It looks like college-style NIL may come to horse racing

Has NIL arrived in horse racing? Maybe this is week 0 of college football being a distraction, but it sure feels like the selling of name, image and likeness is percolating in our game.

First, White Abarrio was headed to the Pacific Classic next Saturday at Del Mar. Now we see he is staying home for the Jockey Club Gold Cup the following day at Saratoga. One more of those Grade 1 about-faces, and White Abarrio will qualify for the Western Dressage World Championship next month in Oklahoma.

Then we see Mike Repole on X. No surprise there. This time he has invited his followers to choose the race he should enter Fierceness next weekend.

White Abarrio is redirected to Jockey Club Gold Cup.

“I could use some help,” he wrote Thursday. “Would you want to see him in the Gold Cup vs. Mindframe and Sierra Leone or in the Pacific Classic vs. Nysos and Journalism? What do you think?”

Note to self. Call Repole’s team and point out the poll attachment for X posts.

With entries for both races not due until Wednesday, I had this vision that Josh Rubinstein at Del Mar and David O’Rourke at Saratoga were on recruiting missions just like head coaches traipsing their polished shoes across the carpets of teenagers’ families.

“You can have a place right on the beach,” Rubinstein might be heard saying. Not to Repole. To Fierceness. “We’ll give you a double barn stall with extra oats and hay. You can have your own private exercise track on the ocean. We can get Baffert to introduce you to two of his prettiest 2-year-old fillies. In fact, they can escort you during your whole visit. And if Mr. Repole wants a little something-something under the stall door, we’ll make sure it’s waiting for him.”

All the while, a phone conversation might be heard from a darkened office nestled among maple trees in upstate New York.

“Hello, Fierceness? Dave here.” O’Rourke and the neighborhood stars are on a first-name basis, you know. “You’ve been a loyal resident here at Saratoga for so long. How about if we give you a bigger plot of grass outside your barn to feast on whenever you want? We will even throw in some dandelion and get rid of the dichondra. And maybe we can carve out a chunk of time just for you and your workmates to train by yourselves. As a matter of fact, how about if we rename the Oklahoma training track? The Fierceness Oval has a nice ring to it. Oh, if Mike needs us exclusive access to the 1863 Club, it’s all his. Tell him not to be surprised if there is a rich, leather valise waiting for him.”

Lawyers would implore me here to emphasize the preceding quotes were entirely imagined. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

This admittedly is a silly illustration, but there is a bigger point that has repeated itself this summer. Whether it was the Haskell vs. the Jim Dandy or the Arlington Million vs. the Sword Dancer, the competition has become unnecessarily fierce for quality horse flesh to fill added-money races. With a foal crop that continues to shrink and a calendar of tradition-rich stakes with ever-richer purses, the term cutthroat does not seem out of reach.

In truth, racing pioneered this routine long before a 2021 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that unleashed the fury of NIL on college sports.

The Westchester Racing Association dangled a big winner-take-all purse for a Seabiscuit vs. War Admiral match race that did not happen at Belmont Park in the spring of 1938. The $100,000 back then would be more than $2 million now. As it turned out, the $15,000 worked just fine at Pimlico that fall.

Canterbury Park floated the idea of adding $1.8 million to its $200,000 Mystik Lake Derby if American Pharoah would bring his Triple Crown to Minnesota in the summer of 2015. That story was big at dinner time in the Twin Cities. Then owner Ahmed Zayat shot it down before the 10 o’clock news that night.

That same summer, Pharoah did show up for the Haskell after Monmouth Park added $750,000 to the $1 million purse. And after it promised to give the Zayat family the finest of the parterres. And free access to a big room to throw a fully paid party for 100 guests.

With the back of the hand parked next to the whispering mouth, the Haskell has had the irreverent nickname of the Envelope Invitational. That label, which track management routinely discredits, has been out there for years. Whether that is self-sustaining gossip or smoke from a distant fire, it does provide a different meaning for name, image and likeness.

It seems times now are more desperate. Just look at the puny size of Saturday’s field for the Travers. With his Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes bona fides, Sovereignty has been viewed as scaring off the competition. The last time this happened was with Holy Bull, who had only four rivals in the 1994 Travers. Are we really suggesting Sovereignty is the next Holy Bull?

The problem is not just American. The Yorkshire Oaks, a Group 1 race established 176 years ago, had only four fillies racing Thursday in England. The International Stakes, another top-level race at the Ebor Festival, drew only six starters the day before.

Fingers of blame obviously are pointed at the usual suspects. Fewer Thoroughbreds. Fewer starts for each of them. The difficulty in shipping them, especially after Tex Sutton Equine Air Transportation stopped flying its own plane four years ago.

Hands have been wrung over the idea that next month’s Pennsylvania Derby, widely perceived by big-track establishment as a Grade 1 in name only, might lure the most competitive field of 3-year-olds this summer.

Here’s a thought. Maybe that is because Parx does not run its $1 million race the same weekend as any other race that could siphon off its potential field.

All these calendar conflicts might be a job for horse racing’s scheduling czar to solve. Oh, wait.

Ron Flatter’s column appears Friday mornings at Horse Racing Nation. Comments below and at RonFlatterRacingPod@gmail com are welcomed, encouraged and may be used in the feedback segment of the Ron Flatter Racing Pod, which also is posted every Friday.