NIL-Focused Discussion

[Deleted]

Kofi Cockburn announced today he's signing with an agent and going pro. Fwiw this was from the Illinois board last week on what he wanted to stay at Illinois:

The word I heard today on Kofi Cockburn’s decision, which is due a week from today, is that his people are “still negotiating” and this “may go to the wire.”

Kofi’s camp understandably wants a very high NIL figure, which those I talk to think is unrealistic even for someone of his ability and importance to the program. The Guardians can help put together a big figure, but it doesn’t match the tall ask right now (which sounds like it is well into seven figures).

Maybe this is negotiation? I can’t say for sure. I’m told the two sides are “far apart still.” There’s still a week to go.

Just for context, a two-way contract (probably Kofi’s most likely yet still positive scenario) is an unguaranteed contract of a shade under $500,000. Kofi Cockburn very, very likely would make more than that guaranteed at Illinois. A minimum deal in the NBA is just under $1 million. A G-League contract is about $40,000. An overseas contract in a great league for someone like Kofi would be six figures.

For reference sake Louisville/Adidas allegedly offered Brian Bowen 100k. The price tag for Deandre Ayton was supposedly 10k a month. None of this competes with what kids can earn legally through NIL. Tennessee for instance just signed a quarterback to an 8 million dollar NIL deal.

atozsports.com/nashville/is-5-star-quarterback-nico-iamaleava-worth-8-million-for-tennessee/

[TC]

Apr 20, 2022 17:00:44 GMT -5 @yaboynyp said:

For reference sake Louisville/Adidas allegedly offered Brian Bowen 100k. The price tag for Deandre Ayton was supposedly 10k a month. None of this competes with what kids can earn legally through NIL. Tennessee for instance just signed a quarterback to an 8 million dollar NIL deal.

Isn't this sort of apples and oranges though? This is an approximation, but college football revenue is probably around 4x what college basketball revenue is.

I don't think paying kids the old fashioned way - with bags of cash or jobs for family - has gone extinct in college basketball.

[hoyaboya]

Apr 20, 2022 17:43:04 GMT -5 TC said:

Apr 20, 2022 17:00:44 GMT -5 @yaboynyp said:

For reference sake Louisville/Adidas allegedly offered Brian Bowen 100k. The price tag for Deandre Ayton was supposedly 10k a month. None of this competes with what kids can earn legally through NIL. Tennessee for instance just signed a quarterback to an 8 million dollar NIL deal.

Isn't this sort of apples and oranges though? This is an approximation, but college football revenue is probably around 4x what college basketball revenue is.

I don't think paying kids the old fashioned way - with bags of cash or jobs for family - has gone extinct in college basketball.

Especially for private, non-football schools that don’t have huge alumni bases and/or local businesses set up to pay players through NIL.

[Deleted]

Apr 20, 2022 17:43:04 GMT -5 TC said:

Apr 20, 2022 17:00:44 GMT -5 @yaboynyp said:

For reference sake Louisville/Adidas allegedly offered Brian Bowen 100k. The price tag for Deandre Ayton was supposedly 10k a month. None of this competes with what kids can earn legally through NIL. Tennessee for instance just signed a quarterback to an 8 million dollar NIL deal.

Isn't this sort of apples and oranges though? This is an approximation, but college football revenue is probably around 4x what college basketball revenue is.

I don't think paying kids the old fashioned way - with bags of cash or jobs for family - has gone extinct in college basketball.

I'm sure it hasn't but how can you compete with what someone at an SEC or Big Ten school can offer a kid legally? I don't expect a b-ball player to get 8 mill but Illinois was willing to give Kofi close to a million dollars. That's 10x's what AZ gave Ayton and Ville was trying to give Bowen just a few years ago.

[TC]

I don't think in the long run you can, but I'm not sure we're dealing with mature markets that are transparent, organized, and sustainable yet. Bags of cash from an assistant's pocket may be a more concrete avenue to payment at this point.

[Deleted]

Apr 20, 2022 18:29:26 GMT -5 TC said:

I don't think in the long run you can, but I'm not sure we're dealing with mature markets that are transparent, organized, and sustainable yet. Bags of cash from an assistant's pocket may be a more concrete avenue to payment at this point.

It's not at those schools. Same is true for nearly all SEC schools and the majority of the Big Ten.

[EasyEd]

NIL is the final nail in the coffin for any hope of Georgetown ever again becoming a major player in college basketball.

[daveg023]

There is a part of me that believes markets have a way of evening out over time. Right now its the wild west and the money is flowing. But after some time and many fruitless endorsements, perhaps some of this calms down and the money becomes more reasonable to account for the fact these are kids with very unpredictable outcomes. At some point throwing $1-2MM over and over on "busts" might have some beginning to question the investment?

Or perhaps it never normalizes, and the money just grows and only 15-20 wealthy state universities will be competing at the highest levels for basketball and football.

[C86]

Notre Dame is now in the act. And in the height of cynicism, they have figured out how to make paying off players tax-deductible. www.on3.com/teams/notre-dame-fighting-irish/news/notre-dame-fund-friends-of-the-university-of-notre-dame-brady-quinn-tom-mendoza/

[Massholya]

I have to admit I do not like the direction of college sports right now. Rooting for players who are 1 year rentals is like watching a worse version of professional sports where at least players have contracts to stay multiple years in most cases. I am not sure I will be able to maintain my past levels of interest in college basketball when all the teams have new rosters every year. Part of the attraction was growing to hate other teams players that beat up on you for years as well seeing your own players grow and develop. Maybe others feel differently and maybe college football is just another animal as it seems those fans really don’t care about anything except W’s. However, if it continues like this it just doesn’t really feel like “college sports” anymore.

[Deleted]

Apr 20, 2022 21:42:47 GMT -5 Massholya said:

I have to admit I do not like the direction of college sports right now. Rooting for players who are 1 year rentals is like watching a worse version of professional sports where at least players have contracts to stay multiple years in most cases. I am not sure I will be able to maintain my past levels of interest in college basketball when all the teams have new rosters every year. Part of the attraction was growing to hate other teams players that beat up on you for years as well seeing your own players grow and develop. Maybe others feel differently and maybe college football is just another animal as it seems those fans really don’t care about anything except W’s. However, if it continues like this it just doesn’t really feel like “college sports” anymore.

The thing is not a lot of the *stud kids are leaving High Major schools. It's really the MM and LM schools that are getting pinched by it. You get a situation like LSU where the HC gets fired and a bunch of kids leave but for the most part the players transferring from P-5 schools are bench players or guys that are toward the end of the roster

[seaweed]

Someone should cross reference the “schools are taking advantage of unpaid workers” theme posts against the “I don’t like the direction” posts, cause there is overlap and it’s kind of funny. And damned sad.

[Deleted]

Apr 20, 2022 19:46:52 GMT -5 daveg023 said:

There is a part of me that believes markets have a way of evening out over time. Right now its the wild west and the money is flowing. But after some time and many fruitless endorsements, perhaps some of this calms down and the money becomes more reasonable to account for the fact these are kids with very unpredictable outcomes. At some point throwing $1-2MM over and over on "busts" might have some beginning to question the investment?

Or perhaps it never normalizes, and the money just grows and only 15-20 wealthy state universities will be competing at the highest levels for basketball and football.

Probably this. Headlines never tell the whole truth. I have a friend who’s very deep in the crypto world on the business side. When all the headlines were going around about NFTs selling for millions, his take was that a lot of it was fraudulent, or would end up not being real (see: Jack Dorsey first tweet NFT). What does the “$8mm” deal look like for the Tennessee QB - are there hurdles like # of appearances that need to be made, how much revenue he generates, etc.

An $8mm headline deal may still end up being worth a couple million, but you do wonder about what some of these other smaller deals will result in for either side. 

Still doesn’t change the fact that Georgetown better get its act together. 

[Bigs"R"Us]

Georgetown no longer leads. We just follow way behind. This applies to the university as a whole.

[hoyaduck]

A reader's question in Stewart Mandel's mailbag for The Athletic posed a question adding, "It's sad that things are changing so much for the worse and the sport we love may not even be recognizable even five or six years from now. Where do we go from here to salvage some semblance of the sport we have always loved?" Even though they're talking about college football, I think what he says applies to college basketball as well and is a good perspective:

I’ve said this before in various forms, but in my experience, when people say “the sport they have always loved,” they’re referring largely to the way college football was when they first fell in love with it. Every major change that comes along, positive or negative, chips away at our romanticized version of it.

If, for example, you started following college football in the 1980s, you’ve experienced every major conference radically changing its membership (and in a couple cases, going extinct); scholarship reductions; going from the old bowl system to the BCS to the CFP; the number of bowls more than doubling; coaches salaries skyrocketing; the near-extinction of the wishbone, the I-formation and huddles; and the rise of the spread, Air Raid and hurry-up offenses.

I hate to break it to you, but this was already very much not “some semblance of the sport you have always loved” long before NIL became a thing. And yet you still watch and enjoy it. So why would we assume that THIS will be the change that brings down the whole enterprise?

Right now, between the one-time transfer exception and the rise of NIL collectives, we’re all experiencing whiplash. Those are two particularly profound changes to have occurred almost simultaneously. And change is always unsettling. I’ve moved houses twice since 2013, and both times it took me months to actually start liking my new place rather than obsessing over everything wrong with it. Kind of like how this new NIL stuff feels very … unfinished, at the moment.

But eventually, my new house felt normal. Eventually, so will this new version of college football. But it may feel very unsettling in the meantime.

theathletic.com/3260065/2022/04/20/mandels-mailbag-notre-dame-clemson/

[Massholya]

Apr 21, 2022 5:21:20 GMT -5 seaweed said:

Someone should cross reference the “schools are taking advantage of unpaid workers” theme posts against the “I don’t like the direction” posts, cause there is overlap and it’s kind of funny. And damned sad.

Certainly something I’ve considered and actually supported. I think the kids should get paid for using their likeness and supported those changes. Nevertheless, what that may leave us with is something that we just don’t recognize as the same “sport”. Sure everything is an evolution of sorts, but the fundamental reason for COLLEGE sports is its relationship to the school. If these become only transient affiliations then I think we are fooling ourselves that it’s really the same thing. I’m not sure I agree with the opinion above from the athletic that it will just become the “new normal”. I suppose it may but if that is what it evolves to than I think the fans are really just fooling themselves with a label. It’s really like the numerous small market European soccer teams that are pro or semi pro leagues or like minor league baseball teams. I guess as a fan if you can delude yourself into thinking that’s “your team” because it has the same name as your favorite college even though there is only a loose affiliation- maybe that’s enough. For me though, probably not. Not passing value judgment. Just my opinion. I hope the pendulum swings back a bit (maybe lessen the transfer capacity) to allow me to at least have a little more to delude myself with 😝

[EtomicB]

Apr 21, 2022 11:37:07 GMT -5 Massholya said:

Apr 21, 2022 5:21:20 GMT -5 seaweed said:

Someone should cross reference the “schools are taking advantage of unpaid workers” theme posts against the “I don’t like the direction” posts, cause there is overlap and it’s kind of funny. And damned sad.

Certainly something I’ve considered and actually supported. I think the kids should get paid for using their likeness and supported those changes. Nevertheless, what that may leave us with is something that we just don’t recognize as the same “sport”. Sure everything is an evolution of sorts, but the fundamental reason for COLLEGE sports is its relationship to the school. If these become only transient affiliations then I think we are fooling ourselves that it’s really the same thing. I’m not sure I agree with the opinion above from the athletic that it will just become the “new normal”. I suppose it may but if that is what it evolves to than I think the fans are really just fooling themselves with a label. It’s really like the numerous small market European soccer teams that are pro or semi pro leagues or like minor league baseball teams. I guess as a fan if you can delude yourself into thinking that’s “your team” because it has the same name as your favorite college even though there is only a loose affiliation- maybe that’s enough. For me though, probably not. Not passing value judgment. Just my opinion. I hope the pendulum swings back a bit (maybe lessen the transfer capacity) to allow me to at least have a little more to delude myself with 😝

The transfer rule change which is ridiculously bad is the only difference in my view...

The nil is nothing kids were getting paid before now its on the up & up. The larger schools will always have an advantage but there are plenty of talented kids to go around...

If it were up to me I'd change transfer rule back to a sit year with the ONLY exception being coaching changes.

I'd also change the eligibility rule from 4 in 5 to 5 in 6. CBB would be better than ever

[SDHoya]

Honest question for anyone with knowledge of NCAA rules:

Is there any reason why a school/program couldn't contractually lock up a student-athlete for 2, 3 or 4 years? E.g., the parties (State U and Joe Basketball) sign an agreement by which State U agrees to guarantee Joe's scholarship (and/or other benefits/NIL) for 3 years; and in exchange Joe agrees he will not transfer during the length of the contract? Parties could put in provisions saying Joe can get out of the contract if State U's coach leaves, or if Joe gets feedback that he's likely to be drafted. State U can void contract if Joe doesn't keep grades up, violates a "morality clause", etc.

This would in a sense further the path towards full professionalization, but would it be against the rules? To the extent State U believes roster stability is in the program's long term interest, it would further that end.

[TC]

Apr 21, 2022 15:38:21 GMT -5 SDHoya said:

Honest question for anyone with knowledge of NCAA rules:

Is there any reason why a school/program couldn't contractually lock up a student-athlete for 2, 3 or 4 years? E.g., the parties (State U and Joe Basketball) sign an agreement by which State U agrees to guarantee Joe's scholarship (and/or other benefits/NIL) for 3 years; and in exchange Joe agrees he will not transfer during the length of the contract? Parties could put in provisions saying Joe can get out of the contract if State U's coach leaves, or if Joe gets feedback that he's likely to be drafted. State U can void contract if Joe doesn't keep grades up, violates a "morality clause", etc.

This would in a sense further the path towards full professionalization, but would it be against the rules? To the extent State U believes roster stability is in the program's long term interest, it would further that end.

Kind of feels like you're trying to reinvent a minor league professional team.

Isn't the whole point of NIL that the school isn't a party to it, and that the student has the right to find outside compensation?

[SDHoya]

Apr 21, 2022 16:43:03 GMT -5 TC said:

Apr 21, 2022 15:38:21 GMT -5 SDHoya said:

Honest question for anyone with knowledge of NCAA rules:

Is there any reason why a school/program couldn't contractually lock up a student-athlete for 2, 3 or 4 years? E.g., the parties (State U and Joe Basketball) sign an agreement by which State U agrees to guarantee Joe's scholarship (and/or other benefits/NIL) for 3 years; and in exchange Joe agrees he will not transfer during the length of the contract? Parties could put in provisions saying Joe can get out of the contract if State U's coach leaves, or if Joe gets feedback that he's likely to be drafted. State U can void contract if Joe doesn't keep grades up, violates a "morality clause", etc.

This would in a sense further the path towards full professionalization, but would it be against the rules? To the extent State U believes roster stability is in the program's long term interest, it would further that end.

Kind of feels like you're trying to reinvent a minor league professional team.

Isn't the whole point of NIL that the school isn't a party to it, and that the student's has the right to find outside compensation?

Kinda feels like we're already there. The NCAA had a chance to put in place real enforceable rules which would separate true endorsement deals from back door "pay for play". It punted.

So now, with all these schools creating "NIL programs" to direct NIL money to the players, is there any real difference between the university coordinating with boosters to funnel NIL money to a player, and the university paying them directly? Maybe the $$ isn't coming directly out of the university's general fund, but the boosters are basically just cutting out the athletic department as the middle man, right? When Tshiebwe negotiates a $2 million package to stay at UK another season, when the biggest part of many recruiting pitches now is what kind of "NIL package" the kid is going to get?

But take my hypothetical and remove the NIL. Let's say its simply the scholarship we are talking about. Is there any reason a school could not guarantee the scholarship for a set period of time in exchange for a commitment from the player not to leave?

I honestly don't know, which is why I posed the hypothetical.