Myth: The Michigan Money Cannon and NIL

I'd like to suggest we all quit whining about it and see how this situation plays out.  

NIL doesnt require billionaires to make it work.

I would be pretty happy to pay $10/month into an NIL fund that goes directly to Michigan players. With an alumni and fan base as large as Michigan's it shouldn't be hard to find 100,000 Michigan fans who feel that same way.

That's an easy $12M/year before tapping sponsorships, boosters, wealthy donors or whatever else. The money is absolutely there. There's no reason for a program like Michigan to be crying poor over NIL, the system just need to become more organized. 

OP writes:

If you look around the country, in most cases, the highly funded NIL schools (schools that have been reported to be most active in pay for play) are not being funded by a massive group of donors all chipping in small amounts.

How does the OP know this? Serious question.

Larry Page really needs to start pulling his weight.

The Michigan Money Cannon has been a proven force for good in the world.  In my opinion it is, and always should be, a separate thing from NIL.  

Obviously, the answer for NIL and a money cannon attracting DoNeRZZZ with dog photos and cars, right? Right?

How rapid does the fan need to be? like a 4.3 40 time? Or are we talking about a distance runner?

Regardless of how you feel about NIL...having an incoming class of players ranked outside the top 20 seems far from ideal.  Esp on the heels of the most onfield success in recent history.  And if you think NIL isn't one of the main culprits here... I dunno what to tell ya.

The greatest trick universities and their ADs have pulled has been shifting the burden for player income to fans and donors while keeping the real money away from the players (TV contracts, preferred seat contributions/PSL, ticket revenue, advertising, merchandise/licensing). Every week there is some story from coaches or AD-friendly media trying to guilt fans and donors by talking about how their team is being outbid by other schools with the message implicit--give us even more money or the team will lose. This week it was OSU media talking about being outspent while their AD takes in the highest revenue in the country.

Fans and donors are already spending significant amounts of money on their alma maters or favorite hometown universities. The universities are working their hardest to keep from sharing it with the labor.

Michigan does not need to offer every 5* big bucks, Michigan needs to go after the players they want and offer big bucks. As has been stated OSU recruits athlete's, Michigan recruits football players,but I would like to see more football players with more money.

I really can't say whether this is true--I have no details on the breakdown of donations to UM writ large vs NIL. That said, your theory makes some sense.

I don't want to paint with too broad a brush, but it strikes me that in general Michigan alumni are more the types to donate to serious issues and vanity projects (e.g., cancer research and getting a B-school building named after them) than sports. I imagine the priorities are just different for alumni of many of schools. 

My problem with this is that it is costing us. I believe that we have already lost 2-3 commits or serious targets to NIL. If you think that is bad, wait until one of our players transfers to Georgia because he can make more money there. Obviously you've got to be smart about it but being naive and trying to run an athletic department like it's the 1970s where everyone is an amateur doesn't seem like the correct approach.

This has the potential of fracturing majored college football into:

Teams/conferences that participate openly in NIL.  Ie pretty unregulated market

Teams that compensate players, but in return requires participating players to enter into contracts that limits the players abilities to receive other compensation (there would have to be an strong enforcement oversight body with contractual teeth to audit teams as well as individual players.  Who knows, maybe this could even include requirements to "play school")

Bears like beets.

It truly means more in the SEC. It seems based on their apparent paltry NIL collectives northern rich donors don't have the desire to pay kids to play football at their school (OSU, UM, ND, PSU).

Most seem to think that a scholarship is sufficient and that kids are free to strike endorsement deals on their own. At OSU the stars have done this, with Stroud earning $2M with Express and JSN $1.7M. But that money came from Express, and not from any OSU NIL collective as bags.

For billionaires who are true big sport fans, Cuban, Ross, Cohen for example, would buy professional teams, which they can enjoy total control. And they would rather make big donations to the school rather than pay some unproven college freshmen more than some players on their own professional team. 

Michigan should produce their own version of “Hard Knocks”. Totally candid and raw.  Inside footage of pregames and post games and weekly insider stuff. Sell it as a subscription of some sort. If it’s as good as that 2017 insight, we’d all sign up to watch, And split the proceeds among the players. Id love to see some of that stuff, 

I am personally a big Michigan football and athletics fan, but I do not have any interest in funding athlete salaries

And there you have it. I saw these posts on July 1 of 2021 and could see the writing on the wall. We arent as motivated as a fan base and surely not as a program to help organize this.

Good bad or otherwise Im not judging it is just the reality of the situation. I really thought the money cannon was going to fizzle and it surely did. We are prime Dantonio @ MSU with some star power in Corum, Edwards, and JJ at the skill positions. Better keep those 3-4 players at those skill positions so we have a fighting chance.

I wonder if Wardes reluctance to go full money cannon is out of fear what it might do to athletic department donations.

I think it's funny that for so long it was taken as an article of faith here that Michigan wouldn't be able to beat Ohio State because they (it was said) pay players and we don't -- and it was asserted that unless we decided to relax our standards we were doomed to lose.

It's also taken as an article of faith apparently that Michigan isn't exploiting NIL options as much as most other teams are.

Meanwhile, we've lost two games in the past two years (one to last year's National Champion, and none this year) ... and Michigan fans are still going crazy that we're doomed, doomed because of our inability to negotiate this particular new world we're in.

I don't know. I liked the conversation Seth and Brian had last week about how Harbaugh prefers "football players" to 5-star recruits who (I'm paraphrasing) aren't as willing to sacrifice for the team to the same extent. I don't see why that can't continue to get us the players we want ... and I have enough faith in the athletic department and the Michigan administration that they will figure out the new world soon enough. Maybe a few years before the early-adopters (Texas A&M, etc.), but ... is that so bad? 

I swear. It's like people want to win the recruiting wars more than the actual games. I'm pretty satisfied with 13-0.

Michigan has said their strategy is to use NIL to keep players at Michigan, not to get them there in the first place. I like this idea a lot. Use it as an incentive to stay. I just saw a graph that UM is second only to TA&M in avg NIL compensation (don't know if this is for football only, for all athletes, etc) at $65K

I think players are getting bags - but not the flashy deals in recruiting but hopefully to all players and most to players who are "earning" it on the field/court

I know SEC fans who give away thousands of dollars a year to help "boost" their favorite team.  These people are not wealthy by any means.  The difference is their favorite teams are organized and make raising money a social event. To them, football is like a religion, and everyone must do their part to ensure their "group" is the dominant one. If that sounds familiar, it should; other non-profits have been doing this for centuries.

This is probably the case and it's also why I honestly don't worry that much about a couple of schools hoovering up the talent - there aren't that many spots and if the only reason you're going somewhere is because their crazy billionaire will write you a check then it's unlikely you'll retain a chunk of that class in the future.  Also, at least with Knight it sounds like Oregon is only going to receive these benefits related to Nike while Knight's at Nike and once he leaves they'll just be reliant on his money and not his influence at the swoosh.  So even that benefit feels ephemeral. 

The money cannon is there and it will help in certain circumstances but, sure, the idea that any school was going to just line up a bunch of rich alumni and convince them to spend millions so that an athletic department already clearing $40-50M from TV deals doesn't have to share with athletes wasn't realistic.