Golden Grizzlies still battling NIL realities
It’s now back to the grind for Oakland University men’s basketball head coach Greg Kampe.
Over the weekend, Kampe was in Arizona coaching the NABC Division 1 All-Star Game. Among his East roster was NCAA Tournament darling Jack Gohlke, who became a household name after the Golden Grizzlies’ upset of Kentucky.
“You’re in the Final Four building, the ramp, in that big of an event, and it’s kind of an ‘awe’ moment,” said Kampe, who who also got to coach several players that Oakland faced throughout this season, including Xavier’s Quincy Olivari and Ohio State’s Jamison Battle. “It was a moment in the big-time. You cherish and enjoy it, and then realize you gotta get back to work.”
Much of that work will be influenced
by the ever-changing landscape of NIL deals.
Oakland partnered with NIL marketplace Opendorse in Nov. 2022 to launch “Gold Standard,” the university’s hub for athletes to reach deals. Nearly 300 of the university’s athletes are listed there now, available for offers on anything from autographs to appearances to social media posts.
There’s also a collective, “The Grizzly Den,” that has unsurprisingly picked up some notoriety with the team’s run in the tournament.
“I think we were in OK shape before (March),” Oakland athletic director Steve Waterfield said. “Half of the Horizon League or so, last time I’d seen some information, had a collective, so I guess we were all in fledgling states when it comes to that. I think what the success has allowed us to do is underscore the importance of retaining
and recruiting student-athletes and how NIL plays a role in that.
“I wouldn’t say every prospect will be asking Greg about NIL opportunities, but the vast majority certainly will be.”
Waterfield talked about some of the realities that have Oakland operating on a different playing field than Power 5 schools. There’s not room in the budget to hire an NIL Executive General Manager, as Michigan announced it planned to do back in February.
That means focusing on the issues that are within Oakland’s realm. And as both Waterfield and Kampe laid out, part of it is purely identifying what’s fact and what’s fiction.
“One of the toughest parts from the very start of NIL is trying to figure out what’s true from a valuation standpoint,” Waterfield said. “I think many
of us doing this on a day-to-day basis, living in the college world, we think (some of it) is not accurate, but how inaccurate? We have no idea.
“That’s one of the things the NCAA has proposed to at least talk about, having some type of NIL clearinghouse, so we just know, ‘What are we talking about here?’ I couldn’t tell you what the average Horizon League men’s basketball student-athlete is getting in NIL, because there’s no way to figure that out. You could hear a number and it could be spot-on, or there could be a variance that’s pretty significant.”
Several reports have flown around on the value of Trey Townsend. The Oakland forward, who was named Horizon League Player of the Year, announced he would enter into the NBA Draft process, but most as