Where do the Huskers land realistically in the transfer portal? Nebraska has roughly 10 million dollars that is spent on NIL every year. With 105 athletes on the roster moving forward this is what it would look like to give you an idea of why Nebraska is falling behind. If the top 10 percent of athletes which is about 11 athletes receive 80 percent of the NIL funds we are looking at about $761,900 per athlete. When you take into account that a top tier offensive lineman in the portal or a 5 star out of high school is going to be around 1 million dollars in NIL compensation, you can already start to see how Nebraska is falling behind. Right now college football has no salary cap when it comes to players, leaving the only excuse when it comes to the money side of things which seems to be a heavy deciding factor in where an athlete lands in today’s college football is just exactly that money.
The 1890 initiative is doing very well and seems to be run at a high level, especially after being handicapped by the previous AD administration, but if the 1890 Initiative were to commit to more creative funding opportunities on a seemingly crowd funded level Nebraska would be much better off. If you look in a specific direction and that direction being low valued inputs such as Trading Cards and look at a company for example such as Onit trading cards which is a mid sized company dealing in strictly college athlete trading cards giving a kickback to athletes through their NIL initiative. They have given back 7 million dollars so far this year to athletes. If 1890 was to pair with a local company to make their trading cards displaying husker athletes and be able to use that money to kickback to current athletes and procure new high valued athletes, Nebraska would be in a much better place as far as NIL goes. Leaving out the non-fan collectors market or resellers and just focusing on fans who buy merchandise and support the University regularly, this could be a step in the right direction because of the Nearly 2.55 million fans according to USA Today. At 2.55 million fans around the country, Nebraska has the 6th largest fan base in the nation but still has the 20th largest NIL fund. Leveraging that fan base and using it to raise NIL funds in an interactive way seems to be the logical next step, giving fans something they are excited about and in return raising money with a low input high profit margin item like trading cards. Not only offering runs of your typical cards but including autographed cards, grass clipping cards, memorial stadium game memorial cards, and special edition cards Husker fans would flock to these commemorable items year round.
Let’s take a look at the numbers. With 2.55 million fans let’s say 50 percent of the fan base would spend money on these cards, buying at a minimum of 5 packs per year since they would be different and the collection factor would be high. That is 1.27 million people spending $50 ($10 per pack). Lets say on average it costs $1 per pack which is on the high end and it could be as low as 15 cents per pack. That’s roughly 55 million dollars towards NIL through the university and 1890. More money equals higher value players with a proven upside and high value recruits with a large upside.
There are other projects such as inclusion in projects, name recognition at games from donors and so many more ways that 1890 and the University can partner up to extensively increase NIL and use it to better the program through player acquisition. We have the facilities, we have the coaches, the Huskers can’t only setback is NIL funding.
