Fleck: NIL Can Be Game-Changer for U

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BleedGopher

BleedGopher

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per Shama:

College athletes are allowed NIL advisors to find deals such as making personal appearances, doing TV commercials or utilizing their social media platforms. Those advisors can’t be coaches from the athletes’ schools, but leaders at the U certainly recognize the potential in this market place given the vitality of the business community.

“…We have a very, very unique location of where we are, and we need to be able to use that, and we need our community to want to use that,” Gophers football coach P.J. Fleck said. “Use our student athletes and really take this program to a different level, and I think we’re very, very capable of doing that.”

Fleck considers NIL to be another major change benefitting athletes, along with things like player safety and the transfer portal. He knows NIL could be a huge catalyst for recruiting, perhaps annually boosting the Gophers into the company of recruiting classes that rank among the top 20 in the nation—a change resulting in rosters with plenty of four-star players, and perhaps a few five-stars.

Fleck is clearly excited about NIL and how it can benefit Gopher football. “I think there is great potential here for what we can become. …We just have to be incredibly creative. We have to be able to use it like everyone else. To be able to use it (as) part of recruiting student athletes to come here.

“Again, not setting those things up, but when you look at where you are and where you’re located, what resources we have around here, this can be game-changing for the University of Minnesota. It can be game-changing for where we are going in the future.”


Go Gophers!!
 

BleedGopher said:
per Shama:

College athletes are allowed NIL advisors to find deals such as making personal appearances, doing TV commercials or utilizing their social media platforms. Those advisors can’t be coaches from the athletes’ schools, but leaders at the U certainly recognize the potential in this market place given the vitality of the business community.

“…We have a very, very unique location of where we are, and we need to be able to use that, and we need our community to want to use that,” Gophers football coach P.J. Fleck said. “Use our student athletes and really take this program to a different level, and I think we’re very, very capable of doing that.”

Fleck considers NIL to be another major change benefitting athletes, along with things like player safety and the transfer portal. He knows NIL could be a huge catalyst for recruiting, perhaps annually boosting the Gophers into the company of recruiting classes that rank among the top 20 in the nation—a change resulting in rosters with plenty of four-star players, and perhaps a few five-stars.

Fleck is clearly excited about NIL and how it can benefit Gopher football. “I think there is great potential here for what we can become. …We just have to be incredibly creative. We have to be able to use it like everyone else. To be able to use it (as) part of recruiting student athletes to come here.

“Again, not setting those things up, but when you look at where you are and where you’re located, what resources we have around here, this can be game-changing for the University of Minnesota. It can be game-changing for where we are going in the future.”


Go Gophers!!
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Glad he's excited about it. I fear it for a program like ours.
 

One thing you can honestly say about Fleck, he is a true modern college football coach. He has that vision to look at new changes going on to his advantage. There might be some "old school" coaches that stick to their old ways of doing things but Fleck is constantly evolving with the changing times. He is one who will likely benefit some of the best of any new changes whether its transfer portal useage or the NIL.
 

This is not news. Fleck has been saying this exact thing for months.
 



tikited said:
Glad he's excited about it. I fear it for a program like ours.
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There are X players available every pre-season in college football. The Alabama's were already getting the top Y players.

They're still going to get exactly those same top Y players. Total roster sizes haven't changed. Players want to play, somewhere.


At worst, you can argue that it would've been easier to "sway" a high 4-star or 5-star guy to come play at Minnesota (more likely, stay home) when all that could "legally" be offered was a full scholly, than it will now be with NIL. That is valid. But Fleck actually thinks it will be the opposite. Guess we'll see.
 

tikited said:
Glad he's excited about it. I fear it for a program like ours.
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I do too. But if anyone can get partnerships set up, you'd think it would be Fleck.
 





Will definitely be a game changer, but unclear what direction. The positive is that being in the TC media and economic market helps for NIL opportunities. The negative is 4 pro sports teams each with better known stars who also get a slice of the athlete endorsement pie
 

fmlizard said:
Will definitely be a game changer, but unclear what direction. The positive is that being in the TC media and economic market helps for NIL opportunities. The negative is 4 pro sports teams each with better known stars who also get a slice of the athlete endorsement pie
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Luckily none of those teams are winners.
 

MplsGopher said:
There are X players available every pre-season in college football. The Alabama's were already getting the top Y players.

They're still going to get exactly those same top Y players. Total roster sizes haven't changed. Players want to play, somewhere.


At worst, you can argue that it would've been easier to "sway" a high 4-star or 5-star guy to come play at Minnesota (more likely, stay home) when all that could "legally" be offered was a full scholly, than it will now be with NIL. That is valid. But Fleck actually thinks it will be the opposite. Guess we'll see.
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Except that with the NIL, what is the market for the 4 star kids who make up the bottom half of the Alabama recruiting class or the 5 star kids who come in and still find themselves as backup in their 2nd or 3rd year on campus. My guess is a Minnesota (or Wisconsin, etc) could do very well taking Alabama's 2nd 22 and those kids would then be the priority for businesses in that market for NIL opportunities. A quick example would be the no.1 kid out of Minnesota staying home and getting all the media attention in the ~15th media market in the country versus going to Alabama and maybe being their 10th biggest recruit in a class of a 20. I'd guess the initial opportunity to cash in at Minnesota would be far greater even if the upside (becoming a star at Alabama) would be greater with the Tide. Of course plenty of very good NFL players don't even start at Alabama for a number of years so that's a high bar to meet.

As far as Fleck's comments, its a chicken or the egg thing. Both Gopher football and basketball are so far off the radar because the products have been mostly terrible for 60 years for football and close to 25 for basketball. I am not sure you can ask for a lot of support when people simply don't care because you've lost like 17 of 18 to Wisconsin and 14 of 18 to Iowa (not going to look up the actual results buth those are in the ball park), that's so far from a baseline of competence that gettting support will be tough. There was a golden opportunity to do better in 2019 and then great opportunities in 20 and again this year in 21 in a very weak West to further establish the program and keep the interest growing from '19. It hasn't happened to date. There would be plenty of interest/support if the product was better, but can the product get better without the support? I think so, but it hasn't happened to date.
 

EG#9 said:
Except that with the NIL, what is the market for the 4 star kids who make up the bottom half of the Alabama recruiting class or the 5 star kids who come in and still find themselves as backup in their 2nd or 3rd year on campus. My guess is a Minnesota (or Wisconsin, etc) could do very well taking Alabama's 2nd 22 and those kids would then be the priority for businesses in that market for NIL opportunities. A quick example would be the no.1 kid out of Minnesota staying home and getting all the media attention in the ~15th media market in the country versus going to Alabama and maybe being their 10th biggest recruit in a class of a 20. I'd guess the initial opportunity to cash in at Minnesota would be far greater even if the upside (becoming a star at Alabama) would be greater with the Tide. Of course plenty of very good NFL players don't even start at Alabama for a number of years so that's a high bar to meet.

As far as Fleck's comments, its a chicken or the egg thing. Both Gopher football and basketball are so far off the radar because the products have been mostly terrible for 60 years for football and close to 25 for basketball. I am not sure you can ask for a lot of support when people simply don't care because you've lost like 17 of 18 to Wisconsin and 14 of 18 to Iowa (not going to look up the actual results buth those are in the ball park), that's so far from a baseline of competence that gettting support will be tough. There was a golden opportunity to do better in 2019 and then great opportunities in 20 and again this year in 21 in a very weak West to further establish the program and keep the interest growing from '19. It hasn't happened to date. There would be plenty of interest/support if the product was better, but can the product get better without the support? I think so, but it hasn't happened to date.
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Your arguments, which are probably very similar to what Fleck is thinking, make perfect sense to me.

Another good example could be someone like Dylan Wright -- who was looking like the next super star here through the first two games, even at Colo he only had one catch but a huge one, then suddenly has fallen off the face of the Earth -- might not have made much at TA&M as a bench player, but then comes up here as a starter and can make more.
 



Gold Rush said:
One thing you can honestly say about Fleck, he is a true modern college football coach. He has that vision to look at new changes going on to his advantage. There might be some "old school" coaches that stick to their old ways of doing things but Fleck is constantly evolving with the changing times. He is one who will likely benefit some of the best of any new changes whether its transfer portal useage or the NIL.
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PJ takes whatever in front of him and deals with. I like that.

No "oh man this is dumb" brooding, dude is going to take it as a challange and do what it takes to overcome it / embrace it.
 


GVLCGopherFan said:
I've always thought NIL would hurt us. That said, I never really factored how much a coach like Fleck might find creative ways to make it work here.
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NIL may not hurt us in terms of the Twin Cities market providing opportunity, but we might well be hurt by unrealistic promises other schools make during recruiting. Fleck will not engage in unscrupulous tactics but many schools will.
 

I don't live in the Cities and don't get back to campus a ton, so I may be wrong, but for all the Fortune 500 companies in the area surrounding the U, it does not seem like a lot of them do much in the way of sponsorships for the U. For example, I don't see Best Buy sponsorships in the Athletes Village or Medtronic, etc. Again, I could be wrong, but that is just my overall impression.

If I am correct in my impression, it makes me wonder why most of the large corporations in the Cities don't want to provide more financial support and sponsorships with the U. It also makes me wonder, that if these companies don't see any financial benefit to supporting the U, will they find any financial benefit to supporting U athletes through a NIL deal? I'm concerned that they may not, putting us at a disadvantage when recruiting athletes. Just a thought.
 

Natural for 3-M to be a big home-grown booster.

Quiz question...What was 3-M's original name?

How can they not be homers for the State's only flagship University? Land grant to boot?
 

We have to avoid pulling a ‘Nils’ on this new NIL policy.
 


I don't see how this will be good for us recruiting the top players. The reason being is that if you are a top talent 5 star type kid, you believe in yourself and never envision being 4th on the depth chart. That is why schools like OSU can get two 5 star QBs in a class - both believe that they are the guy. Additionally, the players likely think that college is just a stepping stone to the NFL and that is a lock - so, they think they will be the ones getting the big payday at Alabama - which they probably got for the last decade already.

Ultimately, I hate NIL and the thought of paying players. I would prefer the B1G go the route of true student athletes with have the players actually meet general admission requirements. I know that will never happen now but I don't see the current changes as 'progress'.
 



MplsGopher said:
That's the Ivy League.

You pay attention to Ivy League football, right? :sneaky:
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The Harvard Columbia game I went to was an odd experience. The Columbia band marched around at half time (at Harvard mind you) with toilet seats around their nexts and then launched into a feminist screed for the half time show.

Edit: my wife remembers that it was a comment on male birth control and that the students had the toilet seats around their necks and were playing the lids which were over their chests
 

Dakota2 said:
NIL may not hurt us in terms of the Twin Cities market providing opportunity, but we might well be hurt by unrealistic promises other schools make during recruiting. Fleck will not engage in unscrupulous tactics but many schools will.
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I'm thinking the ones that will prosper are the those who have rich alumni who are invested in the school's success on the field. Not necessarily fortune 500 companies.
 

GVLCGopherFan said:
I'm thinking the ones that will prosper are the those who have rich alumni who are invested in the school's success on the field. Not necessarily fortune 500 companies.
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I agree and people need to understand that the T-Wolves, Wild, Loons, Vikings, Lynx, and Twins are all looking at those same dollars. Add in Gopher Hockey and St. Thomas and that's a lot of competition for the corporate dollars.
 

I like Stanford’s coach talking on NIL in his discussion with Mark Packer.

He said . . . The system is now setup to allow college athletes to work to capitalize on their market value. It should not be about colleges making promises of getting money for doing virtually nothing, they should be exploring opportunities and working for it. He says, a Stanford degree is worth way more than NIL ever will be, but Stu/Ath now have the ability to explore ways to capture their market value. Giving an 18/19 year old way more than their market should not be the intent, but some will try to use it that way. Come to School X and we’ll guarantee you Y dollar . . . Not the intent of NIL.
 

PMWinSTP said:
This is not news. Fleck has been saying this exact thing for months.
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The news, unfortunately, is that so far it has been just words. Other than a Baldy's night out and Mo at Scheels we have heard nothing. It has not shown up in recruiting to my knowledge. Don't tell me, show me that you embrace it with deals and recruits.

No doubt it could be a game changer...but which direction? Up or down in the standings?
 


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