Troy Dannen admits there was 'donor weariness' at Nebraska over paying players

It’s been several seasons now where NIL has been allowed. In that time, there’s been a race to accumulate and retain talent through NIL. That’s something that Nebraska athletic director Troy Dannen noticed created some weariness amongst donors.

This summer, the NIL race changed significantly with the implementation of the House Settlement, which notably allows for revenue sharing between schools and athletes. It, notably, doesn’t end NIL, though. So, that weariness is still something that schools, not just Nebraska, do need to combat. What remains to be seen, though, is exactly how that NIL spending changes over time.

“I think some people are betting on the fact that since it’s happened,” Troy Dannen said. “There’s no way you go backwards. I talk a lot about that. This has to hold. This has to work. It has to for that reason. Don’t think that the money that was coming in and frontloading and the money that was there for NIL the last two, three years – that was not an endless stream. It’s not just here, but it’s across the country. Donors, there was some donor weariness to this. And now the fact that we’re actually paying them, I think some donors are questioning, ‘Why am I writing a check if you’re paying them?’”

The House Settlement allows for up to $20.5 million across sports. Most of that is expected to be spent on football. It also looked to place guardrails on NIL spending. That includes a new rule, which makes it so that NIL deals above $600 will need third-party approval and will be sent to a new clearinghouse called NIL Go. On top of that, there’s a new enforcement arm for these issues.

“The biggest question is, what are we going to do with high school recruiting? Because the frontloading has moved to high school recruiting. Because you can give anybody anything right now, and it’s unregulated by the terms of the settlement. It’s probably circumvention of the settlement. I hear various things about what’s happening. Some of it’s true, some of it’s not true. I’m not sure I should repeat it,” Dannen said. “Because I don’t trust a lot of what I hear unless I see it, to be sure. I do know there’s a lot of money going pre-enrollment right now as a way to circumvent the gap. I’d say it’s moved from recruitment and retention to recruitment.”

Troy Dannen, like many others, is looking to the future right now. However, there hasn’t even been a full season yet with the House Settlement in place. So, actually realizing how things have changed and will continue to change, is difficult at this point.

“How that’s handled, there’s a lot of us that have made suggestions about what we should do from a regulatory standpoint. We’re waiting. This gets back to the fact that there’s a lot of frustration. Why don’t we have that answer right now? It’s because it’s brand new and it’s going to take a little bit of time. That’s where we have to have patience. We can be frustrated that this is happening at that school or this is allegedly happening at that school,” Dannen said. “But we’re going to get a set of rules to deal with and then we’re going to go forward and we’re going to optimize what we can do with that set of rules.”

For athletic directors like Dannen, they know that they need to avoid any more donor fatigue. It’s that money that helps put the roster on the field, and no program wants to have less access than another. At the same time, it’s hard to avoid fatigue unless there are some results on the field.