ABILENE, Texas (KTAB/KRBC) – In a Sunday conversation on Big Country Politics this week, CEO of myNILpay Brent Chapman discussed the concept of compensating student-athletes for their name, image and likeness (NIL). Chapman also expressed concerns about NCAA President Charlie Baker's recent proposal to create a new level of Division I sports and highlighted the evolving NIL monetization structure.
Chapman, a former chief information officer, was chief technology officer at three financial services companies. He revealed that the idea of creating a platform through which student athletes could get paid came to him while he was going to a national football camp with his son.
“I have a 12-year-old son, and we're at a national soccer camp. We were talking to some of the coaches, who are college students, helping other kids, and we were talking to them about their experiences where there's nothing there. And my son and I walked away from that conversation that way “This is not how it should be, right? There has to be a better way to do this. And I took that and really thought about how do you democratize the NIL? How do you get everyone involved? How do you make it a level playing field for all student-athletes?” Whether I was D1 or D3 or the rowing or soccer team,” Chapman said.
NIL stands for Name, Image and Likeness, which refers to how college athletes are compensated. Chapman stated that it has been a long journey to get to this point.
“When you hear numbers, like a $2 billion TV deal for some football games, you say, ‘Oh, maybe the guy should get more than that, just a jersey and some room and board.’ Right? Maybe it makes sense for the players to be compensated.” “And so they did. It took a really long time. “It took a lawsuit to get to the point where they said, 'OK, we're going to give these athletes a chance to make some money,'” Chapman said.
NCAA President Charlie Baker sent a letter to more than 350 Division I schools on Dec. 5, proposing the creation of a new level of Division I sports that would require schools to offer at least half of their athletes a payment of at least $30,000 annually through a trust fund. However, Chapman expressed some concerns about implementing this proposal.
“The way he is [Charlie Baker] That was explained in this letter, there's not a lot of detail beyond that, and he's since backed off his position a little bit, saying it's just an idea or trying to motivate Congress to do something, right. But if you look at what he said, they'll take the already segmented D1, D2, and D3, okay, and say, now we're going to do a special D1 where you can pay the athletes, right? With limits like that, not all schools will be able to participate, right? “Once again, it will be the big schools and big-name athletes that will be participating,” Chapman said. “The other thing that's taken away is that it's a $1 game with female athletes in sports as well. So, if you choose to pay your quarterback $2 million, you're also going to have to somehow get $2 million for women's sports. Right? So? , I don't see how that works. Right? I don't see how they make money for that or how they make that equal. They've really struggled with that so far. If you look at the stats so far, 92% of collegiate dollars and IO money goes to male athletes. Now you're all of a sudden telling me they're going to do a 50/50 match. I think it's going to be hard for them to do that, and they need to come up with a better system that makes it fair and equal for all the student-athletes.
In July 2021, the Supreme Court allowed student athletes to be compensated for their name, image and likeness. However, not every player has been able to monetize their name.
“About two years ago, on July 21, they deregulated or made it legal for student-athletes to earn money. So the idea was to think about, on a professional level, how do these people make money outside of their contracts. They're doing shoe deals and advertising. television and posting on social media. So the idea was that sponsorship money would now be available to student-athletes, but what would student-athletes or companies want to invest in, right? Well, top players in revenue sports. And so it became a very small percentage of Athletes who had the opportunity to monetize their name and their image and their likeness.So what eventually happened is it evolved into you had groups and other groups getting money for students to raise money and getting money for student athletes to help create other ways for them so they could make money while Playing into it Chapman explained.
Although the concept is relatively new, it has become more structured over time, Chapman explained.
“Right now, the NCAA wasn't getting too involved in, well, figure it out. So when I say go figure it out, I mean the schools figure it out, the agents, the boosters, the donors and Congress. And so it's been very open.” Now it's starting to get more regulated, so Congress is starting to discuss it. The NCAA has talked about this proposal, right? But in reality, I still think that the way the system is set up as it already is, it's more favorable to top athletes and underachieving sports. income. That's why I created myNILpay, to try to create an opportunity for all student-athletes to participate in IO.
He stated that myNILpay is similar to Venmo and complies with NCAA NIL rules through digital art.
“What we've done is we've created this platform that has 500,000 student-athletes pre-loaded so it's D1 to D3, for every sport, every athlete. You find your favorite athlete, whatever school you're supporting, and you say, 'Hey, I want to send them,' so you choose For example, a freshman volleyball player at Elbow Christian University, right? You want to support Peyton Hall, you want to send her $50 or $20, whatever; you see her making a great play. So, when you say this is $20, he sends It's an email to her .edu that says, 'Bren sent you $20, or a fan sent you $50.' They go in, they sign up, they put it in their checking account, and that's it. They accept money,” Chapman said. “It's like the Venmo of NIL It's that simple. So what makes this legal is that the NCAA requires an activation or barter event? Well, the fan gets back a piece of digital art with, in this case, Payton's digital signature on it. This makes this transaction compliant and legal for the university and the NCAA.
Chapman suggested that a program like this could have been very helpful in the case of Johnny Manziel, who was suspended from college for violating the rules of his eligibility agreement.
“They could have just paid them. They could have just gone in, picked Johnny Manziel, put up $10,000, and not had to do all the weird stuff that got him into a lot of trouble. Right. And I think that's where we're headed. Now. I think my salary benefits in the NFL are not like the Johnny Manziel, I think it benefits the Payton Halls of the world, right? Volleyball players, football players, Olympic athletes, because now they're not dependent on a brand that wants to put them in a commercial or Tweet about them. They can now go out and strive and get their own brand and get their own sponsor, get their own donors, get their own fans, go on social media, build their social networks, get people to support them in that way. It puts the power of NIL in their hands and gives Everyone has a fair chance to monetize their NIL.
When creating myNILpayHe aimed to distribute the cake equally among all athletes, not just the big names.
“The goal is… well, there's an opportunity here, right? In a market where you have a new concept. So the easy thing you can do is say, let's take care of the big name, or the quarterback, or whatever, right? And it's What's harder is to say, how do we get everyone involved? And right now, the pie is not evenly distributed. And so I think it's like myNILpay and other products that will follow. And this will certainly give all the student athletes, men and women, the big schools, the small schools, the Olympic sports , and big sports, it doesn't matter, the opportunity to monetize them does not exist.
