I had not been keeping up with the changing landscape of how college players have been being compensated or will be compensated. I finally did read a new article on ESPN discussing the murky waters of allowed vs non-allowed compensation. My interpretation is that as of now, after next season, collectives (boosters) that combine donations to form a payment pool will be disallowed. In other words, player compensation will have to come from either A) Revenue sharing or B) NIL sponsorship from a company that sells a product to the general public. This change could lower an entire team’s payroll to the same as what a single player is making this year. This season over 80% of player compensation is coming from collectives.
I see an easy workaround for this limitation. The collectives could instead approach a company, say a car dealership or a bank, and say, “We want to give you $3 million dollars to pay an NIL sponsorship to such and such player.†My first question is then, would there be any regulations in place to stop this exact type of transaction from happening. Would the company paying an NIL deal have to show somehow that the money came from their business revenue?
Another question I have is, what will be the repercussions of a player making $2mil this year being told that only $250K will be available next year? Will there be a sudden jettison of talent to the NBA draft or to foreign leagues?
The last subject from the article I want to point out is that freshmen are the ones most likely to be adversely affected from the change in regulations. If a team cannot simply offer X amount of dollars they can come up with to any player, but instead have a limited budget to go around, most teams will uses their larger payments for coveted transfers, leaving unproven players with a smaller portion of payroll. Of course, this is normal in sports. Rookie contracts are typically less than veteran contracts. That said, there may be meager sums leftover for freshmen.
I see an easy workaround for this limitation. The collectives could instead approach a company, say a car dealership or a bank, and say, “We want to give you $3 million dollars to pay an NIL sponsorship to such and such player.†My first question is then, would there be any regulations in place to stop this exact type of transaction from happening. Would the company paying an NIL deal have to show somehow that the money came from their business revenue?
Another question I have is, what will be the repercussions of a player making $2mil this year being told that only $250K will be available next year? Will there be a sudden jettison of talent to the NBA draft or to foreign leagues?
The last subject from the article I want to point out is that freshmen are the ones most likely to be adversely affected from the change in regulations. If a team cannot simply offer X amount of dollars they can come up with to any player, but instead have a limited budget to go around, most teams will uses their larger payments for coveted transfers, leaving unproven players with a smaller portion of payroll. Of course, this is normal in sports. Rookie contracts are typically less than veteran contracts. That said, there may be meager sums leftover for freshmen.
Comment