The June 2021 decision of the Supreme Court in the case of National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Alston has changed the landscape of college athletics. The Court ruled unanimously that the NCAA’s restriction on college athletes being able to receive financial compensation for the use of their name, image and likeness (NIL), which rested on the alleged “amateur” nature of their level of play, was in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890.
Since the ruling, states and athletic conferences have introduced their own legislation and policies regarding how athletes can be compensated for their NIL. The athletic departments of many big-name programs have set up their own NIL funds with which to pay players through alumni or corporate donations, such as our own Friends of ‘Nova.
The highest profile college athletes have struck their own individual brand deals and made a lot of money, such as Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders, whose deal with Nike has contributed to an estimated $4.7 million in NIL earnings, according to ESPN.
The ability to directly pay players and help them find lucrative brand deals has also been a boon for large athletic programs, who now have the ability to reload their rosters with high-value, talented transfers in their quests to win titles. For example, Ohio State University’s athletic director reported that the school’s NIL budget for its football team that just won a national championship was upwards of $20 million.
On the flip-side, a lack of top-end NIL money has proven frustrating for some programs and coaches, finding themselves unable to recruit and keep high-level players.
Enter the newly-minted head coach of the Villanova men’s basketball team: Kevin Willard.
It has been widely rumored and reported that a key reason Willard chose to leave Maryland for Villanova was because of a lack of NIL funding from the University which he deemed appropriate for building a championship-caliber team. Thanks to John Talty of CBS Sports, we have more insight into the situation.
Allegedly, Willard’s frustration with Maryland’s NIL funding has been a constant problem for the University’s athletic department since he took the head coaching job there. According to Tarlty, he frequently pestered former-athletic director Damon Evans and recently appointed interim-AD Colleen Sorum for more funding to be diverted from the football to the basketball program.
These tensions erupted before Maryland’s first-round victory against Grand Canyon in this year’s March Madness Tournament.
“I need to make sure that we are where we are with NIL and rev share is not where we’ve been with NIL over the past two years,” Willard reported during his media availability. “We’ve been one of the worst, if not lowest, in NIL in the last two years. So that’s first and foremost.”
While his claim about Maryland’s NIL ranking is wildly inaccurate, based upon publicly available information, it makes his priorities clear. In that same presser, he made a point to say that he wished he could have spent an extra night in New York with his team after beating Syracuse in the Barclay’s Center this season to celebrate Christmas, but the athletic department told him it was too expensive.
Willard wanted to leave Maryland in search of a school who makes basketball the monetary priority and has a hefty NIL budget to back it up. So why did he pick Villanova, when we have had notable struggles with paying to get and keep great talent in the NIL era?
Enter recently-appointed Villanova Athletic Director: Eric Roedl.
While I cannot say for certain the exact reasoning behind Roedl being the choice to replace Mark Jackson aside from being a graduate of Villanova, his ability to raise and manage money, as well as navigate the NIL–era of college athletics, seems to be a big part of it. Roedl comes over from being the Deputy Athletic Director and Chief Operating Officer at the University of Oregon, a school which notably possesses a large budget for athletics and a well-developed NIL program funded by big time corporate partners like Nike.
“During his tenure at Oregon, Eric had oversight of the $163 million athletic department budget, helped lead Oregon’s recent transition to the Big Ten Conference, and led the strategy and implementation of NCAA permissible student-athlete initiatives, including aspects of the proposed House settlement and Name, Image and Likeness (NIL),” University President Rev. Peter M. Donohue, O.S.A., Ph.D. said in Roedl’s introductory email.
“Roedl also provided leadership to the Ducks’ external operations units, including ticket sales/operations, marketing and fundraising, which generated more than $60M in revenues annually,” the Villanova Athletics website stated.
While there has never been exact data on Villanova NIL spending available to students or the public, there were plenty of rumblings that Mark Jackson failed to adequately flesh out the University’s NIL network, which may have contributed to multiple star Villanova players, especially Lucy Olsen, leaving to play on bigger stages and for bigger checks.
The hiring of Roedl seems to indicate that a renewed focus on basketball spending from a budgetary and NIL perspective could be coming down the pipeline. I highly doubt Willard would have come here without assurances of a fully stocked NIL fund available for his direction to recruit promising freshmen and high-value transfers and get the Wildcats back to the Tournament.
