NIL

I typically try to confuse the audience, but in this case didn’t mean to.

That said, I wonder: does an NIL specifically have to cover athletes or can it cover a student or the broader student population as well? If athletes only, then maybe the play is to be direct with the teams and say “we can get all of you $20 a person from each of these restaurants/bars/regional auto dealers etc. It’s not a lot of money per person. But our thought is to put it into creating a better fan experience and by extension, get more fans to watch y ou play. Here’s how. you in?”
When I was working with the casino industry, one of the biggest trends I noticed was the rise of the minnow as a target when historically it had been whales. Miami has more minnows than whales in our community. Maybe we have to go with that?

NIL = Name, Image, Likeness. Before, student athletes could not profit off their NIL and retain their eligibility. If a local restaurant wanted to pay a student athlete to show up and take pictures and sign autographs, that made that SA ineligible. Impermissible benefits, I think was the term the NCAA used. Now that student athletes can make money from their NIL, the same restaurant can offer a player on the softball team money and/or free food to show up, take pictures, etc. A business paying an athlete for their service because they are an athlete.

Miami athlete’s sweet spot should be local businesses. Regional or National deals really arent going to be offered unless one of our athletes can build a large social following, which is how some women’s softball and basketball players from schools major and mid are landing 5, 6, 7 figure marketing deals.

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NIL… it stands for Name, Image, and Likeness… meaning that a student athlete has control over the use of his/her name, image, and likeness. What you are proposing, though an intriguing and possibly fruitful idea, has nothing to do with NIL.

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I see the logic leap on my part now. I have at least successfully confused myself. Job done!

Your concept of what NIL is simply incorrect. NIL agreements are between student-athletes and sponsors. Other than possibly providing some financial and legal advice, schools (whether they are P5 or G5) really aren’t involved. Again, it’s about the student-athlete’s ability to control his/her own name, image, and likeness AND preventing some other entity (typically the university) from making money off his/her name, image, and likeness without compensation. As I’ve noted here before, the second string right tackle at Ohio State isn’t going to get a sponsorship deal to sell cars for Ricart Ford simply because he goes to Ohio State. If there is any advantage one group of schools might have over another group of schools, it’s not size or conference (P5 vs. G5), it’s really the size of a school’s media market. P5 schools in small markets, like Oklahoma State, Mississippi State, Washington State, and Kansas, certainly don’t have an advantage over G5 schools in larger markets, like UTEP, Buffalo, Memphis, Toledo, or New Mexico. Secondly, those huge sponsorship deals that we’re all hearing about are really the exception, certainly not the norm, AND they are typically going to 4 and 5-star recruits that Miami or any other G5 school doesn’t have much of chance to land anyway, NIL or not. Quite honestly, if landing a big NIL deal is that important to a student-athlete it makes far more sense to me for a 3 or 4 star recruit to sign with a G5 school where the odds of becoming a star (and thus more attractive to potential sponsors) are far better than becoming a star at a P5 school.

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Maybe not at Ohio State, but the second string right tackle at Texas has a pretty sweet deal

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Well… everything is bigger in Texas, except for the on- and off-ramps to the interstate highways.

Great idea. I hope someone who gets paid to put into operation ideas like this sees this and begins the process of establishing this/these or similar programs.

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Thanks Double M, I think smaller schools can win by being more creative.

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Now that the transfer portal and NIL are in place, I wonder why the NCAA even exists anymore. Historically, shools have traded education and booster handouts for the athletic ability of young people. And arbitrarily, the NCAA occasionally chose to enforce its rules to punish schools and young athletes for these things. But now that they’ve changed the rules, I genuinely don’t know what purpose they serve anymore. Are they still going to punish coaches for paying for dinners and talking on the phone too long to potential teenage athletic employees? Does that even make sense anymore? Will the paid athletes still be forces to attend a set number of education courses at their university employers. And if so, why?

It doesn’t seem as though they can nuke entire programs for paying athletes to play sports for them anymore, ala SMU football and Michigan basketball. And they can no longer take away awards from athletes for receiving monetary compensation for their services, ala Reggie Bush. Perhaps a federal regulatory agency should take the place of the NCAA. That would make more sense at this point.

It will be somewhat interesting to see how this plays out, but I think I’d rather watch better, more mature professional athletes in higher level leagues than the professional athletes who are being forced to attend educational classes on the side of their sporting professions. It seems as though these classes will interfere with their athletic training. But I would imagine that if another education institution/athletic employer offers more monetary compensation or a more favorable education time to athletic time ratio, it wouldn’t take much more than that to persuade a young athletic employee to enter the transfer portal. At least in the higher level professional leagues, the employees have to sign contracts to provide their athletic services to their employer for a set amount of time before being allowed to enter the transfer portal/free agency portal.

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I think their ongoing role will be to coordinate all championships at the FCS, D2 and D3 levels and run March madness for both the D1 men’s’ and women’s teams. I believe their role as a regulator and enforcer is highly diminished .

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Here’s a recent ARTICLE from the DDN about how Dayton is handling NIL

Highlights from UD AD Neil Sullivan:

“We’ve doubled down on what we think we do best, and what we think we do best is create a 360-degree student experience for our basketball players. When I meet with recruits, I tell them we are a boutique basketball firm. We offer specialized, personalized investment in them, and that has always been everything from academics to their performance on the court, and now NIL is a component of that. It’s not The Component, but it is a component.”

Sullivan sent an email about NIL to season-ticket holders and he advised fans on how to engage with student-athletes and also commented on the current state of NIL at UD.

NIL is now one of the primary influences in the recruiting and retention process. Current and future players are observing how our community supports NIL, just as they evaluate our coaching, facilities, fan support, academic excellence, graduation rates, and overall quality of campus life. NIL is now an important part of the Dayton athletic experience.

The Ohio Bobcats have opened up the BOBCAT EXCHANGE explained HERE.

Interesting article on the Hugh Freeze hiring at Auburn.

It indicates that Auburn booster collective has raised $13 million in NIL in last few months.

For context, I believe this is more than Miami’s entire football budget (last number I saw was around $10 million).

From the article.

Most of what led to NCAA rules violations during Freeze’s time at [Ole Miss]/) are now easily worked around either through regulations the NCAA has implemented or practices it is unwilling to prosecute.

In taking over Auburn, it starts with the Tigers’ NIL war chest. Auburn collective On to Victory has reportedly raised $13 million in first few months of operation to help compensate players. That makes it one of the strongest in the nation. It’s all legal until the NCAA or Congress says it is not.

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@LaxDaddy Thanks for the post.

NIL, TV money, conference consolidation and the transfer portal are radically changing the face of CFB as we’ve known it…forever.

It is so sad to see this totally ruin the amateur college sporting world.

It will be interesting to see how athletes at lower levels react to the lack of substantial NIL deals after all the promises of how great their school’s NIL program is during recruiting.

Scrolling through Dayton and OU’s NIL deals and it appears their athletes are getting the same Barstool sports T-shirt, sweatpants and hoodie that ours are. A couple of Dayton football players have a deal with a clothing line to promote on instagram.

@Nickskin

Dare I even ask, what is Miami doing on the NIL front? Should we start a HawkTalk collective?

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You joke (I think), but I sent some text messages from the start of the year to a few folks to see how feasible that would be. Sounds like we’d be able to do something, it would just come down to how much money can we put together.

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Not joking at all. I would give money to an NIL collective and I’m sure others on here would do the same. My contribution wouldn’t be significant, but we as a group could make an impact.

The fact that we lost our best basketball player in the past 10+ years because Duquesne has their shit together and we don’t really pisses me off.

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LOL No…free school, free meals, free clothes, free academic assistance, probably free other stuff as well….

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