When the NCAA adopted alterations to its policies over the summer allowing student-athletes to immediately profit off their name, image and likeness, South Carolina walked in step with college sports’ governing body, adjusting the timeline of its own NIL legislation instead of waiting until July 2022 to put its law into effect.

But unlike Clemson’s football and men’s basketball programs, which have seen notable players such as D.J. Uiagalelei and PJ Hall strike NIL deals both big and small, the impact of that hasn’t been felt by Clemson’s baseball program, head coach Monte Lee said.

At least not yet.

“As we get into the spring and we get through the spring and we get into the summer, I think we’ll begin to see what are the opportunities that are out there for the baseball players,” Lee told The Clemson Insider. “I haven’t seen it hit quite like the things you see when it comes to football and basketball yet for baseball guys.

“I’m all for student-athletes being able to benefit off their brand, and hopefully we’ll see a lot of positive things happen when it comes to NIL for college baseball and every other sport. I think it’s a really interesting time that we all live in.”

It’s certainly a changing one.

On the field, the Tigers will officially start practice Jan. 28 in preparation for what’s trending toward a critical season for Lee and his program. Clemson, which will open the 2022 campaign with a home series against Indiana beginning Feb. 18, is looking to get back on track after posting its first losing season in more than six decades. The Tigers missed out on the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2008.

But Lee is just as concerned about being able to keep up off the field given the shifting landscape of college athletics – and not just when it comes to NIL opportunities.

Scholarship impact

Sure, a business in Louisville enticing a blue-chip baseball recruit with a more lucrative NIL deal than any offer he might get in or around the Clemson area would be problematic for Lee, but there’s another potential issue brewing in regards to the money schools are permitted to give their athletes. Unlike football and basketball, which are allotted 85 and 13 fully funded scholarships in any given year, respectively, NCAA rules limit baseball to just 11.7 scholarships to be divided among a maximum of 27 players on a 35-man roster.

When the coronavirus pandemic initially spiked in the United States early in 2020, the NCAA granted an additional year of eligibility to spring-sport athletes after their seasons were canceled that year. College sports’ governing body also extended a blanket waiver allowing baseball teams to increase the number of scholarship players to 32 on a 40-man roster through the 2022 season.

Some baseball programs use workarounds to get most if not all of their players scholarship money, though. For example, Vanderbilt, coached by former Clemson assistant Tim Corbin, has morphed into a national power in part because of a university initiative that prevents any student accepted to the school from attending because of the cost of tuition. That creates the possibility of some players getting financial aid from the school and not counting toward the baseball program’s 11.7 athletic scholarships.

Vanderbilt is like many private universities that have a similar financial assistance initiative in place. Clemson doesn’t, which means Lee needs the athletic scholarships to stretch as far as possible.

The fact that most if not all players are on a partial scholarship to begin with makes the possibility of NIL earnings even more important in baseball, but being able to give 32 players something in terms of scholarship money for the time being is better than nothing.

But depending on how prevalent the roster crunch becomes for Clemson in the future, that may not be the case for long. Lee said he’s hoping the 32-man scholarship waiver gets extended beyond this season. Otherwise, if Clemson has players who want to use their additional year of eligibility to stick around in the future, the scholarship money likely won’t still be there for some, which could lead to players seeking a scholarship elsewhere.

“If you think the transfer portal is big now, wait until you see what the transfer portal is going to look like this upcoming summer if they don’t give us another relief waiver for next year,” Lee said.

Helping out?

But there is some financial assistance in the works that could also help the Tigers win some future recruiting battles.

In June, the Supreme Court upheld a district court’s ruling that institutions aren’t permitted to prevent payments to student-athletes related to education-related benefits that fall outside of the cost of attendance. As part of the ruling, which stems from the Alston vs. NCAA case, athletes can be given additional financial assistance of up to $5,980 per year as long as they’re academically eligible and still on their team’s active roster.

Ole Miss became the first Division I school to start doling out these payments in the fall. Lee said those payments could begin at Clemson this year. In that regard, he’s glad Clemson is on a level playing field, but it’s not exactly an advantage for the Tigers.

“It’s an added benefit, but it’s a benefit that everybody across the country and Power Five (conferences) is going to be able to get,” Lee said. “What we’re going to have to do I think is we’ve got to find ways at Clemson to create financial packages for baseball players that make us competitive with other school that we’re recruiting against. I think that’s a big challenge just because from an endowment standpoint, a needs-based state standpoint, we just don’t have some of those things that some other schools have.”

Clemson could find a potential advantage in a bordering state that doubles as a recruiting hotbed. Georgia is one of 15 states that participates in the Academic Common Market (ACM), a tuition-savings program that allows students and their families to pay in-state costs at out-of-state schools, though the major the student wants to pursue in college can’t be offered in state in order to receive that tuition relief.

Still, in those scenarios, it could help Clemson pluck a recruit out of Atlanta that it otherwise might not have gotten. Other states in the Tigers’ recruiting footprint, including Florida, Tennessee and Virginia, also participate in the ACM.

“It helps with an isolated case here or there, but across the board, it’s a great resource,” Lee said.

Lee said athletic director Graham Neff and other members of Clemson’s administration are fully aware of the challenges of trying to keep the program competitive from a recruiting standpoint. To the point, Lee said, the school has looked into additional ways to cut costs for baseball players, including possibly funding summer school.

Because while much of the attention is on football in this new era of college athletics, Lee doesn’t want his program falling behind either.

“It’s all money-based. It just is,” Lee said. “We’ve got to continue to look at and see if there are things (we can do). The one thing I do know about our administration is they’re very progressive, and they’re going to continue to look at every avenue they can to try to help us and every other program here when it comes to some of the challenges from a cost perspective that we face.”

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