Last Edited: 11/8/2023 9:42:56 PM by FearLeon

Last Edited: 11/8/2023 9:50:30 PM by Cellis033

Last Edited: 11/9/2023 11:10:25 AM by M.D.W.S.T

Last Edited: 11/9/2023 12:25:01 PM by FearLeon

Well, that certainly was the spirit of the law. I belong to a group in Dayton that has ADs from Dayton, Wright St., Miami and UC speak each year. They were all in favor of true NIL. If a car dealership wanted to hire an athlete to make an appearance to help drive auto sales, then that was perfectly acceptable. But they ALL said they knew that's what this wasn't going to be. Add in the removal of sit-out year and you have free agency that has the pro sports leagues envious.

So now you have collectives raising millions of dollars and just giving to players (although players are often asked to make an appearance at charity events to legitimize the transaction). There is still true NIL. Ohio has a platform set up to allow you interact directly with athletes (INFLCR Exchange). Ohio's collective is 1804sportcollective.com. I understand that to be primarily focused on basketball but I could be wrong.

Just as the MAC has never joined the arms race in terms of facilities or coaching salaries, I don't see it being a huge player in NIL. Many schools are in small cities/towns with fanbases that can't generate meaningful money.

But the NIL money certainly changes the landscape at the Power 5 level. There was an article in today's Athletic about Pitino and the NIL at St. John's. He determined he would need around $2.3M to put together the team he wanted. So he went to about 30-40 fundraising events to get that money. Pitno said that, with NIL, St. John's is the same as Kentucky. The University of Dayton was on the verge of losing star big man DaRon Holmes. He had an offer of $1M to leave (presumably from Kansas who ended up giving Michigan's Hunter Dickinson $1M). Their collective, Dayton 6th, was able to give Holmes $500K (plus he had true NIL deals) and that was enough to get him to stay.

Many of the ADs feel you have to play the game right now to the extent you can. Although they all believe it will moderate. At some point, people will want ROI from NIL. Plus, universities will start trying to pull back donor dollars into their coffers vs it going to the players. At least in the very short-term, conference realignment and massive player movement doesn't seem to impact the popularity of college athletics. But you start to wonder about its future.