In a unanimous (9-0) decision issued in June 2021, the US Supreme Court affirmed a previous lower court ruling that the NCAA cannot restrict student-athletes from receiving compensation for use of their name, image and likeness – NIL. However, the NCAA can continue to require student-athletes to be amateur and not receive compensation for athletic services … i.e. pay to play.
But many people – and with valid reason – believe that NIL collectives are in fact paying athletes to play, with the compensation simply disguised as payments for NIL. It’s an uncomfortable situation to put it mildly, but some well known coaches are in fact saying the quiet part out loud:
Nick Saban, head football coach at Alabama famously said the following: “A&M bought every player on their team. Made a deal for name, image, and likeness. We didn’t buy one player. But I don’t know if we will be able to sustain that in the future because more and more people are doing it.”
Other head football coaches have not been bashful of the going cost for players:
Nebraska Coach Matt Rhule made headlines when he said the quiet part out loud: “Make no mistake: a good quarterback in the portal costs $1 million to $1.5 million to $2 million right now. So just so we’re on the same page, right? Let’s make sure we all understand what’s happening. There are some teams that have $6-7 million players playing for them.”
Not to be outdone, Ohio State Coach Ryan Day even came out with the number they need: $ 13 million just to maintain their football roster. And recognizing the hazy status of most collective money, Day added the following: “If the speed limit’s 45 miles per hour, and you drive 45 miles per hour, a lot of people are going to pass you by. If you go too fast, you’re going to get pulled over.”
Jacksonville State head football coach Rich Rodriquez made clear the role of NIL collectives: ” … these commercial entities are doing for the student-athletes what the institutions themselves are prohibited from doing.”
The solution to the quandary of collective money – for some – is for the biggest schools to break off and simply operate under their own set of rules. The NCAA has even given credence to the concept of a two-tiered rule structure by its initial draft of a potential subdivision plan. For practical purposes this would “legalize” pay to play, bring most collectives under school control and top-tier schools would make the compensation payments directly to athletes, albeit under the guise of NIL.
While well intentioned, the plan has very challenging inherent flaws, not least of which would be that the plan is not financially viable for the majority of existing NCAA division I schools and who would likely not be overly enthusiastic about being relegated to a “lower” tier. The NCAA plan would require electing schools to pay a minimum of $ 30,000 annually per athlete into a trust fund, and at least half the school’s athletes would need to be covered. Presumably, athletes from non-revenue sports would also need to be compensated which would cause many schools to blink twice. An additional issue for public schools would be that the NCAA plan would involve some very sticky Title IX and public disclosure considerations. Compare this to the current situation where NIL collectives operate independently of schools, can pick and choose what sports and which athletes to compensate, and are not subject to either Title IX compliance or FOIA disclosure requirements.
Primarily due to the absence of substantial TV contracts, most non-Power 5 athletic departments already run at a loss and fund a significant portion of their athletic programs internally. Opting into the proposed NCAA plan would require significant additional cash outlays which most Division I schools could not justify.
So how do non-Power 5 or lower tier schools compete in the new NIL landscape? Basically, support legitimate NIL opportunities for your student-athletes but don’t try to compete in the “pay to play” game. Schools with modest athletic revenues simply will not be able to compete with the big money schools in compensating athletes, and there are some difficult issues even for the schools that can.
As noted above, Nick Saban accused Texas A&M of “buying” their team – how did A&M’s 2023 season actually end up? Despite having the top ranked football recruiting class in the country, the team ended up with an unimpressive 7-6 record and the head coach lost his job before the season even ended. To rub salt in the wound, the school agreed to pay the former coach an additional $ 77 million to not coach. So buying a team doesn’t necessarily translate into winning – it’s difficult to be successful if players are there only for the money, and halfway through the season they are already looking at where to go next for a bigger check via the transfer portal. Schools need to ultimately decide whether they are going to rely on a revolving cast of expensive rental players or try to develop and operate a program the “old-fashioned” way.
Another major issue with the NIL arms race is that the more money collectives raise likely means less money the schools receive. With the emergence of collectives, both the schools and the collectives are asking the same people to contribute to the same cause – funding the school’s athletics. It seems unlikely that donors & boosters are all going to “double up” , i.e., contribute to the NIL collectives and maintain their prior level of support to the school. So as the collectives raise more money to recruit say football and basketball players, the schools will likely receive less contributions to apply all sports including non-revenue producing men’s and women’s programs. This will result in a significant amount of heartburn within school athletic departments.
The donations lost by the schools to collectives also have an elevated risk of being wasted. Collective funds are often used to recruit high-school aged athletes and this is a very risky bet. A situation recently made national headlines when a recruit backed out of his commitment to the University of Florida when a $ 13 million offer made by a collective associated with the school fell through. The recruit ended up attending another school and his QBR rating of 23.6 would have ranked him 123rd among quarterbacks at the 133 FBS schools. It’s not a stretch to say that collectives are gambling with funds that school athletic department used to professionally manage and allocate.
Andy Noel, the former Athletic Director at Cornell University was not bashful in his opinion of the new landscape: “I’m forced just to say it first. Nationwide, I think the NIL situation has been an absolute disaster. Programs can now within the rules buy a team. I hope the pendulum swings back – I think it will – but it’s an absolute disaster. And I can reel off many cases where athletics have been purchased under the guise of NIL and what they bring with their name, image, and likeness. Which in most cases is zero, but they still get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
Both the schools and the NCAA recognize that collectives untethered from the schools is not optimal. But attempting to bring the collectives within school control as the NCAA plan proposes is very problematic. I think for many schools, heeding what Andy Noel said is prudent. Legitimate NIL for student-athletes is fine, pay to play and calling it NIL is not.
Throwing money at recruits – if you have it – is easy, and some would argue, lazy. There is a path to competitive success without having to rely on collective funds, it takes work but it can be done.