From Utah’s pickup trucks to $600-an-hour gigs in Iowa, how rich donors and loose rules are changing college sports
The average starter at a big-time football program now takes in about $103,000 a year, according to Opendorse, a company that processes payments to the players for the collectives.
While in theory they operate independently of athletic programs, collectives have become deeply embedded in the economics of college sports, offering vast supplements to the scholarships that schools provide. Instead, a very different model sprang up in parallel, one in which the collectives have effectively hijacked the NIL system to circumvent the NCAA’s still-in-force ban on paying players to play by finding ways to get more money to more athletes.
Utah football head coach Kyle Whittingham greets players at Rice Eccles Stadium after the team’s players were given pickup trucks by the Crimson Collective name, image and likeness organization in Salt Lake City, Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2023. “Once it was put into writing, that’s when I knew what I would be getting if I went to Iowa,” McNamara said.The Swarm Collective said its charitable arm had, indeed, hired McNamara, who suffered a season-ending knee injury on Sept. 30, for a job delivering meals to seniors and visiting children in hospitals. It pays about $600 an hour. The group also has a for-profit arm, Swarm Inc., which pays him even more to make ads for the collective’s corporate supporters.
“I don’t want you discussing or comparing notes with the guy who dresses in the locker next to you,” Schoemann said. “This could deteriorate a locker room instantly.” As the sun settled over the water, James Franklin, Penn State’s head coach, grabbed a microphone to deliver a message to the 100 or so people there: He needed their help against his main recruiting rivals, Ohio State, Michigan and Notre Dame.
The NCAA has criticized collectives for favoring male athletes over female, favoring big schools over small ones, and for backing out of deals with players. But its leaders say they have few tools to crack down on them directly, because the collectives — unlike schools — have not voluntarily put themselves under the NCAA’s authority.
Dieters said his goal is to make sure players are happy. He conceded the posts from the players do not actually do much to help his charity, which is focused on estate planning. “NIL is the greatest wealth distribution in the history of the United States, next to Social Security and welfare,” said Jason Belzer, whose company runs collectives at more than 40 schools. “The majority of it is going to young African American males and females from lower socioeconomic strata, and it’s coming from white, wealthy donors.”
Jon Passavant, chief executive of Startup Waco, an economic development charity that had handled collective payments but is now moving its work into a new for-profit subsidiary, near his offices in Waco, Texas, Sept. 19, 2023. The rapid rise of big-dollar payments to college student-athletes from so-called donor collectives has upended the economics of college football and other sports while giving many donors a tax break, which is drawing scrutiny from the IRS.
Many collectives were boasting publicly that their real goal was to pay players, attract recruits and help their teams win. In some cases, IRS-approved charities also seemed intertwined with for-profit collectives, working together to pay the same players. “You can say, ‘I want to make a $1,000 donation to support the women’s basketball team at UNLV,’” said Rob Sine, a partner at Blueprint Sports, which operates those collectives. He said the foundation would then turn to the for-profit side of the collective and ask them, “How do you want to use it?” The collective would then choose players to do charity work, and the foundation would pay them, he said.
Tony Bradford Jr., a senior defensive lineman at Texas Tech University where a charity collective pays all football players at least $25,000, in Lubbock, Texas on Oct. 15, 2023. The rapid rise of big-dollar payments to student-athletes from so-called donor collectives has upended the economics of college football and other sports while giving many donors a tax break. At the University of Michigan, a new collective agreed to a major shift to gain IRS approval.
“I said, ‘We can’t do it,’” Passavant said. “And they would say, ‘This is ridiculous. We’re not getting the people we need’” for the Baylor football team.
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