NIL and university employment

[RUUTES]

Looking at how NIL is really now rapidly morphing from Chaos money flood, to possible contract, to potential university employment I started wondering.

For most universities, massively more money comes into the university from research and patents. So if I have a promising group of athletes and bringing 30 of them costs me 20-30m and the profit from that is maybe 20-30m…

Vs bringing in a bunch of chemists and engineers who cost a fraction of that but make me 100s of millions….

At what point does there become pressure to compensate the brains that actually generate the real revenue? I am not just talking about Cal and Standford. I’m talking about most major universities. Now that “students’ are being paid millions more than brilliant research professors who generate billions…far more than sports do…when will someone start to demand these kinds of dollars? I know we have professions who chase funding. But now the cat is out of the bag and pay to play seems like it could easily be pay to research at the next level.

Frankly I’d feel better if university dollars were going to professors and researchers who’ve frankly done more for universities for far less pay.

Maybe someone will explain how wrong my perspective is but in this new era of mass “NIL” money I’m not sure why it’s got to be limited to sports.

[The Miami Ute]

Sports is a loss-leader for the vast majority of universities. That leads me to conclude that if the courts force universities to compensate athletes as employees, then most universities will take the path of least resistance and drop sports in general. Most will drop sports because such a large group of athletes won’t be affordable to maintain but others, like Cal/Stanford/Vanderbilt/Northwestern, etc..will drop sports due to pressure from academia and because of principle. Something else that could happen is that, with the exception of say, 30-40 huge schools, most schools, if they want to maintain an athletic presence, will drop down to Division III. Below are the rules that Division 3 schools follow for athletes:

Division III (D3) schools do not offer athletic scholarships, but they do provide other forms of financial aid to student-athletes:
– Merit-based scholarships: Recognize academic achievements, leadership, and special talents.
– Need-based financial aid: Considers family income, assets, and other financial obligations to determine the level of assistance.
– Academic scholarships: Based on academic performance.
– Grants and work-study programs: Provide additional financial assistance.
– Institutional grants: Based on a variety of factors, including the student’s background, intended major, and overall fit with the college.
D3 schools are often most generous in offering other kinds of scholarships to athletes, with 75% of Division III athletes receiving nonathletic aid.

Here are some other things to know about D3 football scholarships:
– D3 schools do not require test scores for eligibility.
– D3 schools do not have NCAA Core Course or Core GPA requirements for eligibility.
– Student-athletes must meet the admissions standards set by the school.
– Student-athletes can receive athletic scholarships from private scholarship sources.
– Student-athletes can earn money from endorsements and promotions while remaining amateurs through NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness) rules.

[Archie Larsen]

Love this take. I’ve said it for the past several years. Why are we paying these athletes and giving them so much attention. I wish the big donors at all the schools would get together and start donating to sciences, math, medicine, etc…
We all get excited about some kid signingor sad when they transfer away. It all becomes irrelevant when someone we love has cancer or some other debilitating disease.
Hopefully we can all keep it in perspective.

[Mr Chainsaw]

The University has a Technology Licensing Office. When a professor/researcher invents something new they are encourage d to submit an invention disclosure. Patents are filed and in some cases companies are formed. When the technology is licensed the inventor gets a generous cut along with their department. If a professor is really generating millions of dollars they are probably getting a portion of that. I speak of this as a former employee of the University that still gets annual royalty checks for inventions that were disclosed and now licensed to outside companies.

[AlohaUte]

You make some good thought provoking points. But don’t underestimate what a great football program does for the perception of a University. The University of Utah has benefitted massively from being great at football and being in the Pac-12. An interesting read is looking into how Alabama’s recent run of football dominance completely changed the academics and admissions of the school. They are getting higher quality of students from more states and countries applying because the perception of the school has vastly improved.

[Stone]

There was another thread last week about what NIL (name, image, likeness) is supposed to be and what it has become. But worth revisiting how bizarre the NIL world has become. Almost none of the players receiving NIL money have any actual NIL market value, if there was a real NIL market. That is, there are practically zero players that provide a financial return in exchange for being a spokesperson for a company (aka Jordan and Nike). The current NIL market is an entirely bizarre, misallocated market. The NIL payees are not getting a financial return for their NIL money.

To me, that is the only real guardrail for NIL – that the payees (i.e., boosters) will eventually realize that they get nothing from the NIL arrangement beyond the social ego-boost of knowing the money they spent helped the team they cheer for win. Of course, for some, that social ego boost may be enough. The NFL does not ask fan clubs to pay players because it would be absurd to do so. Players get their main money from the team owner (who DOES have a financial incentive to pay players) and sponsors supplement that income when warranted (which is rare).

Given where things are, I believe the only path forward to salvage things is to consolidate a certain number of college teams into a single conference, implement revenue sharing and salary caps, and probably eliminate the guise of the players being student athletes (just make them minor league NFL and have a licensing agreement with the school). The remaining schools then drop to D-III model.

[The Miami Ute]

Here’s what we know…we know that college football, under a certain set of guidelines, has been wildly popular for over a hundred of years. In fact, at one time college football was much more popular than professional football.

Here’s what we don’t know…we don’t know if professionalizing college football will expand or even maintain its current popularity.

My take, and I base it purely on my feelings towards the changes that are afoot and the new normal, is that it won’t.

I’ve said many times that college football is regional and local while the NFL is national. What that means is that it’s easy to root for an NFL team from a city that you’ve never even lived in but much harder to root for a college team that you have zero ties to. If college football eventually forms a Super League of say 30-40 top universities, that’s going to leave a large swath of the country (and a significant number of college football fans) out of the picture.

Personally, I don’t think the networks, the media or the Grand Poobahs from the B1G or SEC realize or understand this. A lot of these people think, and I’ve heard this mentioned, that if some Super League was formed, the state of Utah would be covered by the inclusion of BYU. This as if Utah fans would all of a sudden start following and watching BYU just because it’s a team from the state of Utah. Now, this comes from conflating the sentiments and emotions that apply to professional sports to those present in college sports. However, as I’m sure most people on this site would, there’s absolutely no way that this assumption is correct. Instead, what would happen is that the majority of sports fans in the state of Utah, and certainly most Utah alumni, would just do other things instead of watching BYU in the Super League.

The people that run college football kind of remind me of that line from Apocalypse Now, where CPT Willard says “No wonder Kurtz put a weed up Command’s ass. The war was being run by a bunch of four star clowns who were gonna end up giving the whole circus away.” College football is being run by a bunch of greedy media and P2 clowns that are going to give the whole circus away, and remember this, it’s a lot easier to destroy than it is to build.

[Author]

Posts