I was having a conversation with my family - heard a rumor of BYU again tampering with Utah players and offering them huge sums of money to transfer next year. One that I heard is that an unnamed player was offered $2.5M a year to transfer - and no he isn’t a QB.
And we can gripe about what it is today, but my question or discussion is this: Can it last? It makes no economic sense, and eventually the well is going to run dry not just for us, but for nearly every school in the nation.
Let’s look at the pros. A team drafts players and pays them a salary, and then they get an ROI on that investment through wins, but also ticket and merch sales, etc. Simplistic, I know, but at the end of the day the athlete is an employee of the organization. Of course there are their own brand deals etc, but for simplicity sake let’s stick with that model.
But that isn’t the case for college. Now boosters are giving money, under the guise of NIL work deals, for the schools. What it means is that BYU has found a booster or booster(s) who are willing to part with $7.5M (the player mentioned above has three years left to play), and what do they get in return? What is the economic model of a business getting that much in sales or whatever from that deal for a non-skill player, and nominal star? It doesn’t exist.
Right now, they’re talking guys into it so their favorite team can win, but the price tags keep going up and the winning for most teams is staying the same. It seems to me it surely is going to collapse on itself for a variety of reasons.
So I’d love to hear how things are going to work even 10 years from now if this model persists, because I can’t see it.
My gut says no. The NIL cannot last, for the reasons you mentioned above. That’s ok, IMO. What bothers me is the tampering. At least the NBA has the tampering period, then signing period. We all know that the tampering period is for looks only, but at least it exists. If a team gets too crazy with tampering then they get in trouble. What is the equivalent for the NCAA? None as far as I know. So, what are the consequences for “enticing” players? None, at least not yet.
I hope that the Wild West idea of the NIL gets reined in soon. It’ll kill my love of CFB if it isn’t.
Ed O’Bannon had a legitimate case for his NIL not beniftting him. Throwing lots of money at OL or others who only see TV time when there’s a flag thrown on them? Don’t think so.
It’s weird to say but the visibility is a huge draw for universities. Under Nick Saban, University of Alabama grew 60% in enrollment (if you count this year’s enrollment as a residual effect). We’re counter the trend (daughter is a HS Junior considering colleges) where we are touring NE, Midwest, and West Coast schools. Apparently, all the kids around the US are looking at the SEC schools for the atmosphere of sports and easier academics. Not to mention schools like Alabama are actually cheaper with how many merit scholarships they are giving to high achieving OOS students.
That said, we’re looking at degrees that tend to be only at maybe three of the SEC schools since they aren’t that great at Engineering outside Texas A&M, Texas, and Florida, which my kid has zero interest in. She’s def more into Evanston, Madison, West Lafayette (this shocked me) and Ann Arbor over Austin.
People spend money on entertainment. Entertainers are not paid according to skill, or value to society, or any kind of objective merit. They make money by attracting attention from people who will pay for it.
Compare Kylie Jenner and whomever is the guest artist of the week for the Utah Symphony- massively rich vs getting by. Completely unskilled vs remarkable talent after years of dedicated practice. There is no point in trying to sort out whether it is fair or ought to be that way. It just is.
The college system looks like chaos because it is. The old system was ruled illegal and bam- new system with new formulas for success.
Extremely rich fans paying players is like normal people setting up a pond in the back yard or getting season tiks to watch the Utes play. There is no ROI on your Koi pond but that does not mean that Koi ponds will stop existing. My not understanding why you would want to spend 20k on a Koi pond makes no difference. You want it and do it. Then your neighbor gets jealous and spends 40k on his Koi pond and I still don’t get it.
Same deal for NIL athletes. Boosters for schools that have been on the outside looking in for years are hungry and willing to spend their $. If/when the economy dives then people will probably spend less on entertainment. Same as always.
Athletes have a short period of profitability- especially for violent sports like football. They should make hay while the sun shines.
Utah’s old formula for success does not work like it used to because it relied on a set of rules that the courts judged illegal. New rules, new formula.
The unfortunate reality for us Utah fans is that the long time boosters of Utah athletics (Eccles and Huntsman family) are old school people like myself who are not terribly enthusiastic about NIL. They are rightfully more interested humanitarian efforts. I have no idea what Harlan and company are doing to generate more interest by younger money. Chris Hill never did this and the U is paying for his lack of interest in developing those relationships.
The result will be that Utah will be on the low end of P4 when it comes to NIL compensation of players. There is nothing on the horizon that will change this. Any efforts (legislative or otherwise) to limit the ability of someone to make money will be unenforceable. Professional sports have salary caps but they do not limit a players ability to sign endorsement deals on top of their salaries.
For Utah coaches the challenge will be to develop players and convince them that their long-term success is in developing and playing as opposed to transferring for money and sitting.
I have a close friend whose grandson is a good Utah HS player class of 27 who will receive offers from Utah State and probably Utah and BYU. His father is pushing him to transfer from his local HS to Corner Canyon to get more visibility because it is worth millions if he gets the right deal. This is a family that has plenty of money.
I’ve noted before that if I came into an outrageous amount of $$$$$ (win the lottery or perhaps hit a progressive slots jackpot), I’d be much more inclined to help set up scholarship funds for gifted students from working class families, help build a research lab, or take another action to help a large number of individuals than to spend millions enticing a few individuals to play sports for my alma mater.
100% agree. I love Utah sports, but I think the Hunstmans dontating hundreds of millions to cancer research and treatment is a wee bit more impactful and important than buying athletes for a season or two.
This is why as part of the recent lawsuit settlement that the NCAA has hired some fancy big 5 auditing firm to run an NIL Clearinghouse, where all NIL deals undergo scrutiny that the athlete is doing something to earn that NIL money. The O’Bannon suit was filed because his “NIL” was used in a popular college bb video game where the school got all the licensing money and he got diddly squat. NIL is supposed to be money you earn through endorsements or other activity, not just a hand-out and a thank you.
Of course the Clearinghouse will be the subject of a lawsuit and will get shot down in the courts as well, thereby enabling more chaos.
Especially now. We’re beginning to see the end of the era of federally funded research at US research universities, which was the way the US went about science after WWII instead of creating enormous national institutes for doing research.
Things like the Internet, the Human Genome project, and lots of other research that ended up changing the world.
A lot of my colleagues are frantically applying for grants from every private donation under the sun (which are unequipped to deal with the tsunami of applications, let alone replace federal funding).
The Huntsmans and Eccles and other like-minded great philanthropists are under some acute pressure… the NIL money ain’t coming from them, I don’t think.