Jim Cavale: SEC women's gymnast averaging $17k per NIL deal

When the new age of college athletics opened for business on July 1, 2021, much of the focus was on men’s sports. Specifically, how football and men’s basketball players would capitalize on their NIL.

Turns out those expectations have not lived up.

The Cavinder Twins quickly set the tone with their New York City announcement of a deal with Boost Mobile through Icon Source. Livvy Dunne has a social media following of more than eight million, and it continues to grow by the day.

Those are just some of the big winners. Opendorse released data around the one-year anniversary of NIL. The data showed women were involved in nearly 53 percent of all activities when excluding football players.

INFLCR has seen a similar pattern now in Year 2 of the NIL Era. Speaking on On3’s LeverUp podcast with Shannon Terry, INFLCR founder and CEO Jim Cavale had a wide-ranging conversation about the state of NIL. Cavale was blunt about the headway women athletes have made.

“The average SEC football player does a $3,400 deal inside of the INFLCR system,” Cavale said. “The average women’s gymnast in the SEC — $17,000 Wow. $17,000 is the average deal for an SEC gymnast.”

How could NIL be impacted by Title IX?

Terry and Cavale also dived into how NIL could change in the years to come. The College Football Players Association made headway this summer with the idea of TV revenue sharing when Penn State quarterback Sean Clifford held a discussion with Kevin Warren. From there, any talks fizzled out after the quarterback issued a statement, trying to distance himself from his role with the organization.

But it is only a matter of time until athletes want to capitalize on more of their NIL worth and take a split of the millions in TV revenue their schools pocket. The Big Ten is projected to eventually distribute $80 million to $100 million per year to each of its 16 members with its new TV contract.

And maybe the cash does not come from conference’s TV contract, instead out of an athletic department’s budget. Either way, someone is going to pay. And female sports that are supported by Title IX could be seriously affected.

“The money that’s going to pay for that is going to come out of the money that supports a lot of the other sports that don’t make money,” Cavale said. “So now you’re gonna run right up amok, Title IX. Are we gonna have women’s field hockey anymore? Because we have 30 sports here at North Carolina? Or are we going to have to cancel 16 sports so that we can fund our football and basketball teams all having salaries? Those are gonna be the kind of questions asked.”

There’s also the other factor to consider. Athletes would be fired as an employee. NCAA rules prohibit scholarships being pulled due to athletic performance.

“There’s a few things risky that I don’t think student-athletes want. Number one, they can now be fired,” Cavale said. “You don’t perform well, you don’t lose your scholarship right now. … You don’t perform on a salary, you’re fired.”

On the flip side, paying athletes as employees would defeat the purpose of amateurism, Terry said.

“My fear would be, it would be at the academic athletic college level, it’d be less of a meritocracy,” he said. “It would be more of disbursement of funds across the board, rather than those that go out and earn it and do it, getting a disproportionate share to those that don’t. And I don’t like that. That’s not the way I was raised.”