It feels like the sport has become European soccer, only without the transfer fees.
My suggestion is that the free transfer should only kick in after your sophomore year. You could still transfer after your frosh year but would have to redshirt. That would encourage guys to give their original school a little more of a chance. If things haven’t worked out after two years, OK, you can move on.
I honestly think that this rule would be better for the players (this is a very father knows best ethical argument). However, from a Michigan competitiveness perspective, it’s suboptimal, as upperclass transfers seem hard.
Dropping the COVID years will makes things a bit more palatable I think but we’ll see.
Yeah, I think you have to wait out covid years and take stock from there.
I think if you had wages and not NIL, you could ties the payment to a number of years
Sounds like a move in the right direction. Lots of details to work out but…
The Covid years are causing a mess when combined with NIL and the portal. Those three together combined to change the landscape of the sport.
I still think there’s a market correction coming for NIL somehow…but maybe that’s wishful thinking. If you’re a school’s collective, why couldn’t you create an NIL structure that builds in some sort of retention bonus for staying? Or escalation clause for years of service? Or penalty for early departure? Those are all things that happen in every other industry.
I think there is going to be a rude awakening in bag size when the for profit collective models learn they can’t….make a profit.
It’s pretty radically different when the athlete’s people are working directly with a client, these collectives are trying to rent-seek in the middle of that transaction
Collectives aren’t really looking to make a profit though right? It’s to get people to attend school X.
Aren’t there some that absoutely are? I get the sense Life Wallet is (which as noted earlier in the week, lol).
Like, Valiant is trying to make money, right? I just think the model of making payments now and trying to recoup the payment to the athlete over the course of the initial payment is dodgier than just representing them in negotiations with clients.
I’d say the primary definition of a collective right now is a 501c3 that raises money solely intended to go to athletes, works with charities to bring those athletes to those charities and pays the athletes.
Etc.
Right - there are these. Valiant isn’ta 501c3. I know Michigan just announced a 501c3 the other day though.
There are for-profit and non-profit NIL collectives. For example, Valiant is for-profit. And HAIL is non-profit.
I couldn’t tell you the trade offs in either direction, or whether the for-profit ones are ACTUALLY trying to turn a profit or not.
Yeah, I’ve always viewed Valiant as more of a marketing arm for U-M athletes compared to how a collective operates.
I honestly don’t know - but is Valiant’s model to offer player X, say, $100 grand, and then find a way to finance that via now owning the rights to their likeness/name?
I just find that model, generally, pretty dicey long term.
Regardless, my assumption is that we’ll get to the point where schools have one of each flavor here (regardless of whether you want to call Valiant a collective or something else)
The thing that mostly is moving the needle right now is that Collective A raises a slush fund of whatever amount of money and doles that out to fill out the team’s roster.
That’s what Hail Impact is eventually going to do (I believe it launches May 1 for football) in a sense, but other schools have more established offerings I’d say.
I think that if Valiant (as an example, nationally) can’t get in-flows and out-flows at least roughly similar they will vanish. I think this year we’re in the UBER phase where people are just pumping money into these things, the collectives are shelling it out like crazy, and sort of crossing their fingers that it’s going to work in the long term. The investors are going to run for the hills, I’d imagine if they can’t. I think that the product here is something the investor has an emotional tie to in a way they don’t, say, UBER, so the requirement for profit isn’t going to be there, but I also don’t think they’ll be content to lose their shirts in perpetuity.
I think the better way to think about Valiant is like an agency. Broker deal, take a cut. That’s how they make money.
That’s different than the Player X got 200k to transfer to School Y. Those type of deals are coming from the 501c3 collectives usually.
I thought I read that they were paying out, then finding deals to finance it.
Could be, either way the sustainable model is creating a non profit fund and paying players IMO.
“Hey guy who gives $5 million to build buildings, give us $500k and your team can be good”