Alabama needs at minimum a solid backup, and hopefully the player turns out better than the price tag.guessing just getting a scholly. Big guy
Like the addition, local guy, SEC experience. They have extra scholarships, no harm in using them.
It doesn't have to be an either/or scenario. Once the money goes into the athletic department, it's limited, by NCAA rules, by title IX requirements, etc... If you direct the same funds to NIL and the department matches them, you get the best of both worlds. The golf facilities can still get built, but with the revenue from the athletic department. The NIL collective then helps keep the revenue generation coming.ok, but consider this. Some donors may *only* donate with certain conditions on the funding, and if the AD doesn't agree to the conditions, there's no donation.
i.e. A huge fan of golf decides he wants to help build a facility. He can say this $ can only be used for this purpose and condition / phase the gift based on that.
We are experiencing somewhat of a survival state right now. Stanford has the most NCAA championships of any school. They have a fantastic athletic department. They have not adjusted well to the NIL era, they're ranked 109th in the transfer portal, and they were one of the last picks during conference re-alignments. That prestige did very little for them. They are operating at a loss of at least 25 million per year and it's likely to get worse.I can forsee a time when, if it's not already here, we forget why we're doing what we're doing. Athletic prestige is useful when it gets Alumni to donate to the University for academics. This is the reason schools have always spent money on programs that lose money.