Charlie Baker opinion column in The Hill:
Modernization is an interesting word here
This is pretty funny:
We need a single set of national rules that allow student-athletes to realize their NIL earning potential while setting up consumer protections for student-athletes and their families. As President of the NCAA, I am ready to make needed change but, in this instance, Congress is the only entity that possesses that ability. We need Congress to act. Should Congress step in to address a small but critically important set of threshold issues such as establishing national NIL guidelines and affirming student-athletesā unique, non-employment-based relationship with their universities, I am confident in our ability at the NCAA to fulfill our mission supporting 500,000-plus student-athletes each year.
I read it as: āOh crap we canāt do anything, but please donāt make the athletes employeesā
And also:
developing a sustainable and equitable way to address the financial interests of the small percentage of student-athletes whose teams generate a significant amount of revenue for their universities
Under this framing, the teams generate the revenue, and I guess the student-athletes happen to be on them and have financial interests?
The last thing college sports needs is the government to get involved
One thing the NCAA has proved over the years is that they have absolutely zero interest in protecting the student-athletes.
Remember when top players would be insured by Lloyds of London? No clue if that happens now. I think it does not
NCAA offers an in-house one called the Exceptional Disability Insurance Program.
I heard about it because of this guyā¦
Gotta cheer for this dude
I think thatās basically how it works. The players would not generate much revenue if they werenāt playing for the schools.
Could say the same about the coaches.
I understand why heās framing it this way, as he tries to avoid athletes being seen as employees while having to acknowledge the reality that there is revenue (and in some cases, quite a lot of revenue) being generated in college sports. I disagree with him, certainly, but thatās just my opinion.
Yes, definitely true about the coaches too. The school is the vehicle that primarily drives the revenue.
Kind of interesting: Apparently Hunter Dickinson said on his podcast that he made less than 6-figures in NIL money at Michigan last year. Good reminder that the lack of transparency means that we have very little info into what kids are actually getting paid in NIL money, and further, and even worse, the kids themselves have little info on what other people make in NIL money. There are many super odd things about this market, but the lack of information seems to enable more shadiness than otherwise seems idealā¦ (heck - itās not like Hunter is showing audited financials here or anything, so who knows if these statements are even accurate).
Loved what Hunter said this weekā¦ lotta folks complaining about his move, questioning his character, would in a heartbeat quit their jobs today and take a new one for a $10k/year raise.
Iām sure this would have all kinds of issues, but an anonymous site where kids could post their NIL broken down by university collective and private business deals would be awesome. Would need a way to verify identities, which could be tricky. Someone smarter than me is probably working on this or has thought about it and bagged the idea because itās impossible.
Ostensibly, this is what a good agent / agency model should be doing (providing value by providing more info), but in practice? Who knows.
Thatās incredibly interesting and shines another light on this whole NIL thing. If you asked me during the season, what I thought the starting stud 7footer from Michigan was making Iād assume north of 6 figures easily.
As you already mentioned the lack of transparency in salary, combined with it being a new business, and full with as many carneyās as a pro-wrestling convention itās tough to take anything anyone says as truth especially when you see numbers being broadcast by 3rd parties.
Glassdoor for NIL when?
How good is glassdoor? I remember checking it in early days and it seemed like it wasnāt āthickā enough to have meaningful info.
What I really want is glassdoor for my immediate colleagues and bosses. Because that would be super healthy for me to obsess overā¦
Every once in a while, in my old gig, Iād see salary info for a group of people I didnāt know from Adam, and even in that context, it was always super fascinating. Employee A is a level X-7 analyst earning 3 megabucks per hour and Employee B is a level X-7 analyst earning 15 megabucks per hourā¦
I used to work at a consulting firm with lockstep salary and the glassdoor was a couple of base pay increases behind the current wages. And most of the big schmancy law firms are also lockstep at least for my foreseeable future.
There were also industry specific websites like levels.fyi for coding, WSO comp collection and others
Or you can work for state government like me and have your salary posted publicly.