The landscape of college athletics is always changing, especially with the additions of Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL). Some teams are using NIL to their advantage — whether it’s within the boundary or not — and some teams are still slowly transitioning their way to the use of NIL.
On Thursday, basketball coach Juwan Howard was pretty blunt by saying that Michigan as a whole can do much more than what it’s doing in the NIL game.
“You know, NIL, it’s one of these things where it has helped some programs and what they’ve done in the transfer portal,” said Howad. “For us, NIL hasn’t hurt or helped me or the team when it comes to recruiting from the transfer portal. Have the conversations about NIL been brought up in recruiting? Yes it has. Would I like to see more done for the program, in the sense of some of the things happening in other basketball programs? Yes.”
“And I know this is going to be a storyline, and that’s OK. Do we have a collective here? No. Do other programs have collectives? Yes. Could we be more proactive with the NIL and use more forward-thinking? Yes. And I say ‘we’. I’m including myself. But our athletic department, as well as Michigan as a whole, we can do better.”
Back in May, when Hunter Dickinson decided to come back to Michigan, he had an interview with Sam Webb and Time McCormick on the MichiganInsider. He said that Michigan needed to do more, or it would lose players.
“They’re gonna lose out on so many players if they don’t start stepping up to the plate. I feel bad for Coach Juwan and Coach Harbaugh because they’re trying,” Dickinson said. “It’s not their fault. The coaches are trying for sure”
On the football side of things, when talking about NIL, Jim Harbaugh has bluntly said that he wants the player’s experience to be transformational and not transactional.
“Right or wrong, our philosophy coming to the University of Michigan — it’s still going to be a transformational experience rather than a transactional experience,” said Harbaugh.
Players are still profiting from playing at Michigan, but they are having to earn it by getting on the field and proving it. Not signing huge deals out of high school before stepping on the field at the college level. But if the Wolverines want to land the big fish consistently, it may be time to start looking at more options to help their programs out.
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