This story was updated on July 23 to clarify the description of a NIL collective.
Name, Image and Likeness was just a buzz term for University of Tennessee at Chattanooga athletics. Something that everyone around the university knew was happening, but presumed was more relevant to the Power Five universities as opposed to schools of UTC's caliber — Division I but not of the upper echelon. Mid-major in basketball and Football Championship Subdivision (formerly Division I-AA).
And then, this offseason, things got real for Mocs' coaches.
NIL has trickled its way down to UTC's level, and coaches have been feeling the affects on the recruiting trail, with prospects finding other homes because the school's offer may not match up to what they could get elsewhere. Losing a prospect isn't anything new, but it does raise eyebrows and concerns once the programs started losing them to schools not necessarily known for their athletic success (or at least to the level UTC has historically achieved). Now a lot — not all, but a lot — of kids in the transfer portal want to know, if they choose a school, how monetarily beneficial it can be for them.
At the higher levels, some kids are joining basketball programs as a walk-on and allowing the money they make in NIL to pay their way through school. While that's not the case at UTC's level, it shows where the market is and how important it has become for schools to have, as opposed to not have.
There had been the announcement this spring of a new collective called "The Flock," created by Sam Kilgore in partnership with her husband, Zach Huston of Mocs Sports Properties. The collective is described as "ways for donors to pool together money in order to pay college athletes for their Name, Image and Likeness," and for a lot of people, that's where the issues begin because not everybody is on board with the thought of paying college athletes.
It is also noteworthy that the university is going through a major renovation project to its athletic facility, with ground breaking on the long-awaited Wolford Athletics Complex in March of 2022. Some of the school's primary donors have been pushing their investments into the Mocs Club, with some of the money going towards the building of that facility.
For some programs that money goes to financing things like summer school for the athletes, which also allows the kids to workout, get ready for the upcoming season and — in the case of the incoming freshmen — a chance to start getting acclimated to college.
The challenge now is getting more from those donors that can go straight to the athletes, or risk watching them sign elsewhere. The Flock offers multiple financing options, starting at $10 a month to $200, which gets the donor a "thank you" from a Flock Athlete member; a decal; raffle entry for autographed memorabilia; access to student-athlete meet-and-greets; a custom student-athlete video shoutout autographed poster; a customized gift selection as well as an invitation to an exclusive pregame event during the season.
Fans can also make a one-time contribution.
UTC athletic director Mark Wharton, along with head coaches Rusty Wright (football), Dan Earl (men's basketball) and Shawn Poppie (women's basketball) recently had a private meeting with donors to explain the importance of The Flock and NIL in general.
"It's a huge challenge," Wharton said after the meeting. "It's just trying to put my name out there that I support the collective and that is a need, but also our number one priority is we've got a long way to go to continue to build the Mocs Club and our budgets and facilities and on and on and on.
"But I just feel like if I don't come out and say I support the collective — and it's a necessary deal to be able to maintain competitiveness — what I don't want is a year and a half from now, Dan Earl has a losing season, Poppie has a losing season and Rusty has a losing season and people are saying, 'Well, three years ago you were great. That was a charade.'
"But this is what we need to compete on that same level. In basketball, two-thirds of the conference is doing that, and we've got to find a way in, so that's where my role and job is, to educate and then support people giving."
The school and the collective have surmised that a school of UTC's size has an average operating budget for its collective of somewhere between $100,000 and $250,000 annually.
Kilgore said the target number is $325,000, which would "allow the school to provide an amount for every student-athlete and tier the money based on influence." It would give the collective an opportunity to allocate money to athletes based on their profile, with higher-profile players likely making more money.
That's not always the case, however. One of the top earners at UTC last year was a women's soccer player, according to Kilgore. The season before, a female track athlete was one of the top earners at the school.
"NIL is changing daily and people are waiting to see how it settles out," Kilgore said. "But it matters right now, so if you're not fully committed to driving marketing value or brand value for a student-athlete but you want your teams to be successful, you are not going to be able to recruit and maintain athletes without providing them revenue opportunities.
"So, if we wait until it settles out to be primarily dictated by the federal government or Tennessee changing its state law to where it can grow into foundational status like Texas or Oklahoma, we are going to be so far behind that catching up is almost going to be impossible until its capped. I don't see that cap coming immediately, which means you get one, two, sometimes three recruiting classes behind.
"That's hard to make up for if you want to stay competitive."
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com.