Stars on Sports Intro: It's time for Stars on Sports! A podcast-radio show dedicated to sharing stories about our athletic program at Lansing Community College. LCC athletics has a strong tradition. 23 national championship wins! Over 170 All-Americans! 19 MCCAA all sports trophies! Stars on Sports will introduce you to individuals that have contributed to our program success and give you the backstory on what it takes to develop it. We'll also dive into and break down the topics and issues facing athletic departments across the nation and right here at LCC. This is Stars on Sports!

Hello and welcome to another episode of Stars on Sports. I am joined by our assistant AD and baseball coach Steven Cutter. And today's plan, Stephen, is to talk a little bit about name, image and likeness NIL, which has been a hot topic recently in college athletics. That doesn't mean we won't go off on a tangent in the past. There are a lot of good topics going on and we've had some of those in our office this morning. But just saw an article just recently and actually just got an email today from our national association about an upcoming seminar on NIL for the NJCAA and I've participated in a handful over the last year in the different platforms that offer and very interesting, can be very polarizing topic. It can be a topic that not a lot of people know the specifics about state law dictate some of the topics different level dictate where this discussion could go comparably to the highest level, the Division 1 NCAA all the way down to high school and I've done my share of research on this as I go and talk to different groups throughout our community. NIL seems to be a topic that I try and touch on but not something we really dived into here at lcc. Not familiar with many programs in our state of Michigan that have dived into the NIL at the NJCA level.

Is that something you think that Lansing may end up doing at some point?

Well I think again when the business of us is to do what's best for student athletes and you know recruiting is so important it could be an advantage to us. So I am definitely paying attention to it. I have met the njca, had the platform that they have developed a corporate partnership with and I've met with that individual a couple times. They offer a kind of a free service that you can go on their website and they have a platform I was on there the other day and three it looks like three colleges have their schooled up there but a lot of individuals have their own page up There. But yeah, definitely I was against it at first. To be honest, when it first came out a couple years ago, I was more a believer of true amateurism and scholarships were kind of your payment to be a college student athlete. But I have adapted that philosophy and I don't think there's enough parameters in place at some of the highest levels that it's a fair playing field. But I do think that there is some positive things that come from it that will benefit student athletes. And most of the conversation is about these student athletes that are making, I think I saw the highest student athlete at the highest level is like $3 million a year. A football player at one of the largest institutions and the largest female deal is I think a million or two.

It's fundamentally changed recruiting at those levels as well.

It has and there's been different philosophies. Some schools have aggressively pursued it and have lured players to come there with NIL and others that more once you get on campus will talk NIL money. And I've seen you, you know, there was one school that a contract was canceled because they couldn't come up with the money with a recruit and that recruit ended up going somewhere else. And you were talking within a couple million dollars deals.

These are all private funded.

That is correct. The school shouldn't have anything to do with it. And you know, there's these things called collectives out there which are donors or they can't be boosters, but they technically are, you know, people, alumni of those colleges that have money that put a group together and like come up programs for student athletes. And it can be by sport, I mean they even have broken it down. Like the guard in basketball has get better deal than the center. The QB in football, probably the pitcher in baseball.

Don't you kind of feel like it's, it's not really that much different than when, when sports have boosters that support certain programs, you know, whatever sports program it is, they're putting money to, to help that program. Now they're just putting money into the student athletes to help that program as well because they're getting the, the kids to come there for those deals.

Well, again, with, with the right parameters in place, I, I think it can be beneficial. But I think there's some issues with, you know, the haves and the have nots. There could be locker room issue, there could be, it could create culture issues. But yeah, I, I think it, you know, there, there's always been the allegation that students were getting paid before this came into place. So this probably helps make it more legal or more fair and more on the up and up.

I'm not completely sure what it looks like at our level, at the NJCAA level, but I do know that you're always going to have that in locker rooms and you just have to be able to manage it. You're going to have players that are getting significantly more scholarship money than and then somebody else and you're still, that's still those same parameters where it's. There's a difference between the haves and the have nots but they're all treated equally and you pull them together into a very unique environment. So whether it's NIL money or scholarships, it's really the same. Only the NIL money is significantly more than most college scholarships.

Yeah, I agree, that's a good point. That it is. You could treat it as similar and probably the good coaches do back to getting everyone on the bus. But still another issue for coaches to manage that could create some tension and you could lose some of your depth. If you know, and I know some school that have, that they've gone somewhere, they've transferred somewhere else because they can get more money or they might be a starter in another place which give them the potential to, to earn more money. The, the other intriguing piece to this about earning more money is social media. If you have a strong social media following, it significantly increases your deal potential. It's crazy. I mean the, the numbers out there and the influence that social media has. But back to our level, you know, when meeting with this platform, it was pret some of the statistics that they shared with me that the media focuses on those million dollar deals. But one of the positives that come from that, the average deal for some of the smaller levels is $200 a deal. But even in our level, a meal, you know, if you go on and promote a certain local restaurant and they give you a meal for you promoting them, that goes a long way for our kids and how important meals are to our student athletes. You just gotta follow those parameter. The main focus is promoting a commercial product using your name that is not in contradiction to the institution. So yeah, I think if you look at the ground roots and all those potential, obviously it's managing it. And again you can pay thousands of dollars for these platforms to help you do that, which seems that's the hard thing to come up with.

Seems like it would still be a lot to manage either way because maybe you have somebody that's willing to give you a deal but it's in direct competition to maybe a large donor to the college or to the athletic department or something like that. So you're. It seems like you would run into a lot of things where you're constantly managing it. Not saying that it's a bad thing, but no.

And that's where the. I mean, these platforms are growing exponentially. There's probably, I mean, there used to be one or two platforms that would help schools navigate through this process. Now there's probably half a dozen to a dozen platforms and, and you pay them money to help determine all those factors and what parameters to work within. And again, that's a significant amount of investment there, but it's almost like hiring staff to do it for you. But yeah, and that's probably the finest line to navigate is staying in alignment with your institutional values and what you stand for and what you want to gain from this. And it's been a struggle at all levels, even us, to make that decision to jump in. I mean, once you jump in, there's no turning back that doing it the right way or making sure you have your pieces in place are important. And some schools just jumped in and now they're reacting and other schools got penalized for not having a plan. And it's just the beginning of it. I mean, this, it's here to stay. It's at the high school level. I was looking at, you know, in Michigan, I don't believe it's law yet that our high school student athletes can do NIL. But more and more states, and I think it's coming and you know, there's high school students making, I saw upward to 800,000 dol with NIL deals. And some of it is influen by the college that they might be recruited by.

We were born in the wrong year.

Well, I don't know if I had the talent or the, the, the social media following to get the biggest deal,

but definitely you probably would have been inspired if this was in place. So true. Yeah, Definitely going to do a little more practice. Right, right.

That'll be interesting if it does, you know, motivate certain people. And, and the other interesting part of this is like who they are. And you know, some of the biggest deals are people that already, you know, have that advantage, you know, like LeBron James son. They're two of the highest, you know, people, and good for them. They're making a million dollars, but they come from a family that already had that, that kind of money. But it definitely paying off on, I think the other end of the Spectrum too, for those that this is really a good source of income for them and their family and you know, to make a positive point, but definitely something we will need to follow. Have you heard any, you know, are you aware of, you know, any of our opponents or anyone that you.

Not really. It's. It's still pretty new at the junior college level. But, you know, there's another side to it too. If you don't perform or you don't do well, you, you can see the money get stripped away, you know, so it's not, it's not necessarily guaranteed and somebody can come in and give you whether it's $200 or whatever else. But then it can also get taken away for performance based or, you know, action space.

Yeah. A local college just had their deal expired in the middle of the season just this last weekend because of the turmoil in that program. And they came in and cut it, except for, I mean they didn't cut it completely, but significantly so the economy could play into it. Location, the important factor to many things in life every. And that's where I think at the junior college level we could have an advantage. As you know, I think there's potential in our area for local businesses that support educational athletics, larger businesses that could also jump in and do that. So I think we have the potential to do it. I'm one that's treading slowly, which is kind of what I do anyway, to learn shocking and see funny guy over there. But that's why I need my accountability apartment over partner over there to move me along if it's something we need to move a little faster on. But I do believe I've met with the platform more than any of my colleagues because I also hope to be forward thinking and thinking that this could be a positive thing for us for our student athletes and our recruiting. But I still think it's a little bit away at our level and would need help and looking at these platforms and finding the money to invest in these platforms too. But, you know, amateurism is a big deal to me. You know, different parameters in place of what it is to be an amateur. I still believe we are, you know, amateurs that, you know, participate at our level in educational, athletic. But that's getting blurred more and more. And I get my share of questions from coaches regarding, you know, the definition of being an amateur student athlete and what they can and can't accept as a student athlete, the NJCAA is my understanding at the $350 threshold. When I was at the high school Level when I started, it was $25 and then it went to $40. I think they might have just upped it again. And that's more like if you, it's a, like a, an achievement award. Like if you want a race or something. You're, you're for being an athlete. You can't earn more than that particular

trophy or whatever it might be, injury fee.

And again, $25 and $40 is really tough nowadays. 350. I think that's a nice range of, you know, maybe helping a student athlete in a, in a sport that they participate in. Obviously in a different sport they can, you know.

Do you think that number would need to go up if Nils become more prominent at the junior college level?

I don't think so. Because again, back to keeping it separate. The NIL should be not based on your, your performance of you at the institution. It's more on your name, image or likenesses, which is your own personal gain. Obviously, you know, the better you perform or the better your school does. I mean, I look at women basketball at the college level. You know, LSU has three or four of the top student athletes now and they won the national championship last year, just which increased their, their brand and their, and their notoriety.

Winning does.

But back to your question. That is earning for your performance. And we could all argue that could go up, you know, is 350 or 25, $40 high school enough if, you know, is $1,000 wrong for a kid to earn for their performance? But if NIL is done right, that would be separate and more, not performance based, but, you know, individual based. Yeah. And to the Dalian's point, a good question which, you know, you know, coach Cutter and I were talking about this morning is performance and consistency and days off. And it would be interesting to see how much, you know, motivation, because there's two sides of this. One is your performance on the field and two is your following. You need to have a following for people to be able to promote your likeness. So they don't always go hand in hand. I mean, do you want to, you know, it was crazy. They just came out recently article like the highest paid influencers in the world. And like this YouTube person makes like $80 million a year just doing videos on kids toys, I think, or something. And how it goes down to, you know, the top 50, they're all over $3 million a year. So you might not even have to be a good student athlete. But if you find ways to have a good social media following that you can get you can earn money off of. And I think a lot of that appeals to a lot of our students nowadays of, you know, as much as they're on social media, that they'd almost like put more effort into that than trying to be a stronger athlete. And again, if you do both, I think the potential is significantly better.

So based on that concept, somebody could be like a completely terrible player and just have an outstanding social media presence, never even play in a game because they're so bad and get paid lots of cash.

Yeah. And you had a baseball player a couple years ago that we thought would be a good NIL person that wasn't our strongest player, but just had a great social media following. Whether it's your personality, whether it's, you know, making the most of what you have, you could be goofy or, you know, you know, show how, you know, bloopers, videos, how popular those are. So I believe that's exactly right. I haven't, I don't have any specific examples of, you know, bad players having high NIL money, but I, again, from everything I've read, your social media following is huge on the potential for your deals.

Do you think there's a benefit to that for a team or athletic department to have that type of player?

Yeah, for sure. I coached a kid a few years ago that was at a Power 5 on the west coast and he, he didn't play very much. Very good player, but just wasn't quite good enough to play on that team. Didn't play very much and has an enormous social media following and would be following, you know, showing stuff with the team in the locker room, the rides, the jerseys they were wearing that day and different things.

Almost like playing a PR person.

Yeah, yeah, 100%. And his social media is incredible. So. And it didn't come anywhere near to where his playing career was and it is beneficial.

I mean, on our way over, we're talking about just telling our story and how important branding is to our department. And part of it is having that consistent message out there to increase that following. Whether it's your star player or someone that just has a great following, they both can be very beneficial to your NIL deal. So, yeah, I think regardless of the talent level, some of these colleges at the higher level are using NIL as their main recruiting based that they have high deals and you know, obviously kids want to, to go where they can earn some money. Even local colleges, you know, have kept kids from going to pro with one more year deal where they kept them

another year where they get more money

than what they would have got at pro level.

That that's why I think Tadalian's got to get this going for the podcast, too. We got to get some money for podcasts.

Yeah, I'm working on my own there.

So there's back to our me, our locker room issue. Working on our own instead of working as a team.

Mr. Selfish. That's right.

That's the way I play.

But that's funny here. And it's so true of what locker rooms are dealing with on a bigger scale now, all the way down from the high school level, all the way up to the highest level. And you know, it'll, you know, when we have this podcast in a couple years, it'll be interesting to see how much it's changed or not changed because of where NIL deals. And the NCAA is under a lot of pressure to put some parameters in place, but I'm not sure, you know, how much they can reel in at this time or, you know, what, all on the up and up with it. But, but yeah, we will work on it ourselves here on Stars on Sports and, you know, start developing our own NIL deals. So keep the dallian happy and make sure we stay on the air. But as always, a good conversation. And until next time, go Stars.

Stars on Sports Outro: Stars on Sports is recorded live at the WLNZ studios. Engineering and production assistance are provided by Daedalian Lowry. You can listen to this episode and other episodes of Stars on Sports on demand at LCCconnect.org to find more information about our athletic program, visit LCCstars.com thanks for listening. Go Stars!