Are you educating student-athletes about NIL or just providing "NIL education?"

New survey data says that universities and student-athletes are not aligned.

If you want to learn, adapt, or capitalize on NIL, consider my Live NIL Educational Workshops, On-Demand Digital Courses, or NIL Consulting. Contact me at bill@studentathleteinsights.com or read more at https://studentathleteinsights.com/

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The NIL education gap

A few week ago in this newsletter, I upset quite a few people by writing, “Why NIL Education Hasn’t Worked: Irrelevance, fear, and mystification have been the tricks of the trade.” Coincidentally, I also received the most positive email I’ve ever received from readers too - ranging from Head Coaches to Associate AD’s to NCAA employees 😉.

The point is, it struck a nerve. So beware - it’s about to happen again with this week’s newsletter.

I’m going to illustrate the gap between the “NIL education” that aligns with the university’s goals vs. what student-athletes want. And using new survey data, I’m going to describe the type of NIL education that has a positive correlation to student-athletes taking successful action and landing an NIL deal.

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Checking the box for universities

The underlying issue is that universities (athletic administrators and coaches) don’t have the same NIL goals as their student-athletes.

Before you disagree (or stop reading), please hear me out, because I’m informed by about 10+ conversations per week with coaches and administrators and 1,000+ survey results per month from student-athletes. The differences are striking.

Most athletic administrators and coaches are still not fully on-board with NIL. That’s ok. I work in NIL and there’s lots that I’m not on-board with too. I estimate that 60% of athletic administrators and coaches fall into this camp. They didn’t want NIL to happen and continue to see it doing more harm than good. Again, I am not passing judgement.

But because of the new environment we live in - particularly related to recruiting and player retention - universities feel an obligation to provide NIL education, even if they need to hold their noses while doing it.

Because they’re conflicted - needing to provide NIL education, but not fully supporting NIL - there is an unwitting and subconscious bias, resulting in education that meets the university’s objectives, but not the student-athletes’ goals.

The most common NIL education:

• Focuses on mitigating risks (to the university and student-athlete) by teaching rules, regulations, and compliance

• Is “long-term” in nature, with little immediate impact (examples include resume building, interview skills, professional development)

• And checks the box for the university to say that NIL education has been provided

None of this curriculum is bad. It all has value. It’s just that it’s not what student-athletes want. And since universities are primarily responsible for NIL education, that’s a problem.

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NIL education that student-athletes want & need

It’s not surprising that student-athletes have a very simple NIL goal - to land their first NIL deal or subsequent partnerships.

In the Spring of 2024, I used my NIL Research Poll (5,000 current college student-athletes) to identify:

• What NIL education student-athletes had been provided

• What NIL education student-athletes wanted

• And what NIL education is needed - or said another way, what NIL education has had a positive correlation to landing an NIL deal

Here were my methods:

1. I surveyed 700 DI student-athletes - selected based whether they had received NIL education by their university or third party hired by their university (700 is almost 2x the sample size needed for 95% confidence)

2. I isolated those student-athletes into two groups: Group 1 had landed at least 1 NIL deal and Group 2 had 0 NIL deals

3. I asked a series of questions to both Groups about the content of the NIL education they’d received, such as…

• Financial literacy

• Personal branding

• Social media

• Professional development

• Collectives

• Regulations

• Compliance

• Legal Issues

• Life skills (resume building, interviewing)

• Corporate Brands

• NIL Contracts

• Professional Service Providers (selecting, working with, etc.)

• Sales (selling your NIL capabilities to businesses)

In addition to the content types, the questions focused on whether they had take any type of action after engaging in pursuit of NIL opportunities. I then analyzed the responses to identify the content that had a positive correlation to student-athletes landing an NIL deal…

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