How Will The NIL Rule Affect College and Professional Baseball?
Is college baseball poised to become the next big collegiate sport? The new NCAA NIL (name, image, and likeness) rule may help the sport increase its TV ratings and attendance.
In 2018, the three-game series between Oregon State-Arkansas College World Series final averaged 1.96 million viewers across ESPN and ESPN2, up 4% from the year prior. However, a random Pac-12 football matchup between Washington State and Oregon on November 13th, 2021, got 1.99 million viewers. This isn’t just an oddity. There are various examples of seemingly trivial college football matchups getting close to or more viewers than the games on the biggest stage for college baseball (Full List of TV Viewership in 21-22 College Football Games).
For years, college baseball has been close to the bottom of the list in terms of the popularity of collegiate sports. Naturally, baseball is less popular than basketball and football due to the slow nature of the game, but college baseball is falling behind many less mainstream sports. Sports like Women’s Basketball and Women’s Volleyball are gaining more traction than baseball in terms of NIL deals. In fact, baseball is the 10th-ranked collegiate sport in terms of NIL compensation at a percentage of 1.1% out of the total deals as a result of the new rule (Full List Here). The majority of the sports listed above baseball have considerably less coverage at the pro level, but at the collegiate level, they remain ahead.
For those who don’t know, the NIL rule is a policy passed by the NCAA last July that states college athletes can now make money off of their name, image, and likeness. This means players can now be endorsed by companies without being restricted by the NCAA. But, this still prevents schools from directly paying athletes outside of scholarship money. The rule was passed days after the college baseball season ended last year, so we haven’t gotten to see its full effect on college baseball as of yet. But, as college baseball gets back into the swing of things, we may see quite a few changes.
According to The Advocate, “College baseball teams are allotted 11.7 scholarships, which can be split to a maximum number of 27 athletes on a 35-player roster — all of which need to receive at least 25% of the cost of attendance.” Thus, quite a few players either get no money or a partial scholarship to play baseball for a Division 1 school. Due to the expensiveness of college, and the lack of earning potential, most top prospects choose to go into the draft and straight to the minor leagues if they are not given a full ride from a school. In other major sports, this isn’t an option. Consequently, the collegiate level for other sports has much more talent and exciting players compared to college baseball. While many of the top recruits do get full rides, some are still looking to make money, and the new NIL rule can help provide a viable alternative to draft signing bonuses. In the future, we could see a vast majority of players choosing college baseball that would’ve generally opted into the draft. With an increase in talent, college baseball could ascend up TV ratings and overall popularity.
In theory, college baseball should be more popular than the minor leagues. NCAA teams have the advantage of being attached to big-time schools, as most people root for a single college for all sports. While the minor league teams are affiliated with a major league club, it doesn’t really matter because the minor league teams don’t care about winning. The goal in the minors is to develop prospects and prepare them for the majors. On the other hand, college baseball is all about winning a conference and eventually the College Baseball World Series. Additionally, college baseball and its attachment to school spirit create natural rivalries that make certain games a much bigger deal. So, college baseball should have better turnout and TV ratings, but it doesn’t exactly work out that way. Potentially, the NIL rule can change the talent pool in college and allow it to grow the sport.
Even though the NIL rule has not been around very long, we have already seen its potential in college baseball. For example, in an interview, LSU baseball coach Jay Johnson said, "I had one prominent player on our team made some money in terms of name, image, and likeness, and his dad called me and said, 'Coach, I know you're trying to put together a roster. We're going to give you back the scholarship for this year.’” Coach Johnson went on to say, “I don't think the NCAA really understood what they were doing with this and it's going to cause some issues, but no matter what it's been — the transfer portal, NIL — my job is, I can I can either cry about it or I can figure out how we need to do it to do well for us."
In addition to the NIL rule, there are various ways college baseball could gain popularity among sports fans across the globe. One of these is promoting their players in a similar manner to college football. In 2020 and 2021, virtually everyone in the sports world knew about Trevor Lawrence regardless of their favorite sport. College football is able to promote its players and make them celebrities before they even get drafted. However, in college baseball, no one outside the fans of the collegiate level can name even a few players. Generally, becoming a sports fan is easy once you're a fan of a particular team or player. If college baseball were able to promote its players to even a minuscule amount of college football, the sport could gain lots of hype and popularity.
While college baseball doesn’t promote its players well, Vanderbilt is one of the few programs that help garner hype around its players. Last year, Jack Leiter and Kumar Rocker were some of the few well-promoted players entering the draft, and it’s no coincidence they went to Vanderbilt. However, it's extremely hard for a college to promote players without the help of the sport itself. If schools were able to advertise their student-athletes the way Vanderbilt does, the sport would get a significant boost in recognition.
One of many players who didn’t get the recognition they deserved is Spencer Torkelson coming out of Arizona State University (ASU). At just 18 years old, Torkelson smashed Barry Bond's freshman home run record at ASU. Despite this, very few outside of the ASU fans or hardcore college baseball fanatics heard of him until the draft after he was taken as the first player overall in the 2020 MLB draft.
Now, the time has never been better for college baseball to step up and take a primary role in collegiate sports and the baseball world. After the 1994 MLB lockout, major league TV ratings tanked, and we could see a similar pattern for this upcoming season. With that in mind, college baseball could seize the opportunity and take a dominant role as well as shoot its TV rating and popularity through the roof.
The question is, will they?
