NIL and Minnesota

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MinnySunDevil said:
Just a random thought from a guy who lives in MN but isn't a UMN alum. Is there any buzz that some of the large companies from the Twin Cities are going to start getting involved in NIL?

United, Cargill, 3M, Target, Best Buy, US Bank, whatever's left of Norwest in Wells Fargo, etc.?

Any of those companies could easily ante up program changing amounts of money for NIL sponsorships without any significant impact on their bottom line. I'm not sure how that market place is going to flesh it out, but I'd have to think UMN is in pretty good shape if they can harness some of the Fortune 500 types in its back yard. Anyone know if that's going on? There aren't many football programs in the country with more enormous companies in their backyard. Seems like it might be a big advantage going forward.
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This would have been a great fit for Mike Wright back in the hay day when he was running SuperValue
 


Gophers_4life said:
How "bona fide" does a NIL deal have to be, to not violate the rules?

For example, I don't really see much difference between the following two scenarios:
a) Joe Big Donor walks up to player X, and puts $10,000 cash in his pocket, winks, and walks away
b) Joe Big Donor walks up to player X, says "I'm going to offer you $10,000 for your NIL rights, what do you say?", the deal is signed, and then JBD does literally nothing with those rights (just sits on them) and never had any intention of doing anything with them quite frankly.
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There isn't. It's basically just legitimizing what's been happening at most major programs for decades.
 


Word said:
Denny Hecker or Tom Petters?
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Well we don’t want the people/companies to be criminal, right?
Mike was a standup guy from my recollection, wasn’t accused of any financial malfeasance, and a former Gopher on the gridiron.
 

Barring one of us getting filthy rich the schools in the West are going to fall further behind the places that are willing to spend millions per player on NIL (and yes it will escalate to this point in due time - $100M+ player payrolls for teams like Texas A&M and Alabama). One thing the last 2 years in particular have shown is to never underestimate the ridiculous money that is floating around out there with almost nothing to spend it on.

The Upper Midwest just won't. There's more money per capita up here and stronger corporations and economies, but the culture is simply different. wisconsin and iowa have shown no willingness to get into a massive arms race on this either.

Nebraska could dominate the West in 10 years because the state is ALL IN on that one program because they have almost nothing else. Nebraska football players are the most famous Nebraskans other than Warren Buffett.
 

Gopher_In_NYC said:
Well we don’t want the people/companies to be criminal, right?
Mike was a standup guy from my recollection, wasn’t accused of any financial malfeasance, and a former Gopher on the gridiron.
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I was not comparing them to the SuperValu guy. Just saying those 2 seem like they would have had potential as SEC sugar daddy types.
 

discochris said:
There isn't. It's basically just legitimizing what's been happening at most major programs for decades.
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So there are no rules at all? I'm sure it isn't that plain, nor am I saying that you're saying that.

I guess I'd have to see the language in the rulebook. Perhaps I will try to look it up.
 



As was brought up by @Bob_Loblaw, @discochris, and others, it is an interesting discussion and will be very interesting to see the results of the following thing: how much "outflow" from the top 15 programs will be as opposed to "inflow" into the top 15 programs, via the portal.

Another thing: how much will those leaving a top 15 program be looking to make (as close as possible to) a lateral move? An obvious recent example is Caleb Williams. So there are going to be those guys, who don't "flow down" to mid-major P5 programs like the Gophers (hopefully we qualify, at least now, for such a label). But we've already seen and I agree will continue to see plenty of such flow down.

Not sure how much genuine "flow up" those top 15 type programs will see though. E.g. will there be guys from Abeline Christian who go all the way up to an Alabama? There could already be such examples and continue to be, I don't know. Just wondering if it won't be nearly as much as those guys flowing up to mid-major P5's.
 


Gophers_4life said:
So there are no rules at all? I'm sure it isn't that plain, nor am I saying that you're saying that.

I guess I'd have to see the language in the rulebook. Perhaps I will try to look it up.
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No, there are rules, but it remains to be seen if they'll even pretend to enforce them at this point. The NCAA has proven pretty toothless in the last few years about anything. Where I can foresee issues in the coming years is with the IRS and what they deem compensation for tax purposes.
 

Wally said:
Mike Lindell 😎
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Kris Lindahl?
68747776_2641585475854059_841111272668790784_o-1-1024x494.jpg
 





Gophers_4life said:
How "bona fide" does a NIL deal have to be, to not violate the rules?

For example, I don't really see much difference between the following two scenarios:
a) Joe Big Donor walks up to player X, and puts $10,000 cash in his pocket, winks, and walks away
b) Joe Big Donor walks up to player X, says "I'm going to offer you $10,000 for your NIL rights, what do you say?", the deal is signed, and then JBD does literally nothing with those rights (just sits on them) and never had any intention of doing anything with them quite frankly.
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a) against the NCCA rules and IRS rules. Flat out cheating.
b) JBD is a poor business man. Too many of these decisions puts him under.
 


gopherjay said:
a) against the NCCA rules and IRS rules. Flat out cheating.
b) JBD is a poor business man. Too many of these decisions puts him under.
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More than likely, JBD has 'f-you' money and throwing it at college athletes in hopes his favorite team wins is nothing more than a toy.
 

Gophers_4life said:
How "bona fide" does a NIL deal have to be, to not violate the rules?

For example, I don't really see much difference between the following two scenarios:
a) Joe Big Donor walks up to player X, and puts $10,000 cash in his pocket, winks, and walks away
b) Joe Big Donor walks up to player X, says "I'm going to offer you $10,000 for your NIL rights, what do you say?", the deal is signed, and then JBD does literally nothing with those rights (just sits on them) and never had any intention of doing anything with them quite frankly.
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Here's the difference: JBD, in scenario (b), even though clearly a bagman, has done nothing wrong, in the eyes of the law or the NCAA. Now, if JBD tries to deduct the $10,000 as a business loss, and can't demonstrate some reasonable or plausible likelihood that he could profit from the NIL rights, the IRS might challenge the deduction as part of a sham business transaction ... but neither the school nor the player will suffer. Big Donors, I believe, are far more likely to throw obscene amounts at sham NIL arrangements for relatively unknown college kids than Fortune 500 companies are to throw even modest money at good faith NIL arrangements with well known college kids.
 
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I saw the thread title and was wondering what is going on with Northern Illinois now? Did we schedule them?
 

As noted, NIL is all over the landscape. there will be a lot of players getting relatively modest amounts of NIL $ to sign autographs, do endorsements, or to facilitate a player marketing their own T-Shirts, etc. that level of NIL will mainly involve smaller businesses.

the really big money end of the deal - IMHO - will be concentrated on programs where there is a very strong fan attachment to the program. i.e the 'helmet' schools.

The Gopher fan base is not in the same category. outside of the die-hard Gopher fans, the state of MN does not live or die with each Gopher Game - not like the fan bases do for Bama, Clemson, etc.

A company is not going to pony up huge NIL deals for a Gopher athlete because the Gophers are just not thought of in that sense by the general public.

You're not going to see Gopher players doing TV ads in the way that a Kirk Cousins or a Justin Jefferson would.

that is a side effect of the Gophers playing second fiddle to the Vikes in the general consciousness.
 



gopherjay said:
a) against the NCCA rules and IRS rules. Flat out cheating.
b) JBD is a poor business man. Too many of these decisions puts him under.
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a) beyond question against NCAA rules. I was saying this would be personal money, and I doubt it is against IRS rules to gift someone $10k cash. If you were saying it would be illegal for the player to not report this as income, sure I could see that.

b) think about any small business owner, that literally is the owner of the company. Such things have nothing to do with good business practice, and everything to do with trying to essentially accomplish the same thing as under scenario a) while staying within the new rules.
 


Gophergrandpa said:
Here's the difference: JBD, in scenario (b), even though clearly a bagman, has done nothing wrong, in the eyes of the law or the NCAA. Now, if JBD tries to deduct the $10,000 as a business loss, and can't demonstrate some reasonable or plausible likelihood that he could profit from the NIL rights, the IRS might challenge the deduction as part of a sham business transaction ... but neither the school nor the player will suffer. Big Donors, I believe, are far more likely to throw obscene amounts at sham NIL arrangements for relatively unknown college kids than Fortune 500 companies are to throw even modest money at good faith NIL arrangements with well known college kids.
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Agree with everything you said here.

And if it was a minimum requirement, I'm sure none of these guys would pause for a second to create some new LLC that does nothing and exists on paper only in order to facilitate the NIL deal.

$10k really isn't that much in a year to a guy even with "just" $1M sitting in the bank, but can make a nice bit of difference to a college kid.
 


MaxyJR1 said:
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In the same article he mentioned that Nebraska has much better NIL opportunities (for him, anyway) than Texas! Texas has some pretty good NIL things set up—I wonder what the heck Nebraska has going? A lot of rich boosters … Got to be better than anything else in the B1G West. Maybe this is what Frost needs to turn the corner.
 

Gophergrandpa said:
In the same article he mentioned that Nebraska has much better NIL opportunities (for him, anyway) than Texas! Texas has some pretty good NIL things set up—I wonder what the heck Nebraska has going? A lot of rich boosters … Got to be better than anything else in the B1G West. Maybe this is what Frost needs to turn the corner.
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On thing they have is major connections with opendorse.com which was one of the first companies helping pro athletes monetize their brand with social media years ago. Tons of high profile players and teams in all sports are clients of theirs. That company is headquartered in Lincoln and founded by two former Husker football players.
 

These are the kinds of things that are going to make college football feel gross.
 

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