NCAA agrees athletes can make money from their fame

That's the choice players will be making this fall

Strange times
Surely they’re smart enough to know that nobody cares about their NIL if they’re not performing well on the field/court. Being good will make them money, not just being on the team
 
Some of you all are freaking out for nothing. Very few players are going to actually benefit from this.

So apparently two Miami players got 20k each straight out of the gates for an endorsement or sponsorship from a moving company.




Meanwhile two women's basketball players at Fresno State signed a deal with Boost Mobile thought to be worth up to 50 or 60k apiece, and thanks to their millions of Tik Tok followers they stand to reach seven figures if they continue to accept deals.

Behind the Scenes With the Faces of Day 1 of NIL

I think you may be vastly, vastly underestimating how large a tidal wave is headed for college athletics.
 
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Some of you all are freaking out for nothing. Very few players are going to actually benefit from this.
I think it depends on the school, but why not? If I was an AD or coach, I’d persuade my boosters to hire all my players and guarantee recruits a certain amount. If a booster is going to give a few million a year anyway, why not use it for the players. That will lead to winning quicker than anything, and will lead to keeping jobs longer than getting donations for facilities/scholarships etc.
 
So apparently two Miami players got 20k each straight out of the gates for an endorsement or sponsorship from a moving company.




Meanwhile two women's basketball players at Fresno State signed a deal thought to be worth up to half a million dollars, thanks to their millions of Tik Tok followers. And they're looking to sign more deals in the near future.

Behind the Scenes With the Faces of Day 1 of NIL

I think you may be vastly, vastly underestimating how large a tidal wave is headed for college athletics.

The Miami players are King, their star QB and Bolden, who is one of the best safeties in America. Again, high profile players are going to have the potential to make good money, which is exactly the point I was making.

And the Fresno State story is about twin sister basketball players who have a massive following on tik tok and Instagram. So obviously they are going to be able to make a lot of money because of their presence on social media. Hell there’s a LSU gymnast who is going to have the potential to bring in seven figures a year simply because of the amount of followers that she has on Instagram.
 
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ESPN started this mess and now we witness the end of college athletics as we know it. I’m blessed I got to see what it was and now how easy it will be to turn it off. R.I.P.
 
Some of you all are freaking out for nothing. Very few players are going to actually benefit from this.

Social media accounts/followers may prove otherwise. Many athletes that aren't on TV all the time have huge social-media audiences.
 
Any school in an ultra big media market now has an instant advantage in recruiting. Think UCLA/USC. The amount of money kids can get for making tv appearances and the like will be enormous compared to Knoxville or Nashville.

Disagree, especially since many of these student athletes have a large social media presence that can pay well based on the number of followers, regardless of media market.

Old farts like me still watch TV, but I’m quickly becoming the exception.

Playing in small media markets hasn’t limited professional athletes from making money on endorsements, and I don’t see it being any different for college athletes under these new NIL rules.
 
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Social media accounts/followers may prove otherwise. Many athletes that aren't on TV all the time have huge social-media audiences.

What he said.

The marketing reach and earning potential of any given athlete is no longer limited to the media market where they reside.

It’s a new day, get used to it.
 
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It will hardly be a big deal at all in 2 years imo.

I think the fun hasn't even started. My guess as to additional legal problems.

- many more mega class action lawsuits against the NCAA and member schools into the $10s of billions
- DOJ Anti-trust Division may prosecute the NCAA for their new stupid rules
- Players sue individual States (depending on the NIL law) for Constitutional "taking"
- I would think DOJ might have an issue with the number of scholarship players as that would be restricting competition, but have to see on that. DOJ did tell them lighten up on transfers, and the NCAA has been steadily dropping rules for that over the last few years.

Economic problems.
- mega class action lawsuits which the schools will be on the hook for
- facilities and long-term coaches salaries liabilities
- TV/Radio contracts are going to take major hits as some schools are not going to play the arms war
- eventually the players will figure out they walk off the field together in the middle of prime time TV if the schools don't put them under contract

My guess is eventually major splits in college sports, but its hard to guess the details at this point. The business model will disappear very rapidly once the TV contracts need to be renewed.
 
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I'm interested in what institutional pressures will increase to 'win', when winning now will result in more sponsorship shekels going to 'winning' programs/players. No company wants to sponsor a loser.

Or will star players on 'losing' teams/programs still rake in the bucks at the same level?
 
Long quote, sorry, but worth a read....the bolded part addresses the question I posed just above, in a way:

“Will male or female athletes end up making more money from NIL?”

Men will make more money in totality, I think, but many individual women will make an absolute ton of money off their social media profiles too.

But the reasons people will be paying will differ.

I think men’s basketball and football players will make money based on the interest level in their sports, which are far higher than any other sports, but I think the women who cash in will do so based less on their athletic achievements and more on their looks, humor, and personality. That is, the Instagram influencer market is essentially run by women and almost all of the women making good money there are really good looking. I suspect that overarching model will govern here too.

I’m curious how long it will take for the criticism to be levied that men’s name, image, and likeness dollars tend to be tethered to athletic ability, while women’s name, image, and likeness money tend to be linked to looks. This isn’t necessarily anything new, remember Anna Kournikova made tens of millions of dollars without ever being one of the top ten tennis players in the world, while way more accomplished women’s tennis players made much less. Now Kournikova came along before social media existed, but there’s no telling what she would make in the modern era. Probably way more.

One thing to keep an eye on if the money becomes substantially pronounced in favor of male athletes: will there be lawsuits based on Title IX? In other words, will some female athletes file lawsuits saying that men being paid massive amounts of money outside the scholarship world violates Title IX, which requires colleges treat all athletes equally? We don’t really know the answer to a lawsuit like this — and I suspect it would take many years to resolve — but the more active, interestingly, schools are in monitoring and policing name, image and likeness money, the more of an argument women would have that these payments should be included as part of Title IX.

If Title IX lawsuits like these happen, and courts find they have merit, then I think what you’d end up with is a large cash pool for all athlete endorsement money that gets redistributed evenly to all scholarship athletes.

A couple of other NIL issues that I find really interesting: what will internal locker room dynamics be like when the quarterback is making over a million dollars a year, but other players are making a tiny fraction of that? Remember, there will be a clear superstar effect at play here. Most football and men’s basketball players, even on good teams, are relatively anonymous. So how will this work when some players become rich and most players remain poor?

Furthermore, can you imagine some of the wild trouble million dollar college athletes are going to find themselves in. Think about when you were in college. How often did parties get out of control even if you guys had no money to spend? Can you imagine the parties that would surround a 19 year old multi-million dollar college athlete? Can you imagine the strippers and hookers that might make their way to campus to cash in too? How many Don Kings are there going to be, signing young athletes out there to crazy deals that advantage the marketing agent more than the player? This is going to be the absolute wild west.

And there’s no way, by the way, this isn’t going to flood into recruiting. I know, I know, the schools themselves aren’t going to be paying, but wealthy fans are going to be signing up top recruits and directing them to their favored programs. I don’t know how this will be policed. You can make a handshake deal that as soon as the scholarship is signed or a player arrives on campus he gets a ton of cash to endorse your product.

Every top school is going to have twenty Buddy Garrity’s out there gladhandling for top recruits.

Which is why I actually think NIL might lead to top players going to different schools. Would you rather be, for instance, Alabama’s tenth five star or would you rather be Mississippi State’s only five star? Which would potentially pay better, being the best player on a smaller school or one of a dozen top players? I think it’s the former.

And it could impact the non power five too. Would you rather be Southern Miss’s top player in their class if you’re from Hattiesburg, for instance, or would you rather be Ole Miss’s 20th best recruit? I think this will be fascinating to watch.

A few other questions: how will NIL impact existing sponsorship dollars for schools? Let’s say there’s an official pizza or soda of an athletic department. If I’m one of the rival brands, why wouldn’t I sign the top players and put them in conflict with the university brand deal? How much policing of this will schools be allowed to do without creating anti-trust issues for themselves?

Speaking of policing, why does the NCAA need to exist now? For generations the NCAA has policed “improper benefits” for athletes based on the amateurism standard of college athletics. Now that athletes can all get paid and transfer pretty much without any prohibitions, what’s the NCAA’s role now? Sure, they put on championships and set basic rules, but is that really worth billions of dollars? Why does this vast bureaucracy need to exist at all? And how, by the way, is the NCAA going to punish schools with boosters accused of paying players now that boosters can effectively pay players? These are all major questions to resolve.

Finally, if your “job” is effectively moving from playing a sport to promoting yourself and your own personal brand, how does that interact with team success? Lots of college coaches have been able to manage their teams by telling players if they listen to them they’ll be millionaires in pro sports. But what if some players can become millionaires just by listening to their social followings?

It’s a brave new world, buckle up.
 
What he said.

The marketing reach and earning potential of any given athlete is no longer limited to the media market where they reside.

It’s a new day, get used to it.


While this may be true, the universities which reside inside HUGE media markets (the greater Loss Angeles, New York, Chicago, Miami, areas) will make **** tons of money ON TOP of their social media endorsements. The playing field is in no way level here. And if your state is slow to develop these new guidelines then your program will suffer even more than just being in a small market.

Places like Alabama, Clemson, Ohio St and others (Tennessee) will begin losing recruiting battles to much smaller "non-powerhouse" schools in much bigger markets.
 
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Which is why I actually think NIL might lead to top players going to different schools. Would you rather be, for instance, Alabama’s tenth five star or would you rather be Mississippi State’s only five star? Which would potentially pay better, being the best player on a smaller school or one of a dozen top players? I think it’s the former.

I dont think the kid will be choosing between Bama and Miss St. They will be choosing between Bama and UCLA or Bama and Northwestern or Bama and Rutgers. The teams near or inside huge media markets are about to flip the tables on recruiting.
 
While this may be true, the universities which reside inside HUGE media markets (the greater Loss Angeles, New York, Chicago, Miami, areas) will make **** tons of money ON TOP of their social media endorsements. The playing field is in no way level here. And if your state is slow to develop these new guidelines then your program will suffer even more than just being in a small market.

Places like Alabama, Clemson, Ohio St and others (Tennessee) will begin losing recruiting battles to much smaller "non-powerhouse" schools in much bigger markets.

Possibly, but take Los Angeles for example - college sports are not the king in LA. The LA market is saturated with sports and other entertainment vying for your in-market dollars. USC and UCLA are important to college sports fans, but in Los Angeles their brand is far behind the Lakers, the Dodgers, the Kings, etc. Not to mention competing with UC-Irvine and every other regional college crammed into that part of the country.

For example, we don't know USC's revenue numbers, but we do UCLA's - they're ranked out of the top 30 for program revenue. Some of that is the PAC-10's abysmal negotiations on media, but again, part of why those negotiations are so hard is that they're on Pacific time but also the conference brands just aren't as valuable to advertisers as some of the other brands out there. And having lived in that part of the country, most of their population couldn't care less about college sports. When you stack up all their methods for obtaining revenue, however you do it, they aren't playing with the big names.

The sweet spot will be markets big enough to grow an individual player's brand value, and offer opportunities for income after college sports, but not so big that they're effectively irrelevant to the local market.
 
The sweet spot will be markets big enough to grow an individual player's brand value, and offer opportunities for income after college sports, but not so big that they're effectively irrelevant to the local market.

I think the ability of players to make money other than signing day is very limited other than the star players. I mean, if you turn on your local channels you rarely see the local average joe Pro player is doing car dealership commercials if they are lucky. Nobody wants 99.9% of these kids in their ads. Although they are talking about this NIL, really the only money to be had other than the star players is on signing day. So, basically everyone is a free agent and unless a sponsor has a multi-year agreement to stay in place... in theory, the free agency contract is one year at a time.

Eventually these kids will be coming for the pie (revenues of the sports programs and tv contracts).

Class action lawsuits + No salary cap + Ability to transfer basically at will + Ability to not perform = Destruction of business model
 
I think the ability of players to make money other than signing day is very limited other than the star players. I mean, if you turn on your local channels you rarely see the local average joe Pro player is doing car dealership commercials if they are lucky. Nobody wants 99.9% of these kids in their ads. Although they are talking about this NIL, really the only money to be had other than the star players is on signing day. So, basically everyone is a free agent and unless a sponsor has a multi-year agreement to stay in place... in theory, the free agency contract is one year at a time.

Eventually these kids will be coming for the pie (revenues of the sports programs and tv contracts).

Class action lawsuits + No salary cap + Ability to transfer basically at will + Ability to not perform = Destruction of business model

To me, the people who argue that things are fine are assuming the best of everyone involved. They don't think or account for the bad actors who will slam the gas pedal right into the floor if they think it's a guaranteed win.

My assumption is that if you take the thin veneer of "kids making 500 dollars from a local car dealership" off the surface of this, it's the bidding war the big schools will engage in via proxies in the community which will really blow the lid of this thing. The outliers are the ones which will determine future rules and limitations, or lack thereof. Imagine some kid who catches 12 touchdowns in a season in the WAC but decides he's worth more now and uses his one time transfer to engage in a bidding war between a half dozen power five schools. Or a junior on a decent basketball team who averages 20 and 10, and then simultaneously does both his NBA draft evaluation and also fills out his transfer portal paperwork - ostensibly for some person reason but in reality because he wants to get paid big bucks and will stay "in school" and transfer if a school gives him a good offer or if the draft results aren't lottery level.

The landscape will be chaos for a year or two. Then it will settle a bit. The rules will be clear. And then the shadow boosters with the money to play will up the ante. And just like that, we'll be off to the races. Values will inflate. It won't be about the value of the sponsorship to the business. It'll be about the value of the player to the team's chances on the field next season.
 

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