RE: Tony Kurre’s latest interview with Mark Ingram
What I am alluding to is perfectly legal within NCAA rules. It is free enterprise and the universities have no control over the exercise of free market participation beyond compliance with those NCAA guidelines. They also do not, and cannot, control this pot of money or determine how it is spent.
The most ambitious schools have now come to recognize this as a win-win for the institutions, the athletes and the fans and are doing all they can within those guidelines to encourage participation and growth. In the power 5, that is pretty much everybody now. In the G5, schools like SMU, Memphis, Boise State, USF, UTSA are being *very* aggressive.
It is the new world and it is not going away.
I have been doing a lot of research on how these collectives work. I find it fascinating and probably have spent too much free time on it but it is one of the biggest changes in college sports in our lifetimes and there are so many headlines to read. Are there some dirty ones? Sure, but most seem to be operating within the lines as defined.
These are:
1) it cannot be a recruiting inducement. In other words, come here and get x. Can’t do that. What you can do, however, is highlight the support in place and how current players participate. Does that happen? Sure. But that is against the rules just like always and I expect some schools to get busted for that soon.
2) activity must be quid pro quo. In other words, nil deals must be attached to a documentable set of deliverables that must be fulfilled by the athlete.
3) the schools cannot directly participate in making the deals or cause the payment to take place. They can educate and direct booster and businesses on where to go to support student-athletes. The coaches and staff now can actively participate in this promotion or in promoting the athletes’ NIL endeavors.
4) the individual schools can determine other conduct such as whether university marks and facilities can be used, etc. Some schools allow this and some don’t. State laws can influence those policies. They also can in some cases place limits on categories (alcohol, cannabis, porn) or certain brands that conflict with university contracts. (if your school is Nike, you can’t wear a competing brand in competition, for example).
Nil activity can include a lot more than just things like commercial endorsements. It can apply to things coaches have always done like paid media and public appearances, merchandise, etc.
It can apply to appearances, coaching sessions, camp participation, starting your own business while still in college and using your athletic fame to promote it. It includes a ton of things that regular students can do that athletes could not just because they were athletes. If you want to pay Jelly Walker to come make ballon animals at your kids’ birthday party, you can lol.
Where the collectives come in is in raising money and finding sponsors. They act as a third-party agency, essentially, which actually is needed under the new guidelines because the school’s role is limited to education, compliance and promotion of how to participate.
There seem to be several approaches to collectives. Some are classified as charities. This is noble and I am seeing some very cool things being done like players doing Thanksgiving food banks and driving awareness to fundraising. But that also could be sticky — the IRS is a stickler for things like tax fraud so I personally probably wouldn’t go that route.
The UAB collectives, I think, are more the other model where the athletes are essentially employees of the collective and are paid a set salary for a set of deliverables such as appearances, autographed, product endorsements, camps, etc. The collectives fund this through donations, memberships which include goods and services in exchange to the funds, and more traditional business deals in whick players are then matched with opportunities. I do not know but I am going to guess that things like players appearing at restaurants and making media appearances under a sponsor fall into these categories.
Players are also free to do their own things outside of the collectives. Jelly with Barstool would be an example.
Players are required to report all this data, including any in-kind goods and services they receive. Think about it — kid goes home to see his parents and gets himself free lunch for the family in exchange for posting a shout out on Instagram. That is NIL. They also have to make sure they are handling their taxes the right way.
I read somewhere that the expected going raise for a power 5 collective is gonna to be $10 million per year. I know there are g5 schools like SMU trying to raise $5 million+ per year.
Somebody in the G5 is going to nail this and win a CFP game and transform their program. Somebody in the G5 is going to become Gonzaga within one or two recruiting classes. Somebody in the G5 who is good now is going to drag their feet and lose their status.
We are kidding ourselves if we think kids like Jelly Walker and Eric Gaines will show up here or kids like McBride stay here without NIL support. At same time, leaning into it could get kids like that some elite help.
(This post was last modified: 12-03-2022 01:17 PM by DuelingDragon.)
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