retirement.
Memberships - The Volunteer Club
Acceptable reasons in my opinion to not support Volunteer Club
1) You can’t afford to
- I doubt most people on here can't find a way to give $5 a month but there are some people who literally cannot and it's certainly everyone's prerogative to spend their money as they see fit
2) You so morally disagree with how collectives have played out and the institutions around faux amateurism so you'd rather see Tennessee lose players than support something you disagree with in how it came to be
- It's a somewhat interesting moral stance to take but unfortunately not a practical one if we want to get and retain top talent, keep our coaches and win games. As long as there are other programs supporting Name, Image and Likeness through a combination of collectives support, the talent will go there so you can't sit on the sidelines without burning our program to the ground in the near-term
3) Others will do it for you
- This feels like a selfish mindset to me and if everyone acted this way, we’d fall way behind, lose players and ultimately our coaches but I know there's a lot of selfishness out there and a lot of people that just let others carry the weight
4) You just don’t care that much
- I don't know why you're on a Tennessee message board if so, but I totally get it. College sports are kind of weird thing in general
5) You are generally afraid of change
- Evolving and being nimble is difficult and moving forward can often leads to a place that's worse than what you left behind. That said, we have no option but to move forward if we want to get and retain talent, keep our coaches and win games.
6) You have this fantasized view of why players have historically come to Tennessee and why they should in the future
- I've got some really bad news on why a lot of kids have come to Tennessee (or any other school) historically. Also have you seen the quality of kids that have come to Tennessee in the last decade? That said, if you truly believe every kid should go to a college based only on the brand and opportunity on the field than so be it. It's not conducive to winning games in this world though unfortunately
Questions or arguments I disagree with
1) This isn't totally the intent of Name Image and Likeness. It's a misnomer
- Maybe so.. But why are you so caught up on semantics? It's a free market and what the NCAA "intends" is not some biblical referendum on anything. This is capitalism at play and someone's worth is what someone else is willing to pay
2) Why should I spend my hard earned money to fund players salaries?
- It's your prerogative to spend your money however you want. That said if we game theory this out, we lose our players and eventually our coach without supporting the Volunteer Club. You buying a t-shirt doesn't get us there because other programs fund through a combination of pure "marketing" opportunities and then a backstop of guarantees. Without Volunteer Club, our players would simply go to the programs that do that and over-time we would lose our great coaches to places that fund the top athletes.
3) Shouldn't kids come to the University for the benefits they already get?
- This became professionalized a long time ago. We have coaches making $8-10M a year. Should they just be doing this for the love of the university? College football specifically generates $100M+ for universities profiting off of the players who in total get benefits maybe totaling $100K? This has been a legalized anti-capitalistic system for a long, long time and as a capitalist I think it's nice to see it change, even if not perfect
4) Shouldn't rich boosters be funding this? Why should the average person do this?
- This isn't sparing boosters that have large amounts of money. There are big boosters that support Spyre and it's amazing that they do, but unfortunately we don't have the same number of mega billionaires that schools like Texas do so we need to take advantage of what we do have, which is an endlessly passionate fanbase who can give something. The big boosters still need to step up to get us to the amounts we want to but without a fully funded Volunteer Club, we'll lose players to the portal and eventually our coaches because of that.
5) Shouldn't the university be funding this? Or the coaches? The university makes over $100M a year through football and the coaches make a ton as well?
- Over-time this is might be where it ends up, but currently the university nor the coaches can fund it this way. It will take coordination among states, universities and therefore likely ultimately the federal government to get there. Until then we're in this prisoner's dilemma that if we don't do this, we lose our players to programs that will do this and therefore eventually our coaches. Also there are definitely dollars going here that would be going to the university otherwise so it definitely is in part coming "from" the university.
6) Some of these guaranteed contracts create no incentive for players to fully maximize the marketing opportunities that Tennessee provides
- This is akin to saying that giving a sales rep a base salary means that they have no incentive to earn a bonus. Or a record label or a band signing an artist and giving an advance gives them no incentive to outperform that amount of money. There are always incentives to succeed
7) Won't some of these players "flop" and just hang around cashing checks?
- There will definitely be some players that earn more than they produce, but the contracts cannot legally be contingent on production and so this is the game on the field. Also the dollars are mostly small compared to what a player could earn in the NFL so most players will likely look to move on to have a chance to get on the field even if they have an NIL deal
8) I don't like Spyre "profiting" off of my money
- First, Spyre is filled with Tennessee alums that work their tails off for the university and the players. They are salt of the earth good people who give their all for Tennessee. Second, Spyre takes 10% of Volunteer Club to fund administration. This is in line with the lowest take rates of even non-profits and doesn't even cover the overhead associated with the Vol Club. To think your dollars are funding people getting rich is factually inaccurate
