This past Wednesday morning at the Eye Opener Discovery Breakfast presented by the University of Florida at the UF Hilton Conference Center, the guest speaker was Florida Athletics Director Scott Stricklin.

Stricklin, who enters his ninth year as Florida’s AD, was quick to address the elephant in the room following the Florida football team’s embarrassing loss at home to the University of Miami last Saturday.

He began by saying that September, October and November were probably not great times to do public speaking, to which those in attendance laughed.

“I was optimistic that we would be sitting here with a bunch of smiles on our faces this morning,” he said.

But his topic on Wednesday was a subject that he gets questions about all the time – Name, Image, Likeness (NIL).

NIL refers to the rights of college athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness for commercial purposes, including endorsement deals, merchandise licensing, public appearances and speeches, etc.

It has transformed college athletics.

Previously all the NCAA would allow were scholarships for participating in athletics and they were prohibited from receiving any type of benefit outside of that scholarship.

But because of a series of state laws that were passed in 2021, they could no longer prohibit young people from receiving cash and benefits for their NIL.

One of those avenues is through university-specific collectives which often pool money from boosters and other donors and use these resources to create and bring paid endorsement opportunities to student-athletes through a variety of activities.

“We have a collective, Florida Victorious, which has done a really good job working with over half of our athletes,” Stricklin said.

Florida Victorious works with 11 of the 21 UF sports and more than 230 student-athletes.

Stricklin also mentioned a significant antitrust lawsuit in California that could be another outside revenue source as the NCAA and the nation’s five biggest conferences announced in May that they have agreed to pay nearly $2.8 billion to settle a host of antitrust claims, setting the stage for current and former athletes to be paid.

The defendants in the case are the NCAA and the power five conferences (Big Ten, Big 12, Atlantic Coast Conference, Southeastern Conference and Pac-12).

“This lawsuit is basically claiming that the conferences and the NCAA conspired to limit what schools are being able to pay athletes and there is an announced settlement in the works for this case…but it appears that this settlement will provide a pathway where schools will directly share a percent of revenues directly with athletes and kind of bypass that collective third party middle man, if you will,” Stricklin said. “It’s a pretty sizable change. We’ve seen a lot of change in college athletics the last few years.”

The settlement envisions about 22% of a school’s athletic department revenue. That’s over $20 million.

Stricklin said that as part of this settlement, the plaintiffs’ attorneys have suggested that approximately 75% go to college football players, 15% to men’s basketball, 5% to women’s basketball and the rest to other athletes.

While that is still to be determined, the settlement isn’t expected to be finalized until next spring and will go into effect the next school year.

But it’s not a done deal.

On Thursday, the House v. NCAA settlement was put on hold as a federal judge urged revisions.

NCAA lead attorney Rakesh Kilaru told the judge that the revised rules for how collectives operate are “a central part of the deal.”

The University of Florida is considered the cream of the crop when it comes to the SEC.

The Gators have 265 SEC titles, which is the most of any conference member and over 100 more than the next closest school (Tennessee with 160). Gator women’s athletics have won over half.

UF, which has 367 individual NCAA national championships, recently had 41 Gators in the Olympics (11 medals). That would have tied for 16th if Gator Nation had been a nation.

The student-athletes are also getting it done in the classroom. This past spring, a record 78% of all student-athletes earned a 3.0 for the semester.

Income is essential to run a successful athletic program as the average annual cost of scholarships is $20,098,885. The average annual cost of a scholarship, excluding coaching and training, is $78,398.

But there are a lot of moving parts when it comes to paying student-athletes.

The transfer portal has also been a huge change.

There was also a concern by the NCAA that paying athletes would take amateurism out of college athletics and fans would not want to follow the sport.

However, Stricklin said record attendance across all sports, and record viewership for the sports that are televised, indicate it’s not as big a concern as once thought.

“My personal opinion is we all have a certain value, and for years the NCAA said every athlete had the same value which was a scholarship,” he said. “That’s just not real life…at the end of the day, people’s values are going to be recognized in one way or another…I don’t mind athletes having access to more benefits than just a scholarship.”

He noted for most athletes, that is their value (a scholarship to the University of Florida), but they have other examples, such as former Gator QB Tim Tebow, “whose value was much greater than that scholarship to the University of Florida.”

One of the primary rules of NIL is that the school can’t directly provide the benefit to the athlete beyond the scholarship. They can receive benefits outside the scholarship, but it has to be through a third party.

As with any new change, there are always concerns.

One concern that was raised during the question-and-answer session was about educating athletes on finances.

Each athlete that gets paid through NIL receives a 1099, meaning they are not taxed and are required to report their income to the IRS and must pay taxes separately.

“Florida Victorious helps with that,” Stricklin said. “We actually have a lot of financial education programs that we require as well for our athletes and it’s not a one-time 45-minute session, it’s an ongoing conversation. One of the challenges that a lot of these athletes are facing for the first time is they’re not getting taxes taken out so they’ve got to be really disciplined when they receive money to set some aside so they can pay their taxes.”

The NIL is here to stay. Money drives the world.

Stricklin gets the sense that a high-level quarterback is going to receive a $1 million NIL deal, including a six-figure deal for highly ranked recruits.

He also noted that more college players are sticking around longer to cash in before moving on to pro ball.

“You’re already seeing that,’ Stricklin said. “This past year’s NFL draft had half as many underclassmen declare as the year before, which I think the number was like 120 the year before and less than 60 this year, so you’re already seeing athletes make the decision that this is a pretty good life.”