This is game week of the new college football season, and Hurricane Ida is not the only storm we have to worry about as the Tar Heels open at Virginia Tech Friday night.
The path of Ida, right now, is expected to impact the Blacksburg area on Wednesday or Thursday, and if it remains a category 5 hurricane, the havoc it wreaks could put the 6 p.m. kickoff Friday in jeopardy.
Options right now would be to push the game to Saturday night or move it to Chapel Hill, which is east of Ida’s current trajectory. Remember the 2016 game at Kenan Stadium during Hurricane Matthew? After the Hokies drowned the Heels’ passing game 34-3, Bubba Cunningham admitted the kickoff should have been delayed or the game moved to Sunday.
Another turbulence hangs over college football that could cause its own damage to the sport with longer-lasting implications.
Because of laws passed in California and pressure mounting in other states to pay college athletes, the Name-Image-Likeness (NIL) storm forced the NCAA to wash its hands of the movement that had started when former UCLA basketball player Ed O’Bannon saw his name and likeness used without his approval in a video game featuring the 1995 Bruins’ NCAA championship team. He filed various lawsuits because his “right of publicity” had been violated.
So, as of July 1, college athletes were allowed to benefit under rough guidelines imposed by states that had passed such laws, or conferences and universities left to figure it out for themselves.
Some, like UNC, proceeded carefully and thoughtfully, hiring marketing firms to instruct athletic departments how to implement and manage whatever opportunities came along for their athletes.
Others like Alabama and more recently BYU and Ohio State treated it like the Wild West of college sports, lining up big-money businessmen who support their schools to offer deals that surely benefit athletes but have no value structure that will make it very hard to police, especially when there are no NIL cops right now.
Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban was the first to brag that his new starting quarterback Bryce Young, who was a reserve behind first-round draft choice Mac Jones last year, had almost $1 million of deals lined up. Alabama is a rich state when it comes to wealthy alumni supporting the Tide and Auburn, since there are few professional teams or other sports on which to plunk their dough.
This past week, BYU announced a deal apparently brokered by its president and athletic director (which is not allowed, as we understand it) that covered any scholarship funds the school wanted to offer beyond the 85 allowed by the NCAA.
It could result in a $35 million gift from Built Brands, a Utah-based company that makes protein snacks, funding about 120 full football scholarships, which seems to give BYU a competitive advantage and create its own feeder system to the varsity. And BYU has been pretty brazen about what it did and why.
Athletic director Tom Holmoe said, “Are we saying that people in collegiate football these days are not looking for competitive advantages? The essence of athletics is competitive advantage. Competitive advantage exists in life. It’s called creativity. You come up with good ideas that give you a competitive advantage.”
At the same time, a Chevrolet dealer in or near Columbus, Ohio, has given lease cars to five members of the Buckeyes football team in exchange for their appearing in commercials and handing out toys at charity events sponsored by the dealership. That sounds pretty cool, but who is monitoring the value of a lease car against the NIL commitments made by the athletes?
So, you can see why this has the potential of spinning out of control pretty quickly, and a process that was supposed to help athletes across the board turn into a recruiting competition that is only going to make the rich get richer among college sports programs.
“How much is my son going to get in NIL money,” college coaches will be asked on recruiting visits moving forward. And what can they say except detailing how much money their current players are already making, or they don’t know how that will be determined? The latter is a losing answer.
Many athletic departments and athletic directors, including Carolina and Cunningham, entered this process very wary of how it could worsen a climate already wrought with uncontrolled agents preying on families of athletes and out-of-control spending.
Yes, like raising more money than other schools that allow you to pay head coaches and their staffs into the multi-millions, boost recruiting budgets higher than the competition and building fairy-tale facilities that wow teenage 5-stars.
The NCAA will hold a “governance” convention in January, and that shapes up as more of a brawl between administrators of the “have schools” and have nots. The “haves” could be schools with more money or more conscience.
At Carolina, Mack Brown repeatedly says he cannot get involved in whatever NIL deals his players are offered. That has to be handled by professional agents hired by the athletes or the UNC marketing teams and compliance office.
Chapel Hill Media Group (which owns WCHL and Chapelboro.com) has developed a small program geared to getting some money for as many athletes as possible who want to broker their NIL rights.
Already, more than 30 players have signed up to record a short interview that is turned into a feature called the Carolina Player Spotlight. It is open to any football players (and later, athletes from others sports) who sign up and, as soon as they are matched with a sponsoring business, come into the station, record their short interview and walk out with $500 that most athletes can really use these days.
It has been completely vetted and approved by the compliance office, and it helps Brown’s goal of “getting some money for as many players as possible.” So far, about 15 local business sponsorships have been secured.
Business owners who want to support Carolina athletes in this “legal and sanctioned” way should email aubrey@wchl.com for more information.
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