Coaching Scholastic Athletes

In this first of a two episode series, we take a look at coaching scholastic athletes in the United States which is very different from the college athletic programmes in Canada (& perhaps in your part of the world if you are not living in North America). Episode two as you might guess will switch the focus to Canada which includes a chat with a long time and very successful college coach in the person of Jim Waite and his granddaughter Sadie who established a highly successful scholastic soccer career as a Corn Husker which means she played at Nebraska but now plays professionally in Ottawa for the Northern Super League's Ottawa Rapid. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:17

Welcome to another episode, a very different sort of episode of a pain in the class podcast. This is your host, Bill Shearhart, Chartered Professional Coach with Coaches of Canada, coming to you from my home in Grand Bend, Ontario, Canada, on the ancestral land of the Kettle and Stony Point First Nations. Well, we're going to take a look at college sports today. As indicated in the show notes, this again, like the last two episodes, is going to be a two-episode series on coaching scholastic athletes. And this first part is going to deal with scholastic athletes at the college level in the United States. The vast majority of my listeners come from Canada and the United States. And I also want to address or at least reach out to those of you who live in other parts of the world. I mean, this is uh North America is not the center of the universe. It really isn't. And so I'm going to rely on my listeners if you can and and feel f uh like you can weigh in on this and help me with uh what it's like with uh college sports in your part of the world, I am very eager to hear. But this first episode will deal with the United States, the second episode Canada. Specifically a change, a major change that has taken place over the last number of years in the United States. And it's with the acronym NIL. Well, what does NIL mean? NIL stands for Name, Image and Likeness, which represents an athlete's legal right to control and profit from their personal brand, things like their name, photos, videos, voice, and public persona. Before twenty twenty one, college athletes were prohibited from earning money this way, effectively giving up these rights when they joined National Coaching Athletic Association, NCAA for short, programs. The NCAA's 2021 policy change, combined with various state laws, restored these rights and opened the door for athletes to sign sponsorships, endorsements, social media deals, and other commercial agreements. So how does this NIL work? Well, the athletes can now number one, sign endorsement deals with brands. Number two, get paid for social media posts. Three, appear in commercials or ads. Four, host camps or clinics. Five, sell merchandise featuring their name or likeness. They can also hire agents, attorneys, or marketing professionals to help manage deals. Schools often provide training on business practices and NIL compliance. Well, who regulates NIL? Here's where things get a little sticky. There is no single national standard. Instead, NIL is governed by state laws, which vary widely. School or conference policies, especially in states without NIL legislation, and NCAA guidelines, which prohibit schools from directly paying athletes and aim to prevent NIL from being used as a recruiting inducements, although enforcement is challenging, and that's where things really get challenging. Most schools require athletes to report NIL deals and may restrict certain types of endorsements such as alcohol or gambling. Gee, I wonder what sport that I'm familiar with seems to have embraced gambling. I wonder what that sport might be. Well, why does NIL matter? NIL has transformed college sports by allowing athletes to earn money legally, increasing competition among schools and booster collectives, influencing recruiting and transfers, giving athletes more control over their personal brands. In high revenue sports like football and basketball, NIL has become a major factor in roster building and athlete mobility. There is another important aspect to all of this, and it's called the transfer portal. The NCAA transfer portal is a centralized database where college athletes enter their names to signal they are exploring opportunities at other schools. Once an athlete is in the portal, coaches from other programs are allowed to reach out, which would normally be prohibited. So how does this transfer portal work? Well, in four different ways. First, athletes must submit written notice to their school's compliance office. The school then has 48 hours to add them to the portal. Second, once listed, the athlete can receive contact from other schools, evaluate offers, and decide whether to transfer. Three, entering the portal does not guarantee a scholarship at the next school. And four, athletes may also withdraw from the portal, but their current school is not required to continue their scholarship in future terms. Well, when can they do this? Well, they're called transfer windows. Athletes can only enter the portal during specific windows, which vary by sport and division. For example, in men's basketball, the portal typically opens for a set period after the season concludes. Players must enter during that window, but they can commit to a new school after the window closes as long as they were already in the portal. Well, why does this all exist? The portal was created to bring transparency and structure to the transfer process. Before its introduction, athletes often had to request permission from their current school before talking to others. The portal gives athletes more control and visibility into their options. Well, what are the effects on college sports? First, increased player movement. Thousands of athletes enter the portal each year. For example, nearly 5,000 men's basketball players entered during the 2025-26 cycle. Second, roster turnover. Teams rebuild quickly through transfers, sometimes adding multiple experienced players in one off season. Three, recruiting strategy changes. Coaches now recruit high school athletes and the portal, treating it like a second recruiting market. And number four, NIL influence. Name, image, and likeness opportunities often factor into the athlete's transfer decisions. Now, on a personal note, I think people who know me, uh, not only do I like college sports, there is a certain university not too far from where I live, across the border, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Sorry of Ohio State fans and Michigan State fans, but that's always been the university that I watched very carefully. I have articles of clothing that say Michigan go blue. Anyway, uh Michigan just won the NCAA Basketball Championship, and if I remember correctly, all five of their starting players arrived at Michigan through the transfer portal. Well, I guess this is where I weigh in as a coach, chartered professional coach. How do college coaches feel about NIL and the transfer portal? Well, most college coaches feel that NIL and the transfer portal have created major challenges, especially around player retention, roster stability, and the shift toward money-driven recruiting. Many support athletes having rights, but they're frustrated by the chaos, constant roster turnover, and the new financial pressures on programs. Surveys have been done. So how do coaches generally feel across sports? Well, first of all, NIL is now the top factor in recruiting, and coaches know it. Multiple coaches say NIL has become the single biggest factor in where players choose to go. Playing time and fit now come second. One big East Coach said NIL is the most important piece for prospects. An SEC, that's a Southeast Conference coach, called NIL's influence too much. An ACC coach, that's Atlantic Coach Conference, said players still want to win, but that number better be right. Coaches feel they're competing in unrestricted free agency with no salary cap, which creates misinformation, bidding wars, and pressure to raise more money. Secondly, the portal has made roster stability nearly impossible. Coaches describe the portal as creating mass movement and decimating rosters, especially at mid-major programs. Even successful seasons don't guarantee players will stay. Furman University's coach, for example, lost top players despite a strong year because athletes can chase better NIL deals elsewhere. 3. Coaches feel they're constantly re-recruiting their own players. Arkansas coach Sam Pittman said NIL is often the deciding factor when players consider transferring, making retention a constant battle. A very important section here. Why some coaches are burning out or leaving college sports. Coaches say their job is shifted from mentorship to financial management. Former college coaches who moved to the NFL say recruiting used to be about relationships. Now it's about money, agents, and retention. Terry Joseph said he no longer wanted to be a financial planner answering questions about checks. Many coaches feel the joy of developing players is being replaced by transactional conversations. High profile coaches have retired or stepped away, citing NIL and portal pressures. Jim Larinaga said eight players entered the portal right after a Final Four run driven by money elsewhere. Mike Shoshevsky said NIL is chaos without more structure. Others like Jay Wright retired tired amid the shifting landscape. Well, some coaches still support NAL but not the current system. Becky Hammond said she likes NIL for players, but dislikes how the portal encourages chasing money over growth. She urges players to chase purpose and greatness, not the bag. In summary, as far as NIL is concerned, well, coaches just it's frustration plus acceptance. Not necessary for athletes, but now dominates recruiting and retention. The transfer portal, overwhelmingly, from coaches' perspective, it's overwhelming. Constant roster turnover, players leave even after successful seasons. Job satisfaction, well, as you might guess, definitely declining. Coaches feel more like financial managers than mentors. And finally, the future outlook. Well, almost to a person, they're very concerned. Many want more structure, rules, or reform. I have two sound bites for you. First is an interview with Peter Robinson of Bloomberg News when he was uh questioned about entitlement, the transfer portal, and of course NIL. The second soundbite is by the very well-known uh football coach at the University of Alabama, Lou Sabin, who also coached for a period of time in the NFL, and he had some very interesting views from a coaching perspective. So, and he was uh appearing before a Senate subcommittee on NIL and the transfer portal. So let's hear those two sound buttons.

SPEAKER_00 14:40

Peter, uh, really we're talking about college football here and maybe to a smaller extent college basketball. And college football has become unrecognizable to traditional fans, right? You've got players switching teams like free agents, you've got players making millions from endorsement. You see Berkeley as part of the Atlantic Coast Conference. And all this comes down to a court decision that allows college athletes to profit off their name, image, and likeness. Is that right?

SPEAKER_04 15:03

Yeah, the the floodgates really opened uh back in 2021. That that's when the NCAA uh let athletes uh profit from what are called name, image, and likeness uh deals. Uh and it also changed the transfer rules, which which let athletes uh in the big time revenue courts move more easily from school to school. So what happened is that that's sort of alchemized into a de facto play-to-play system where you have these poster groups, which are essentially the wealthiest people in town, think the you know, richest car dealer in town, the richest real estate developer, they get together, uh they pay to bring players uh to their school, uh, and the the university uh has this you know sort of hands-off third-party relationship. Uh, and we uncovered uh cases where uh these athletes who were promised one thing and and got another and uh promised big money uh and then the contracts are abruptly pulled.

SPEAKER_00 15:57

Mm-hmm. You described cases where players were taken advantage of, they were terminated without any notice, even though they did sign a contract, they were also promised money that never appeared. What kind of role does the NCAA or Congress play here? I know, I know there's been a lot of hearings in Congress, but what's come out of any of that?

SPEAKER_04 16:15

The the big issue is that the NCO has really lost the ability to enforce its own rules. It's repeatedly lost antitrust suits uh and and just hasn't been able to uh to put any guardrails around this. Congress uh has held a dozen hearings since 2020, and again, there's been no bipartisan legislation. Uh and what's really missing is um anyone representing the players. Uh the uh coaches, administrators uh are professionalized now in college football. They make uh salaries, even the assistant coaches in college football uh hire agents and negotiate salaries from 400,000 to 2.5 million. And uh people hear about you know these these big deals for certain college athletes, and that's certainly true. You know, some of them are getting these big deals, but the reporting uh that my colleague Noah Buhler and I did shows that the vast majority of the players are are really at the mercy of these donor groups to uh take what they can get. Uh we described a situation that that was um not known last year where uh the Ministry Spartans uh actually had a near walkout before a game because the donor group abruptly uh pulled their funds.

SPEAKER_02 17:29

People be more successful in life. So you're trying to develop a value-based system, uh, just like a value-based business that would create opportunities for young people to be more successful. So this started with personal development, it started with academic support to make sure guys graduated and had the and prepared themselves for when they couldn't play football, and uh also the whole concept of branding uh and making sure you had an image out there that was going to be something that would be uh enhance your chances of being successful and create opportunities for your future, and see if you could develop a career as a football player. Now, what we've done between freedom to transfer and creating a free agency system where guys can transfer whenever they want to transfer, the whole idea that we've created a pay-for-play um sort of uh model in college athletics have created some issues in being able to actually have a program and a system that would enhance those very values that I just talked about. And how does this even impact other sports uh relative to Title IX, uh relative to non-revenue sports? And how do we continue to create some kind of a model moving forward where we do improve the quality of life of the student athlete, but create some kind of a balance in terms of uh competitive balance, uh, which all venues have, some guidelines and rules that create some kind of competitive balance, which right now we don't have in college athletics. It's whoever wants to pay the most money, raise the most money, buy the most players is going to have the best opportunity to win. I don't think that's a spirit of college athletics. I don't think it's ever been the spirit of what we want college athletics to be. So that's my major concern, the combination of pay-for-play, free agency, and how that impacts development. And I can attest that I've had two NFL coaches tell me, and this is a football deal because they're concerned about the football part, that the players come to them less developed, uh with more entitlements and less resiliency to overcome adversity. And these are concerns that they have even in their football development. Well, if that's true in their football development, is that true in other parts of their development, whether it's academics or personal development? And each time you transfer, you minimize your chances of graduating by probably about 20%. Now we have guys transferring two or three times. So some of the goals and objectives of what we've worked so hard for the last 20 years to improve graduation rate, to improve health care for players, to have mental health care for players, all the things that we work so hard to improve on, we're going to start seeing slide in the wrong direction because we've created uh uh an environment uh that really does not promote personal development or uh that is going to create success for their future.

SPEAKER_03 20:32

You know, one one question I have to ask. Uh you just retired from an amazingly and historically significant coaching career. How much did the current chaos and state of the law contribute to your decision to retire now?

SPEAKER_02 20:48

Well, all the things that I believed in for all these years, 50 years of coaching, no longer exist in college athletics. So it's always about developing players. It was always about uh helping people maybe more successful in life. Uh, my wife even said to me, we'd have all the recruits over on Sunday uh with their parents for breakfast. And uh she would always meet with the mothers and uh talk about how she was going to help and uh impact their um sons and how they would be well taken care of. And she came to me, you know, like right before I retired and said, Why are we doing this? And I said, What do you mean? She said, All they care about is how much you're gonna pay them. They don't care about how you're gonna develop them, which is all what we've always done. So why are we doing this? So, you know, to me, that was sort of a red alert that we really are creating a circumstance here that is not beneficial to the development of young people, which is why I always did what I did. Um, my dad did it, I did it, and that's the reason that I always like college athletics more than the NFL is because you had the opportunity to develop young people. So, and I I'm with Their quality of life to be good. I think, as I said before, naming, would you like this is a great opportunity for them to create a brand for themselves. I'm not against that at all, but to come up with some kind of a system that still can help the development of young people, I think, is paramount to the future of college athletics.

SPEAKER_01 22:23

We heard Coach Saban use the word entitlement, which in college athletics refers to student athletes developing an inflated sense of privilege or special treatment, which can undermine coachability, team culture, and accountability. It emerges from structural changes in college sports, shifting incentives, and evolving athlete expectations. Well, what does it look like in today's college athletics? Entitlement manifests when athletes believe they deserve benefits from playing time or special treatment regardless of effort or behavior. Coaches increasingly report that athletes are less coachable, more focused on personal gain, and more willing to challenge authority. Veteran coach Rhonda Rampola retired partly because, quote, kids are not as coachable as they were years ago, close quote, noting athletes growing focus on perks like cost of attendance checks rather than academics or team culture. Coaches also describe athletes who expect privileges and react negatively when held accountable, reflecting what some call the selfie age of individualism. Sad to say, entitlement is increasing rather than decreasing. Why? Well, first on the list, of course, is the topic of today's episode NIL Name, Image, Likeness, Money. Athletes can now earn millions through sponsorships, creating a professionalized mindset at younger ages. This changes recruiting dynamics and increases the sense of personal leverage. Cost of attendance payments and benefits. As schools offer more financial incentives, some athletes prioritize these perks over academics or team fit. Social media and personal branding. Athletes are more connected, more visible, and often more focused on individual recognition than team identity. Legal and structural changes. Court rulings in unionization efforts increasingly frame athletes as employees, shifting expectations around compensations and rights. Well, how is this affecting athletic programs in general? First, reduced accountability. Athletes may resist coaching, discipline, or feedback. Team division. Perceived favoritism or unequal treatment can fracture locker rooms. Coach burnout. Persistent entitlement is cited as a factor in coach retirements and turnover. Misaligned priorities, decisions driven by money or perks can overshadow academic and developmental goals. Well, how have some programs fought back against this? Well, first of all, by clear messaging about team values, structured activities that reinforce selflessness. And coaches modeling the behaviors they expect from athletes, an important point. And these strategies help shift focus from individual privilege to collective responsibility. Coach Sabin talked about Title IX. The Title IX regulations require schools to provide equal opportunity regardless of sex. This requirement applies to schools' athletic programs, including club, intramural, interscholastic, and intercollegiate teams. Equal athletic opportunity in athletic programs is measured by three factors. Number one, the benefits, opportunities, and treatment given to male and female athletic teams. Two, how a school is awarding athletic scholarships and financial assistance. And three, how a school is feeding its students' athletic interests and abilities. In the next episode, we switch from the American side of the border to the Canadian side. What's the situation here in Canada? And we'll examine that with uh a chat with a longtime friend. You've heard Jim Wade's voice on the podcast on a number of occasions. And his granddaughter, Sadie, just happens to have gone through the scholastic program in the United States playing soccer at a very high level for the University of Nebraska, and now is a professional soccer player with the Ottawa Rapid. And I watched Sadie play on television just a few days ago. So I hope you'll tune in for the second part of coaching scholastic athletes. So until next time, and don't forget those wise words of that great North American philosopher Charlie Brown, don't focus too much on things that make you sad, because so many things will make you happy. Until next time.