The advent of NIL legislation and rules across the country has resulted in a vastly different landscape than we saw just a few months ago. Billions of words have been written about it, the takes have been remarkably lukewarm at best, and the world has continued to turn. Ohio State announced a while ago a collective agreement which athletes can opt into for group marketing and payment. It's a weird setup, requiring 3 athletes from the same team, or 6 from any combination of teams to join up for mass marketing.
While this NIL business won't really affect the major sports in terms of student-athlete impact, this has MASSIVE implications for the Olympic sports, including men's lacrosse.
This will have the potential to truly alter the trajectory of Ohio State's men's (and women's) lacrosse teams. You can't change tradition or the past, but you can always blaze a new trail. And this gives Ohio State that chance. You can already see it with Mitchell Pehlke.
A pretty big presence in the YouTube/influencer arena, Pehlke is finally able to take in income for his efforts there. Right now it takes the form of income from ads on YouTube, but that can gradually be transitioned into personal, Ohio State-themed merch. Pehlke bobbleheads in his OSU gear? You know that is coming. Personalized t-shirts sold (and shipped!) through online, Buckeye-themed stores.
That amount of free assistance is incalculably valuable for a young entrepreneur. There is time to get a handle on logistics later, at Ohio State you can focus on content and creation of ways to capitalize on your own activities.
After his time at Ohio State is done, Mitchell Pehlke will move into a much more broad role, but he will still have a lot of help from his time monetizing everything while being a part of a Nike-affiliated, premier university that has a rabid fanbase in just about everything. As long as it wins.
Football does, basketball is on a slow build, and other teams rise and fall. But what NIL offers at Ohio State that helps both university and athlete is a ready-made customer base that is eager for new things to buy into.
For lacrosse, that comes down to equipment and merch. Yes, there are more professional opportunities than ever before. The PLL is flashy and appealing, while box lacrosse is quietly becoming a major force in ⅔ of North America.
Despite that, where NIL will have major implications is when players start hawking lacrosse-specific products. Tre Leclaire could have walked out of the building with probably six figures burning a hole in his pocket from selling heads, mesh, shafts, and apparel. Just in Columbus.
Nike's never one to miss an opportunity to make money, and the new landscape is rife with opportunities to score a few extra dollars. What that does is increase Ohio State's appeal to top level athletes by removing the biggest barrier: school debt.
Teams like the Ivy League and service academies already offer a free education to their student athletes.
Endowments fund the former, and years of service in your adult life pay for the latter. With NIL, Buckeye lacrosse players can offset costs based on their playing career, and even earn seed money to set themselves up for the rest of their lives.
No player on last year's roster was on a full ride, which sucks for those out of state kids. Superstar, and even just regular star, players have the opportunity to change that significantly.
It makes the staff's job much easier as well, allowing them to highlight opportunities for income as well as scholarship money that each player can count on for sure.
Say a Joey Spallina is looking at the Bucks. He is an otherworldly talent, making his marketability much higher. Offering him a half scholarship, but stating a projected income of $XX,XXX annually, can absolutely offset issues of scholarship allocation.
Underlining that is the value of the Ohio State brand in a local (statewide) context. Lacrosse reaches into Cincinnati, Cleveland, and is all over Columbus itself, along with the suburbs. This is a tremendous asset for an Ohio State program looking to get to that next level.
We're already seeing the merch drops for OSU lacrosse players. Justin Inacio has a shirt up for sale, link in the comments. Obviously Inacio has cache for OSU lacrosse die-hards, but maybe not so much in the rest of the states. In Canada, though?
The community is small, and I imagine this will be a fantastic seller north of the border. More things like this will come, and hopefully has a lasting positive impact on the Buckeyes' for years to come.
