KEY POINTS
— Forget the mascots, fans; watch out for spreadsheets as collegiate sports become Moneyball more than ever before.
— When talking about the future of NCAA sports, “transactional” is the new reality rather than loyalty, three university athletic directors warn at NC Leadership Conference.
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RALEIGH — One couldn’t help but draw a parallel to the venue down the stairs, matching a T-rex and a triceratops — extinct dinosaurs — and the panel discussion about the future of college sports. Are they, as we know and cheer them today, going extinct, too, amid the barrage of changes striking your alma mater as well as mine?
The transfer of financial power to athletes “changes how we operate for years to come,” says UNC Chapel Hill Director of Athletics Bubba Cunningham. “We’re all hopeful all this [change] works.”
Bottom line: If you are a fan of collegiate sports, a new term will be creeping into your vocabulary as you talk about loyalty to universities.
Transactional.
So warned the ADs at UNC Chapel Hill, Wake Forest University and East Carolina University at Business North Carolina’s NC Leadership Conference in Raleigh on May 16. While money for athletes is hardly a new topic, the flow of dollars is becoming a flood — just how much so and what this means for college sports was made clear by each in a panel discussion that proved riveting to the crowd gathered at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh.
Forget cheering for your mascot. Forget about the star four-year student-athletes. Sports, more than ever, are becoming all about spreadsheets, revenue sharing and NILs. That acronym means “name, image and likeness,” the rights of athletes to own their digital IDs and thus earn in some cases millions of dollars.
In other words, the old days of bleeding Carolina or Duke blue with letter sweaters, jackets, summer jobs, post-graduation employment and T-shirts are really, really out — 10-99 income is in. These days are here to stay.
“NILs are going to continue,” Cunningham says, with athletes able to negotiate agreements worth millions for quarterbacks and top basketball talent.
How appropriate NIL also means “nothing” in Latin. One-and-dones fast break from college basketball to the NBA. The transfer portal will continue to allow athletes to switch schools on demand. And as revenue sharing begins institutions of learning will be splitting up to $20.5 million with their athletes.
Driven by lawsuits and legislation, college athletes are amateurs in name only.
All this change is “transformative,” says Wake Forest AD John Currie. The era of transactional where new relationships replace the old is upon us.
“Pay attention to how all this affects the appeal of young people to go to college,” adds Cunningham in an interview after the panel concluded.
As for how to compete? With NILs becoming more prevalent and revenue sharing providing more money to athletes at top tier schools, how will smaller universities with fewer dollars compete?
Notes ECU AD Jon Gilbert: “You’re going to see wide disparity. … The crazy thing is we all compete in football.”
It’s not just schools but conferences. Wake Forest’s Currie stressed that revenue sharing isn’t necessarily an equalizer. Later that day the Atlantic Coast Conference announced member schools shared in $45 million revenue each — a record — yet far below the wealth share across the Southeast Conference ($56 million) and Big Ten ($58 million).
As for the revenue sharing, who determines the “share” for each player after funds are broken into buckets across 20-plus sports?
“The coaches do,” Cunningham points out. “Just as they do now.”
But the money influx and the NIL complexity have also combined to give rise to a new position: General Managers to handle contracts and negotiations for sports, such as former Tar Heel player Jim Tanner at UNC.
ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips recently warned that the college sports money environment needs to “settle down.”
“I think college athletics needs to settle down, not just the ACC,” he explained, according to ESPN. “I think we’ve positioned ourselves for that. The chaos and constant wondering of what’s happening here or there, that distracts from the business at hand. I feel good about where we’re at, and while I do take things one day at a time, I think there’s a period of time where let’s settle in and get things done.”
And whose job is on the line for finding ways to remain competitive in this new world? Cunningham is asked: Are you in the hot seat for the dollars, let alone dealing with football coach Bill Belichick?
“Yes,” he says.
As for fans, who ever thought a college sports fan would need a degree in accounting to truly understand just what the heck is going on.
“It is different,” Cunningham says when asked about fan loyalty. “We probably will see restive fans. … It’s a challenge. It will take the next couple of years to get through it.”
ECU’s Gilbert warned that fans will “still expect the best fan experience.”
But as the NBA and Major League Baseball prove in most years that dollars often don’t decide which teams win championships.
Rick R. Smith recently retired from WRAL TechWire, which he co-founded and edited for more than 20 years. He can be reached at: rickrosssmith@gmail.com or LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-smith-18a9647/
