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Michigan in the revenue

Last week, a federal judge made a landmark decision that transformed the world of college athletics. Schools were granted the authority to compensate athletes directly. The court decision also regulated rules concerning name, image and likeness (NIL) payments, a ruling that came as Michigan’s NIL collective, Champions Circle, continues to thrive. Before the ruling, many […]

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Michigan in the revenue

Last week, a federal judge made a landmark decision that transformed the world of college athletics. Schools were granted the authority to compensate athletes directly.

The court decision also regulated rules concerning name, image and likeness (NIL) payments, a ruling that came as Michigan’s NIL collective, Champions Circle, continues to thrive.

Before the ruling, many payments mirrored a “pay-for-play” model, where boosters and non-profit collectives would pay athletes significant amounts of money for minor services with the intention of bringing them to a certain school. Now, all NIL deals must pass through a clearinghouse to ensure athletes are receiving compensation for no more than their “fair market value.” Deals that don’t meet this criteria will be denied by the NCAA.

Like collectives around the country, Champions Circle is looking to adapt to the new NIL world. The Michigan Daily’s Jordan Klein sat down with Champions Circle co-founder Jared Wangler to discuss the collective’s strategy in the revenue-sharing era.

Responses have been edited for clarity.

Jordan Klein (JK): Players now have to be compensated for their “fair market value,” as approved by a Deloitte clearinghouse. How does that change the deals and other things Champions Circle does to get athletes to the University of Michigan?

Jared Wangler (JW): It’s a great question. I think everything you’re looking for is tailored around athlete compensation in this new revenue-sharing world, with increased oversight from the clearinghouse, and a little bit more regulation around athlete compensation outside of what the university can offer. With the new House settlement, universities are now permitted to share up to $20.5 million worth of benefits in Year 1 one. That will increase by 4% year over year, all the way to Year 3. Then, it will reset based on the equation that they came to, which is 22% of the average annualized revenues of the Power Four schools. That’s what the schools are now permitted to share.

What’s difficult is that the market for athlete compensation currently outweighs what the universities are able to bear. If you look across college football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, softball, wrestling … If you want to be competitive at a national-title level or a conference-title level, you need to have adequate funding for what the talent costs.

I could walk you back four years when schools couldn’t provide anything, and the only money that could be provided was from brands and collectives. Most of the major markets created these collectives as a way to aggregate capital to pay the student athletes. The cap at that point was zero dollars, and there wasn’t regulation around how much money you could pay the student athlete, and what the exchange of services for. It was very laissez-faire. Now, the cap is $20.5 million, and any dollars above the cap that are being used for talent acquisition and talent retention. Those are going to be more regulated by the Deloitte clearinghouse, as you reference. 

The Deloitte clearinghouse will be reviewing any deals that come from associated entities at the universities. Associated entities can mean a lot of things, but primarily they’re going to start with collectives and the multimedia rights holders. The multimedia rights holders, those are the Learfields of the world, the Playflys of the world. Think of it as the corporate sponsorship arm of these athletic departments. 

In this current state, I’m bringing it back to where talent costs have gotten. You might have seen Texas Tech pay over $55 million worth of contracts to its student athletes. That’s football, that’s men’s basketball, it’s women’s basketball, baseball, softball … that’s their pool. That’s $20.5 million of revenue share from the university, and about $35 million coming from affiliated entities. It might be their collective, it might be Learfield, Playfly, whatever their MMR holder is, or a combination of the two. In this world, where there’s a clearinghouse to decide whether the deals are fair market value or not, it is the job of these collectives and associated entities, to have enough deal flow for the athletes that will pass through the ‘sniff test.’ That can be used in conjunction with the revenue sharing to come to a total compensation package that is agreeable to.

It’s probably not a secret like right now that most college football budgets, if you’re trying to compete at the top level, are between $20 and $30 to $35 million. That’s just football. And then basketball. Men’s basketball is anywhere between $10 million, and in some markets, up to $20 million. When you’re adding all these budgets together across multiple sports, you need more than just $20.5 million if you’re at a place like Michigan, Ohio State, Auburn, Alabama, Southern California, Texas. 

That’s where you’re seeing these collectives and multimedia rights holders work together to get as much capital as they can, to then use and underwrite contracts for the athletes that will be above the cap. They have to be done in a way that can pass the clearinghouse standards for fair market value. 

In practice, let’s say it’s a women’s basketball player, starting point guard, making $1 million. Let’s say $500,000 of it was going to come from revenue sharing, and $500,000 of it was going to come from the collective. The payment can’t just be a lump sum payment of $500,000 — show up to an event and then be on your merry way. There has to be actual work done and actual services rendered for the $500,000. That might be spread out over 12 months. It might look like 20 different commercial activations. They might do signing events, they might have merchandising promotions, they might work with brands that are affiliated with the collective or the multimedia rights holder, there might be media appearances. 

There’s a whole host of services that groups like us have the athletes do to justify their NIL payments. That becomes even more critical if you want to be one of the schools ‘above the cap’ space, because that’s really the new name of the game. How much capital can you put together, and how many deals can you get to the student athletes that can make their way through the clearinghouse and be used in a way that helps underwrite competitive teams? That’s where a lot of this is moving.

JK: Deloitte estimated that roughly 70% of deals would not have passed through their clearinghouse standards. Where would that number sit for Champions Circle deals? How is the Champions Circle changing its approach so 100% of your deals meet the clearinghouse standards but also keep athletes at the compensation levels they were looking to get before these new rules?

JW: It’s hard to know for sure how much of our total deal volume would have gotten through the clearinghouse. I’d say with high confidence that we would bat at a significantly better percentage than only 30% of our deals getting through. That’s because our business was set up as a sports marketing agency before we built the collective. Valiant Management Group, which is the holding company to Champions Circle, was built as a group licensing agency, a talent rep agency and a merchandising company. It all spun up in 2021 around real commercial activity. It wasn’t until 2022 that we set up Champions Circle as a fund that dollars would come in, and then we would use that to help underwrite payments for the student athletes. All of our agreements with our athletes read as real commercial services agreements. 

For the amount of money we’re paying the student athletes, are we getting that much in return for the work that they’re doing? If you took a peek behind the curtain of our event calendar, our brand activations and our merchandising, we’ve generated significant revenue of commercial dollars based on the services of the athletes. We’ve had over $7 million worth of NIL merchandise sold over the last four years. Over $3 million generated around fan events. So think golf outings, think signing events, think private meet and greets. We’ve brought in over $4 million worth of brand deals. When you look at these different parts of our business, we’re one of the few collectives, marketing agencies, that you could point to to be like, ‘Oh, they were actually using the athletes’ NIL to generate real commercial revenue.’ 

(Other groups) tried to capture as much money as possible and get it out the door before there’d be more regulation. Those groups are now either folding or trying to restructure as a marketing agency.

That’s really where most of this moves — putting more infrastructure and bones behind the athlete marketing agency component of what you do. There is real commercial value that the athletes’ marketing services bring, if done correctly. Not everyone is Bryce Underwood and can demand a large sum of money for an appearance or a post around the brand, but the athletes collectively can drive revenue, if done in a way that is capturing everybody’s rights together to promote a good or a service. 

An example would be the starting point guard for the women’s basketball team.  On her own, she couldn’t demand a $1 million budget for a brand activation. But that starting point guard in conjunction with seven of her teammates, and then becoming a Michigan women’s basketball partnership, the sum of the parts are greater than than the whole. It’s more of a collective mentality around utilizing all of their NIL together to promote a good or service, using all of their social media handles to distribute that content, using their voice to elevate whatever product or service we’re working with. It’s a different type of marketing. It’s more viewed around the property itself and aggregating all the talent together. 

The really strong groups are going to separate themselves if they understand how to do this specific type of marketing. That is where you will be able to make a justifiable case to move significant sums of money through a clearinghouse, because you are a legitimate exchange of services.

JK: It seems like in the last year or so, Michigan’s NIL really took off. With the new regulation, is Michigan more uniquely positioned to succeed in the NIL space?

JW: I believe that Michigan’s always been primed to succeed in a world where it can level the playing field and start compensating its athletes. I long felt like we were fighting with one arm tied behind our back, because that’s an area where we were never active compared to some of the teams we were competing against. I do feel like we have had a leg up for quite some time. 

The bad rap we got early on wasn’t because we were not doing NIL, we just weren’t using it in recruiting the way most other schools were. Almost all of our NIL money was predominantly used for the current student athletes, and not used in recruiting for prospective student athletes. That’s changed as rules and regulations have adjusted over time. Now, we do communicate NIL opportunities, and we do have those compensation conversations on the front end in recruiting, whereas we wouldn’t before. But the resources have been there. There’s been greater alignment with the athletic department over the last two years that’s really elevated the fundraising efforts. 

Michigan has always been a place that demands brand attraction, and fan and donor engagement. We’ve had a competitive advantage over the last four years now that we can pay student athletes, and I believe that will only continue to grow that competitive advantage over time, because we are at a place like Michigan. It has the largest living alumni base. We have more brands that want to partner with the ‘block M’ and partner with the athletes in conjunction with the ‘block M’ more than any other school in the country. We sit in a robust business market in metro Detroit, but have national ties into different markets because we have alumni in New York and alumni in California. 

We’re able to make a compelling pitch to brands when they want to do real NIL activations with our student athletes. Our friends down the street, in Michigan State and Columbus, don’t quite have that same competitive advantage because they’re so much more of a regional, localized brand than Michigan, which is more national. I do think that Michigan only stands to benefit from that. 

You can’t discount the educational piece of it, and the relationship value of it. When the sum of money for these student athletes has gotten so significant, then you really have to start peeling back. What the advantage is now, if you have money, then how can you multiply that? Some of the best multipliers of compensation are relationships and education. How are you going to take those earnings in that window while you’re in college, and multiply that year over year. That’s our goal with what we’re trying to do, and I know that’s the goal with Michigan athletics — create great infrastructure, develop relationships. 

As they’re earning that money, it’s not about how much you make. It’s about how much you can keep and how you can multiply that over time. There’s no better market in college sports than Michigan for that. You might be able to look at Stanford or Notre Dame. I’d say those are up to par, but Michigan is just so much bigger, and the engagement is so much more significant than those two other schools. I really do believe we check all the boxes, if you’re a prospective student athlete. … There’s a whole host of reasons, and we’re at the level now where we can compete from a compensation standpoint. It’s not like it was five years ago, six years ago and all the years before that, where some schools might have something under the table, and we had nothing. Now there’s an equalizer there. Michigan is very well positioned for the future of college athletics.

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Coaches wait for key decision to learn whether they can keep NIL promises

LAS VEGAS — Next week, college football coaches can put the recruiting promises they have made to high school seniors on paper. Then the question becomes whether they can keep them. Uncertainty about a key element of the $2.8-billion NCAA antitrust settlement that is reshaping college sports has placed recruiters on a tightrope. They need […]

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LAS VEGAS — Next week, college football coaches can put the recruiting promises they have made to high school seniors on paper.

Then the question becomes whether they can keep them.

Uncertainty about a key element of the $2.8-billion NCAA antitrust settlement that is reshaping college sports has placed recruiters on a tightrope.

They need clarity about whether the third-party collectives that were closely affiliated with their schools and ruled name, image, likeness payments during the first four years of the NIL era can be used to exceed the $20.5-million annual cap on what each school can now pay players directly. Or, whether those collectives will simply become a cog in the new system.

Only until that issue is resolved will many coaches know if the offers they’ve made, and that can become official Aug. 1, will conform to the new rules governing college sports.

“You don’t want to put agreements on the table about things that we might have to claw back,” Ohio State coach Ryan Day explained at this week’s Big Ten media days. “Because that’s not a great look.”

No coach, of course, is going to fess up to making an offer he can’t back up.

“All we can do is be open and honest about what we do know, and be great communicators from that standpoint,” Oregon’s Dan Lanning said.

Aug. 1 is key because it marks the day football programs can start sending written offers for scholarships to high school prospects starting their senior year.

This process essentially replaces what used to be the signing of a national letter of intent. It symbolizes the changes taking hold in a new era in which players aren’t just signing for a scholarship, but for a paycheck, too.

Paying them is not a straightforward business. Among the gray areas comes from guidance issued earlier this month by the newly formed College Sports Commission in charge of enforcing rules involved with paying players, both through the $20.5-million revenue share with schools and through third-party collectives.

The CSC is in charge of clearing all third-party deals worth $600 or more.

It created uncertainty earlier this month when it announced, in essence, the collectives did not have a “valid business purpose” if their only reason to exist was ultimately to pay players. Lawyers for the players barked back and said that is what a collective was always met to be, and if it sells a product for a profit, it qualifies as legit.

The parties are working on a compromise, but if they don’t reach one they will take this in front of a judge to decide.

With Aug. 1 coming up fast, coaches are eager to lock in commitments they’ve spent months, sometimes years, locking down from high school recruits.

“Recruiting never shuts off, so we do need clarity as soon as we can,” Buckeyes athletic director Ross Bjork said. “The sooner we can have clarity, the better. I think the term ‘collective’ has obviously taken on a life of its own. But it’s really not what it’s called, it’s what they do.”

In anticipating the future, some schools have disbanded their collectives while others, such as Ohio State, have brought them in-house. It is all a bit of a gamble. If the agreement that comes out of these negotiations doesn’t restrict collectives, they could be viewed as an easy way to get around the salary cap. Either way, schools eyeing ways for players to earn money outside the cap amid reports big programs have football rosters worth more than $30 million in terms of overall player payments.

“It’s a lot to catch up, and there’s a lot for coaches and administrators to deal with,” Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti said, noting the terms only went into play on July 1. “But I don’t think it’s unusual when you have something this different that there’s going to be some bumps in the road to get to the right place. I think everybody is committed to get there.”

Indiana coach Curt Cignetti, whose program tapped into the transfer portal and NIL to make the most remarkable turnaround in college football last season, acknowledged “the landscape is still changing, changing as we speak today.”

“You’ve got to be light on your feet and nimble,” he said. “At some point, hopefully down the road, this thing will settle down and we’ll have clear rules and regulations on how we operate.”

At stake at Oregon is what is widely regarded as a top-10 recruiting class for a team that finished first in the Big Ten and made the College Football Playoff last year along with three other teams from the league.

“It’s an interpretation that has to be figured out, and anytime there’s a new rule, it’s how does that rule adjust, how does it adapt, how does it change what we have to do here,” Lanning said. “But one thing we’ve been able to do here is — what we say we’ll do, we do.”



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IU was ‘the job’ for Brad Brownell, but Clemson became home

“There’s been tremendous highs. There have been difficult lows,” Brownell said, “but through all of it, there have been unbelievable life experiences and relationships with people that have meant a lot to me and still do. And I’d still like to keep going here.” Brownell is clear-eyed about the challenges of continuing on. Where a […]

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“There’s been tremendous highs. There have been difficult lows,” Brownell said, “but through all of it, there have been unbelievable life experiences and relationships with people that have meant a lot to me and still do. And I’d still like to keep going here.”

Brownell is clear-eyed about the challenges of continuing on.

Where a program like IU pays its basketball players handsomely, Clemson will earmark revenue-sharing dollars for athletes according to the money each sport brings in.

Football, which is responsible for 80-plus percent of the Tigers’ revenues, will have a sizable rev-share cap compared to its peers. Clemson basketball will inevitably have less than its competitors, including mid-majors that don’t have football programs to share with.

But also some more hoop-centric ACC schools.

“We’re all just trying to figure it out over the next couple years,” Brownell said, “and there’s gonna be some sacrifices that we’re all gonna have to make.”







brad brownell schieffelin

Brad Brownell recently saw one of his former players, Ian Schieffelin, join the football team. He’ll get paid to play a fifth season for Dabo Swinney.




Brownell figuring out how to manage revenue-sharing gap

While every coach wants as much support as possible, Brownell won’t complain about.

He gets why football is receiving an estimated $15 million of the $18 million available in direct revenue-sharing with athletes, which leaves about $2 million for basketball.

“I mean, there’s 58,000 football season ticket holders,” Brownell said, calling Clemson football a top 5 program nationally. “That’s a big part of the culture of this place, as it should be. Because of the success of the football program, a lot of us in other sports have benefited greatly.”

Clemson has to stay ahead in football.

Brownell, who has brought the Tigers to the NCAA tournament in back-to-back years, including an Elite Eight run in 2024, has to do the best he can with what he has.





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Has Anyone Ever Been This Optimistic About Duke Football?

College basketball and football are in a strange place right now with the massive changes being swept in by NIL, the transfer portal and now the House Settlement. It’s going to take a while for things to settle down but Duke football coach Manny Diaz is optimistic that things will work out just fine for […]

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College basketball and football are in a strange place right now with the massive changes being swept in by NIL, the transfer portal and now the House Settlement.

It’s going to take a while for things to settle down but Duke football coach Manny Diaz is optimistic that things will work out just fine for his program

On the Jim Rome show, Diaz said this:

“It benefits us. The new landscape, it helps Duke. Wherever the world was 20 years ago, it’s not the same now, everybody can agree on that. We know there’s the portal, hopefully it goes to one portal, but the portal is here to stay. And this is a school that’s going to remain transformational. What this education can do… they still understand that.

“I think we were one of the fewest portal exits teams in the country in terms of guys outgoing. And that’s because our players are here for more than just football.”

He also believes that Duke’s academic culture tends to limit transfers:

“This school with our requirements, it does that by proxy. It just happens whether you like it or not. So you get a lot of people that were really raised the same way, guess what happens when you put them in a locker room? They really enjoy playing with and for one another. So when that portal opens, they don’t want to leave their best friends.

“I’d like to take credit for it, it ain’t me. They want to play for the guys down there, and that’s because they’re about the same stuff.”

There are a lot of theories and possibilities that we have considered when it comes to this Strange New World of college sports, but it never occurred to us that Duke could be at an advantage. That’s really kind of amazing.



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Arch Manning is highest paid NIL player in college football

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas Longhorns’ quarterback Arch Manning is the highest-paid NIL player in college football, according to On3.com. Manning, who will become the starting quarterback later this year, has a total NIL valuation of $6.8 million, over $2 million more than Carson Beck, the University of Miami quarterback, who sits in second place. NIL, or […]

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Arch Manning is highest paid NIL player in college football

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas Longhorns’ quarterback Arch Manning is the highest-paid NIL player in college football, according to On3.com.

Manning, who will become the starting quarterback later this year, has a total NIL valuation of $6.8 million, over $2 million more than Carson Beck, the University of Miami quarterback, who sits in second place.

NIL, or “Name, Image and Likeness,” allows student athletes to be paid for their personal brand through endorsements and other opportunities. Manning has notably endorsed Raising Cane’s, Uber, Vuori and Panini America, to name a few.

Manning, who can trace his football lineage to quarterback royalty through his uncles, NFL legends Peyton and Eli Manning, and his grandfather, Archie Manning, was also at the top of this list last year. But his new position as the starting QB, after last year’s starter Quinn Ewers left for the draft, has earned him an additional $3.7 million in NIL money.

The Longhorns open their season Aug. 30 against Ohio State. 

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NIL

Arch Manning is highest paid NIL player in college football

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas Longhorns’ quarterback Arch Manning is the highest-paid NIL player in college football, according to On3.com. Manning, who will become the starting quarterback later this year, has a total NIL valuation of $6.8 million, over $2 million more than Carson Beck, the University of Miami quarterback, who sits in second place. NIL, or […]

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AUSTIN, Texas — Texas Longhorns’ quarterback Arch Manning is the highest-paid NIL player in college football, according to On3.com.

Manning, who will become the starting quarterback later this year, has a total NIL valuation of $6.8 million, over $2 million more than Carson Beck, the University of Miami quarterback, who sits in second place.

NIL, or “Name, Image and Likeness,” allows student athletes to be paid for their personal brand through endorsements and other opportunities. Manning has notably endorsed Raising Cane’s, Uber, Vuori and Panini America, to name a few.

Manning, who can trace his football lineage to quarterback royalty through his uncles, NFL legends Peyton and Eli Manning, and his grandfather, Archie Manning, was also at the top of this list last year. But his new position as the starting QB, after last year’s starter Quinn Ewers left for the draft, has earned him an additional $3.7 million in NIL money.

The Longhorns open their season Aug. 30 against Ohio State. 



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Roy Williams ranks ahead of Mike Krzyzewski on Top 25 Coaches of the 2000s list

Now that we’re a quarter of a way through the century, there have been plenty of rankings to signify the best players, coaches and even moments that have occurred over the past 25 years. The Athletic has compiled a top 25 ranking that is sure to spark some controversy, listing the top 25 college coaches […]

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Now that we’re a quarter of a way through the century, there have been plenty of rankings to signify the best players, coaches and even moments that have occurred over the past 25 years.

The Athletic has compiled a top 25 ranking that is sure to spark some controversy, listing the top 25 college coaches of the 2000s.

Fans of the UNC basketball program will love to see where former head coach Roy Williams ranks, especially given who he is ranked ahead of!

Williams earned the No. 2 spot on the list, an impressive spot for the Hall of Fame coach. Don’t worry- the guy from Duke, Mike Krzyzewski, isn’t the lone coach ahead of him on the list.

Krzyzewski actually ranks No. 3 on the list, while Bill Self claimed the top spot.

While Duke fans will cry about their former leader not being ranked ahead of Williams, The Athletic had a clear-cut explanation for why the coach wearing Carolina Blue got the edge.

Roy Williams

Teams: Kansas (2000-03), North Carolina (2003-21)
National titles:
 3
Final Fours: 7
Conference regular-season championships: 11
Conference tournament titles: 3
NCAA Tournament appearances: 19
Wins: 574 (27.3 per season)

Williams built a juggernaut at Kansas, and while he was a beast in the regular season in the 1990s at KU, he was finally starting to be equally as dominant in March in the early 2000s. Williams made back-to-back Final Fours in his final two seasons in Lawrence, then took a core that missed the NCAA Tournament in 2003 and won the national title in his second season at North Carolina. Williams is tied for the most titles this century and is a Kris Jenkins buzzer-beater away from four. Williams had a great eye for recruiting to his system and there were few things in basketball more aesthetically pleasing than the Carolina break. He just edges Coach K because he reached two more Final Fours and more than doubled him on conference titles this century.

Basically, Williams’ two more Final Four appearances and his conference titles (which he doubled Coach K in) proved to be the difference.

Of course, these types of rankings are always subject to debate. Heck, you could make the case that both Coach K and Williams could have a strong case to be the top spot (even though Self has had quite the career thus far).

However, we’ll take this small victory and run with it, as The Athletic got this particular ranking right (especially the order in which they chose to rank Williams and Krzyzewski.





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