Last year when Micah Shrewsberry left for Notre Dame, I think a lot of Penn Staters, myself included, were – for a lack of a better term – pissed off with much of that anger being directed toward Penn State’s NIL two collectives.
It was a two-party system at the time that made the current United States government’s two-party system seem functional.
Ever since then – and particularly since the merger of Success With Honor and The Lions Legacy Club into Happy Valley United – things have improved. Could they be better? Yes. Are they great? No. Are they good? Ehh. But more on that later.
What hasn’t gotten better is what we’re missing. It’s the “why” to NIL and I don’t think that’s just a Penn State issue.
In terms of NIL, Penn State seemingly has made strides with its united approach via Happy Valley United but for average fans, it’s hard to find the drive to hand over even more hard-earned dollars to college athletics on top of rising ticket costs, conference expansion and, maybe too, frustration.
There are a lot of problems with NIL. This issue is just one of them. But at least around these parts, it seems that the why is the biggest issue. What is that why? I don’t know. I don’t know if Penn State knows. I don’t know if Happy Valley United knows. And that’s what’s frustrating.
No one can articulate that why quite well enough yet.
For parts of six decades, things were done a certain way around here. I am of course talking about Success With Honor the philosophy and not Success With Honor the NIL collective. And for Penn State’s elder generation, it’s certainly hard to see the why of paying players when they’re already on scholarship.
But this isn’t a small business anymore. College athletics is massive money. Penn State just generated more than $200 million in revenue in 2022-23. Players, for all of the attention they bring to universities as essentially marketing vessels, have long deserved a cut of that.
In other words, why could a business student go out and make a start-up with the support of Penn State but an athlete helping generate part of those millions upon millions for the athletic department, television rights holders and even local tourism entities not see a cent?
It made no sense. The players undoubtedly deserve something.
So now that NIL is here as an omnipresent factor in the college athletics arms race, we have to accept it. But I don’t think Penn State’s collective has done a good enough job of explaining that – even if the “it” is hard to explain. Does the success on the field, court or rink really come from bigger NIL pools? Maybe. Michigan and Washington just went to the national title game on the backs of NIL funds built around preventing players from going pro. But in basketball, UConn’s national title may have been a push for more NIL support rather than what spurred it.
Regardless, where Penn State has missed is with addressing or creating that sense of urgency in messaging – even if they don’t know the why beyond it’s the right thing to do.
Of course, some of that was because Penn State was late to the game getting people on the same page internally when it came to NIL. It took prominent Penn Staters Jay Paterno and Michael Mauti publicly feuding as some sort of wake-up call to get things down to one collective working together.
And Pat Kraft does deserve credit for brokering a deal to get Happy Valley united. But where he as the true leader of the athletic department has missed is not zeroing in this effort on the average fan.
That miss is also where Happy Valley United has missed in my opinion. They haven’t done enough for the average fan. That’s the fan that may have season tickets or may not. The fan that cares passionately about Penn State football, tunes in when hoops is good and knows Penn State has a hockey program. Or even the fan that gets to one game a year in the fall.
They haven’t explained the why well enough to people like us. The problem is, I’m not sure what that why is and I’m not sure they know what that why is either. But they could be doing a better job of at least faking it.
Why should I – as a season ticket holder for example – fork over another hundred bucks on top of my surprise increase “donation” to the Nittany Lion Club? Or why should I donate at all? What benefit do I get from it as a fan?
I’m sure you can think of something, anything? Right?
It is hard to find those answers but it’s even harder to make that money when fans don’t see the point all that well. At the end of the day, while it is separate transactions to separate vendors, is it really? Do I as a fan look at that money differently? No. It’s still going to support Penn State athletics in a way. It’s just going to a different routing number essentially.
In college athletics, the money sits with the big boosters. It also sits with the average fan. It takes 107,000 to fill Beaver Stadium but not all of them have $107,000 in their bank accounts. So how do you get those average fans who come to one or two games a year to shell out a few extra bucks?
Man, I don’t know. But you’re now 929 words into a diatribe so clearly we both want this problem solved.
Problem is, I don’t think they – being the people whose job it is to solve these things – know either.
I think this is the same issue any other fan base is dealing with. Even for the ones that have bought in like Ole Miss, we haven’t seen those results yet. We haven’t seen what the reward truly is and whether or not it’s worth it. And if the average fan can’t see the results in a world of instant satisfaction for most, you’ve got to work overtime to explain that why – or make me believe in the why.
There are some areas where I think Happy Valley United and Penn State could start.
Why not spend money on Facebook ads to get the word out? We all know that’s where Penn Staters really hang out. Where is the sense of urgency like the one Ohio State created? That’s what Ryan Day did. Penn State has not had that moment yet even if it was self-fabricated.
(Whispers: Also why jack up my NLC fee instead of getting creative to drive me to donate NIL? That certainly was a frustrating – and still unexplained – decision.)
But those are at least tangible ideas to create a why – even if there may not be one.
Of course, there is also another way to fix this. We just get the NIL era over and pay the players directly. But Kraft and co. can’t change NCAA rules that fast – nor am I optimistic the collegiate sports governing body is going to go down without a fight on that issue.
All of that is in the future but for now, that’s why Penn State needs to do a better job to fix it. In the present, it’s where Penn State is falling short.
We’re missing the why.
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