NIL and College Basketball

In this episode will look at how NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness) will impact college basketball in the future. There are 3 major concept that will accelerate the process of the NCAA becoming a professional style program. 

We dive into the transfer portal, NIL deals and the new NCAA profit sharing rules that will change the game moving forward.

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Transcript

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Welcome to the Hoop Nomics Podcast. In this episode, we'll talk about how NIL has changed college athletics forever. The concept of NIL name, image, and likeness brings many benefits towards the student athlete in the modern day college basketball. For instance, I played at Florida International University from 2003 to 2005, and we basically was granted a Pell Grant. If your family made a certain amount of money per year, you would be granted a Pell Grant. And you would also, of course, if you played NCAA basketball, you would have a scholarship. The scholarship was for you to get your education and hopefully you could use your education to find a job if you didn't go professional. You had a choice to take student loans. I took student loans out during college because I went to school in Miami and I needed extra money. So yeah, uh, I took out loans. And that's how I actually made money. And um this concept of NIL came from um schools benefit from athletes through uh your name, your image, and your likeness through media rights deals, through TV contracts, um, through all types of media um platforms, and the schools also bring in revenue from ticket sales and other schools paying you to play them. For instance, we played UConn in 2004, University of Connecticut, D UConn, and I think they paid us $55,000 for the game. They paid our hotel fees, etc. And all that money goes to the school while the athletes all we do is get on the plane, and of course, we do stay in the hotels and we have to play the game, and you go back home, and that's it. Um, over the years, that's just an example from my own personal experience. But over the years, players have wanted to benefit um from their name and name, image, and likeness. Uh, I think there was a case with Johnny Manzel and Reggie Bush, but Johnny Manzel is one of the key um ones because I think he wanted to do autographs outside of his you know university play. He was a very famous football player at Texas AM and he wanted to sign uh different uh pictures and you know different types of media uh content for fans. And the NCAA got mad and penalized them and told him that he couldn't do it. So over the years, uh legislation has passed to you know enact NIL rules, and NIL has created a monster because actually it has made sports more into building a personal brand because you would have to build this brand to be able to benefit from NIL. You would have to build your social media brand, you would have to build followers, because the concept of NIL is that third-party organizations can pay you if you market their product through your name, your image, and your likeness. So, um my perspective, I believe NIL is great, it is good, it is a good tool and is a useful tool for student athletes to make money while they're in college. Because, you know, if you really break down a college uh you know, student athlete or a normal person in college, they need money. Uh, just because you go to a school, that doesn't mean you pay the school. So if you're paying the school to be educated, do you think they're paying you anything? You know, in return, they're really not. You're going to their school, you're living on their campus, and you're going to their facilities every day. The benefit, the business administration school, and sometimes you know you have to pay for food, you have to pay to go to the game room, you need clothes, you need gas for your car. You just need general living expenses. This is the first time a young adult is thrust into being an adult. So you need money. And sometimes being an athlete, um, the school ends up making more money from you than giving you. And the benefit, as we know, is not everyone who gets a degree is gonna go and make a hundred thousand dollars after they graduate. So the concept of NIL on face value, you know, brings great benefits for the students and the students basically that are being athletes at the school. So in this episode, I just want to, you know, break down a couple of the key core concepts of the NIL and how it is really changing and has changed college basketball in particular forever. Now, after the NIL rules passed, it became the wild, wild west. And there are three particular things that you know enhances uh the NIL and the train uh and and and college sports, and it's the transfer portal. So the transfer portal for me is the number one thing that enhances um and that has the you know greatest impact because now kids are going to schools. Just say, for instance, let's take Tommy. Tummy is a five-star basketball recruit from the state of Virginia, and Tummy he signs with North Carolina, the North Carolina, where Michael Jordan went to college. And Tommy um plays well. North Carolina gives him uh his regular scholarship and they pay him whatever they pay him, but also um, you know, he gets a big NIL contract at that school, maybe worth $700,000. Let's just say $700,000. At the end of that year, this athlete can actually leave that school and transfer to a bigger school or a you know more equal school. There's really no athletic school that's going to be bigger than North Carolina, unless you're talking about the Yukons or Michigans or Arizona's of the world, but let's just say an equal college, and he can go and get more money. So the transfer portal has enabled kids to go to schools for one year, make a substantial amount of money, and that would be like the 25-26 season. So for the 26, the 2026 and 2027 year, which would start this year, August 30th. Let's just say August 30th, that kid can enter a new school and sign a new NIL deal or sign, you know, or get more money. So the transfer portal has given kids uh the ability to, you know, kind of unlimitedly transfer throughout you know the years they have eligible. Now, when I went to school, of course, I went to school a long time ago. I graduated in 2005. If if I went to Florida International, so if I wanted to transfer to Florida State, I would have to wait one year. So it discouraged kids from transferring, and and most kids did not transfer, but now there's no limitations or there's no waiting period. So I can complete a year and transfer to a whole new school and play right away and get more money. So, you know, this impact, um, the transfer portal impact on kids, it has a major effect on how we will view and see college basketball and university sports in general going forward because kids have the ability to just transfer. So it's just madness because um most kids are taking advantage of the fact that they can transfer. Uh, the number two biggest effect is the NIL deals themselves. Now, NIL deals are very complex. I don't have enough time to uh break it down, but most athletes are paid for their activities outside of their respective sports. Um, you're talking about monetize content mainly through social media, um, the increased attention on personal brand and pay for play deals through collectives. And there are there's all types of ways that these kids can can get money, and I don't knock it. It's just that when you don't focus on the game and you're focused on the business side as a young adult, it becomes overwhelming because you can't put you only can put so much into your respective sports, the talent area. And kid, you need to be work working out, you need to be basically, you know, uh addicted to practicing and training and trying to get better within your sport because somebody's always coming for you. If you are this hyped up number one player, you have other players who know if they just put in a little bit of work, they can be equally or better than you. But you're worried about you know the attention that your brand has. Oh, my likes, and oh, I got you know, 15,000 likes on this post, or I got 2,000 likes on this post, and these other third-party uh businesses or organizations that are paying you, they're also paying attention to you and they're communicating with you and letting you know what you need to be doing and how many times you need to be posting. So this has become a very old this has become very overwhelming for the student athlete. I'm not knocking it, it's just I'm just explaining that if you want, you know, college athletics to be pure and based on competition and discipline, um, you're gonna have to bring some of those elements back. And they're trying to fix it because it's very chaotic at the at this moment, but it's gonna be a hard transition. And I don't think once I think once you open up that Pandora's box, you're not gonna be able to bring back the essence of sports. It's gonna be tough, it's gonna be tough to bring it back to where it used to be. You have opened the door for players to make millions. These players are making the average player is making $100,000. And and and that could be over a four or five year period, and and it's great, but you know, it's gonna water down the actual sport, the reason why you're there. And um, they the third reason is the NCAA revenue sharing. Now, this is a very new concept. Um, this is about trying to take the you know, Power 5, the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, ACC, and Pac 10 schools, they're trying to come up with a revenue sharing model where universities are allowed to share up to 22% of revenue um that comes in. They're capped at $20.5 million per school. And top players who who play in national national televised games, they may receive a higher share of the proceeds. And so um, you know, this is separate from even NIL. So you're talking about a kid can come to a school and get you know revenue sharing money and NIL money at the same time. So this, you know, this is a huge opportunity to cash in on your talents, and this will be another reason. And and and uh I don't know if this is actually trying to keep talent there because the $20 million that these schools into Power Five, this is not every conference, this is not the Big South, this is not the Sun Belt Conference, or you know, like the A Sun conference or some of these smaller conferences, the Mountain West, these are the Power Fives. Maybe this is they're maybe they're enacting this rule to try to keep you know some of their core talent on campus. But I mean, these are immense opportunities for top-rated athletes. So university uh or college athletics has purely turned into a business, and it it uh you know it provides a you know big potential to make money for rising athletes and all of these young high school players um who are coming up and and able to receive this money and able to be in this uh you know market to be able to receive this money. So, I mean, if you're a young athlete and parents, um just prepare your kids at a young age. And I'm talking about, you know, 13, 12 years old, that if they are a you know, if they are a um, you know, top athlete or has potential to be on this trajectory, that they need to understand what they're going against. I wish as a you know person that's you know involved in basketball, and I've been involved in the game of basketball for 25 years, ever since I got out of college. I played 15 years overseas, I've coached, I've refereed, and now I'm trying to go on the business side and the player developmental side of the game. But um just to understand that the essence and everything of this is the actual game. If we can get everybody focused in on loving the game again and going out there to compete on the highest level, and the money that you receive is just the icing on the cake, it's just an added portion of it. We can get the game, and I'm not saying college is not competitive because it is. We just saw, you know, March Madness 2026 and the teams who who played in it played their butts off. But a lot of those kids that's going to that college, they've already, you know, colleges, those kids who went to those colleges, some of them have already put their name in the transfer portal. I mean, that's how much is at stake. And um, you know, it's it's more stakeholders involved with these uh kids now. You have agents and mentors and coaches and trainers and parents. I mean, for instance, when I went to school, man, my parents only went to one game. Although they lived in Alabama and I played in Miami, they came to senior night. That's the only game they ever attended. And that's just uh to show you that once before, you know, uh parents weren't even involved in in your, you know, there there was involvement, but most parents just kind of sat on the sideline and kind of either cross their fingers or they didn't even really care what you were doing. And you were doing something big. Like I look back at my parents and I say, wow, they didn't even know I was, you know, I'm traveling around everywhere in America, I'm going to school and I'm playing college basketball. So um, you know, the it's a lot of uh opportunity, and I just hope that we can bring this to a point where we bring the essence of the sport based on discipline, based on, you know, sportsmanship and competition back to each sport, not only basketball, but football, soccer, volleyball, women's sports, male sports, um, either or. Um, but um, you know, that's what I wanted to talk about today. That, you know, NIL, you know, how has it will it have a profound change in college athletics? Yes, it will. Um, once you open up the box, and once you open up this Pandora's box, you cannot close it. Once you give people the ability to have freedom to make money and earn from their own likeness, you can't put that back in a box and tell them no. You're gonna have to come up with ways um that you govern it maybe or bring more laws, but um it will only increase in the future. So um that's my ramble for the day. I just wanted to talk, you know, briefly about you know NIL and some of the uh subtopics around uh NIL, and that's all I have for this week. If you want to hear any other type of content or you want me to talk about something else, please email me at info at hoopnomics.com. That's info at h o p n o m i c s dot com. Peace.