On 7/1/21, 1:53 PM, "Daves, Phillip R" wrote: Lou Do you have a couple of minutes to talk? I’ve recently been educated on some of the NIL stuff and if you don’t already know about it you should. Phillip Phillip Daves pdaves@utk.edu Phillip, I'd be happy to talk next week. I listened to a 30 min pod cast giving the history and some implications of this that Beauvais sent around. My take on the impact of this at UTK is: 1. Athletics will now hire a collection of folks to provide a variety of training on this for all student athletes. This will be expensive because it needs to be available to all student athletes, not just the very small number who will gain any significant $ from the use of their likeness. 2. There will now be competition between schools based not just on the facilities and tutoring they provide to athletes, but on the amenities they provide to assist students get the most they can from their likeness. So this increases the unconstrained "arms race" that has been going on in college athletics for decades. 3. There will be direct additional costs to Athletics in order to compensate student athletes when their likeness is used by the program. 4. There will be reduced revenue to Athletics because certain companies will choose to use their resources to sponsor individual athletes rather than the entire program. 5. This will exacerbate the have and have-not differences between the various athletics programs including men's and women's. I suspect that there is a whole collection of articles that state something like the above - I have made no attempt to read the literature. Bottom line is that Athletics will now argue that they should not be expected to even come close to covering the costs of Athletics and will ask for subvention from the BAM. So there will now be additional charges to revenue generating units for the costs of Athletics here. The Senate Leadership was already told by the Chancellor that Athletics will not be held to covering their share of the costs that will be charged to other units, at least til 2025. It is past time to seriously considering cancelling a large portion of all athletics programs here, as a variety of institutions have been doing. At the least, as I have argued repeatedly for decades, a clear accounting of the costs of Athletics here should be openly provided. I am around all next week to talk. I am ccing Shawn and Beth to keep them in the loop as well as the co-chairs of the Senate Athletics Committee James Williams and Bonnie Ownley. Stay well, Lou 7/1/2021 Lou That sums up a lot! The new perspective I heard at breakfast yesterday is related to your item 4. Not only is the athletic department likely to lose money to individual athlete sponsorships, this puts the highly visible athletes in direct financial conflict with the athletic department and coaches. This sounds like a recipe for ethical conflicts of interest in how the coaches treat the athletes. So in addition to an expensive arms race with other sec schools, there’s the likelihood of high financial stakes internal conflict unless a new internal system of rules and checks is developed. I, too, think it’s about time we considered caging the athletic program before it drags down the academic enterprise. Phillip 7/1/2021 Phillip, Thanks for the additional perspective on financial conflicts. I have no good idea what processes could be put in place to ameliorate these concerns. The University has no authority to vet any contractual arrangements that students might pursue, while they already do constrain those that coaches and ADs enter into through the contracts that hire these folks. I can't see how we can set up any effective rules for how often a coach plays a particular student. I suspect this will engender yet another layer of General Counsel oversight to avoid lawsuits by students who feel slighted in not getting playing time which now affects their potential for financial gain immediately. Yet more expenses and schools have only themselves to blame by not constraining the system in a more thoughtful way years ago. Stay well, Lou 7/1/2021