Someday, we’re going to look back and laugh at Wednesday’s announcement by Louisiana football coach Billy Napier that all of the Ragin’ Cajuns’ scholarship football players will be encouraged to join the Ragin’ Cajun Athletic Foundation (RCAF), which has an entry level membership that starts at a $50 donation.

There might be some laughter now, but it’s quickly overtaken by thoughts of “Is this real?” and “Can he do that?”

The team rule was first reported by The Acadiana Advocate, and the encouraged donation is reportedly optional for walk-ons.

“That’s probably a little bit unheard of and a little bit unique, but I think this is a place where that would be appreciated,” Napier told The Advocate. “I think it’s part of the type of program that we want to have. We want our players to be educated and understand the benefits that come with being a student-athlete and that is not something that should be taken lightly — the effort and time and investment that the people that support athletes at UL have put in into this program.”

The final part of that quote – “the effort and time and investment that the people that support athletes at UL have put in into this program” – is where there’s a disconnect.

The school’s website lists a football staff that includes 11 football coaches, a strength and conditioning coach, directors of football operations, video operations, player personnel, recruiting & football logistics, on-campus recruiting, an administrative coordinator and four graduate assistants, plus undoubtedly a number of other invaluable academic, medical and fundraising personnel who operate behind the scenes.

But they’re paid professionals, some of whom are very well compensated.

Napier’s contract with the school guaranteed him $756,960 in his first season, according to The Daily Advertiser, which reported that a contract extension is in the works for its head football coach.

Do the student-athletes, who have to balance a full course load academically with practice, games, lifting, tutoring and travel schedules, let alone a social life or other hobbies, not also invest significant time and effort into their football program and athletic department?

The university’s athletic department, by the way, saw $32.5 million in revenue during the 2017-18 fiscal year and operated at a profit of $82,086, according to USA Today.

The language regarding the new rule was a bit vague when it was announced. Are scholarship players truly only being encouraged to donate to the school’s athletic foundation, or does “encouraged” in this case mean “required”?

Stadium College Football Insider Brett McMurphy reported that players will simply be encouraged and not required, so we’ll have to take the school at its word.

At best, it’s simply a poorly engineered and executed attempt to build loyalty between current student-athletes and the university, which led to bad PR.

At worst, if the use of the word “encouraged” actually turns out to be something much stronger, the move might be borderline illegal. (Could a school really force its student-athletes into an annual donation that was never part of the letters of intents and scholarship agreements that they signed?)

A statement from the university supported the initiative by Napier.

“The Louisiana Ragin’ Cajuns Department of Athletics is thrilled that head coach Billy Napier’s football program and its student-athletes expressed their collective desire to give back and show gratitude to the Ragin’ Cajuns Athletic Foundation,” the statement read. “Members of the football program have started an initiative to demonstrate their appreciation to the RCAF, including its board of directors, staff, and investors, when they are able to do so.”

Once again, this narrative of appreciation feels backwards, when it’s the student-athletes who are responsible for so much of a school’s revenue and publicity.

Somehow the conversation about student-athletes – which, by the way, was a phrase coined by the NCAA as part of a legal ploy to avoid having to pay workmen’s comp claims – getting paid for their name, image and likeness, or simply at a level commensurate with their market value, has swung so far in the other direction, at least at one school, that student-athletes are now being encouraged to pay their school.

To use Napier’s own words, that is not something that should be taken lightly.

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