Kelley Lynch’s freshman year feels like a lifetime ago.
In the fall of 2019, Lynch — who earned National High School Player of the Year honors as a senior at East Coweta High in Newnan, Ga., — arrived in Seattle as perhaps the nation’s most prized prep softball prospect. Unsurprisingly, companies attempted to capitalize on her significant social media following.
But NCAA laws prohibited such partnerships.
“It’s not even that anyone was offering money, but people would say, ‘Hey, can we send you this product to post on your (Instagram) story?’” the soon-to-be senior pitcher and first baseman said last week. “I’d say, ‘Oh, I’m sorry but I can’t do that.’
“Just looking now, I’ve been fortunate to work with Outback (Steakhouse) and even Coca-Cola, and it’s just so surreal. It’s really cool for all college athletes, but especially females to know how profitable we are now with social media, in this day and age. Just to know people see value in us is really, really cool.”
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It wasn’t always this way. Title IX — a federal law that ensures equal opportunities for men and women in “any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance,” athletics included — was passed 50 years ago Thursday. And last July, the NCAA suspended amateurism rules related to name, image and likeness nationwide — allowing college athletes to profit from sponsored social media posts or ads, personal streaming channels, training lessons and camps, speaking engagements, merchandising, autograph sales, endorsement deals and more.
For Lynch and others like her, the NIL Era has made an immediate impact.
For others, however, it arrived too late.
“It’s tough,” said NCAA all-time leading scorer Kelsey Plum, who carried UW to a Final Four and was selected with the first pick of the 2017 WNBA draft, in an interview with The Times last summer. “There were definitely times, especially the last couple years of my career, where we’d be selling out arenas on the road, nationally televised games, people wearing my number in the stands on shirts, but they can’t put my name on it.
“I really just tried to take it as, it’s a stage in your life. Now I’ve moved on to be a professional and I can make money off of what I do. But Seattle rent is not cheap. I was paying like $900 a month for a room, and I’m trying to pay for wifi. I’m trying to pay for gas in my car. There were some days where I’d look in my bank account and say, ‘Dang.’ I do think I would have for sure — whether that’s locally or nationally — made some good money. But here we are.”
A year of data supports that assessment. According to NIL platform leader Opendorse, 15.7% of total NIL compensation from July 1, 2021, through May 31, 2022, was paid to women’s basketball players — ranking behind only football (49.9%) and men’s basketball (17%). Even so, women’s hoops has accounted for just 4.5% of total NIL deals — meaning the sport’s top stars have disproportionately profited.
In March, Axios and Opendorse reported that each social media post from UConn standout Paige Bueckers was worth a whopping $62,900, followed by Louisville’s Hailey Van Lith ($44,200). Of men’s and women’s Sweet Sixteen entrants, the next three highest earners — Gonzaga’s Chet Holmgren ($10,400) and Drew Timme ($8,400) and Duke’s Paolo Banchero ($9,000) — could scarcely compete.
Bueckers, of course, has become perhaps the NIL Era’s biggest star — inking deals with Gatorade, Cash App, StockX and Crocs. But the average compensation per Division I athlete is a more modest $3,711, according to Opendorse.
Which, for a college athlete, still pays dividends.
Especially when you don’t have time for a job.
“We have players who could be on a 20% (scholarship) or a 70% (scholarship). So everyone has their own story,” Lynch said. “If you’re not getting help from your family or anything financial like that, it can be really hard. Even if people just need to put food on the table for themselves, if they can’t do that because of their busy schedules, it really has completely changed the college experience.
“For me, I know with NIL I can go shopping now. I don’t have to worry about stuff like that. It has been a real game-changer for me, and I’ve seen that for a lot of other athletes as well on different levels.”
Added Plum: “In the summer, I hustled. I was working camps and refereeing. I tried to do what I could to scrap together that type of cash. But absolutely not (to the idea of working a job). You’re a full-time student and a full-time athlete, traveling on the road all the time. There’s absolutely no way that I personally could have held down a job. I know people do it. I don’t know how people do it. There’s no way.”
In a presentation to the University of Washington Board of Regents last month, athletic director Jen Cohen reported that at least one athlete from every UW sport — men’s and women’s — has benefited from NIL in some capacity. Lynch and UW softball All-American Baylee Klingler recently announced deals with Outback Steakhouse, while local sports merchandise company Simply Seattle partnered with eight Husky softball players to commemorate the 50-year anniversary of Title IX.
Vintage Brand — a company that creates personal merchandising brands for college athletes — partnered with UW freshman hoops guard Jayda Noble this spring as well.
“We looked at the landscape and thought (women’s basketball) was really the sweet spot for NIL,” said former UW baseball player and Vintage Brand co-founder Chad Hartvigson. “We think those athletes are underserved, for one, but are very marketable. The athletes there understand social media a lot more than their counterparts on the football side. They’re more active on it. They know how to portray themselves. They do a really good job of taking great videos and putting up really great content that people aspire to watch.
“We thought, ‘Man, these athletes have strong followings.’ A lot of this is about social reach. It’s not about who’s the best player on the team. It’s about who can really market themselves and build their brand and show their dynamic personality.”
In that vein, posting content on social media has accounted for 67.6% of all NIL activities and 34.2% of all compensation — the most in both categories, according to Opendorse. Lynch, for one, credits a UW NIL course for educating her on the tax ramifications of NIL deals and how best to build a presentable brand.
“From a marketing standpoint, I need to really step back and write down my core values and who I am as a person,” she said. “How can I display that through my social media? Because I think it’s really easy to be surface level on Instagram, and people don’t really know you. They just see the pictures you’re posting. I want people to know more about me, as opposed to just looking at the pictures that I post and liking them.
“You look at (former UW national champion pitcher and ESPN analyst) Danielle Lawrie. She has mothers who follow her. It’s not just softball. That’s what I think is really cool about it. The world sees us mainly as softball players, but through NIL we’re getting to not only express our other interests, but we’re able to give back and help grow our sport. You look at all the camps softball players have been able to put on since NIL has passed, and it’s just amazing that we’re able to give back to the game and do our part.”
Of course, when it comes to NIL, football remains the biggest possible fish. And because of that, men’s Division I athletes have earned 73.5% of total NIL compensation since July 1, 2021, with women claiming 26.5%.
On the 50-year anniversary of Title IX, more work is required. Women’s athletics, on all levels, can continue to grow.
But now, at least, Lynch can post a product on Instagram.
“Working with (UW NIL collective) Montlake Futures has been so awesome, just them doing the work to find local brands and people who really want to support us and who really care about college athletes in Seattle,” Lynch said. “I’ve just felt so much love from our city and the small businesses since NIL started. I feel really blessed to be at UW, because we have so many of these resources and so many people who want to help us get as much as we can out of NIL while we’re here.”
Added Plum, now a standout guard for the Las Vegas Aces: “For these student-athletes to be able to capitalize on (NIL) is huge. We don’t have multi-million dollar (professional contracts) like the guys have, but this is a way to build your brand, build your business, and take steps to really elevate yourself throughout your college career. What a luxury. So absolutely, I think it helps female athletes a ton.”
Think NIL blew up college sports? California is going for the knockout with new bill
How would the revenue sharing be structured?
California college athletes would be the first to receive payments related to their athletic performance directly from schools. The NCAA, following what’s been laid out in court decisions, has always fought to keep benefits “tethered to education.”
Well, in SB 1401, much of the compensation still would be related to academics. The bill states a noble goal of improving graduation rates for Black athletes in football and men’s and women’s basketball — the only three sports where players currently don’t receive more than 50% of revenues back purely through their scholarships.
Schools would establish a degree completion fund for each athlete, and the contents of the fund — fed annually — would be made available soon after degree completion (within six years). If the athlete does not graduate within six years, he or she will forfeit the fund and it will go back into the athletic budget. Players would have immediate access to a maximum of $25,000 each year, while the rest would build over time.
How much money are we talking?
The amount owed to each athlete would be the half of the sport’s total revenue minus the team’s total student grant-in-aid package divided by the number of players. For instance, each USC football player could make upwards of $200,000 a year.
Think about taking $15 million to $20 million that currently has been used to reinvest in football resources and to fund the rest of the athletic department and transferring it to football players, and it’s easy to see why administrators are getting ready for a fight.
On the other side of the coin — and this point will have been argued by Sen. Steven Bradford, the bill’s author, and National College Players Assn. executive director Ramogi Huma — should it really have been college football and basketball players’ sacrifice all these years to subsidize the training of America’s future Olympians?
There’s a compelling argument that the amateur model — particularly in the last two decades as television revenues have exploded — has led to a displacement of what could have been generational wealth for young Black athletes and their families.
Under SB 1401, would athletes be classified as employees?
The bill establishes a “pay for play” model but stops at designating athletes as employees, stating, “This does not establish evidence of an employment relationship between a student athlete and their institution of higher education.”
Among administrators, this is viewed as clever wording meant to make the bill easier to pass and harder to lobby against. The assumption is that once “pay for play” begins, employment and collective bargaining will quickly follow.
How likely is the bill to pass?
That is hard to know. It has a long way to go, needing to make it through the Senate and then through a bunch of committees in the Assembly and then the Assembly floor before moving onto the governor’s desk.
The bill has already been amended. The original asked for Title IX protections and mechanisms in place to curb the cutting of non-revenue sports, but those parts have been removed to fully focus on revenue sharing.
Given the massive implications for athletic department budgets as it’s currently written, there has already been discussion about amending the payment structure to give schools the option of distributing only new revenues (increases year over year) to the players.
In that case, say USC football made $10 million more in 2022 than it did in 2021. Then all of the gain would go to feeding the players’ degree completion funds — $117,650 each — but the department would be able to continue to use the same amount from 2021 to fund the rest of its sports and avoid the doomsday scenario.
One thing to factor in is that the Pac-12 will be renegotiating its media rights contracts for 2024, which should bring in significantly more revenue from the conference.
If SB 1401 becomes law, much of that windfall could go to the athletes and quickly make them whole, so to speak, in working toward the bill’s requirement of a 50/50 split.
It seems likely that if the bill passes, it will have something like this new revenues option in place, because it would give the schools a chance to maintain their current level of operations.
What if a player transfers?
In the era of the one-time transfer waiver, this is a key component of the bill — especially one tied to degree completion.
The wording states that if an athlete transfers to another California institution, the degree completion fund will transfer after enrollment and be managed and funded by the new school.
If an athlete transfers to an institution out of state, the degree completion fund is forfeited.
Will the NCAA punish California schools if this bill goes into effect?
Huma, the former UCLA linebacker who has become one of the leaders of the college athlete rights movement nationally, is confident that the answer is no.
When the NCAA made threats against California with SB 206, the Department of Justice antitrust division established an NCAA boycott of California schools would be a violation of antitrust laws.
Power Five conference leaders already talking publicly about possibly leaving behind NCAA governance certainly wouldn’t help the association’s cause if it were to threaten California.
Why does California always have to be first?
Simply put, Ramogi Huma.
He is relentless in his motive to break up the NCAA and give bargaining power to the athletes, and he just so happens to live right here in Corona.
Even if SB 1401 doesn’t pass, he will assuredly have a fresh bill ready for next year’s session.
This isn’t going away.
