For the second year in a row, Michigan has looked to the transfer portal to help shore up its kicking position. Last year Michigan landed James Turner from Louisville. This year they have possibly found their answer with Arkansas State transfer Dominic Zvada, who committed to the Wolverines.
Zvada is a 6'3", 174 lb. junior who had started for the Red Wolves for the past two seasons. He was 17/18 on field goals (the lone miss was from 51 yards) as a freshman in 2022 and 30/31 on extra points (the lone miss was blocked). Then in 2023 he was 17/22 on field goals and 41/41 on extra points. His career long came as a freshman when he hit a 56-yarder.
Zvada was a Lou Groza Award finalist in 2022 (the year Michigan's Jake Moody won the award) and was on the Lou Groza Award Watch List in 2023.
Arkansas State was Zvada's only scholarship offer coming out of Chandler (AZ) Valley Christian in 2022.
The head coach of Arkansas State is former Central Michigan head coach Butch Jones.
I'm not sure what the point of recruiting a kicker out of high school is at this point. Your best case scenario is no better than grabbing a guy from the portal and your worst case is lighting scholarships on fire.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. It's probably the easiest position to recruit now for a place like Michigan.
Delete"Hey, you're at a small school and can kick the ball through the uprights from 55 yards away. Would you like to repeat the exact same movements except for more money and in front of more people?"
Yeah, let some other college feed them, house them, supply coaching, free school for years just so we can go pluck the best fruit when it is ripe.
DeleteMAC and other schools are now talent suppliers to the power 5 schools. Developmental league for bigger schools.
Scholarships are not a thing anymore. Schools just take NIL money to cover the tuition.
I think the bigger question becomes if that approach (picking guys from lower tier programs) isn't more effective across the board.
DeleteOn scholarships -- I think it's still relevant to some degree. That's still real money coming out of either the athletic department and/or NIL. If you're dropping 80K a year in tuition, room, and board on a player -- that's 80K you can be dropping in salary to keep a Keon Sabb or DJ Waller on the roster.
It's nice as a fan to dismiss the financial costs because it's a big business, but this is something Warde Manuel and Sean Magee and the guys running these collectives have to sort out IRL.
I'd love to know how things are working in big-name schools like Michigan and Ohio State now with respect to scholarships and NIL. Do they combine the two for the superstars? Or do they allocate buckets of NIL to superstars and reserve the scholarships for the necessary-but-not-superstar other players?
DeleteIt's not clear but ultimately it doesn't matter because I don't think a 5th year senior is going to care if his tuition, room, and board are funded via scholarship or NIL. What we know is that some NIL money is going to these things...which means it's not gong to directly to the player's pocket.
DeleteAnd then all sorts of questions come up: are the NIL pools truly pools, or do the donors have some ability to indicate which player (or players) the donations may be used? Is there some accountability about how NIL money was allocated?
DeleteI can't imagine donors would want their money to go to third string long-snappers. I mean, some donors might take the "big view," but I suspect most will want to make sure their money goes to players they think are valuable. This is why I wondered about scholarships vs. NIL ... my suspicion is the way things are working out is NIL bubbles to the valuable players, and scholarships are being used to keep the middle-tier in place. I don't know for certain, but that's my sense.
I'm also curious how the accounting for NIL distributions work. I have to believe the IRS knows about what gets given to which players, and taxes will be owing. What's the relationship between NIL collective and player from a tax reporting perspective?
I have no inside knowledge of the NIL's directly but I move money around between different entities and almost always -- people want very much to know specifically what their money goes to. They typically insist on it. So either there is tremendous institutional trust (demonstrated action, specific prior examples, what you call "the big view") or there is a specific path (your money is going to X).
DeleteGiven the NILs are new, my guess is that some of the big donors are going to hear a very specific message (like maybe "you are paying for Rod Moore scholarship which opens us up to recruit someone else in the freshman class", or "your contribution is the difference between Mason Graham being a Wolverine and being an Oregon Duck"). But ultimately it does all go into a pot, so some promises where multiple parties are chipping in may get double dipped on the "marketing" side without explicitly being deceitful.
The middle-tier guys were already getting a scholarship - so that's not much of an inducement to them. There's probably some relatively unsexy financial work happening to say keep Earnest Hausman around or get Jose Priebe in to transfer in, that will only resonate to a smaller audience of donors or otherwise fall to more general sources that these "collectives" are using in addition to the BIG donors.
On the tax side -- I have no clue but I agree it's interesting. My understanding is that players in the program are getting financial educations like they never have before, with the help of the collectives. I bet other programs are not providing at the same level so even though some players at other places maybe getting bigger checks, perhaps their bank accounts may not reflect that exactly.
Thanks! Nice post ... good stuff.
DeleteI have to believe somewhere on the NIL landscape there are players who received (round number) $1M and didn't set any aside for taxes. They are in for a surprise.
Agree Anon. T minus X months till we hear these type of stories. Hopefully they are rare because we know the majority of guys, even at big programs like Michigan and Alabama are not going to get lucrative pro contracts.
DeleteKid gets crazy lift.
ReplyDeleteYES, those kicks get up. Welcome young man!
Delete