(07-07-2021 12:55 PM)Kayjay Wrote: It is clear we all have opinions about NIL and what will happen to college football in the future. So put yourself in Dr. K and Coach Bloom and Pera's (and the rest of the coaches) chair and let us know what you would do to source, develop and leverage the NIL opportunities to gain a competitive advantage for Rice athletes to enhance Rice's athletic program(s). This is a tectonic shift in college athletics so it is an opportunity to have a real positive impact on these student-athletes and Rice athletics
While the University cannot directly arrange NIL opportunities for the Student Athlete I am certain many Universities are brainstorming with groups and encouraging the development of NIL opportunities for their student athletes. One key regulation is that prospective student athletes are not eligible until they are actually enrolled and also no NIL opportunity can exceed the time that the Student Athlete is on campus competing.
I'm sorry, but there is absolutely no way this is a positive development/growth opportunity for small schools like Rice.
It's a positive for individual kids, sure. Anyone who wants to pay Rice athletes and recruits, knock yourselves out. The kids will appreciate it, I'm sure.
But other fans of other schools will be doing the same, and they outnumber us, vastly in most cases (especially w/r/t schools Rice people care about competing with and comparing themselves to).
So on a program level, that means there will be little to no ROI to paying Rice kids. The only ones doing it will be pure altruists or people with more money than sense.
I mean, *maybe* we theoretically have enough collective wealth and will to punch above our weight vs. CUSA and similar schools. We can probably buy better teams in most sports than Southern Miss and UTSA, for instance. Better than Texas, though? Or TCU, Baylor, A&M...? Or Stanford, Duke, Vandy, Northwestern...? Absolutely not. Never.
I think there's no question that the gulf between P5 and G5 will widen exponentially from here on out.
And if the best my money can buy is, say, a CUSA-competitive team with an impenetrable ceiling above that due to the increasing concentration of talent at schools with alumni bases that can out-resource us now that those resources have been officially unlocked, well then, I'll just hang on to my money, thanks.