Wednesday, the college sports world took a huge turn when both Governor Tom Wolf signed into Pa. law that college athletes could be compensated for their name, image and likeness (NIL) and the NCAA announced that all student-athletes could benefit from such opportunities.
I detailed that development with my piece that ran the same day, which you can read here, but Thursday was the first public comments made by Pitt Athletic Director Heather Lyke and Jeff Capel on the development. As universities across the country make plans on how to adjust to the development, Pitt made their first move rolling out a program that would aid their student-athletes in their efforts to benefit from new NIL opportunities.
"The new world of college athletics start officially today," Lyke said Thursday. "Our program called, 'Forged Here,' has us excited about the education component of it. That includes the partnership with the Katz (Business) School, Center for Innovational Excellence, our life skills team, our compliance group and this new unchartered territory. Our goal is to help students understand what they can do, navigate the space, educate them about it, and our obligation to monitor and document what they're doing."
The program had been in the works for several months, as Lyke confirmed that Pitt had assigned a task force on NIL opportunities before the pandemic even began, but had to pause its efforts while the world adjusted to the impact of COVID-19. But Lyke said that in Jan., that task force resumed its work to prepare such a program and focused even more on what benefits it could provide once it became clear that July would be when NIL policies took root in Pa.
Lyke explained Forged Here's primary component as a program for student-athletes is education.
"The challenge is not only looking at opportunities, but understanding the financial implications," Lyke said. "I had to explain that if you get paid $1,000 to do X, they don't make $1,000 because of taxes. There's a host of educational components that our life skills team is focusing on for financial literacy, taxes, agreements and arrangements they're entering into. It's a real educational effort for us to make sure student-athletes know what they're getting into."
Those steps to education have only just begun, as Lyke had only just addressed Pitt's football team Wednesday and would address the men's basketball team with Jeff Capel Thursday afternoon.
Part of that education involves the various limits of how student-athletes can benefit from the new NIL rules both by the NCAA and Pa. Some rules might not be as straightforward and easily understood, like the limitation in Pa. that prevents college athletes from wearing or using any "institutional marks," as described by the policy, during their NIL activities.
"Under state law you're not allowed to wear institutional marks," Lyke explained. "So yesterday I asked our kids, 'do you know what an institutional mark is?' This is great because it's all educational for them to understand taxes and an institutional mark. An institutional mark is a logo, Panther head, Pitt script, and they're not allowed to wear that."
"If you look at a State Farm ad with Aaron Rodgers and Patrick Mahomes," Lyke contined. "They don't have their team logos on those commercials. It made our students a little more aware that this school of thought applies in professional settings as well. That is state specific, so you might see athletes in other states wear logos but not in Pa."
Lyke also explained that even without wearing any institutional marks, college athletes also cannot indicate during any NIL activities that they play for their university.
Capel also addressed how Pitt has to help its student-athletes better understand all the involved complications that will come with making a profit off NIL opportunities.
"Some of the misconceptions that a lot of the young people will make is that this is free will," Capel said Thursday. "It's not. There are laws intact where states differ and it can come down to what your university decides to do. There are tax implications where these young people have never paid taxes and don't know what that means. That's not something that's necessarily taught in college. It's something these young people need to be educated on."
During the NCAA's 115-year existence, student-athletes had never been given the opportunity to profit on their own likeness as other entities did with jerseys, T-shirts, video games and other methods. During that time, money has been at the root of several major scandals involving point shaving for gamblers like in Boston College, Tulane or Northwestern in basketball. Then there are also instances of programs or their boosters paying players and/or their families as a recruiting edge like with Southern Methodist in football, Michigan in basketball and others.
Our own Dale Lolley wrote in his Thursday Talking Point about the potential challenges to hold programs and universities in check with the new NIL policies, as recruiting competitiveness could look to build NIL opportunities that attract top prospects to their programs. But universally under all NIL policies, no university can be involved with a student-athlete establishing a contract, deal or arrangement with a sponsor.
"This is not about us compensating student athletes because they play their sport at Pitt," Lyke explained. "Nor is it to compensate student-athletes because they score X number of goals, points or touchdowns. This is not about recruiting inducements. We can't recruit student-athletes with the idea they should come to Pitt because we can set them up with certain name, image and likeness or compensation opportunities. We can't arrange that or use that in the recruiting process directly. Those are pillars consistent in all 50 states, which I think is a real positive thing."
But with the long history of corruption in college sports, the question as to whether better NIL opportunities with different programs will impact recruiting efforts cannot be ignored.
"There's an indirect recruiting piece to it," Lyke said. "That comes more from the following, if you will. Some of the compensation or influencer jobs you hear about are based on your following or social media presence. Certainly schools are going to promote the fact that we have X number of followers, or we can grow your followers through an outside company, and we have contracted with influencers to help our student athletes build their brand if that's something they're interested in doing."
"There's no question there will be an indirect recruiting pitch," Lyke continued. "We have a plan like everyone has a plan. We're in the city of Pittsburgh, we have a lot of corporate opportunities here in Pittsburgh, we're not in the middle of nowhere. I think that's an advantage to a place like Pitt."
But as Lyke explained, any advantages to Pitt that involve corporations around the city who might sponsor a student-athlete cannot be established or directed by the university or any of its officials.
"Our role is threefold," Lyke explained. "We must educate them about everything that's happening and how they manage it. We develop policies as it relates to where our policy is right now to follow the Pa. state law. Then we monitor it. They have an obligation to tell us about these deals a week in advance and we document what happens. But we can't refer to them to companies or individuals that would love to pay a student-athlete to come and speak to our organization or sit down and sign autographs or anything like that. We can't be involved in those kind of arrangements."
Capel also addressed that part of the new NIL rules, saying that he knows he'll follow them and that he's excited to see how they play out with the level of uncertainty and unchartered territory brought to college sports. But he also acknowledged the murkiness of how uncertain everyone has been around the establishment of the NIL rules, and the challenges of him being a leader for student-athletes and helping them understand this huge change.
"I didn't talk to them at all about it," Capel said when asked if he'd spoken with his players prior to the NIL passing in Pa. "Because I didn't understand it and there was no need to talk to them about something that I didn't understand. Nobody knew what the rules were and anyone that said they did understand what would happen on July 1, they're lying to you. I don't talk about things that I'm not educated on. I want to be able to speak to my team in an educated manner. We'll do that today during our 4:15 p.m. meeting today."
Capel has been outspoken in his time as a coach about the challenges student-athletes face from issues with COVID-19, unfair criticisms while being unpaid, balancing difficult decisions and schedules, and more. Capel acknowledged that being granted the right to earn benefits from their likeness while being college athletes was a big step in the right direction.
"Their situation has gradually gotten better," Capel said of student-athletes. "It took a significant leap in 2014 after the comments Shabazz Napier made at the Final Four. There were a lot of changes made that weren't made public or discussed on a national level that really helped student-athletes out. This is the next logical step and a very important huge step for them to be able to capitalize on their name, image and likeness. For them to have rights as a basic human being where someone's making money off them where they're able to capitalize on it as well. I do think it's a huge victory for student-athletes."
"For us old people, we have to adjust and adapt," Capel continued. "It's new for us. It's very different and unlike anything we've ever experienced. We can't be the people who say, 'Oh this is horrible! This is bad!' or things like that. We can't be those people. We have to be able to adapt. The people who've been able to be successful and have longevity in coaching, and really anything, they've been able to adapt and that's what we have to do."
Adapting is what all of college sports programs will have to continue to do as in the past two years major changes have come in the face of the global pandemic of COVID-19, new NIL policies, and the Transfer Portal Boom that has seen NCAA basketball transfer players per year boom from 1,018 players in 2020 to 1,710 players in 2021.
Whether the potential of NIL deals could tie down players more to universities and counteract the boom of transfers, Lyke is unsure.
"We have not contemplated that aspect of it," Lyke said of the Transfer Portal. "I'm not sure how widespread this is really going to be. Some high profile kids may really take advantage of It and others who are really entrepreneurial, or have strong social media following. We have 500 student athletes, I'm not sure that it's going to impact the whole masses like that and have a counter against the Transfer Portal."
Both Lyke and Capel also explained from their own perspectives why the NIL policies were necessary to combat the challenges that have faced college athletes and prospective college athletes for decades.
"I always thought about Olympic athletes," Lyke said. "I think it's fundamentally wrong they have to choose after their 14-16 year-old career when they go win a gold medal whether they want to go to college and give up all their sponsorship deals that they've earned or do they want to defer college and stay a pro and get on tours. We should never be in a position where a student-athlete has to choose between going to college or give up what they have earned the right to earn. There's a great opportunity to get control of their name, image and likeness and maximize on those opportunities. It doesn't undermine what we do as a college with education."
Capel has his own experience as a Division I basketball player for Duke, playing for a team that was always in a national spotlight with several superstars.
"You do think about that," Capel said about what it would've been players to be paid for their likeness. "I played with one of the all-time best guys in college in Grant Hill. I think of the opportunities he would've had a senior being well known after being there for four years. What could that have done? The guys that we're talking about, don't forget they were really good too. For that to happen you have to be really good."
"These people who are potentially going to be doing these deals, they're business people," Capel continued. "They're smart. They don't just throw away money. Some of the probably will maybe to help a coach or program out, or ego playing into it about beating out another school for a kid. There's certainly an element of that, but that's been there even before name, image and likeness. There are places that have been doing that for years. It's going to be fascinating to see how all this plays out."