Kiarra Crayton & Trevon McGlone | GNP contributors
Editor’s note: The NCAA’s Division I Council recently changed the NIL rules to allow schools to “increase [their] NIL-related support for student-athletes.” But “prohibitions against pay-for-play and schools compensating student-athletes for use of their NIL remain in place.” [https://tinyurl.com/yad6h5m4]
The new age of Name, Image and Likeness is good for some student-athletes, but for all the rest, not so much. Especially if the sport isn’t a major money-earner or not seen as one at all.
Raegan Holton is among the left-out. She’s an ECU cheerleader, and her team is part of the spirit squad with the band, the Dance Team and the Pee Dee pirate mascot.
“I feel like everyone feels confused (about) what Athletics views us as,” she said. “We’re invited to the Goldspys,” ECU’s version of ESPN’s ESPY awards, “which then you would be OK, they’re considering us athletes but then we get no awards.”
Holton says the cheer team doesn’t have the same resources as the sports teams, including access to paid NIL work.
That’s because “cheerleading is not an NCAA-sponsored sport at ECU,” Alex Keddie, the Athletics department’s director of compliance, said in an email. “They’re not subject to the same Name, Image and Likeness rules and policies as Division 1 student-athletes.”
Keddie added, “Cheerleading students at ECU are permitted to have NIL opportunities just like any other general ECU student.” Anyone can make money off of their Name, Image and Likeness, but the term—and attention—is mostly applied to college athletics.
Although the cheerleading team isn’t able to go on contract with the Team Boneyard, the local NIL collective, cheerleaders they have options. They could partner with local businesses or be a brand ambassador for a company, although anyone can be a brand ambassador.
NIL has created a wave in collegiate athletics. In 2021, the NCAA implemented an interim policy to allow student-athletes to profit off their name, image and likeness, which encapsulates a variety of things such as personal appearances, social media posts and branded apparel.
Team Boneyard was created in June 2022 by alumni, donors, fans and former athletes, according to its website.
Over the spring, the Greenville News Project looked at how the NIL works among ECU student-athletes. It found that the local NIL collective—it is not affiliated with ECU—prioritizes football and men’s basketball players, at least so far.
Incentive tiers
Former Pirate football defensive back Julius Wood remembers that last year Team Boneyard used a tiered system that incentivized student-athletes to do more to earn more.
At the time of this story, Wood is looking to be picked up by an NFL team.
He recalled that the NIL tiers were based on student-athletes’ performance and position on their team’s depth chart. NIL money was in addition to the athletes’ monthly stipends from the Athletics department.
Wood said he was on the highest NIL tier and received $1,000 on his Team Boneyard contract. Wood also recalled the tiers were negotiable throughout the season.
“You could schedule a meeting with the coach and see why you're on that tier or if you want to move up or move down,” he remembered. “You could have that conversation with the coach or with the donors …you’d have to have that conversation with somebody.
“I feel like a few players did do that, and I feel like if the conversation went well and it was well thought through and if everybody came to a conclusion, like, ‘Oh that player deserves to be on that tier again,’ obviously there would be movement.”
To that, Keddie wrote to GNP, saying bold red letters, “NCAA rules prohibiting pay-for-play remain in effect.”
The NCAA’s interim policy says that “NIL agreements must be based on an independent, case-by-case analysis of the value that each athlete brings to an NIL agreement as opposed to providing compensation or incentives for enrollment decisions (e.g. signing a letter of intent of transferring), athletic performance (e.g., points scored, minutes played, winning a contest), achievement (e.g. starting position, award winner) or membership on a team.”
GNP contacted the NCAA’s media office for comment. Its repeated requests for an interview went unanswered.
Hank Hinton of Inner Banks Media and board member of Team Boneyard said the collective only used the tiered system for the 2023 season.
“We set up the football team originally in three tiers when we did the first contracts last year based on seniority and who we thought would start versus a second team player or third team player and then made adjustments accordingly if there were changes to the starters, etc.,” Hinton wrote in an email to GNP.
For the 2024 season, Hinton said the amount of money players earn under contract is based on “position depth/needs and a variety of other factors.” He said using the tiered system in the previous season was a “simple” way to determine contracts.
“In a lot of situations, a QB on a football team makes more in NIL than other positions as he is usually the leader and playing the most visible/important position on a football team,” Hinton wrote.
“However, you may have a problem with depth on the offensive line or defensive line and might need to attribute more money to getting more depth on the ‘O’ line or ‘D’ line,” he said. “We have to consider team and program needs when determining how much to offer certain players and certain position groups.”
Hinton clarified in a follow-up email that Team Boneyard gives contracts based on potential value of student-athletes based on their previous performances. He said it's also based on the needs of their teams.
Another NIL collective, this one called the NIL Store, is a way for student-athletes to sell their own branded apparel. Campus Ink Sports is the company that helps make the apparel and its vice president, Adam Cook, has worked with UCLA, UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke.
Cook said he noticed that some schools are more focused on how much money the student-athletes can bring in while others prioritize the athletes and their well-being.
With Campus Ink student-athletes can earn 15 to 20 percent of the revenue from sales of jerseys T-shirts, hats and other merchandise that uses their name, image and likeness. The standard industry rate that ranges from 5 to 8 percent.
As of April 24, there were 38 ECU student-athletes selling branded merchandise through the NIL Store. The sports represented were baseball, football, softball, volleyball, soccer, men’s cross country and cheerleading.
Some in, some not
Maeve English is Pirate and a goalkeeper for women’s soccer. She’s a highly decorated student-athlete. She has no NIL
English recorded eight shutouts in the 2023 season for the fifth most in a season in ECU program history. She also has the third most shutouts in her college career and has played the second most minutes out of all goalkeepers.
During the 2021 and 2022 seasons, she was named the American Athletic Conference goalkeeper of the week twice and earned the AAC Weekly Honor Roll award three times.
She recalled being featured on Team Boneyard’s website to talk about how NIL is impactful for student-athletes. But she said she “hasn’t seen a dollar since it was established.”
“I’m not naive to say that like, I know our sport doesn’t bring in as much money as football or baseball,” English said. “I mean at the end of the day, we are all putting in the same amount of work so it's a little frustrating to those at least at a high level to not feel like you're as adequately maybe compensated.”
English did say she doesn’t think this will be an issue for much longer as women's sports are on the rise. According to ESPN, the recent women’s basketball game between Louisiana State University and the University of Iowa was the most viewed game (12.3 million viewers) for college basketball in the network's history.
Even women’s soccer is on the rise as the first professional women's soccer stadium is being built for the KC Current team.
“I think even in the past eight months or so there's been so much more opportunities for female athletes,” English said. “I mean, it is a little frustrating to have less opportunities, but I think they’re doing a good job of making it more accessible to maybe lower income sports.”
Among the resources, student-athletes can participate in the SABRE (Student Athlete Brand Resource Education) program, an educational partnership with ECU’s Miller School of Entrepreneurship. The program is designed to guide athletes in brand creation and give them financial literacy resources to help them manage their NIL deals.
Former ECU football player Jack Powers is a senior and was an outside linebacker for two years under the Pirates. He said NIL was beneficial for him as he saved more money for the next chapter of his life.
Yet, he said there’s no structure for NIL deals right now. There needs to be some sort of salary cap, he said, to control the flow of money better.
“Strictly from a NIL perspective, I think you look at solutions like a possible salary cap or something like that would keep college athletics a lot more competitive because you’re gonna get schools like Oregon and Georgia and Texas A&M who just haul all the money in the world and they’re going to be able to get whoever they want,” he said.
“Then the schools who used to be able to compete, like Group of Five [athletic conference] schools or even lower Power Five schools, [and they] are going to be left in the dust.”
Crayton and McGlone produced this story for the course, In-depth Reporting Capstone, at the School of Communication, East Carolina University.
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