In most sports, it’s only a handful of athletes that make a team a winner vs run-of-the-mill. This is especially true at Ivies, where a player who may have been recruited by a P4 decides to go Ivy instead.
NIL started to change the calculus already in the last few years - the NCAA settlement could be the nail in the coffin.
If Men’s Tennis goes from the current 4.5 scholarships (uncapped roster) to capped roster of 10 fully funded scholarships, that moves the needle significantly. And please don’t tell me P4 schools won’t be able to find the $ to fund those 5.5 extra scholarships - anyone who says that is not dealing in reality.
Here’s a real world example:
Moved from Harvard to Duke after his freshman year - allegedly got some decent NIL $. In the new regime, never goes to Harvard to begin with and goes straight to Duke.
In a sport like men’s tennis, if you are getting cut from a P4 roster due to new limits, you wouldn’t have been recruited to Ivy in the first place. The ones getting “squeezed out” are not the elite - they are more likely the walk-ons, “academic kids” (if needed to balance a team’s academic standards) and underperformers.
They will make the move out of necessity, not out of a position of strength. They will lose all of the top basketball talent eventually, so will already be performing at a upper-D3 level. Moving to that lower division will just match their athletic performance on the court.
You already know the difference between a mid-major (which gives athletic scholarships, and oftentimes other merit aid, with minimal academic standards for admission) and a typical Ivy. The bottom half of the Ivy League is performing significantly worse than most mid-majors in most sports. Most of the other Ivy athletic policies are closer to D3 than to P4.
I’m not comparing Duke vs Yale basketball. Duke has 25 varsity sports. By my rough count, 17 of the teams would be recruiting athletes who would also be considering HYP.
The Texas has 40+ swimmers on their men’s rosters. They will has 22 next year. These 20 extra kids are far from mediocre.
Go count how many Ivy athletes, American and otherwise participated in the Olympics. Won gold medals, even. They are not going anywhere. And they are not getting the fortunes you are dreaming of. Even IF they get a gold medal.
The Ivy League is stronger than you think when you look at Olympic Sports. IVIES IN PARIS DAILY BLOG
PARIS, France – It was a historic and memorable Olympic Games for the Ivy League as 109 past, present, and future Ivies and five coaches participated in the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris, France.
30 Ivies took home a total of 34 medals across eight sports in the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Ivies took home 32 medals in the Olympics marking the most marking the most in a single Olympics for the Ivy League. Four Ivies also won multiple medals in their sport. In all, Ivies captured 16 gold medals, seven silver medals and 11 bronze medals. Current and former NCAA athletes took home 15 Olympic medals, finishing in fifth of 22 conferences that earned medals, only behind the ACC, SEC, Big Ten and Big 12.
But remember: Many athletes on Ivy teams are members of a different national team. 20 percent of T@F athletes at H&P are from other countries and represent them at the Olympics.
What do NIL deals look like in D1 rowing so far? Which D1 rowers, if any, are getting big NIL money? To the extent there are such rowers, are they currently blocked from getting that NIL money at Ivies, but not at D1 colleges with rowing teams against which the Ivies want to compete for recruits? Are there enough such rowers to fundamentally change the competitive positioning of Ivy rowing reams? If so, could the Ivies just modify their NIL policies rather than eliminate D1 rowing?
These are potentially interesting questions, but I am not sure they are answerable by looking at something like a couple individual basketball stars who have recently transferred from Ivies to more prominent basketball teams.
This is part of what is confusing me about this conversation.
I may be missing something, but to my knowledge, the Ivies are not blocking these Olympic athletes from doing individual NIL deals, or indeed Olympic team collective deals. To the extent they have a limiting policy at all, it is for collective college team deals.
So if in 2028 I am an Olympic Squash star for Egypt, and I am also on the Harvard Squash team, what exactly won’t I be able to do in terms of cashing in on being an Olympic star? And is that enough to persuade me I should not use being a top Squash player to go to college at Harvard prior to 2028?
I’m not sure why you keep mentioning Swimming. NCAA prelim settlement will mean D1 Football scholarships are basically increasing by the same amount (85 to 105) as Swimming loses. 20 extra spots per team for someone to choose between barely getting by academically at an Ivy playing football or getting a full ride + NIL $ at a P4? Does that sound to you like a proposition many potential Ivy football recruits might now need to consider? The full scholarship roster sizes of P4 Football just got 25% larger.
Sports Illustrated disagrees with you:
The great news is, those Olympians are now more likely to get a full scholarship + lucrative NIL $ at a P4 over an Ivy.
And I’m not saying the 2024 Olympians are necessarily going anywhere (although they might) - but the 2026, 2028 & 2030 and beyond future Olympians who are entering college in the coming years certainly have a much greater incentive to go P4 over Ivy.
One might argue that a low income athlete would benefit greatly from the Ivy League, whose financial aid is among the most generous in the nation. A free Ivy League education sound pretty enticing to me. Definitely better than a 5k-20k NIL deal from a P4 school.
Men’s rowing and M/W squash are not NCAA sports, so we need to pick some other sports to go forward with whatever the intended examples/points are. Men’s rowing, especially in D1 non-ivy schools, is one of the most at-risk sports post-House vs NCAA settlement.
The gist of that article is that someone like Torri Huske may be able to leverage a great Olympics into a lot more social media attention, which in turn she can monetize through social media based NIL deals.
It’s not so enticing for P4 football/M basketball/baseball prospects with reasonable chances of turning pro, who often don’t have anything close to Ivy level stats. Remember…P4 Football and basketball are currently full rides because they are headcount sports (moving to equivalency sports post-House vs NCAA.)
Outside of those examples (assuming Ivy level stats even for a recruited athlete), I don’t disagree. IME most low income potential D1 athletes do NOT have Ivy level stats (even considering the give on stats for recruits in Ivy land.)
An interesting argument for staying out of D3 and evolving by legal and market forces:
What if Ivy becomes open to collective NIL?
What if Ivy offers athletic scholarship?
Keeping the same academic integrity as they have, the teams would still be limited to certain recruits, but I believe the Ivy becomes extremely attractive.
I don’t know about NIL $, but I do know that if Cal or Stanford want to dominate rowing they can now offer every single one of their max 68 roster a full scholarship, if they choose to. Whether they will or not is debatable: maybe they eliminate some teams and fully fund the remaining ones, maybe they keep same number of scholarships and just divide them among the 68 - but the point is, they have the option, and in the best case scenario could give out 68 full scholarships so that everyone on the roster gets a full ride. How is it not obvious that Ivy League teams, including Rowing, are disadvantaged by the proposed NCAA settlement on the margin?
Squash is not an NCAA sport, so your example is a bit off
In other NCAA sports, the schools are paying the athletes directly from their NIL collectives, that is the difference. Those athletes can also get extra NIL $ from outside deals if they want, just like the Ivy Olympians in your example.
Just to be clear, I have personally only been discussing the NIL issue. I don’t feel confident predicting what will happen with scholarships.
Right, so how much money is actually at stake in most sports for most athletes specifically from college team collectives, versus individual deals and possibly Olympic team deals and so on?
And if that was really a pressing issue, could not Ivies relax that specific policy versus going D3?
I think that is a little off because the Ivy League also offers incredibly generous need-based aid that is often not available at non-Ivy D1s. Again this is not a new tradeoff, but likely the distribution of who gets what sorts of athletic scholarships is going to change. But whether that overall helps or hurts or a mix of both when it comes to Ivy recruitment specifically is something I find too complicated to predict so far.
But again holding aside how the scholarship issue plays out, focusing on the NIL–I think we are then agreeing the practical impact of the Ivy NIL collective policy depends on whether a lot of athletes in a lot of sports are getting a lot of money specifically from school NIL collectives as opposed to individual NIL deals.
As I understand the data being published, it appears the answer is no, most of those tea, collective deals for most athletes in most sports end up being for very modest amounts of money.
But I am open to contrary evidence. But an anecdote about a star basketball player or Olympic gold medalist getting big individual deals is of course not evidence about what was available to them in terms of a team collective deal.
We don’t know exact amounts for sports - it’s not officially reported. Ohio State’s AD announced that Ohio State is paying ~$20mm annually to the football team from the school NIL Collective.
Speaking with others who are receiving $ from school NIL Collectives, it’s not a trivial amount, *even for non-revenue sports". And P4 schools are mentioning it in their recruiting pitch during official visits (again, non-revenue sport).
The Ivy League may eventually participate in NIL Collectives - I think it is the only way they can stay in D1.
I thought you said we weren’t talking about revenue sports. Still, even in football there are few students “barely getting by academically” which is one of the challenges Ivy has in terms of being competitive in revenue sports.
Regardless, why would D3 would be better for Ivy athletics as a whole?