An Exclusive Look Into The Gamecocks' NIL Program
By: Caleb Alexander - Southcarolina.rivals.comThe world of college football got turned on its head in June of 2021 when the Supreme Court ruled that the NCAA could not legally limit payments to student-athletes. In the months following, many programs around the country have set up whole new branches for their athletic departments to focus on how their program can keep up, with an emphasis primarily centering around NIL, otherwise known as Name, Image, and Likeness. While many states have their own laws around what schools can do, many do not, and in South Carolina, the law is currently suspended, leaving in-state Universities with flexibility for how to structure their programs, while still abiding by ever-changing NCAA rules around the processes.
If it's already starting to sound a little confusing, that's exactly why we're writing this article, in hopes of clearing up exactly what the function of the University of South Carolina's NIL program is, how they are allowed to interact with student-athletes and recruits, and where they're continuing to evolve in the rapidly changing landscape of life in the Southeastern Conference. To help with that, Gamecock Scoop was able to talk to Hilary Cox, Associate Athletic Director for Administration at the University of South Carolina, a position she said is a bit of an umbrella for many roles within the athletic department, but one of her primary roles is overseeing the NIL department at USC. "In Spring 2021, we created our own NIL department," Cox said in her introduction. This allowed the University to put manpower and resources into getting a handle on this beast, something they prioritized from the onset of the Supreme Court ruling.
The Gamecock NIL 'Ecosystem'
One of the most difficult tasks in understanding how NIL works at South Carolina and other universities is just tracking down and understanding all of the moving parts. With South Carolina, you have the University's internal NIL department, you have the various external collectives, you have sports agencies that work with Gamecock players, and there are resources like the Gamecock Exchange which allow businesses and individuals to partner directly with athletes. All these moving parts bring up two fundamental questions: 1. How does this ecosystem work for student-athletes at South Carolina? 2. How does this system compare to other schools the Gamecocks might be competing against for recruits?As for the first question, Cox provided us with a thorough breakdown: "You can think of the institution as the central hub (of the ecosystem)...I think it's important for us as the institution to be involved from an educational standpoint, but at the end of the day, we don't have to be involved in a NIL deal at all. Fundamentally a NIL deal is just a transaction between a student-athlete and a brand (or individual, business or collective)"
So that is an important point to note. The University themselves cannot just pay players and that isn't happening anywhere. The University can help educate student-athletes and help bring forth opportunities, like creating the Gamecock Exchange, but they can't broker deals. There are a few occasions when the University can get involved directly, like when a piece of USC licensing is involved, or a USC media partner might be involved. "Other than that, the way that the rules currently stand, the institution is on the outside looking in (on many of these deals)," Cox added when explaining the role they're allowed to play.
That said, if you look at the Gamecock NIL Hub, the University is allowed to point student-athletes in the direction of various resources that can benefit them. "We can always educate...That's one of the main tenets of what Gamecock NIL does. We can educate about the collectives, we can educate about Park Avenue, but we're not responsible for those...They are in our ecosystem, but we have no control over anything that they do," Cox said of the moving parts beyond the University itself.
As you can see, this can be a bit complicated, but at its core, the strength of South Carolina's NIL department is in showing the Universities' athletes the doors of opportunity that are being created by fans, business owners, brands, etc. through collectives and individual business deals. This is something that South Carolina is succeeding in.
That said, there's still some resistance from fans who may have a moral objection to NIL, or simply don't know where to start. I asked Hilary Cox what she would suggest for a Gamecock fan who is interested in trying to help with NIL, but isn't sure how to get started or might have questions. "Reach out to anyone that's in our ecosystem, whether it's through the University, the Gamecock NIL department contact page, whether it's through one of the two collectives in town...We are all working towards the same common goal, which is to help our student-athletes...just reach out and say 'Hey I want to know more,' there are no dumb questions here. It's our job to make sure we are educating everyone and having those one-on-one conversations."
To put it simply: the success of NIL does depend on the University making sure its student-athletes understand how to make deals and with who, but it also depends on many factors outside of the University's control, like who is offering a deal, or how much one of the various collectives has in its coffers to offer.
How Is It Going?
Now that we understand how the ecosystem works at the school, the next question is of course: how well is it functioning? To some degree that is an impossible question to answer with the level of specifics that I'm sure everyone wants. I don't have a list of how much each SEC school's ecosystem is paying out to its athletes. We've all seen insane headlines like the rumor that Texas A&M raised $30 million for its #1 recruiting class, which of course was never substantiated. It would be difficult to know exactly how much money per year South Carolina student-athletes are making because each of those deals are individualized. The closest you might get is by comparing the collectives of various schools, but most of that is not public information. "If there is a pool of money, it's through the collectives, which isn't in our control...the NCAA rules preclude an institution from being involved with a collective when it comes to the money, so we can educate the collective and connect our athletes with the collective, but we can't tell a collective how much money to give to a student," Cox explained when I asked about how the Gamecocks might stack up within the SEC.When it comes to recruiting, there continue to be rumors about this school or that school offering packages to recruits, and sometimes those rumors have even centered around South Carolina targets, like some of the names the Gamecocks finished in 2nd place for over the summer. Just like in the pre-NIL era, it is possible that some athletic staffs and athletic departments are directly getting involved in some of these deals, but that would be cheating, and you'd like to think that the NCAA would eventually get involved there at those schools.
As for the Gamecocks, they are sticking with the rule book. They spend time on every recruiting visit educating prospects on how NIL works at South Carolina, how to build a brand, and how to use that brand to make deals for themselves. "That stuff happens regardless of how many stars you have" Cox assured us when I asked if there was a difference in how they might educate a 5-star prospect vs. a 3-star prospect.
She did admit that it's easier with some recruits than others though. "Maybe someone has a large social media following. You could try to analyze their social following and say 'maybe it would be good to try to partner with 'X' because your followers enjoy using 'X'...but from an institutional standpoint, we can't make promises, we can't personally facilitate deals for our athlete's, so we can't sit down in front of a recruit and their family and say, 'here are the six deals you're going to get as soon as you step on campus.'"
As for Cox's advice for the coaching staffs who are having to deal with recruiting against schools that might be overpromising? "I tell them to tell the kid to tell that school to put it in writing...if they won't do that, it should answer a lot of your questions right?"
Conclusions
While NIL can seem like a complicated system, the University staff seems to be filled with creative and motivated individuals like Hilary Cox that are fighting to keep the Gamecocks ahead of the curve as the NCAA rules and various state laws continue to shift and change as NIL becomes the new normal.At the end of the day, the most important question I asked was a simple one:
As far as you can tell, is there any NIL disadvantage for a recruit should they choose the University of South Carolina compared to other options?
"No, not at all. I think we have the resources in place to help student-athletes with brand deals. We employ an Altius NIL Partner Services Manager, Joe Shepard, who is on campus every day. We were one of the first schools to do that. We were one of the first schools to build out our own NIL Department, which has proven to be instrumental in positioning us. Also, there are a lot of really unique aspects within our ecosystem...There are a lot of positives here, being in the capital of our state, and the passionate fanbase that wants to support our athletes. I like to focus in on student-athletes and brand deals, and I think we do that really really well."