Taylor Fritsch

Lawyer. Farm kid. @UWMadison / @UNLCollegeofLaw alum. Opinions here are mine and mine alone. RTs are not necessarily an endorsement. #GoBadgers

[Evan Flood @Evan_Flood]

BREAKING: Top 100 guard Jalen Browm has committed to Wisconsin, he tells me for @Rivals.

Brown is the highest ranked commit for the #Badgers since Sam Dekker in 2012.

"I’m ready for all the pressure or anything that comes with that. I want to make my home state proud and bring championships.”

https://t.co/FojbuE2dmW #Badgers

[Taylor Fritsch @taylorfritsch]

@BadgerNewsNet @maascowjr At the risk of beating a dead horse, this is it for Fick & Co. I think if they can’t go 8-4 against this schedule, there’s almost certainly no justification to run it back.

[Taylor Fritsch @taylorfritsch]

@bluehighway15 @CBartWSJ @JimPolzinWSJ Sustained losing in the face of significant headwinds for selling tickets across the country is not a great combination.

[Taylor Fritsch @taylorfritsch]

@BadgerFootball

[Taylor Fritsch @taylorfritsch]

Nothing reinforces my affinity for @Delta like flights on other legacy carriers.

[Badgermaniac @THEbadgermaniac]

In today's climate, there is no shame in saying, "My dream is the NBA, but I also understand how difficult that dream will be. In the meantime, I cannot turn down life changing $ in case my dream doesn't come true." What pisses folks off is trying to claim it wasn't about the $.

[Doug Russell @DougRussell]

I’m not shocked that Chris McIntosh is moving on. In the NIL era, being a college AD has never been more thankless. You’re not working with the kids anymore, you’re trying to find money for them. College sports is broken, perhaps beyond repair.

[Taylor Fritsch @taylorfritsch]

The report that select Regents informed Rothman of their no-confidence determination in March is interesting timing given that Chancellor Mnookin at UW-Madison announced she was moving on in late January…

[Scott Bauer @sbauerAP]

The Universities of Wisconsin Board of Regents scheduled a Tuesday vote to consider firing the system's president, who refused their offer to quietly resign because he said no reason had been given for the surprise ouster.

https://t.co/pGbdn99vIY

[Taylor Fritsch @taylorfritsch]

@MLBFanSupport why is the @Brewers stream lagging / buffering so badly?

[Taylor Fritsch @taylorfritsch]

@cwagner100 @TravisBOUND Nor is there anything wrong with the state spending a modest amount of $ on publicly owned facilities that generate substantial economic activity. Last I checked, taxpayers chipped in for the arenas that Marquette and UWGB play in, too.

[Taylor Fritsch @taylorfritsch]

@cwagner100 @TravisBOUND But now, the economic model has shifted such that we either pay athletes (mostly FB and MBB) or cut Olympic sports. There’s nothing wrong with thinking that the UW shouldn’t do that.

[Corey Bennett (BadgerNews) @BadgerNewsNet]

🦡The Wisconsin NIL Bill Passed, and It's a Great Day to Be a Badger Fan 🏈

DISCLAIMER: Lots of words. And then more words. If you're not supremely interested in this topic, I'd skip.

The Wisconsin NIL bill passed the state Senate on March 17th in a 17-16 vote, allocating $14.6 million annually in state funds to cover UW-Madison's athletic facility debt service. The reaction from a segment of Badger fans has been predictable — taxpayer money flowing to an athletic department feels wrong on its face, particularly during a stretch of disappointing football. That frustration is understandable. But a lot of the argument against this bill rests on weak premises.

First, some context on the numbers being debated. The $757 million figure represents the total annual economic footprint of UW Athletics — meaning the full ripple effect of the program on the state economy, including fan spending on hotels, bars, restaurants, and travel on top of what flows through the athletic department's own books — per the 2022 ESI study commissioned by UW-Madison [1], which also found the program generates $16 million in annual state tax revenue. The $280 million figure that has circulated in this debate is a separate number entirely — the estimated annual statewide economic loss if football continues to decline, per the UW Crowe Center for Research on the Wisconsin Economy [2], driven by reduced attendance, gameday spending, and tourism. Those are two very different figures describing two very different things.

This bill does not create new facility debt. It shifts who services existing debt — moving it from athletic program operating revenue to a state general appropriation. While that shift does create a new taxpayer obligation, it functions as a highly leveraged investment in the state's most visible tourism and marketing engine. It also frees up program dollars to compete under the new House settlement framework. Under that settlement, schools must now direct institutional operating dollars toward a $20.5 million annual revenue sharing cap for athletes. Wisconsin was already spending a significant portion of its operating revenue servicing facility debt, leaving less to deploy toward that cap than competitors whose facility costs were already subsidized. This bill corrects a structural disadvantage, not a coaching one.

A central premise of the case for this bill is that winning produces economic activity. Not just at Camp Randall, but across the state. Bars and restaurants filling up on Saturdays. Watch parties. Gear purchases. Travel. Badger-related transactions rippling through communities that never appear in a stadium attendance count. Every sports fan understands this intuitively because we have all lived it. We invest more in good teams. We show up more, we spend more, we care more. You do not need a commissioned economic study to acknowledge what losing is doing to Badger-related business activity in real time. The data supports it anyway — peer-reviewed research from Ohio State finds that each additional win increases a program's total revenue by over $800,000 [3], and Wisconsin's own Crowe Center data shows season ticket sales dropped from 42,000 to 38,000 after just one bad season [2]. That is observed behavior, not a projection.

Even if you want to challenge the methodology of the economic studies — and there are legitimate critiques of consultant-commissioned impact reports — you still have to reckon with the directional truth. A better football program means more eyeballs, more transactions, and more economic activity distributed across the state. Sports fandom has worked that way across major college and pro sports markets since sports fandom became a thing.

The relationship between resources and winning is also documented. A study of Power Five programs spanning 2005 to 2022 found that facility spending correlates more strongly with on-field success than coaching salaries or recruiting budgets combined [4]. Research from Athletic Director University supports the full cycle: better resources produce better recruiting and facilities, which produce better rosters, which produce wins, which produce revenue, which get reinvested into the next cycle [5]. That cycle runs in both directions. Wisconsin has been in the downward version of it. This bill interrupts that trajectory. Fully funding the $20.5 million cap does not guarantee Big Ten championships in an era where peers are doing the same, but failing to fund it makes sustained relevance materially less likely.

On roster spending specifically — the direct NIL-to-wins link is still maturing in the academic literature given how recently the framework changed, but the directional evidence is clear. CBS Sports analysis of the 2025 College Football Playoff field found the biggest spenders predictably occupied the top of the bracket [6]. More importantly, peer-reviewed research published in Applied Economics concluded that if current NIL spending patterns persist as absolute spending levels rise, the talent gap between elite programs and the rest of the Power Five will widen materially over time [7]. Wisconsin cannot afford to find out what that widening looks like from the wrong side of it.

Is anyone really surprised by any of this?

A fair critic will note that the correlation between resources and wins runs in both directions — successful programs attract more investment, not just the other way around. That is true, and worth acknowledging. But in public policy arguments, waiting for perfect causal proof before acting is rarely a viable standard. What matters here is the asymmetry of risk. If this investment does not move the needle as much as the data suggests, Wisconsin is out $14 million annually on a program that was already generating $757 million in state economic activity. If the data is right and Wisconsin opts out, the talent gap widens, the downward cycle accelerates, and the economic and competitive damage compounds in ways that become structurally difficult to reverse. The downside of acting is modest and recoverable. The downside of inaction is not.

This entire argument is deliberately coach-agnostic. CBS Sports data shows Wisconsin under Paul Chryst had the lowest recruiting spending in the nation — under $400,000 per season [8]. This bill does not bet on any particular coach. It raises the floor and ceiling for whoever is on the sideline. Money does not transform a limited coach into an elite one, but it gives any coach materially better tools than Wisconsin has provided in years. If the ceiling still is not good enough, you find someone else — and that someone else will be operating with a structurally stronger program than the one that existed before this bill passed.

The argument that Wisconsin's alumni base or the university's endowment should have covered this gap misunderstands how both work. University endowments are overwhelmingly restricted funds — designated by donors for specific academic purposes like research, scholarships, and faculty. They are not a discretionary pool available to the athletic department. And under the House settlement, revenue sharing must flow as institutional operating dollars, not donor collective contributions. Alumni generosity and institutional operating budget are structurally separate under the new rules. One cannot substitute for the other regardless of the size of either.

So here is the actual question worth asking. If we agree that winning produces more Badger-related economic activity across the state — and the data and our lived expeirence as sports fans say we should — and if we agree that better-resourced programs raise a coach's floor and ceiling — and the data says we should — then what is the most plausible downside scenario for this bill? A taxpayer obligation that ends up closer to budget neutral than advertised and a marginal improvement in the probability of sustained competitive football in Wisconsin. For $14 million a year, this bill meaningfully increases the likelihood of long stretches of virtuous cycles — wins producing revenue, revenue producing better rosters, better rosters producing more wins. It increases the probability that Badger fans get some relief on Saturdays from all the bullshit in the world. Given everything this state's football program generates for Wisconsin's economy and quality of life, that is a rational bet.

So yes — it is a great day to be a Badger fan. This bill does not fix everything, and next September is not guaranteed to look different from the last few. But Wisconsin just made a rational, evidence-backed decision to stop bringing a knife to a gunfight. The structural disadvantage quietly undermining this program for years has been addressed. The tools are on the table. What gets built with them is still to be determined — but the program now has a legitimate shot at the kind of sustained success that fills bars across the state, sells out Camp Randall, and gives Badger fans something to look forward to every fall. That is worth celebrating. #OnWisconsin

References
[1] UW-Madison Athletics Economic Impact Study, ESI Econsult Solutions (2022) — https://t.co/T1cyKYGIES
[2] UW Crowe Center for Research on the Wisconsin Economy, Football Losses and State Economic Impact (2025) — https://t.co/m3ZhUh3pSk
[3] Logan & Bergman, Revenue Per Quality of College Football Recruit, Ohio State University (2020) — https://t.co/uF5igycafA
[4] Samford University Sports Analytics, Spending Smart: Power Five Football Programs and the Effect on Wins, 2005–2022 — https://t.co/WZcUFqFJqP
[5] Athletic Director University, Analysis of College Football Return on Investment — https://t.co/noBZUH0VQ2
[6] CBS Sports, College Football Playoff 2025 NIL Spending Power Analysis — https://t.co/2Uc35PkZ0R
[7] Applied Economics, The Impact of NIL Contracts on Student-Athlete College Choice (2024) — https://t.co/mvLc0llDpU
[8] CBS Sports, College Football Recruiting Expenses by Conference (2022) — https://t.co/rZg0UgkkS4

[Taylor Fritsch @taylorfritsch]

@jaypo1961 Seems to me the case could progress if Miami and Lucas would drop their opposition to limited jurisdictional discovery.

[Taylor Fritsch @taylorfritsch]

Was always the problem—NIL was unleashed with no actual plan for how it would be regulated to *avoid* becoming pay-for-play. So it became pay-for-play from the jump, and it now seems unlikely that parties benefitting from that will ever rein it in.

[Clay Travis @ClayTravis]

Urban Meyer is teeing off on reality that NIL doesn’t really exist in college sports, it’s pay for play. NIL should be, per Meyer, actually paying players to do commercials and the like, he’s in favor for that.

[Taylor Fritsch @taylorfritsch]

@jake_schwall I think people have read far too much into the in-state recruiting. Last year, they were aiming for a small class & were clearly not as high on some prospects as others programs. 2027 is a strong class in-state; think it’s fair to judge the staff on how they do this cycle.

[Taylor Fritsch @taylorfritsch]

@JSteppe1 I’d love to see if they could lure him back. But making the move now may not make sense for him or UW.

[Taylor Fritsch @taylorfritsch]

@MikeJMcCleary Can remember when he and Bo didn’t really care for each other. But that seemed to mellow with time.

Izzo has become bar none my favorite opposing coach in the conference—just a total class act. And he’s spot on here.

[Taylor Fritsch @taylorfritsch]

@kit_sionn_witch @rjb1216 @jailedamanda CBS originally had rights to this year’s Super Bowl. They made a deal to trade with NBC because (1) having 2026 was worth more to NBC than CBS (NBC is able promote the Olympics during the Super Bowl/sell packages to advertisers) and (2) CBS didn’t want to compete w/the Olympics.