MITCHELL — Does anyone have a dollar to spare?
That's what athletic departments across the nation are asking their alumni base and boosters these days, in a desperate attempt to keep up with the haves of the college sports landscape.
Between the need to upgrade facilities, increase ticket and media revenue, fund scholarships and other student-athlete expenses, and grow name, image, and likeness (NIL) collectives associated with the universities, there are seemingly endless ways that programs need booster support.
The local Division I schools are no different.
I attended the Mitchell Quarterback Club at The Depot on Wednesday, expecting to hear from new USD athletic director Jon Schemmel. He was unable to attend, in part because he's leading the search for a new women’s basketball coach. In his stead came senior associate athletic director and chief revenue officer Ben LeCompte, along with associate athletic director for fan engagement Jarren Duffy, and the two spoke publicly about the state of the program and its trajectory.
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“So as of right now, if you look at the Summit League and the Missouri Valley, USD, compared to to the schools that report — so public institutions — we are closer to UMKC, or second to last or dead last in all three major revenue generating areas: Ticket sales, sponsorship and media rights and scholarship endowments,” LeCompte said.
The Coyotes were also the last school in the Summit League to launch a NIL collective, called “The Pride of the Western Plain,” earlier this year. That is the organization that can make contributions to athletes at a university and pay them for their name, image and likeness. Most of the Division I schools in the region have had to adjust quickly in the last year, as both South Dakota State and North Dakota State rolled out NIL collectives in the last six months.
But according to LeCompte, USD has a plan. As the SEC and Big 10 programs further detach themselves from the rest of college sports, and, as many suspect may happen, break off from the NCAA, there will be tussle from the scraps, and USD, like everyone else, wants some of what’s left.
“We need to work over the next five to seven years to get ourselves into the area where we're having an athletic budget of $35-$45 million, so that we don't get left behind. So it's not unfair to say at all that the next 10 years of what we do at the University of South Dakota … getting people in seats, selling tickets, communication, media, sponsorship, philanthropy, all that over the next 10 years is 100 percent going to decide if we're playing football and running track at that middle level.”
But, as LeCompte put it, there's also a "fourth bucket" to the whole deal, and that is NIL. To compete at the “middle level,” would require a functional collective, in order to retain in-house talent that would otherwise be poached by bigger schools due to the free-for-all transfer portal.
For example, my alma mater, Utah State, which is essentially a middle-level athletic program USD aspires to be, is still playing catch-up in the NIL realm, and has suffered the consequences. Just since the transfer portal opened this spring, the Aggies’ football team saw a top defensive player transfer to the University of Utah, and a quarterback bolt to BYU.
But on top of everything else alums are asked to give, is it realistic and fair for small programs, such as USD, with an enrollment below 10,000, in a state with a population south of a million people, to ask their fans to also make non tax-deductible NIL donations? Money that will go directly to the pockets of a 21-year–old athlete and do little for the betterment of the school as a whole?
That’s a hard sell, in my opinion.
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To LeCompte’s credit, he acknowledged the skepticisms: “We will never encourage somebody to give to any sort of fund that they're not passionate about,” he said. “So if you're not passionate about NIL, you can stay as far away from it as you want because we need your money in a lot of other places.”
He also added that USD will use NIL less as a recruitment tool, but more as a retention tool.
Every donor will have their limits. If a person contributes to a school's NIL fund and a star player departs for more money somewhere else, how long do those donations continue? If that donor supports scholarships or facility upgrades at a given school, at least they know those donations won't walk away to another school.
College players earning a paycheck from their school for their efforts might happen down the line, depending on lawsuits and the court system. Their hard work should be rewarded, especially in the light that schools have benefitted from their relationships with players for a long time.
But throwing NIL dollars at young athletes in exchange for wins and bragging rights isn’t a sustainable enterprise, and shouldn’t fall on the shoulders of a small-program fanbase.
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