RE: NIL
(02-11-2025 10:12 AM)ez272 Wrote:
Saw this on the SEMO message board:

"On a side not. I was reading the USI fan forum and they were talking about NIL's. someone mentioned that they had 40k in NIL money but they heard that Little Rock had 400K in NIL money. I don't think we'll ever be able to compete with that. Notice neither one of those schools have a football program. Their NIL money will all go mostly to basketball. Does anyone know how much we have?"

In the USI case, is that $40,000 just for basketball or for all of athletics.

I am not so surprised that 40K is all USI has given this is the schools 2nd year at D1. I am surprised that SEMO doesn't have at least 100K. I would think 100K would be the baseline for OVC teams. Especially those with football.

Wonder if that 400K figure for us is accurate. I have heard nothing about this. When Frank Cuervo was hired he said he would be working on an NIL program, but again I have seen or heard nothing. That figure might help explain how we have been able to sign high major transfers like Lawson and Wilkinson, and keep Jackson Wells on the pitching staff. When we announced the conference move, I did believe we would have advantages over other conference teams in the OVC that we clearly did not have in the Sun Belt. While I always liked the idea of being in the best possible conference, being the "big dog" in a lesser conference certainly has its advantages. Like playing for first place tonight (although we can't even get an article about the game in the local paper).

The point that was made about football is also a good one. Not having to provide NIL to 85 football players (or however many of those we would fund) makes it a lot easier to find funding for basketball players.

I know very little about NIL, so I’m not really qualified to even guess.

But I will say, I’m sure people donating money do, or can, designate where it goes. And football may pull in a whole group of donors who don’t give a fig about basketball. The money may essentially be different pots, different fans, different donors.

I hope you are right, but Chicago is such a saturated market that I cannot imagine our getting much traction in football. Little Rock has looked at it in the past and discarded the idea because there is no use playing football in Arkansas because the U of A is a virtual monopoly.