ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Oklahoma women’s golf concluded the second round of the NCAA Albuquerque Regional ninth (26-over, 602) at The Championship Course at UNM.

A conversation about potential reforms to name, image and likeness deals looming over college sports

Name, image and likeness – commonly referred to as NIL. It’s all anyone in the world of college sports wants to talk about. The situation around what were intended to be licensing deals spun out so fast that it might have cost Mark Emmert his job as NCAA president.

I’ve been kicking around some ideas with the esteemable Tye Burger of Kansas State site Bring on the Cats about the impact of NIL deals on the NCAA and the college sports industrial complex. We decided to take the conversation online.

We didn’t really solve anything. I’m not sure if we even reached any conclusions. But here are our thoughts on some of the more pressing questions surrounding the explosion in NIL deals. Feel free to chime in down in the comments with your thoughts.

1. Do you think the current state of essentially unregulated NIL compensation in college sports is desirable? Why or why not?

Tye B.: The lawyer’s go-to phrase is most apt here: it depends. For the players? This is mostly desirable. We’ve created an essentially unregulated marketplace with gaping loopholes that allow eager boosters to create a pay-for-play environment under the guise of NIL compensation. The result is that major football recruits and transfers are reportedly making more than NFL rookies and good-not-great basketball transfers are taking in mid-six-figures and getting cars. Good for them.

For coaching staffs, this is a new, and massive, difficulty that falls within their mid-seven-figure job description. Don’t feel too bad for them, they’re paid well to deal with problems. But they now have less control over their rosters and may face locker room problems around how much each player is making.

Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports

Desirability for fans takes into account the coach’s issues, and also may depend on each school’s station in the college sports hierarchy. Allen and OU fans will have more resources at their disposal and thus more power to to attract major recruits and transfers. My K-State Wildcats risk becoming a feeder school for the OU’s and Ohio State’s of the world.

Or maybe this is much ado about nothing. Not every successful player moves up. And K-State is rebuilding its entire basketball roster relying mostly on the transfer portal, presumably competing and winning contests for players at least partially on their ability to compete in the NIL space.

Overall, my conclusion is that a fully unregulated NIL environment is not desirable for college sports. Note that “fully unregulated” is the key component of that previous sentence.

Allen K.: I like your framing here with the separate groups of stakeholders, but don’t forget the schools themselves. Even though it may not be a zero-sum game, they are now competing with players for boosters’ dollars.

If you’re a booster who loves football, are you going to donate to the school or the equivalent of a slush fund for acquiring talent? I imagine more will go for the latter, especially if collectives survive as 501(c)(3) organizations – admittedly, that’s no sure thing.

Here’s something to consider: In the scenario you’ve posed with some schools serving as feeders for big programs, let’s say fan interest in college football declines. (Not a given, but play along.) Meanwhile, donations start falling. At that point, schools decide they would rather collectively bargain to give players a slice of TV money.

How are you going to get the players to negotiate? Unless the distributions are huge, star players benefiting from the existing setup won’t have any reason to change things. The players who don’t command big NIL money can theoretically be replaced without much trouble. Getting everyone to the bargaining table sounds like a serious challenge.

2. Same question as before, but now substitute “sustainable” for “desirable.”

AK: Frankly, I’m not entirely sure how to answer this question due to the fact that I think “sustainable” in this case likely means many things to many people. Admittedly, I also don’t believe NIL will change the overall competitive outcomes in college football dramatically.

Are the rumored dollar figures attached to these deals sustainable? Possibly. From an economic perspective, we know total spending on NIL has to hit a peak at some point. Regarding spending rates, we just don’t know if: a) we started out at a natural equilibrium point; b) there is room for those rates to grow; or c) rates will fall.

Is this sustainable as a compensation system for athletes? I guess so. Fans have been spending money on their favorite college teams since the first time toe met leather. If this system stays in place, I imagine they will continue ponying up.

Does sustainable mean that college football will look the same in five or 10 years as it does now? If not, I suspect the television industry will have more to do with that than NIL deals.

I honestly think the biggest concern right now is that we are in the very early stages of what has become a cottage industry. I suspect a significant number of collectives and businesses organized around NIL will go out of business quickly, leaving many of their obligations unfunded. How many players will that affect, and how will it impact opinions about collectives and the programs tied to them?

TB: Your last point is what I’m most focused on. The ROI just doesn’t seem to exist here. Sure, there are some boosters who have so much f*&%-you money that they can spend six figures here and six figures there because wins are worth it to them. But in the grand scheme, there aren’t that many of them. And inevitably some folks are going to get in over their heads and an athlete who thought he had a six-figure deal will get left holding the bag. What happens then?

3. Broadly speaking, what types of NCAA regulations would you favor for NIL compensation?

TB: NIL compensation should be tied to specific outputs, or organized into specific categories, in such a way that it can be tracked and accounted for. Royalties from merchandise and memorabilia sales are well-established in other sports and industries. Fees for public appearances, promotions and skill camps are another area. Caps should be established for each type of payment and the categories of NIL compensation permitted under NCAA rules should be enumerated with specificity. If your reaction to that previous sentence is negative, you may not be familiar with the NFL’s salary cap or MLB’s luxury tax.

Open-ended and unregulated NIL collectives are essentially just pay-for-play, which as we discuss elsewhere in this post may actually be preferable to pay-for-play under the guise of NIL compensation.

AK: I’m skeptical that those regulations are feasible without negotiating a collective bargaining agreement with the players. Personally, I’d argue that the schools could infuse the sport with some stability by requiring players who transfer to sit out a year.

BRYAN TERRY/THE OKLAHOMAN / USA TODAY NETWORK

I never thought that part of the old transfer rules seemed particularly onerous. (Coaches limiting players’ potential transfer destinations is a different issue altogether.) And if a player has to sit out a year before becoming eligible to compete, it dilutes the benefits of tampering and makes transferring less desirable to players.

I don’t love this solution, especially considering how many players end up transferring at the behest of their coaches – perhaps there are some guardrails for those situations. Going back to the old transfer rules just feels like a more reasonable approach to addressing any problems that might be percolating at the moment.

4. Is a direct, and regulated, pay-for-play model better than unregulated NIL?

AK: “Regulated” is doing a lot of work in this question, but I’m inclined to say yes. What we have now isn’t NIL – it’s a proxy system for directly compensating players. That’s not a good stand-in for a contractual relationship between employers (i.e., the schools) and employees (i.e., the players) for a number of reasons. For example, considering NIL deals are almost certainly contingent in one way or another upon players being enrolled in school and a member of a team, what kinds of conflicts of interest do they pose for coaches with the ability to “process” players out of their programs? And in terms of unintended consequences, consider all the opportunities the NIL system is creating for grifters and third parties to siphon money from the athletes.

A simple, transparent system for compensating players just seems like a more reasonable approach to me.

TB: That’s where I am, and I think a lot of what this comes down to. Unregulated NIL is essentially just a pay-for-play scheme dressed up as … something else. I know the NCAA and the schools (but I repeat myself) seem willing to die on the hill of amateurism and avoiding collective bargaining. But as I said above, if this current system goes south, then leadership may change their mind. Perhaps it’s better to have control of the compensation.

If you’ll permit me to be naive for a moment, it could even make the sport more equitable. Through the draft and the salary cap, the NFL is designed to promote parity and prevent super teams. By contrast, Alabama doesn’t get the last pick in the recruiting draft after they win a national title. In most cases they effectively get the first pick. And now with NIL, they (and others) sustain their advantages and make it nearly impossible for teams with fewer resources to compete at the highest level. But a pay-for-play system with a reasonable salary cap in place could spread the talent out more evenly.

OK, I almost typed that with a straight face. Now I’m back to the real world where I know that if CFB ever does adopt pay-for-play, it’ll be a toothless version that does nothing to promote parity.

NORMAN – For the second consecutive season, the Oklahoma men’s golf team is the nation’s No. 1 overall seed. As a result, the Sooners will host the NCAA Norman Regional at Jimmie Austin OU Golf Club May 16-18, it was announced by the NCAA Division I Men’s Golf Committee.

An observation about OU’s player development and other thoughts from the NFL draft

The NFL invited 11 Oklahoma Sooners to the NFL combine in Indianapolis this year, tied with Alabama for the second-most of any school and behind Georgia with 14. When the actual draft commenced last week, the first OU player selected was Nik Bonitto by the Denver Broncos at the end of the second round.

A program with that many players invited to combine going without a pick in the first round doesn’t happen very often. Of the 27 teams that finished in the top five of combine invites in the last five years, five failed to have a player picked in the first round – OU in 2022, Notre Dame in 2021, Ole Miss in 2019, and Miami and LSU in 2018. Of the 10 teams that sent exactly 11 prospects to the combine during that period, the Sooners joined the 2021 Fighting Irish as the only two without a first-round pick.

You could argue that this stat doesn’t mean much. After all, it’s possible there’s no correlation between NFL combine invites and first-round picks, and combine invitations are far from foolproof assessments of talent. On the other hand, if you’re of the belief that OU’s development of players had fallen off lately, this seems to support your position.

Seven Sooners heard their names called last week. That’s certainly not a bad total – only four schools had more (Georgia, LSU, Penn State and Cincinnati). And it’s definitely better than zero.

But it also marked the second year in a row that OU didn’t produce a first rounder. OU has seen too many talented players pass through the program recently for that to happen.

In February, Jason Kersey made the point in an evaluation of OU’s coaching transition that the Sooners’ on-field product declined slightly in the five-year tenure of Lincoln Riley. The inability in the last two seasons to develop any first-round picks also fits with the perception of a slow erosion on his watch.

BRYAN TERRY/THE OKLAHOMAN / USA TODAY NETWORK

Whatever the case may be, not producing first-round picks can make for tough sledding on the recruiting trail. New coach Brent Venables should look to rectify that quickly.

A few other observations about OU’s draft class:

Trevor Ruszkowski-USA TODAY Sports

*One important question to consider: Did playing out of position hurt the stock of some OU prospects? Most notably, Perrion Winfrey and Isaiah Thomas.

Winfrey clearly doesn’t have the size to be an NFL nose tackle – his pro future is at 3-tech defensive tackle. Meanwhile, OU frequently slid Thomas down from his natural position on the end to an interior DT.

Both players brought other drawbacks to the table as prospects, but it seems like a question worthy of consideration.

*Overall, the pass rushers in this draft class looked really strong. In other years, Bonitto and Thomas may have gone earlier than they did.

Same applies at wide receiver and Mike Woods.

*Given how the NFL now values running backs, Kennedy Brooks falling out of the draft shouldn’t have surprised anyone. The bet here is that he still enjoys at least a few seasons on an NFL roster.

*The Minnesota Vikings are shifting to a 3-4 base scheme under new defensive coordinator Ed Donatell. Obviously, that can mean different things for position assignments, but Brian Asamoah seems better-equipped to play in a 4-3. That assumes the Vikings intend to play him as an inside linebacker, of course.

Anyway, Asamoah’s physical tools and motor make him the Sooner with the highest ceiling of this crop.

*How much did Delarrin Turner-Yell raise his stock with a fast 40-yard dash at the combine? He likely went from undrafted to the fifth round because of it.

*Sooners most likely to hear their names called in 2023 (from most likely to not as likely):

• Marvin Mims, WR
• Jalen Redmond, DL
• Woodi Washington, CB
• Key Lawrence, S
• DaShaun White, LB
• Wanya Morris, OT
• Brayden Willis, TE
• Theo Wease, WR
• Michael Turk, P

NORMAN – The Oklahoma women’s golf team has been selected to compete in the NCAA Albuquerque Regional May 9-11 at The Championship Course at UNM.