Here's an interview that was equal parts illuminating and terrifying.
Jason Belzer manages Oklahoma's collective of record -- Crimson & Cream -- and he recently sat for an interview with OU's Rivals site. Except, Belzer doesn't just manage OU's collective, he also manages Notre Dame's (Irish United), and Syracuse's (Orange United), and dozens of others, all the way down to Robert Morris University (RoMo Rise). Belzer is the CEO of Student-Athlete NIL, which markets itself to athletics departments as a turnkey NIL operation -- they'll manage everything from soliciting sponsorships and donations, to finding marketing opportunities for athletes, to doling out payroll.
Belzer compared his company's functionality similar to Learfield, the conglomerate which handles almost every Division I athletics department's multimedia sales. Except instead of selling sponsorships, Belzer and company are managing the payroll of a major college football team.
"We had already prepared a report of every single Oklahoma student-athlete on the football roster and what their value was going to be in the Portal for December and January. We were able then to go back to every single player and allow them then to know, 'This is what we believe you're worth. This is what we're going to be willing to offer you. And there's not really going to be a lot of negotiation because if you think you can get a lot more in the Portal, have fun,'" Belzer said.
Simply put, it was startling to hear Belzer lay the management of a college football roster out in such cold, black-and-white terms. Not in a pearl-clutching, I can't believe these guys are really getting paid way. It's startling because here we have taking a major ownership stake in Oklahoma's roster management who does not work for the University of Oklahoma.
What happens when a Sooners player wants more money from Oklahoma... err, Crimson & Cream Collective? Belzer explained his side of the Cayden Green transfer.
For those who don't know, Green was a top-100 recruit who started as a true freshman and, for all intents and purposes, was the future of Oklahoma's offensive line -- until, seemingly out of the blue, he transferred to Missouri.
"When it came to Cayden, just like everybody else, we presented him with a contract for the coming year. He was still under contract with us. When he did respond with us, he basically said he wanted substantially more money. We looked at it and we said, 'Okay, we're not going to give you what you're asking, but we're willing to come up.' And we basically came close to matching what he had asked, and then he sort of said, 'You know what? I'm going to go into the Portal.' At the end of the day, we can only have those conversations," Belzer said.
Imagine any other business working this way. Imagine a Tampa Bay Rays outfielder wanting to negotiate a contract extension after fielding an offer from the Milwaukee Brewers and ownership saying, "Let me place a call to New York... hold on, they're on the phone with Boston right now."
I know that's not an exact translation of a college football's relationship to its own payroll department, but it's close. What a system.
"We look at it as we work for the University of Oklahoma. We don't have a contract with the university, but we are fully transparent in what we do," Belzer said. "They know every dollar that comes in, every dollar that goes out. They know every donor that puts money in."
This decentralized system asks donors to fund the team and the roster, which in turn creates an adversarial relationship between the collective and the development office and, if indirectly, between players and coaches. There are only so many donation dollars to go around, and Belzer was open where his allegiance lies.
"I've told every AD in the country, you have to tell your coaching staff, 'No more hiring analysts. Stop spending money and figure out how to fund your NIL program. Period, end of story. We have to pay the labor, and the bill is only going to get bigger and bigger," Belzer said. "So, how could you turn around and say, yeah we could hire more support staff? That's not realistic."
A sane system would bring collectives in-house, ask donors for a single (if larger) check, and then pay the roster and the staff out of a single financial pot. But there's sanity, and then there's the system we have in college football.