What Student-Athletes Think about NIL Changes to Allow More School Involvement
What Student-Athletes Think about NIL Changes to Allow More School Involvement
The big news in NIL this week has been the potential changes to the NCAA’s NIL guidelines that would allow more school involvement.
The proposed changes have not been finalized, but they have been made public through the media.
As is common these days 🙄, there seems to not have been much data collected or input from student-athletes. So I thought I’d take a very preliminary crack at it below.
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What Student-Athletes Say about Some of the Proposed Change
Here, I’ve summarized three of the NCAA’s proposed changes, followed by just one of my survey questions, the result, and what I think it means.
From October 9-14, I polled just under 1,100 current college student-athletes of which 815 were in DI.
Proposed Change #1: Schools to be allowed to proactively assist in the development/creation of NIL activity.
Survey question: “If your college/university were allowed to proactively assist you and other student-athletes in developing/creating NIL activities, would you be more likely to participate in NIL?”
Survey Results: Yes 78% / No 22%
Why this matters: My key takeaway here is that the percent of student-athletes who would be more likely to participate in NIL if their college/university were allowed to assist them far exceeds the percent that are currently participating. So it seems logical that more student-athletes will participate if this change is made by the NCAA. (Note: There is still no reliable data on NIL participation, but if you allow me to guess, I’d say that the national average is around 25% - I work with schools where that # is above 50% and I work with others where it’s under 10%.)
Proposed Change #2: Schools to be allowed to provide tax preparation and contract review services.
Survey question: “Would you be likely to use tax preparation and contract review services if they were provided by your college/university?”
Survey Results: Yes 39% / No 61%
Why this matters: While you may not be blown away that only 39% of student-athletes would use their institution’s tax preparation and contract review services, keep in mind that those #’s would represent an 8x increase. Very few student-athletes currently use attorneys, financial advisors, and other service providers due mainly to the economics of it - why hire a $300/hour attorney to review an NIL activity contract for which the athlete might be paid $200? (I have surveyed this topic in the past and publish findings on LinkedIn which you can find here.)
#3 Schools to be allowed to provide access to cameras, podcast studios, and other resources for NIL activity.
Survey question: “Would you be likely to use cameras, podcast studios, and other resources for NIL activity if they were provided by your college/university?”
Survey Results: Yes 36% / No 64%
Why this matters: Again, while you may not get excited about 36% of student-athletes using these additional resources, I look at it with optimism. As I mentioned in #1, I think the national average for NIL participation is around 25%. So any # above that indicates an opportunity to attract more student-athletes to NIL participation.
Bill Carter is an NIL Consultant, Educator, and Speaker. He is a NIL Columnist for Sports Business Journal and teaches NIL in College Sports at the University of Vermont’s Grossman School of Business. Click here to read about Bill’s NIL Consulting and NIL Education for sports organizations, universities, and brands.