This has come up a few times. It doesn't seem to be a problem, though, at UCONN or Creighton, and who knows what those guys are getting.
Do the players live apart from the rest of the dorm students? A former admisistrator told me they might be living on the other side of S. Orange Ave. Do they go to class? Do they drive expensive cars?
I love this particular aspect of the topic at hand.
Maybe at the schools where the program is historically successful (Kansas) or is the only game in town (Creighton), fans have come to accept NIL more willingly. There is a sense of tradition, going to the games is an event, and there is a sense of community. Not necessarily a bond with the players themselves but with the fellow fans you sit next to.
If you’re a school like Indiana with football. When you have been bad for so long, the fans will rally around a team because they have been starved of success for so long.
Now if you are Seton Hall. Ask yourself this…
Do we really have a ton of tradition?
A: I say NO. We have always been Seton Who?
I always laugh about the time Tyrese Samuel went to the BE freshman conference or whatever it was called and they did the pick a team with X amount of dollars game. And he goes, “I picked this Terry Dehere guy cause I saw his picture on campus once.”
Is going to the game an event?
A: I say NO. Even the fans on this board (most die hards) complain about traffic, weather, start times, parking costs, pretzels, etc etc.
When the season ticket holders pick and choose which games they want to go, because it’s still a better deal to buy the entire package then to buy individual game tickets, you know something is off.
Are the students bothered by NIL?
A: I say YES.
If I were a student living on campus and the cost of my degree is going to cost me over a quarter of a million dollars to graduate if I live on campus, then I would have animosity towards someone who is getting that same degree for free and then making hundreds of thousands of dollars on top of that.
I have no agenda with this example. But if I know a player like Manny Okorofor is getting a free education, makes a couple hundred thousand, performs poorly on the court, contributes little to a team that went 7-25, and then turns arounds and requests close to $800,000. Damn right I wouldn’t be inclined to spend my time and money to go support that type of mercenary. And that’s what the players are, mercenaries.
If we find out that an athletic program is operating at a financial loss, did the athletes truly deserve the piece of the pie they are getting paid, if the pie is making enough to be profitable.
