New Iowa AD Beth Goetz: 'We want to be ambitious' in NIL space

During her more than six months as Iowa’s interim athletic director, Beth Goetz saw just how much — and quickly — college sports can change. In fact, she wondered if she missed anything during the first part of her introductory press conference on Tuesday as she took the role full-time.

“Changing college athletics is an understatement,” Goetz said. “Hopefully nothing has happened in the last 20 minutes that we’re not all aware of here.”

Iowa was one of the last power schools to enter the NIL space when The Swarm Collective launched in July 2022. A year later, Gary Barta announced his retirement and Goetz took over as interim athletic director. That gave her a head start on working through the NIL landscape in the lead role, and she spoke with On3 earlier this academic year about the role collectives could play going forward.

As the landscape evolves, Goetz said the Hawkeyes have to stay ahead of the curve. She cited the relationship with the Swarm collective as part of her answer on the state of NIL at Iowa, but she noted the “moving pieces” that come with the evolution of the space.

“It’s incredibly important that we both honor our tradition at the University of Iowa but welcome and run to what that future is going to look like,” Goetz said. “We can lead in that space. We can say, hey, it’s important to us that we hear the voice of our student-athletes, that we recognize the value that they bring to the brand. And whether that means increased NIL benefits, increased benefits overall — obviously, there’s a lot of moving pieces. We don’t know exactly how that’s going to lay out. But you’re partnering with everybody around you, certainly on our campus and in the Big Ten. We have a great relationship with the Swarm collective and within the parameters of the rules the NCAA has right now, that’s how NIL needs to operate.

“But we’re going to continue to evolve. We want to be ambitious in that space. We want to be creative and nimble and do all that while protecting what is most sacred, which is making sure that these student-athletes are pursuing a degree, will leave here with a degree from the University of Iowa, that they’re supported, that their well-being is taken care of, but everything else is going to modernize, and we’re going to be ready and prepared and nimble enough to adjust to that.”

Iowa’s Beth Goetz: ‘We need to know what the landscape is’ in order to ‘have our priorities in the right order’

The fight for federal NIL legislation is still going strong on Capitol Hill, with hearings just last week on the matter. Keeping track of the potential changes is just one part of the equation for Beth Goetz as she settles in to the full-time role of Iowa athletic director.

Because there are so many unknowns, Goetz said there are conversations about the future of NIL “almost every day” in the Iowa athletic department. The reason for that is so the Hawkeyes can properly adjust to whatever happens next.

“There are going to be challenging times,” Goetz said. “But what we need to do is understand what the parameters are, whether that is provided to us via a lawsuit or by the Federal Government or whatever entity that is, through the NCAA rules. We need to know what the landscape is, and then we will put together the pieces of the puzzle to ensure that we have our priorities in the right order. There will be changes and significant changes, and that will mean that we’ll need to make different decisions about where to invest. There’s never been a more important time to understand where we can leverage our strengths, and we’ll have to do that across the department to be sure.

“But when you do that in partnership with your coaches, with your athletes, one, you come to a more agreeable decision, but we’re also a part of getting to the right place. Even though we don’t yet know what the outcome is — we talk about this almost every day. Every time we meet with our coaches, we conversationalize this with our entire staff, and so we all know what’s coming. We’re going to spend a lot of time modeling what outcomes could be. But at the end of the day, we will adjust to what the environment is.”