NILISM

 

               The word “nil” means zero in soccer, but capitalized and turned into the acronym NIL it means a whole lot in college sports. The letters stand for name, image and likeness, and sale of the use of them will put legal income in the pockets of some college athletes without altering their competitive status. It’s a change that will revolutionize the games collegiates play, with results we now can only guess at. The saying “watch what you wish for” seems to apply here.

               The new era began legally on July 1 but the money has yet to start flowing in earnest. There will be rules governing what sort of income is and isn’t okay, but as yet they are unclear. Twenty six states have passed laws permitting NIL payouts, creating a hodgepodge of regulations.

The NCAA has given its reluctant approval, and has drawn its own lines, but it and most other actors in the field are hoping for Federal action that will unify and clarify. This in itself is revolutionary; heretofore the NCAA has resisted any Federal involvement in its affairs, the camel’s nose in the tent thing, you know. It’s not an idle fear and I’ll treat it later.

Even at this early time, though, a couple of things about the new era seem certain. One is that it will involve a lot more money than was previously imagined by me and, I’d bet, most other people. The other is that it won’t be distributed equally or nearly so. About 450,000 students in the NCAA’s 1,100 or so member schools are varsity athletes and the soccer-word nil will apply to most of them.  For a lucky few, however, it will be a bonanza, creating a new class of undergrad millionaires. A good thing, huh? Or maybe uhuh.

The magic word is this context is “followers.” Sure, jocks may be able to pick up a few hundred dollars, or even a few thousand, signing autographs at a booster’s auto dealership or being teacher-counselors at summer sports camps. In one deal already announced, a Miami gym owner has pledged to pay each of the U. of Miami’s 90 scholarship football players $500 a month for each year they’re eligible, or $540,000 a year in total, for promotional services.

  Another avenue for spreading the wealth, at least among football and basketball players at the “Power Five” conferences, will be income from electronic-game makers. NFL players reportedly each take in $48,000 a year from those sources, and less-numerous NBAers $400,00 a year. The per-player divisor will be much higher among the colleges, but the haul still should be substantial.

But the real money will come from endorsements on the so-called social mediums. Being elderly, I don’t have much truck with these, but many (maybe most) under-40s do, and reputedly they can be persuaded to buy or do things suggested by the “influencers” that create content for the likes of Instagram and TikToc. According to online sources their followings can be sold to advertisers for annual rates of up to eight cents a year. Multiplied by hundreds of thousands of followers and by several advertisers, those pennies can turn into big dollars. To paraphrase Ev Dirksen, a hundred thousand dollars here and hundred thousand there and pretty soon you’re talking real money.

That’s apparently what’s in store for Spencer Rattler, the quarterback of the U. of Oklahoma Sooners and Heisman Award candidate. With a catchy name, blond coif and strong arm, he’s big on social media, and his agency, led by the famed Leigh Steinberg, is painting quick millionaire status for him. Much the same goal has been set for Bryce Young, the projected starting QB for the U. of Alabama’s always-highly-rated football team, and he’s a sophomore who has yet to start a college game.

But while the big majority of social-media money will go to footballing and basketballing collegiate males, they won’t get it all. The Cavinder twins, Haley and Hannah, play basketball beautifully at Fresno U. and maintain a lively online presence for their reported four million (yep) followers. Margzetta Frazier, a UCLA gymnast with show-business aspirations, does likewise for a smaller but still sizable audience. A high-school hoopster, Mikey Williams from San Diego, also is said to be poised to cash in big from people mesmerized by his flying dunks.

Still, the economic prospects of, say, a second-string offensive guard at Purdue aren’t brilliant, and that could lead to difficulties. Income inequality is well established in professional sports, where players earning a measly one or two million per locker next to teammates pulling down 20 times as much, but it might not play as well in the college realm. Will the above-mentioned kid, living in a dorm and riding a bike around campus, go all out to block for his penthouse-living, Cadillac-driving QB?

 Maybe more importantly, playing a big-time college sport while pursuing an education (one hopes) already is a fulltime job and then some, so where will the time come from to make in-person or online commercial appearances? Rich or poor, the number of hours in a collegian’s day is fixed, and there are distractions aplenty as it is.

The NCAA’s retreat from its historic stance on amateurism already has had consequences. It’s both cause and effect of the loss of political clout that led to the retreat; years of its hypocrisy and money-grubbing has alienated even spineless pols who used to support alma mater no matter what.

 Further, no matter what the rules, income opportunities for jocks inevitably will turn recruiting into the Wild West and lead to the survival of the fattest. Traditional conference structures could collapse and “superconferences” form; for evidence see the recent move of Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC from the Big 12 and the talks now underway between the Big Ten, ACC and Pac-12. The situation may make the just-pay-‘em folks happy, but everyone doesn’t root for ‘Bama or Ohio State. Like I wrote above, watch what you wish for.

                

O NEWS & VIEWS

 

               NEWS: Simone Biles bows out of Olympics, citing mental health concerns.

               VIEWS: GOAT or “goat”?

               As the Olympics began there was no doubt about which of the 11,000 or so athletes in its various fields deserved to be called the star. It was Biles, the gymnast with the Atomic Ant physique, whose 2016 O Games all-around gold medal, and five other world-championship all-around firsts, stamped her as a performer without peer, the Greatest Of All Time (GOAT) in her demanding sport.

               But then, shockingly, the 24-year-old packed it in after the first event of the all-around final last Tuesday, saying she wasn’t in the right “head space” to continue to compete. Her teammates carried on without her but could muster only a silver medal in the event in which they’d been heavily favored to win. 

               Reaction was swift, and while like just about everything else these days it divided along red-blue political lines, that which came to my attention was mostly positive. No definite diagnosis was offered but it was assumed that the gymnast suffered from a mental illness, and that was apt grounds for her action. USA Gymnastics, her sport’s U.S. governing body, applauded “her bravery in prioritizing her well being.”  The head of the World Health Organization said what she did put the seriousness of mental illness in a proper and overdue spotlight.

               One cannot judge Biles without having lived in her leotard, but a few observations seem in order. One is that she’d embraced her celebrity, even reportedly fashioning a “GOAT” emoji to decorate her texts. Another is that she constantly pushed the envelope of gymnastics by developing new and more difficult twists to her routines, thus bringing her closer to the edge of an already dangerous sport and increasing her possible anxiety about bringing them off.

 And while her leaving took the weight off herself it increased it on the teammates she left behind.  Said Sunisa Lee, the 18-year-old who took over team leadership by default, and whose gritty performance helped the U.S. team gain a silver, “it was the most pressure I’ve ever felt in my life.” Lee went on to establish her own stardom by winning the Games’ individual all-around gold medal.

Biles is a young woman with the biggest part of her life ahead of her. One hopes that her new self-knowledge will guide her future actions.

NEWS: Women make up 49% of 2021 Olympic athletes, bringing virtual gender equity to the Games.

VIEWS: It’s the U.S.’s Title IX at work worldwide.

This year’s sex breakdown compares with 44% women in 2012 and 46% in 2016 and caps a 50-year rise. The boost corresponds to the tenure of Title IX of the U.S. Education Amendment Act of 1972, which decreed that American schools and colleges provide women students with athletic opportunities equal to those of men. While still controversial in some circles, it unquestionably sparked nothing less than a sports revolution. U.S. world domination of women’s basketball and soccer has been one result, but it’s had global implications as well.

For proof one need look no further than the web site of the University of Southern California, which quadrennially leads the U.S. collegiate pack in producing Olympians. It notes that this year 65 Olympic athletes are present or past Trojans, representing 32 different countries. It’s a bigger contingent than that of 164 of the 205 nations represented in Toyko. Thirty nine of the 65 are female, led by Katinka Husszu of Hungary, a four-medal-winning swimmer at the 2016 Games. Additionally, two USC coaches are in Tokyo coaching foreign teams.

Foreign women (and men) athletes come to U.S. colleges for education (one hopes), but also for the superior sports facilities and coaching the institutions offer. The free room and board that comes with an athletic scholarship is a potent lure—most other countries offer no equivalent aid. Most imported jocks are represented in tennis and golf, but swimming and track and field also rank high. It puts a new twist on the term “home team,” huh?

NEWS: Skateboarding debuts as an Olympic sport.

VIEWS: Ouch!

Daredevil sports are nothing new to the Olympics, but usually when the daredevils crash they come down on soft materials, like foam, sand or snow. Not so in skateboarding. In an effort at verisimilitude the Tokyo Games laid out a “street scene” course of ramps, stairs and railings made of or set in concrete. No soft landings on that stuff.

I suppose that was okay for the male side of the event, where most of the contestants (and all three medal winners) were in their 20s and of the age of consent, but the “women’s” side was mostly teens, and some just barely-- the gold and silver medals went to kids of 13 and the bronze to a 16-year-old. When they crashed I expected their moms to run out to succor them.

   Clearly change is called for, something along the lines of gymnastics, which some years back raised its minimum O age to the year an athlete turns 16. If gymnastics were staged on concrete it’d long since have been banned.

NEWS: NBC’s Olympic coverage enters its 33^rd year, at great cost.

VIEW: Does the network own the Games, or vice versa?

NBC began broadcasting the Olympics in 1988 and its current contract, worth a reported $12 billion, runs to 2032. It’s the Games biggest single supporter by far but one wonders who’s getting the best of the deal.

The network’s previous Summer O anchor was Bob Costas, who sometimes added tart commentary to his hosting. This time it’s Mike Tirico, an affable sort whose style is best suited to one of those happy-talk morning shows.  Event announcing has been predictably rah-rah-USA, the features fawning to their subjects with dollops of pathos. The IOC loves it, I bet.

The worst example of NBC brown-nosing has been it’s parroting of the term “Russian Olympic Committee” in referring to the Russian team. You’d think those athletes compete wearing waistcoats and carrying briefcases. That’s the term the IOC decreed as a fig leaf for its capitulation to Russia’s horrendous cheating in past Games. They’re just Russian, folks, all 300-plus of them, and they look to be having as good a time as any in Toyko, God love ‘em.