Instead of exchanging platitudes at the dinner table this holiday season, you should ask your family about the state of name, image, and likeness in college sports.
Although my family never really took to sports beyond spectating, one of my cousins shines as a prospective Division-I baseball player. Even as a junior in high school, he’s already carefully considering whether or not to go the junior college route, which training camp he should prioritize, and if he should compete on an out-of-state team next summer for more exposure.
All of these decisions, coupled with an insane workout regimen and pitching for three teams, are intentionally executed to get my left-handed pitcher cousin into the best baseball program possible.
Personally, I think he’d be a great pickup for the Quakers, who lost program-great left-handed pitcher Will Tobin, a 2025 College graduate, last spring. But while education is an important factor, my cousin will ultimately choose to go wherever NIL money talks, which is not the Ivy League.
For those unfamiliar, NIL deals refers to the sponsorship deals that a student-athlete can pursue to profit off their name, image, and likeness. The NCAA legalized NIL deals in July 2021 after immense student-athlete outcry and a series of antitrust suits.
NIL was strengthened this summer after the courts ruled in favor of the student-athletes during House v. NCAA deliberations, requiring schools to adopt revenue-sharing models that pay student-athletes. The Ivy League notably opted out of the House settlement in January before a ruling was made.
Some student-athletes like Texas quarterback Arch Manning and BYU freshman forward AJ Dybantsa receive millions of dollars from individual NIL deals, while other athletic programs house NIL collectives benefiting a whole team.
In accordance with NCAA standards, the Ivy League allows legitimate NIL through third-party businesses, but it has a hard stance against collectives and direct payouts to athletes.
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A few weeks ago, during a question and answer session, Penn men’s basketball coach Fran McCaffery, a 1982 Wharton graduate, stated that a new NIL “collective” was in place for the program.
McCaffery’s answer to the NIL question was carefully crafted to quell Ivy League fears. He emphasized legitimacy and potential internships — a perfect selling point for an institution engulfed in preprofessionalism.
Penn's internship program supports a legion of student-athletes who already have to balance D-I athletics with rigorous academics, but it puts pressure on alumni to sponsor these positions and potentially pay Penn student-athlete interns different wages than interns who went through the typical professional recruiting process.
The application of this idea is still unclear, but providing more financial support for student-athletes incentivizes future generations to seriously consider the Ivy League for both its academic and athletic programs. As a result, this will make the Ivy League a more competitive and supportive athletic conference.
Although the Ivy League Instagram page likes to tout rankings and statistics that consistently place the Ivy League as the fifth strongest athletic conference, it fails to account for how NIL and new financial choices will drive the recruiting process. The Ivy League’s 88 nationally ranked teams mostly came from non-flagship sports.
The Ivy League has a flagship sports problem, which is exacerbated by the lack of NIL and athletic scholarships.
With the exception of the annual Harvard-Yale football faceoff, the general Ivy League student body does not engage with student athletics beyond supporting friends. The Quakers’ season-ending football game against Princeton last weekend had a listed attendance of just 3,093 spectators.
It’s discouraging as a student-athlete to attend an institution that doesn’t emphasize athletic greatness. Even bottom-of-the-barrel, Big Ten bum Maryland, whose lackluster attendance earned a write-up in the Washington Post three years ago, recorded a 46,185-person turnout for its game against Michigan last weekend.
Choosing which college to commit to is ultimately a business decision. Although the Wharton School is the strongest business school in the country, more and more prospective recruits are going to turn away from the Ivy League academic allure for lucrative NIL deals and scholarships at other institutions.
Penn’s new NIL initiative is a bold deviation from the Ivy League norm, but it’s just what the conference needs to remain competitive — or at least, that’s how my family sees it.
ELLIE CLARK is a College junior from Cleveland, Ohio studying music and art history. All comments should be directed to dpsports@thedp.com.
