Dr. College Sports Finance

Founder/EiC of @NILnomics. PhD in college sports finances. Likely overanalyzing your school's athletic budget right now. Yes-your school is losing $. Subscribe!

[Dr. College Sports Finance @gregchickphd]

🚨 Big Announcement🚨

Today I’m launching something new:
NILnomics — a newsletter about the 💰 and 📊 behind college athletics.

🔗https://t.co/5aFWvRxJO5

[Playmaker Recruiting @PlaymakerRecrut]

What a great article about the new revenue share agreement and the SEC meeting.

At the end of the day an proposed SEC separation has a simple goal, give the SEC more money to spend to rebuild their competitive advantage.

[Dr. College Sports Finance @gregchickphd]

@jjfuller72 Yeah isn't this the issue with EADA is it only has a few disaggregators of revenue and none of them are student fees, institutional/state/federal subsidies, and/or donations?

[Dr. College Sports Finance @gregchickphd]

@HigherEdAD Say more!

[Dr. College Sports Finance @gregchickphd]

@bportnoy15 @SBJ Has anyone looked at their 990s....

[Dr. College Sports Finance @gregchickphd]

@RossDellenger Hey Ross I think I showed pretty clearly this week what the central issue is - schools like ND had the cap calculated with schools making less than half their revenue.

If the big two broke off and applied the same formula, their caps would go up nearly $9 million!

[Dr. College Sports Finance @gregchickphd]

I'm not crying

[CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil @CBSEveningNews]

At the school talent show, 11-year-old Samuel didn’t just find his voice — he found his flock. The autistic student with Tourette syndrome can mimic 50 different birds, a talent that had gone unnoticed until that unforgettable performance. @SteveHartmanCBS is On the Road.

[Dr. College Sports Finance @gregchickphd]

@PeterBurnsESPN Leverage with their academic careers, inability to be fired easily, health care, long term disability, ability to weigh in on practice/game/post season decision making

[Dr. College Sports Finance @gregchickphd]

College football 📈

[Lucy Rohden @lucy_rohden]

yesterday was my last day with the lebatard show. here's some insight on why I left and what I'm up to now (full vid in link): https://t.co/Ed9zL3eS3J

[Dr. College Sports Finance @gregchickphd]

@heitner

[Dr. College Sports Finance @gregchickphd]

@HigherEdAD Interesting. I'm sure it's wonderful

[Dr. College Sports Finance @gregchickphd]

Paying the players is out of control.

But also this 🤪

[MLFootball @MLFootball]

🚨🚨REMARKABLE🚨🚨

TCU football became the first college program to implement a 100 thousand dollars snow recovery room.

The room was designed to help athletes recover faster and reduce inflammation.

College football is getting insane.

[Kyle Saunders @profgoose]

Our (w/ @NILnomics) Athletic-finance maps just grew. Now with 200 D1 schools with full MFRS line items now (was 192). It's free, go search for your program!
E.g., Navy: $79M athletic budget, 96% self-gen. FIU: $50M, 30% self-gen. Same conference tier, completely different funding models.
There's a lot more where that came from! :)
https://t.co/07HIoadgGx

[Dr. College Sports Finance @gregchickphd]

New drop today 😀

[NILnomics @NILnomics]

The SEC breakaway debate has generated wall-to-wall coverage.

Governance. Enforcement. Power politics.

Nobody is talking about the salary cap.

That’s what this week’s NILnomics covers. 🧵

[Dr. College Sports Finance @gregchickphd]

@EricJBlevins Very true! Glad I'm on the sidelines drawing graphs and not having to sort out the legal side of this :)

[Dr. College Sports Finance @gregchickphd]

Our new issue is out! We break down school revenue/expenses by comparing to conference e leaders.

This view does a great job not just RANKING schools within a conference but showing the GAP between them.

Check it out👇

[NILnomics @NILnomics]

@OhioStateFB generates $267M in revenue. @RFootball generates less than 44% of that — in the same conference.

Ordinal rankings tell you who leads. They don’t tell you by how much.

I built a conference-by-conference breakdown of every FBS athletic department. A thread. 🧵

[Dr. College Sports Finance @gregchickphd]

College sports. Only in America

[Dave Portnoy @stoolpresidente]

Very cool. Point for college baseball.

[Dr. College Sports Finance @gregchickphd]

@NoahImgLikeness Got it. Ty

[Dr. College Sports Finance @gregchickphd]

A well informed look at the agent fee cap issue. Not sure what side I land on but it's clear the space needs some level of regulation.

[Darren Heitner @heitner]

I serve as legal counsel for many agents. Let me explain why the 5% agent cap in the Cruz-Cantwell Protect College Sports Act is bad policy.

It's a price control that fails to distinguish between lower-effort school or collective agreements and the far more labor-intensive work required to source, negotiate, and service genuine third-party brand deals.

Most true #NIL endorsement opportunities are modest in value. At 5%, an agent's compensation on an $8k deal would be $400. After accounting for the time spent identifying the opportunity, conducting due diligence on the brand, negotiating the terms, and providing ongoing fulfillment support, that figure doesn't come close to covering legitimate overhead or rewarding the expertise that separates competent representation from amateur efforts.

Agents who specialize in this space routinely operate at commission rates between 10-20% on brand deals because the work is closer to traditional talent or entertainment representation than to the union-capped commissions on multimillion-dollar pro player contracts.

A flat statutory ceiling also interferes with the freedom of contract that should govern the relationship between the athlete and advisor of his/her choice. If a high-profile QB with significant national-market potential wants to pay a premium for an agent who can deliver blue-chip corporate partnerships and manage a personal brand across multiple platforms, the market (not Congress) should set that price.

The cap risks driving experienced agents out of the NIL space altogether, leaving athletes to either go unrepresented or turn to less reputable operators who may skirt the rules.

Registration, mandatory disclosure of all material terms, fiduciary standards, and a robust private right of action against fraudulent conduct are legitimate tools for preventing exploitation. But the % cap misses the mark.

[Dr. College Sports Finance @gregchickphd]

Just getting to this, but this is a fantastic explainer on the state of college hockey. Worth a read

https://t.co/GtUL6Cb60O

[Dr. College Sports Finance @gregchickphd]

@ramblinroundup @CLD_AAC @JWMediaDC @TBM_JY @wilnerhotline @DavidSmoak @BarstoolAAC @uabreporter Do you have copies of the actual returns or are you going off of press releases?