Everyone is talking NIL lately. I can tell you that the high school kids here in TX are definitely caring about NIL. I would go so far as to say it's #1 in their list of reasons as to which school they potentially commit to. Many of these kids aren't going to make it to the pros. College is their only chance to make money.
I sincerely hope and would assume that UConn is working on something. But, for a lot of schools, the energy and initiative is coming from non-university members. That's the thing about NIL, it has to be via outside partnerships.
With Texas, there's was no shortage of loud voices that wanted to spend, spend, spend. In the early days, there was a bit of a fracture until they decided to work together and form
Texas One. It's a pretty smart initiative IMO. Lots of huge corporate donors are sponsors of it.
Texas One pays all athletes via non-profit donations. Kids are paid to "promote" and/or "work" with non-profits. The compensation could be anything or any amount. Besides the usual one-off donations, you can pay monthly, you can even pay with stocks!
Anyway, Texas One is just one blueprint. (A blueprint that generates 10s of millions in NIL.) Here's a list of
20 more. Too lazy to read through that article? I got you:
- Oregon has Division St. Major focus on custom merchandise. Things like team branded shoes and apparel, Beats headphones, art, and AirBnB decorations. Sabrina Ionescu is the face of it.
- Florida has Florida Victorious (formerly Gator Collective). Besides merch, they list out all the different all-access packages you can purchase. From $500 to $60,000 per year. For the poor among their fanbase, there's the 96 Club package which has "content" and small stuff for $96 a year. Probably the most impactful thing this collective does is help out the family of the players, like pay off medical bills or buying a new car for the player's mom. They did this for Colts QB, Anthony Richardson.
- Ohio State has The Foundation. Events, merch, experiences. Things like golf with players and/or coaches. Autograph merch is nice.
- Texas Tech has The Matador Club. They pay 100 football player a minimum of 25k.
There's more, but that's more or less the framework. Personally, this is all kinds of weird to me. It kinda, sorta doesn't seem like it's about academics and school anymore...