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N.I.L
Mar 10, 2024 17:24:15 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by motorcitysam on Mar 10, 2024 17:24:15 GMT -5
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N.I.L
Mar 10, 2024 19:56:45 GMT -5
Post by calihanmole on Mar 10, 2024 19:56:45 GMT -5
This is the new normal. Within a few years, any power conference recruit will expect any school making an offer to play in an MTE tourney in November that comes with some guaranteed money for each player and a purse of NIL money for the winning team.
Not sure if there are enough sponsor dollars around to do similar things for mid major schools. Either way, if you’re a guy who could be a star at a mid major or a 5 minute per game guy at a power school, the power school might make more financial sense.
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Post by Rogobob77 on Mar 12, 2024 9:39:41 GMT -5
From the Extra Points Newsletter, an interesting article discussing how NIL dollars could flow directly from event revenue to college athletes' pockets:
Conference basketball tournaments are either just wrapping up or about to hit full swing, with the full March Madness events kicking off next week. But it’s a potential tournament for next basketball season that’s really caught the interest of the college sports industry.
Front Office Sports reports that a new tournament, tentatively scheduled for the fall in the 2024-2025 college basketball season, will do something no other regular season event has done… pay the players.
Via FOS:
The tournament, dubbed Players Era, will host eight teams this fall at MGM Arena in Las Vegas and 16 teams starting in 2025. The event will be operated by EverWonder Studio (which was created by former Time president Ian Orefice and backed by RedBird IMI and Jeff Zucker) and AND1 CEO of Basketball Seth Berger. EverWonder hasn’t yet secured distribution but is in talks with both linear and streaming-based broadcasters.
The tournament operator is guaranteeing that sponsors and other tournament partners will offer each school a total of $1 million in NIL money for participating. That money will be funneled to collectives, boosters, or other NIL entities, and the coaches and teams will be able to distribute that money however they see fit, as long as the money goes to current players. The winning team will be eligible to earn another $1 million, to be distributed in the same way.
Both FOS and On3 reported that while the event is initially scheduled to include eight teams, the event organizers are talking with Alabama, Duke, FAU, Houston, Kansas, Oregon, Rutgers, San Diego State, St John’s, Syracuse and Virginia about potentially participating.
It’s also technically not the first basketball tournament to pay out NIL money…just the first regular-season event. The College Basketball Invitational pledged $25,000 to their event’s champion, $10,000 to the runner-up, and $2,500 to each semifinalist. Last year, Charlotte defeated EKU in the title game, with Southern Utah and Radford rounding out their Final Four. That event’s founder, Rick Giles, is steadfastly in favor of explicit pay-to-play events.
On the surface, paying a collective a million bucks for their athletes to participate in a tournament…with the potential to earn even more money if they win, feels a potentially systemic event, right? If a program is deciding between participating in an MTE (multi-team event) that promises to directly pay players vs one that doesn’t, surely they’d have a pretty compelling reason to take the event that pays their athletes?
Sure. But does the math work for any of this?
The Players Era event isn’t a bowl game, or postseason event, or even a proper mid-season tournament. It’s an MTE to be played early in the college basketball season, amid a calendar that already has several of those events.
Let’s take last year’s Maui Invitational, typically one of the most prestigious eight-team MTEs. The field included Purdue (who would win 29 games and earn a 1 seed that season), Kansas (27 wins, 1 seed), UCLA (29 wins, 2 seed), Marquette (28 wins, 2 seed), Gonzaga (3 seed) Tennessee (4 seed), plus Syracuse (a team people care about). That’s a stacked field with elite teams. That event averaged 677,000 viewers across all the ESPN networks, and a championship game of 1.59 million.
Those are excellent college basketball ratings, some of the best for an MTE in recent years. But it wouldn’t come close to cracking the top ratings for a regular season game this basketball season…and that’s also a smaller TV audience than a lousy Minnesota/Bowling Green bowl game.
Ratings for November college basketball games, even between elite teams, often do even worse than that. Kentucky and Kansas, about as blue blood a matchup as you’re going to get, posted a .87 rating on November 14 of this season. UConn and Kansas played on Dec 1 and recorded a .37 rating.
Recording ratings above 1.0 before conference play is relatively uncommon.
If you assemble a field of some of the absolute best teams in college basketball and have them play in November, it’s going to be a niche product. And based on the list shared above, is there any reason to think that the 2024 Player’s Era tournament could include that kind of star power? Duke, Kansas and Houston have been consistently excellent, and Rutgers is bringing in a top five recruiting class, but is the rest of that field going to be strong enough to command national interest? Will you convince casual America to watch a basketball game between two teams that are hoping to play in the 8/9 game in March, just because the players are getting paid?
National interest is important, because MTEs rarely sell out of tickets, and the NIL payments aren’t the only expense involved in hosting a tournament. Per the FOS story, Players Era is also covering team travel, lodging and meals. Throw in facility rental, paying officials, and everything else that comes with running a multi-day event, and stuff gets expensive quickly.
Especially since…maybe a million bucks isn’t that much money for the players?
According to the two published reports about the game, the tournament takes that million bucks and pays it to the school’s collective or designated third party, rather than the school itself (since, of course, the school can’t directly pay the players). The collective can decide how to break up the money, so long as it does to active players.
A million bucks split across all 13 scholarship players is $76,923 per player. But remember, this is an eight team tournament, so presumably, those players are playing three games, not just one…so that’d be about $25,500 or so per game per player. If a player is making $800,000 for a collective for a season (which is not a crazy number for a high minutes player on an elite team)…this NIL payment is basically what he’d be making per game anyway.
And there’s a good chance the individual payouts could be even less than that. Since this payment is structured as an NIL deal, the collective itself, or perhaps a player’s agent, could potentially take a cut of that payment.
For a player that doesn’t have a huge contract with a collective, making $10, $15, $20K per game for a three-game stint in Vegas is huge money. But for players who do, I’m not certain this amount of money is automatically game-changing. A million bucks is enough to be expensive for an event operator, and large enough to make a compelling headline to generate earned media. Enough to make a team turn down the Battle 4 Atlantis? Maybe, maybe not.
But even if this tournament doesn’t end up taking off, directly paying players may shift how everybody else does business.
We already had a bowl game launch an official NIL platform to help athletes secure deals, and I’ve heard other bowls are considering similar programming. If one major event is going to directly pay athletes, NCAA-policies-be-damned, it may be hard for other major events to get away without doing the same.
Jay Bilas recently suggested that if this sort of revenue sharing doesn’t happen with the NCAA Tournament, other postseason events could try to steal market share. Via On3:
“And can you imagine getting an invitation from a March tournament where you can make into your collective $2 [million] or $3 million? You go to the NCAA tournament, your players get a t-shirt? That’s going to be that’s going to be a thing, and the NCAA is gonna have to respond. Revenue sharing is coming, and they don’t want to admit it. But it’s coming, and now it’s here.”
Now, I don’t think that exact scenario is particularly realistic in the near future. Schools are bound to accept NCAA Tournament invitations, and a promoter would have to pay a lot of money to convince a brand, let alone individual athletes, to pass up a shot at a national championship. But it is fair to point out that the NCAA-brand, alone, may not be enough to secure participation forever.
For years, after all, the premier postseason college basketball event wasn’t the NCAA Tournament, but the NIT, which offered better payouts, better media exposure, and a better location. The history of bowl games is very much about how games competed for prestige, in part, by competing over purses and payouts.
Eventually, I believe we are heading towards a system of formal revenue sharing not just for the NCAA basketball tournaments, but for every event that commands meaningful broadcast revenue. That’s not an uncommon view in this industry. But the legal system is slow, and the NCAA is slower, and we might not get there for a few more years to come.
So perhaps an MTE paying athletes directly (or as close to directly as possible) is another step towards that eventual destination. That makes it important and meaningful…even if the specific event and specific contracts aren’t industry-shattering in Year 1.
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N.I.L
Apr 9, 2024 11:29:13 GMT -5
Post by motorcitysam on Apr 9, 2024 11:29:13 GMT -5
I'm not sure it's accurate, but there is a story being reported that Wisconsin transfer AJ Storrs asked Kansas for a $1 million NIL deal to enroll with the Jayhawaks. Kansas reportedly countered with $750,000, so Storrs is looking elsewhere. I can see Kansas balking; they paid big money to Hunter Dickinson for the 2023-24 season, and had one of their worst years in a while. Granted, a "bad" Kansas season is 20 plus wins and the round of 32, but the program had their worst conference finish and most losses of the Self era. The below article states that Kansas's NIL efforts are supported by something called The Mass Street Collective. It only raises money for the Jayhawks, which would seem to violate the original intent of the NIL. The kid from Oakland and DJ Burns of NC State both cashed in big time on NIL opportunities during the tournament. Companies used them in advertisements for their products. That's what NIL was supposed to be. What we have now is just a system for programs to rent players. And prices are rising. It wasn't that long ago that Life Wallet paying Nigel Pack 800K over two years seemed extravagant. www.si.com/fannation/name-image-likeness/news/former-wisconsin-star-storr-seeks-1-million-nil-deal-to-transfer-matt9
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N.I.L
Apr 12, 2024 7:35:48 GMT -5
Post by motorcitysam on Apr 12, 2024 7:35:48 GMT -5
In a recent discussion on a DePaul message board, some people claimed, with confidence, that one of the reasons that Coach Stubblefield struggled at DePaul was that he only had an NIL of $200,000 to work with. They also said that Chris Holtzman was going to have $2 million to work with, so recruiting should improve.
As a DePaul fan, I found that news encouraging. As a college basketball fan, it just depressed me.
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N.I.L
Apr 12, 2024 11:34:26 GMT -5
Post by motorcitysam on Apr 12, 2024 11:34:26 GMT -5
NIL is supposed to be completely separate from the actual University. However, Mark Madsen, the head coach at Cal, tweeted out this message today on social media: "To Cal Bear Alums: Let's continue to build more NIL opportunities across each and every sport at Cal. As we move so the ACC, let's support "California Legends Collective". Let's become a national leader in NIL."
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Post by calihanmole on Apr 12, 2024 15:20:16 GMT -5
NIL is legally separate from the universities (for now), but the coaches have no choice but to be in contact with these collectives and various donors and their businesses who might award NIL deals to players. You hear things like “_____ University has two million in NIL money to play with.” Well, who decides how to divvy up that money? The coach? The donors? The people who own the collective that is probably an LLC? What if the coach wants a player but the donors don’t see the value? What if a player gets a generous NIL but then has a bad first year? The collective can say the player is a bum and refuse to renew any NIL contract. So you ostensibly have wealthy “donors” deciding the roster. It’s no wonder that a guy like Jay Wright no longer wants to coach and deal with all this.
At the introduction of Calipari in Arkansas, the Tyson chicken guy who was influential in signing Calipari was there and the crowd cheered for him when he was on the Jumbotron. One comment I read on Twitter was spot on: a guy like that is basically a de facto co-owner of the team at this point. Not that he has shares or equity in the program, but he self identifies with the program so much that he’s willing to give enough money to elevate his brand. And I know for a fact that guys like that get comped great tickets, and have access to private events that they can use to help their outside business interests.
College basketball has become a #uc%ing soap opera. Soon, every off season you are going to have half the players transfer. In some cases you will see coaches leave for new jobs and just take any good players with them. There’s not going to be any continuity. Also, most NIL deals are private so we have no idea how much players are being compensated.
I don’t know where all this leads a school like UDM, but I would bet it won’t be good. When all the football tv contracts expire in 6 years, everything will radically change.
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N.I.L
Apr 16, 2024 15:14:49 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by motorcitysam on Apr 16, 2024 15:14:49 GMT -5
Per this post from Eric Bossi of CBS Sports, a 15 minute per game player at a Power 5 program can command as much as $338,000 for a one year NIL deal.
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N.I.L
Apr 17, 2024 16:43:37 GMT -5
Post by motorcitysam on Apr 17, 2024 16:43:37 GMT -5
Per ESPN, the NCAA is making it legal for college programs to become openly involved in NIL deals for athletes. That's been going on pretty much since NIL came into existence, but now the NCAA is saying what has been going on is no longer against the rules. Of course, they are still paying lip service to the ideal that NIL is "sponsorship" opportunities, rather than just a straight pay to play salary.
The DI Council also moved forward on legislation that would allow schools to be more actively involved in securing sponsorship deals for their athletes. Schools could still not directly pay athletes, but they could facilitate NIL opportunities between third parties and athletes.
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N.I.L
Apr 17, 2024 17:21:45 GMT -5
Post by rbj on Apr 17, 2024 17:21:45 GMT -5
Per ESPN, the NCAA is making it legal for college programs to become openly involved in NIL deals for athletes. That's been going on pretty much since NIL came into existence, but now the NCAA is saying what has been going on is no longer against the rules. Of course, they are still paying lip service to the ideal that NIL is "sponsorship" opportunities, rather than just a straight pay to play salary. The DI Council also moved forward on legislation that would allow schools to be more actively involved in securing sponsorship deals for their athletes. Schools could still not directly pay athletes, but they could facilitate NIL opportunities between third parties and athletes.Schools are now hiring NIL General Managers. I hope the titans hiring one sooner than later. theathletic.com/5367654/2024/03/28/michigan-football-basketball-nil-general-manager/
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Post by Commissioner on Apr 17, 2024 21:36:57 GMT -5
I don't know if I do or not. Right now I'm still interested, but it's really just habit. I don't seriously have a lot of interest in minor league professional basketball--I expect before too long I'll become purely a college hoops historian, not an up-to-date fan. I'd like to think maybe dropping to D-3 would be best--restore some of the old purity. But it won't, especially with the NCAA also announcing an unlimited, no waiting period transfer rule. D-3 teams will suffer the same melt that mid-majors now face. There will be constant roster turnover, and the poor will never compete with the rich. The sport is essentially ruined--its heart and soul have finally been torn from it. Who gives a s*** about minor league men's hoops? Maybe I'm wrong--Brits follow soccer below the Premier League. But Americans don't follow minor league baseball, or basketball, or football, or hockey--so why will they follow minor league basketball that pretends it is college ball? My enjoyment of Titan hoops now comes only from history, or when I am able to block out of my mind that schools--at least the top schools--no longer field a team of students, but a team of minor league professionals with the bizarre contractual provision that they have to attend an accredited college. I expect I'll watch for a while--again, old habits die hard--but it will be a zombie fandom.
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N.I.L
Apr 18, 2024 4:23:31 GMT -5
Post by ptctitan on Apr 18, 2024 4:23:31 GMT -5
Commissioner - all NIL has done is shift into the open the money being paid under the table in bags and FedEx envelopes to the players in the past. The NCAA was already compelling its members to pay cost of attendance money to its players on top of room and board. And the room and board in cash or dorm rooms and meal cards was already a $10-20K annual benefit to the athletes.
What's coming in NIL contracts are multi-year deals with buybacks if the athlete enters the transfer portal. Also, what's coming is a more realistic reset of the monies being paid. USC already got in trouble with missing NIL payments. And many schools are using max values in contracts to sign players who then find in the small print language that does not guarantee them the max value. In the end, a player's NIL value is much more dependent upon the team performing well than on individual stats.
The power football schools will always be able to outbid the mid-majors. But a well-managed mid-major will be able to compete on a much smaller NIL program in the same way that the Tampa Bay Rays consistently compete in the AL East with a player development model. There is nothing to prevent players under contract with our NIL collective from having their contracts bought out by larger collectives at the schools to which the player transfers in a similar manner in which MLB teams often pay cash consideration for certain players. In that regard, we would use the money from other collectives to help build our own NIL pot of money here. If certain players want to treat us as a business, we will do that for the benefit of the collective.
The end result of this will be the end of the APR since players in good academic standing and meeting progress to a degree can now get immediate eligibility.
So, yes. For a few years, college sports will operate differently. BUT, the whole system is in peril due to the impending recalculation of TV revenues due to the demise of network TV. The football schools see this and that's what's driving their consolidations and mergers of conferences. Actually, it's the power conferences that are most in danger of an economic collapse - not the mid majors. And the biggest danger is football. Why do you think some power schools like Florida State are exploring selling equity stakes in their athletics departments to private equity firms? If football collapses, then so does the ability of power schools to poach mid major talent in basketball and other sports.
The key for U of D is to make some targeted investments in sports right now so that we are in place to benefit from the likely upheavals in college sports coming in a few years when the TV contracts are up for renewal. The SEC and the BIG will learn the lesson of the PAC-12 as explained by Mick Jagger in The Big Chill, "You can't always get you want."
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Post by Commissioner on Apr 18, 2024 9:14:41 GMT -5
Commissioner - all NIL has done is shift into the open the money being paid under the table in bags and FedEx envelopes to the players in the past. This is absolutely untrue. There is no evidence of players previously being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars on a routine basis. This is like saying that blowing up a dam just brings into the open the water that was already flowing over the spillway. This is like the erroneous belief that prohibition had no effect on drinking. In fact, prohibition led to a huge decline in alcohol consumption. We got rid of it because that gain was not worth the cost it imposed. Here I don't know that the cost/benefit analysis plays out the same way. My point. There is no comparison in these amounts, and under the old system it was at least vaguely tied to the idea of a full ride scholarship. Yes. This is what I hate. This is what strips away the final notion that these are college players, and just "shifts into the open" that this is minor-league professional basketball. I don't think it can last, although it will take some time to play out. Extremely unlikely, IMHO. We will see. But the difference between $40,000 under the table and $400,000 above board is pretty significant. And when that is combined with the free, unlimited transfer rule, middies will never be able to steal or develop a recruit and keep him. Remember why the transfer sit rule was enacted--to make sure that students transferred for reasons other than playing their sport. The idea was that they did have to be students. By the way, I predict that within a few years the requirement that team members be students will be dropped. As I said, I think soon the requirement to take classes will be dropped (or at least the idea of a full-time class load will go). Because... why? Why should players have to attend classes? They are hired to play basketball, and in high major programs in particular share almost no experiences in common with other students. That's in line with my thinking that the system is unsustainable, and we are already seeing a leveling off or decline in fan interest. I agree. I'm just not sure that I will care as the habit drifts away.
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N.I.L
Apr 18, 2024 9:36:49 GMT -5
Post by calihanmole on Apr 18, 2024 9:36:49 GMT -5
Everything will change radically by 2030. That’s when a lot of the current football tv contracts start to expire. Colleges are about to realize they made their lives very messy and expensive with the expansion of their leagues. While people joke about the absurdity of situations like UCLA flying to play a conference game at Rutgers, or Stanford flying to Boston College, the truth is it’s not so absurd when you consider football plays relatively few games and they are on Saturdays. And the money football generates is obviously massive.
But with these big conferences now national in scope, they’re going to quickly realize how much money they have to spend to send athletes in all the other sports just to compete. And why should a tennis player in Southern California have to fly to the east coast for conference competition?
I think one form or another of the proposed “Super League” for college football will be created by 2023, likely separating football from all other sports. Possibly replacing the NCAA itself. Not sure what that will mean for college basketball.
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N.I.L
Apr 18, 2024 10:30:33 GMT -5
Post by ptctitan on Apr 18, 2024 10:30:33 GMT -5
Commissioner - I always view disruptions to the old systems as opportunities for creative thinking. NIL creative thinking at U of D does not have to rely upon the AD or the university.
Adjust the numbers for inflation and you have pretty much the same levels of compensation for the best players. Clark Kellogg reportedly earned six figures 40 years ago "selling" insurance policies to wealthy alumni. In the late 1980's, a middle of the road JUCO could demand and receive $10-20K to transfer in and play. 35 years ago, UM players were making $14-18/hour "working" at no-show security guard jobs. Then, there was the shoe company money before the Christian Dawkins scheme.
So, yes, the current system sucks. But we can still do well in it.
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