I like what you are saying, but wouldn’t hockey have to be included? What about women’s sports? Or minor men’s sports? We have an All American 3B in softball. We have had all Americans in field hockey. We lost 3 women’s basketball players who were in the top 10 in scoring in the MAC last year. We recently had a 1st round baseball draft pick who made it to the majors a year later. In other words, you are limiting it to Football and Men’s basketball, which would make it much more affordable. Is that fair? Would that pass legal attacks?
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Dick, these are all valid questions. Personally, I would funnel my money to football and MBB because they are the only sports I care about and they are the sports that can drive the most revenue and garner national attention. But anyone who donates to the collective can earmark their money to a specific sport or athlete as they see fit.
Admittedly, I don’t have all the answers on NIL and how it would impact Title 9 and the best way to funnel money to specific sports and athletes. I am just frustrated by Miami’s complete silence on the issue. The administration seems to be taking the stance of “we don’t like NIL and therefore we aren’t going to do it.” To me, that attitude only guarantees that we will fall further behind.
I have been beating the NIL drum on this board for over a year and almost every response has been negative and I’ve heard nothing but excuses on why we shouldn’t do NIL. Meanwhile, I see NIL being adopted at over 90% of D1 football programs and almost every competitive basketball program.
Historically, the only way Miami has gotten real fan support is when we either 1) Host a big time opponent (UC, Xavier, Dayton, P5 team) or 2) when we’ve developed a genuine superstar (Harp, Wally, Travis, Ben). Outside of UC football, we rarely get the chance to host a big time opponent anymore. And not participating in NIL is a near 100% guarantee that we will never develop and retain a superstar athlete at Miami ever again. That is depressing as hell.
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“ Our players love Chuck “. A few players may love CM. Lots don’t. Some despise him. Regardless of which camp they reside, nobody loves him enough to leave a stack of cash and a P5 opportunity on the table.
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Falling behind who? We just won the conference.
This is a good point. To clarify my thought process. Let’s say one of our star players loves Miami, loves his teammates, likes the coaches, and is also getting paid $25-50k by the Redhawk Collective. Would that player be more likely to stay at Miami if they were offered $100k by a P5 program with no guarantee of playing time? I think you at least make it a more difficult decision.
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If we are happy with a MAC football title every 5-10 years and a MAC basketball title every 20 years, then we should just keep doing what we are doing.
But if we want to dominate the MAC and be relevant on a national level, then we need to invest more in the programs.
And with our current football success, we might have more fan support to raise money. Remember when we had Wally and Ben and did nothing to invest in the programs and take the next step? Look how that worked out for us.
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True
Agrtee
Investing in athletics to perform better against our MAC peers should all be about offsetting expenses. NIL didn’t help us with the MAC, NIL won’t help us, long term against our peers. Being the most efficient with our funding and expenses will win everytime.
MBB has been horrible because of apathetic succession planning and hiring decisions and what appears to be, on the surface, lack of administrative focus. NIL does help this problem. NIL provides a sugar high, at best
NIL is a losing game for a G5 program. The best players in the G5 are getting multiples more in NIL from P4, without those collectives breaking a sweat. Miami players can get orders of magnitude more NIL……imo, it would be a complete misallocation of resources
I think the P2 is going to expand to a total of 40 teams and then - one way or another - they’ll screw everybody else regardless of what we do.
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You claim that NIL doesn’t work at the G5 level, but I am curious how you know. Toledo seems to have the biggest NIL operation in the MAC and they are currently best in conference in football and MBB. Is that a pure coincidence? Maybe, but I have to think NIL is a piece of the puzzle for them.
For me, donating to a NIL collective would be empowering to a smaller donor. If I donate $1000 to Miami athletics, I have no control over how that money is being spent. If I donate $1000 to an NIL collective with the explicit goal of retaining Brett Gabbert, I know I’m having a direct impact.
Your argument only makes sense if you can prove that donations are a zero sum game. Some donors (myself included) are willing to donate additional money to NIL on top of what we currently donate. What’s wrong with that?
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Oh boy, did you miss some exciting news 
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You can designate your donation to any sport. I know where my donation is going.
Exactly dan
Toledo got decimated by P4 NIL this year. Not G5, not MAC
I believe the idea to invest in NIL to be top of MAC is a fallacy and to compete against the thieves is a fools errand
To build long term success in the MAC you must have the best stability in above average coaches and succession. Look at frank solich, look at Charlie Coles, look at Carolyn condit
And do I really need to explain the payback on subsiding athletic department operations versus giving 10 kids $25k until they get poached for ten times that?
I applaud your enthusiasm. Bottle up the same amount of effort and donate it to MU with conditions. You’ll spend the same amount of effort and have far better roi
I’ve be inside the belly of this beast
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You’ll be enjoying some of Kentucky’s finest and you know it! (Newsflash: me too.) But I like your logic.
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By “national level” I hope you are talking about a G5 “league” because that is where the CFB is heading. An unanswered question is would the G5 teams even be considered for the AP rankings etc if the split I have been predicting for years happens. At this point, I am quite fine with separate G5 and a P4 groupings. Then it becomes a determination of how much you want to spend, if anything, to be “nationally relevant” in the G5, but it likely will be significantly less expensive than a futile attempt to compete with the P4.
“Resistance is futile” is the way the Borg would put it from Star Trek when it comes to us competing with P4 teams in NIL. Our pockets are not deep enough. Our fan base just doesn’t support us like P4 fans do. As Clint Easrwood would say (well kind of) " a fan base has to know its limitations." Half the time we can’t get 15,000 to a football game or 2000 to a b,/ball game. And you think we’re going to compete with P4? They’re paying $100 k for backups.
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To clarify, there is no question that participating in NIL will make us more competitive. We will have a better chance to recruit and retain better athletes. Exactly how competitive we will be is an unknown. I don’t think NIL is a magic bullet and won’t make us an overnight success, but it’s one piece of the puzzle along with all the very important things @HawkLBacker is talking about.
I am not naive enough to think that creating an NIL fund will keep all of our best players in Oxford. But maybe NIL helps us retain 2-3 key players that would have otherwise left. And maybe those 2-3 players put us over the hump to win a MAC title and possibly even earn the G5 bid to the CFP. And maybe that leads to more fan support, more revenue for our AD, and more donations; which then leads to more future success.
And I think winning the MAC more often will make us “nationally relevant” as that will lead to more trips to the Big Dance for hoops and put us in the conversation for a trip to the CFP playoffs.
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Maybe. Or possibly a tenuous chain of causation. If you have a moment, let me bend your ear a while about a one T. Boone Pickens. He’s deceased now but a few years back, he gave Oklahoma State University the single largest private gift ever in the history of any college/university. A one billion dollar check to turn the Cowboys into national championship winners. In the time since he gave them the monies, (and I just wanted to say monies so I wrote monies) they have won exactly (1) Big 12 championship in football back in 2011. They did reach a final 4 in men’s hoops back in 2004 but I actually think that was long before T’bone’s big steak arrived. Moral of story: Money can make a big difference no doubt. But it’s not a guarantee by any stretch. Also, depends on who is managing the money. At one point, OSU had lost so much of the investment, it was down to slim pickens (nicely done, YN5) so Boone Pickens demanded his financial people run the investment funds or else he was gonna pull the remainder from the school. The quote he said at the time about their incompetence was pretty funny. I’ll see if I can find it.
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