Athletic: How Ohio State unlocked its NIL potential and won the college football offseason
The Athletic ($) is up with an article on how Ohio State got its NIL setup going. The intro:
COLUMBUS, Ohio — When Gene Smith and Ryan Day met after the season, the athletic director made it clear he was going “all in” on football. Ohio State heavily investing in football is hardly new, but after three consecutive losses to Michigan, Smith wanted to take it up a notch before retiring this summer.
Smith sketched out a long list of donors that the Buckeyes needed to call. He passed it to his sixth-year head coach.
“Ryan, you need to call these guys,” Smith recalled telling Day. “I can answer the questions, but you’re the football coach...”
After taking it slow the first year or two, Smith and Ohio State more aggressively embraced NIL, with Day freed up to take a lead role.
“If I call, 99.9 percent of the time they know why I’m calling,” Smith said. “But if it’s Ryan, that’s a game-changer.”
NIL made a difference in enabling OSU to retain key players and attract others:
But there’s no denying that NIL helped make it possible to retain players who might have otherwise entered the draft.
“This was the best decision for me and there’s no reason for me to rush to the league — we have NIL now,” Burke said. “We’re not worried about too many things.”
OSU NIL collectives, after a slow start the first two years, are firing on all cylinders:
The portal success wouldn’t have happened without increased alignment at every level, from coaches to administrators to NIL collectives and donors. There’s a sense of urgency inside the program that extends to Ohio State’s primary NIL collectives, The Foundation and The 1870 Society.
The Foundation, which signed an exclusive deal with Downs and also has a deal with Howard, top-ranked 2024 signee Jeremiah Smith and many others, has raised 10 times more than what it raised at this point last year, said Brian Schottenstein, a co-founder and board member of The Foundation...
“I think this is what the country was afraid of,” said Ohio State donor Gary Marcinick, founder of the non-profit Cohesion Foundation collective.
Ryan Day has taken a step back from day-to-day coaching to focus more on fundraising. That has had a big impact on NIL fundraising:
The impact of Day’s name popping up on a donor’s phone is substantial. Even new men’s basketball coach Jake Diebler has benefitted from his growing fundraising duties.
“We have a big list of contacts, but we’ve had them make the calls because it goes further,” Schottenstein said. “It makes it more real. They can talk about the team and make the donor feel they have the inside access. … It makes them feel part of the team and it helps them want to donate because they are part of the family.”
Mark Stetson, a longtime donor who founded The 1870 Society, said getting a call from the head coach can tip the scales for a donor who may be on the fence. It’s less about Day calling and asking for money than it is him explaining to donors how NIL can impact athletes.
“I think when you are communicating with a coach you can feel the need, and that’s where you get a lot of the positives of NIL,” Stetson said. “You go across the non-rev sports, there’s kids who work two or three jobs to be able to live, but with NIL they can focus more on athletic and academic hours. Hearing that from the coach is a direct line to see the impact.”
It's a long article; the rest is here.
They getting rings for winning the offseason?
Offseason pants.
Gold jorts
Some cats still do.
You mean like these?
Congratulations to Osu for finally winning in something the tile “Preseason Queens”
Ok, but how is it an achievement to win because you outspent everyone? Where’s the satisfaction in that?
OT, ask the Mets or Yankees (https://www.theonion.com/yankees-ensure-2003-pennant-by-signing-every-player-in-1819566731):
For that reason (payroll disparities) alone I have limited interest in MLB.
And this is also the reason why I have no interest in club soccer. It's worse in that sport because of who the big spenders are and where they get their money from.
My assertion is that dirty money is pouring into NIL at these mega-donor programs as well. It's the wild wild west until the players get a cut of the TV revenue & then we still won't be able to regulate out the side hustles.
Alabama, Georgia and LSU seem like they've really enjoyed the last 15 years.
Sure, but at least those teams weren't soft and were better coached. Just look at TAMU to see what spending millions can do for a bad culture and weak coaching.
The point is that it cheapens the victory (for anyone not suffering delusion.) The same people complaining about participation trophies getting all excited that their team bought a championship.
I'd feel 100% satisfaction if Michigan had the biggest NIL budget and won multiple championships.
According to 11 Warriors (cute name) their 2018 class was the highest rated class in program history. My guess is it's a talent development problem, not a talent acquisition problem.
Exactly. Winning is not a foregone conclusion for them.
And their coach is doing... less coaching now. That doesn't sound like the path to better development.
What they're setting up for is the most expensively purchased, and therefore greatly painful, disappointment in program history. I wish they could keep Ryan Day forever, but this is probably it for him.
You can’t buy culture.
Ohio has a lot of stupid money sloshing around, apparently.
I love football, but in my head, I put it in its place as entertainment. There are tons of things these benefactors could spend their fuck-you money on to improve that shithole of a state, but this is what they're doing.
P.S. Random thought: imagine the boost to Ohio's economy if they put all this NIL money toward academic scholarships instead.
Reminds me of when i see a beat up 20 year old honda with giant exhaust, even bigger spoiler, mismatched body panels, and MOPAR/Roush/NOS stickers all over
I think those are kinda funny. Pondered making one myself, for the irony. Get me a spoiler like it came off the boom of a P-38, 'cuz I ain't dusting anyone with 1.5L under the hood. But -- and here's the rub -- I decided that'd be a ridiculous waste of money for a joke.
Nah, this is more like, when I see a Ford F-750 or whatever with those big rig vertical exhaust systems and six tires and truck nuts and patriotic decals. . . and a perfectly pristine cargo bed. Meaning it's not a work truck, it's a gorram white-collar commuter. You could be doing the exact same thing in a used Kia, but you're mortgaging your future on a boner surrogate.
Dragon this is probably my favorite post ever. Tiny little Toyota truck with 3 lawn mowers pulls up to a house as the owner drives away in his Mega truck on the way to the office. $900 a month farther away from retirement.
When your fuck-you money is limitless, you put it toward everything you give two shits about.
What are you talking about re:'stupid money'??
It's not like we in Ohio ever had an issue with energy companies bribing elected officials $60 million in kickbacks for bailout legislation at the taxpayers' expense
For some kids, athletic scholarships are the ticket to riches. They are better athlete than a doctor or engineer or a lawyer. AND once their career ends in mid-20s to mid-30s, they can come back or get a certification to work on those fields.
By mid-30s, most people in their careers (via academic route) are selling. These athletes are going to do the same and their names will open more doors.
This arms race will reach an equilibrium in the next 2-3 years, with schools ending up exactly where they started. Everyone will spend a ton, with no one getting an edge. The only winners will be the players, which is good.
I've enjoyed the last three years, but beating them again will be even sweeter now that they've demoted their head coach to telemarketer.
But he's a super tough telemarketer!
"Hi, I'm Ryan Day and I'd like to talk to you about the OSU AD's day of giving campaign. Also, if you can TELL ME WHERE LOU HOLTZ IS RIGHT NOW it would be greatly appreciated."
Well played
I hate to play the role of the Debbie Downer, but we had the perfect storm in a good sense the last couple of years and that may not be repeated soon. We had unusual coaching talent, players who hung around for an extra year and were some of the best talent the program has had along with few major injuries, Zinter being the exception and Blake in '22 but Donovan saved the day.
And by the way, much of that talent got here before NIL.
I have enjoyed every bit of the last three years. My National Championship football arrived yesterday and I was lucky enough to be in Houston for the NC game. I thought we were good enough to have won the whole thing in 2022 also.
Realistically, while I wish coach Moore well, I have my doubts that he will be another Harbaugh. Harbaugh was exceptional. You don't find coaching talent like that often. I'm still saddened that JH is gone, in part because I think with the right AD he might have stayed.
Our schemes were perfectly matched for our talent.
JJ and Blake were exceptional. We had talent everywhere as the NFL draft showed; and potentially three more first rounders on this year's team.
My crystal ball suggests we will be good over the next few years but not as good as the last three years have been.
What has largely been missing is the personnel we should have been able to recruit with our record. Some of that was due to JH's dalliances with the NFL and some was due to not embracing NIL.
I think OSU has looked at college football in its current state and done exactly what needs to be done to win, namely, fire their money cannon. We have not. Sure, things have gotten better but our NIL money is at another level than what is happening in Columbus and not in a good way. Time will tell, of course. Our schedule is going to get tougher from the new B1G.
It was a lot of fun being at the top. I'm concerned that unless Michigan changes the way it supports NIL, being a championship team will be a fleeting memory.
You're just realistic. The college football that we love, the unique animal of developing kids who play with heart and emotion as their primary driver, is now over. It is a thing of the past. There are now two super-conferences, no amateurism, and a playoff that is almost exactly the same as the NFL. Rivalries are finished. Bowl games and healthy debate are finished.
Team 144 was the very embodiment of Bo Schembechler’s “the Team” speech. Name your favorite player on team 144-you can’t, I dare you, because there were too many of them. I agree with Josh Pate; they were the last great college football team.
My time in Ann Arbor was 1985-1992, which started with Harbaugh as QB and ended with Desmond Howard. I would see both those guys, as well as many others, around town. They were students who happened to be really good at football, and it was easy to get excited to see the same guys you saw hanging out at the Brown Jug that week play at the Big House on Saturdays. The players were completely relatable. That wasn't limited to just athletics either. I also knew students that happened to be great at other endeavors, such as music, and it was a testament to the type of talented people that University of Michigan could (and still does) attract. I strongly agree with the athletes getting paid, but the naked money first professionalism that exists now is a bit disheartening. They are no longer students who are good at football, rather they are mercenaries that go to the highest bidder, with no real sense of belonging to the institutions they represent, ie they are professionals, not student athletes. For most students, the school they choose is as much as anything an emotional one, and that emotional choice binds you to that school for the rest of your life. That used to be true for student athletes too, but that seems to be less and less the case. And before someone pipes in with “doesn’t everyone go to a job that's the highest bidder”, at least for me that didn’t hold true. If the money was good but everything else sucked, I didn’t go. There is absolutely nothing LSU could offer that Michigan can’t better, other than $. Even the weather argument doesn’t work, as shitty winters are replaced with unbearable summers.
Old man rant over. I am sadly in agreement with some of the pessimistic posters above. Team 144, I love you! Go Blue forever! I’ll hold my season tickets until I can no longer walk, but I suspect my emotional investment will probably become a bit attenuated compared to prior seasons.
I came of age (from a Michigan football fanatic standpoint) during the Cooper years so growing up I had this ingrained belief that Michigan was innately superior to OSU in virtually all respects, and therefore it was a god-given right of Michigan to continue on dominating the series. Clearly I learned differently as OSU has objectively been the superior football program for most of the 2000s. It sure seems like a lot of M fans have bought into the idea that our continued dominance is preordained and will continue.
The worm always turns. For every “I went for two because I couldn’t go for three,” there is an Upset of the Century. For every Cooper, there’s a Richrod. That realization kept me going through the many dark years before Harbaugh, when the worm finally budged. The worm will turn away from us again, just hopefully not as long as he turned away last time.
Didn't really think this joke would turn into a discussion, but great points. But, a small correction. They didn't just start. They just needed proper motivation to increase what was already a really good pay-to-play program prior to NIL.
Agreed. You can't win forever. You can't do anything forever. The pendulum of life swings back and forth. Just the way it works.
Harbaugh was never staying. You're delusional.
Did you see the John Harbaugh quote about Jim? "He loved some of the people there. Probably." "Never" isn't appropriate in this case. JH indicated frequently that he would stay at MIchigan until he retires but it was always understood that that was only on his terms. Jim loves to operate a certain way, so he rubs some people the wrong way. And yes, the chase of a Super Bowl ring was always on Jim's list but it isn't the only thing on the list.
“I've enjoyed the last three years, but beating them again will be even sweeter now that they've promoted their head coach to telemarketer.”
FIFY
It's just amazing to me that they still think it's about how many stars the player has. The logic here is let's pay lots of money to build a roster with guys who, on paper, can't lose. Oh, and to get that money, lets have our "coach" who hasn't been able to win with superior talent when he was fully focused on football to divert his limited coaching resources elsewhere to fundraising.
I mean, that's usually the way it works, right? Double down on what has worked in the past. Wonder how much they had to spend on QBs after chasing McCord out of there
Given how Day hasn't been able to win it all yet despite top 5 class after top 5 class and inheriting a championship-level team to boot, maybe keeping him on the phone is a great idea.
Slight correction there: Top 3, for many years straight, by average player ranking.
I mean, it probably works to a certain degree. You can just out-talent mediocre teams, even with mediocre coaching. Then you just pray that you get enough bounces from the oblong football to go your way to overcome your coaching deficiencies in the few games that matter.
If the talent gap is wide enough, it certainly can narrow the margin for error for your opponents. Even the worst pro teams would smoke the best college teams, simply on talent level alone. Miss a tackle on a 5* speedster and it is a TD. Miss it on a 3* guy and it is a 15 yard gain and a first down.
Yeah we kinda know it works. Winning correlates heavily to recruiting rankings and number of nfl draft picks on the team. The rankings correlate to draft picks.
Michigan winning despite that trend doesn’t suddenly mean those correlations are dead. You still want to accumulate as much talent on your team as you can.
So yeah we can all laugh at OSU for the results the last 3 years, and Days failures, but the strategy makes sense. It’s how Alabama dominated the sport for more than a decade.
Anyone else ever wonder why when Michigan becomes top of it class in a category recruits no longer care about it? Dismissing the fact we are fighting Kentucky for recruits after 13 players went in the draft and we just won a national championship is strange?
After Bama, Georgia, OSU and the SEC flavor of the week pick their recruits we should be routinely 4th-6th in recruiting. I know we hate chicken littles here I get it but can someone put their finger on it to help us better understand what is going on?
$uper $trange.
We expect them to get an education?
I don't think the direct relationship to recruiting ranking is winning - though, it definitely helps.
It's money - it's been money - and, it will continue to be money.
The SEC perfected Brown Bagging. Bringing Meyer up from SEC country just solidified and improved what the Buckeyes could do - and did do.
The only difference with NIL is - the taxes the players' are responsible for. Oh - and, of course, the brown bagging still goes on.
You can't dismiss that we had some of the best talent available and very good coaching. There was a bit of luck built into that equation.
If you want to be relevant consistently a top five recruiting class and great coaching makes for a winning program.
I hate to give any credit to OSU but in 2022 they were one field goal away from a likely NC win and this year, even with all of our talent and their sub par quarterbacking, we didn't beat them by much.
If money buys championships then the Yankees or Mets would be winners every year. They don’t though. It still takes heart to be a champion.