By Pat Harty

IOWA CITY, Iowa – In the good old days, or in other words, about four years ago, building and sustaining a college football and men’s basketball roster at the highest level relied more on emotional support from fans than financial.

Of course, fans had to do their part by purchasing tickets and school-affiliated attire, and by donating to facility upgrades and to whatever else might come up where money was needed to make something better.

But in the good old days, meaning prior to July 1, 2021, which is the day name, image and likeness went into effect, fans didn’t have a financial stake or responsibility in building a roster unless they were a deep-pocketed donor that was willing to contribute.

Now, fair or not, every college sports fan is a potential donor, and in many cases, including Iowa football and men’s basketball, a much-needed donor.

As part of the House vs. NCAA proposed settlement, schools will soon be allowed to share athletic department revenues with their varsity athletes.

Once the settlement is finalized, which is expected to happen in April, NCAA Division I schools, starting on July, 1 will be allowed to directly make payments to their athletes up to to a tentative annual revenue sharing cap of $ 20.5 million per school.

So, yes, that’ll certainly help.

It has been estimated that Iowa men’s basketball would receive about $2.5 million from what’s left of the three-fourths that football is expected to slice from the settlement pie.

Combine that with Iowa’s outside collective raising about $1.5 million annually in NIL resources for men’s basketball, and new Iowa head coach Ben McCollum should have at least $4 million to work with coming out of the gate, but probably even more, assuming there will be an uptick in NIL donations in response to his hire.

So, yes, that seems like a lot of money.

But we now live in a college sports world where $4 million, or even $5 million, is considered average at best when trying to build a men’s college basketball roster.

Pete Nakos from On3 reported that the Louisville men’s basketball program has an immediate goal of raising up to $10 million annually to fund its roster building.

And while it’s easy to believe that the rich donors will ultimately help to save the day, that doesn’t seem true in Iowa’s case.

There obviously are wealthy donors that continue to support Hawkeye athletics in multiple ways, including NIL contributions.

But there doesn’t appear to be one of those super, mega-donors, someone like Nike founder Phil Knight, whose financial support for Oregon athletics has been so critical in attracting recruits to Eugene.

Ben McCollum was asked in his introductory press conference last Wednesday what his sales pitch would be to recruits as he starts to rebuild Iowa’s roster literally from the ground up.

“You know, one, it’s the University of Iowa. Like I think it’s a big deal,” McCollum said. “I think it’s pretty cool to be here. I love the campus. I love everything surrounding it. I love the support. I love the fans. I’ve been around it my whole life. So you sell that, number one.

“Two, the relationships that we’re going to have with them is a dig deal. So we sell the people. So we’ll sell the people that — my assistants, my staff. We’ll sell anyone that’s in the program at that point.

“And, three, just making sure that they understand we’ve won a lot, and if you want to be infected with some of those winning characteristics that we can bring to the table, this is where you should be. And if you want to go somewhere else for a certain amount of whatever, then go do that. But we’re going to make you better.”

His sales pitch already has worked on freshman forward Cooper Koch, who announced Sunday on social media that he will return to Iowa next season.

What McCollum said also maybe could be used to encourage fans to make an NIL donation.

Because in this state, Iowa men’s basketball is a big deal, or at least should be.

The current disconnect with fans, which led to the lowest home attendance in 60 years this past season, is a disturbing trend, and part of the reason Fran McCaffery was fired as the Iowa head coach after 15 mostly successful seasons.

In fairness to Fran McCaffery, he was at a disadvantage with NIL resources that that caused him to miss on some key recruits.

Iowa failed to make the NCAA Tournament in each of the past two seasons, and barely averaged 5,000 fans in the 18 homes games this season.

But when the Iowa men’s basketball team is winning enough games to be relevant, Carver-Hawkeye Arena is usually rocking.

The challenge for McCollum is to win enough games for Iowa to be relevant.

He won at an incredibly high rate in his previous two head coaching jobs at Drake, which he led to a school-record 34 wins in his only season as head coach this past season, and Northwestern Missouri State, where he won four Division II national titles, and that’s why he’s now the head Hawk.

McCollum has shown a knack for identifying and developing talent, and for getting the maximum effort out of his players.

His teams are known for how well they execute on both offense and defense, and for how unselfish and connected they are on both ends of the court.

McCollum is also a true Hawkeye fan, and not just out of convenience just because it now goes with the territory.

He literally grew up in this territory, born in Iowa City in 1981 and then raised in Storm Lake.

Former Iowa head coach Todd Lickliter always seemed like an outsider during his three disastrous seasons as head coach from 2007-10.

The soft-spoken Lickliter was a Butler guy and he held the Butler way close to his heart, even after he arrived in Iowa City.

Or so it seemed.

McCollum, on the other hand, said he didn’t even watch NBA games as a kid because his sole focus was on watching the Tom Davis-coached Iowa Hawkeyes.

If McCollum were to struggle as the Iowa head coach, it wouldn’t be from being an outsider or from not being a good coach.

It would be from not having enough talent to compete.

That is what ultimately led to Lickliter’s demise, but Lickliter was largely to blame for his downfall, especially since there wasn’t NIL to blame back then.

McCollum faces a much tougher challenge than Lickliter did simply because of the impact from NIL, and from the transfer portal.

And so do the fans, because whether they like it not, fans now play a giant role in building and sustaining rosters with NIL donations.

Name, image and likeness has quickly, and unfortunately, become pay-for-play, and if you’re not willing to pay, the teams you support emotionally might be at risk.

That puts a lot of pressure on the fans, but that’s where the situation is right now.

NIL is driving big-time college athletics, but sometimes you worry that it’s being driven off a financial cliff.

The average fan who supported name, image and likeness for what it was originally supposed to represent probably didn’t realize how much of the financial burden would ultimately fall on his own her shoulder.

Fans certainly have a choice about making NIL donations, and for those that choose not to contribute, that is certainly their right to do so.

But remember that choice if your favorite team struggles from a lack of talent and depth.

McCollum wouldn’t have taken the Iowa job if he felt NIL was too much of an obstacle to overcome.

He had a good thing going at Drake and was on the radar of other Power 4 programs.

But whatever Iowa athletic Director Beth Goetz said to McCollum about NIL fundraising was enough to help seal the deal.

The rise of social media caused many college sports fans to take themselves too seriously, and to think they matter more than they really do because they had a platform that gave them equal time and space to express their opinions.

But now with NIL at the center of building and sustaining rosters, the average college sports fan truly does matter now more than ever.

They have a financial say on how rosters will be built.

And while it sounds neat and exciting, it comes at a heavy cost.

 

 

 

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In NCAA vs. Alston, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an NCAA appeal of its antitrust lawsuit, finalizing the lower court decision that the NCAA is not exempt from antitrust regulations. This ruling opened the floodgates for additional academic-related compensation and led to the NCAA’s ultimate decision to quickly adopt an Interim NIL Policy that allowed, for the first time, student-athletes to benefit financially from their name, image, and likeness without fear of NCAA penalty.