Looking forward to Yale v. Cornell men's in the Ivy semis at 2 on ESPNews. Yale has had some screw the pooch games, especially the season finale that cost them a tie for the regular season championship.
Nice article by Jesse Dougherty on how Malik Mack from Oxon Hill, the top freshman in the league at Harvard, might get a big NIL deal if he enters the transfer portal. Also noted a few other names to watch, like sophomore Joe Wolf (7' 1" Yale center from Chicago area), Xaivian Lee (6' 3" Princeton point guard with a "microwave" shooting touch), and Tyler Perkins from Penn were mentioned. I'd toss in PotY Caden Pierce from Princeton, a 6' 7" 220 lbs sophomore forward. Ivy League has no NIL collectives affiliated with the schools, and an NBA scout suggested Mack could make $250K by transferring. Dougherty mentions Jordan Dingle as an example of an Ivy guy who got a big NIL deal from Pitino. Was his senior year after winning PotY.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2024/03/13/malik-mack-harvard-ivy-league-nil/dougherty:
BACK ON JAN. 20, before Harvard faced Penn in Philadelphia, an NBA scout stopped by press row and asked: “Are you here to figure out if Malik Mack will transfer? I mean, do you take $250,000 to go play somewhere else, or do you stay for the Harvard degree?”
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If you’re into the collision of higher education and the big, big business of college sports, Mack is the ultimate bar debate. Some key facts: When the regular season ended last week, Mack, Harvard’s best player, ranked fourth in the Ivy League in scoring (17.2 points per game) and first in assists (4.
. He was named the Ivy League’s rookie of the year Wednesday. But to date, he has not earned a penny of NIL money, according to his father, while many of his peers in other conferences are cashing in. That’s partly because Harvard does not have an NIL collective, a donor-funded group that pays de facto salaries to in-demand football and men’s basketball players. None of the eight Ivy League schools do, making the conference an extreme outlier.
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Collectives, it should be noted, are not run by schools. They typically raise money from fans and regular donors, then compensate athletes through paid charity work and appearances. But while schools are not in charge, they can promote and partner with collectives — and it would be naive to think coaches aren’t communicating with boosters about recruits. An accountant or lawyer isn’t deciding which transfer guard should receive a six-figure offer. And after a court decision in Tennessee this month, collectives are temporarily allowed to negotiate and even sign contracts with recruits before they enroll.
As was mentioned in the article, if the Ivies started forming collectives, you can imagine the money alumni could spend to buy teams. As is, and as Dougherty notes, the Ivy financial pitch is not so much the money you could earn in the NFL or NBA, but rather the 40 year payout (that has eluded my life
). The other thing the Ivies do is give a lot of grant money to all students who lack financial resources. I'm not sure where Mack's folks fall, but the cut is around $100K (mindfact), with roughly 60% of the student bodies getting some grants.
The story is a good read about Mack. Lots of detail on his rise, how he came to the attention of Amaker, and his skills both on the court and academically. Folks deserve credit, too, for support and helping him focus on being rounded and not just a hoops or brainy nerd, but he has the discipline to pull it off.
