Profit comes from revenue - expenses Revenue is going to be ticket sales, concessions, tv revenue, etc. Expenses are going to be scholarships, food, travel, facilities, etc Are you asking what portion of NIL the school used to fund their roster came from fans? If so, whatever answer youre going to get is going to be misleading, at best, and wildly incorrect, at worst. For one...we dont know that the figure the article mentions for UTs roster is even true...but for the sake of argument lets say it is. So what comprises that 15mil number? If it comes from the University (and its a public university) then the NIL figure is already going to be on the expense report. So that portion would be fairly easy to validate (though some schools have gotten around explicitly stating what they paid in NIL). The second part of that is that people conflate rev share with NIL. They include rev share dollars in what is being provided to athletes and then call that total number NIL...except it isnt NIL. If a collective pulls in 5 million for their roster and the school dishes out 3.5 million in rev share, the school could tout 8.5 million dollars in a NIL war chest and not a single dime of it would actually be NIL coming from the school. That's an extreme example but lets say a school provides 6.5 million in NIL for its basketball roster, 3.5 million in rev share, and 5 million...thats 15 million, the exact total the article mentions, but with only a third of it coming from the school through NIL The larger thing to be aware of is that not a single entity has a vested interest in downplaying their war chest, nor do they have a vested interest in being correct in the figures they put out. No athlete is going to lowball what hes getting paid. It makes him look better to agents, other schools, girls, etc to inflate his numbers No school is going to lowball what theyre paying. Yes, come to our school, here's an article showing we have 15 million dollars to play with. Receipts you say? No, no thank you. No agent is going to lowball how much money he got for his client. Youre funding less of a percentage for athletes than you have been funding for coaches for the last 50 years...but for some reason I dont see the hand wringing going on for that aspect of it.

is, IMHO, the central point in the whole "what to do about NIL" debate. As college sports have become more professionalized, one of the glaring differences between the franchise-based pro leagues and the college-based pro leagues is the approach to dividing up the revenue pie. Pro players now receive infinitely more of that pie, proportionately, than they did a generation ago. And player salaries for the top pros dwarf coaching salaries. A pro team's spend on roster talent is way higher than its spend on coaching and front office talent. And as pro salaries increase, ticket prices usually follow, but that's about the extent of fan gouging that occurs. Salaries and caps go up because revenue continues to go up. College-based pro sports seems to follow entirely different logic. The structure of the past several decades, where schools, coaches, athletic directors, and assorted hangers-on reap enormous financial rewards, and players received no direct compensation, has now been upended. But the response has not been "now we have to divide the pie differently and share". Nor has it been "how can we grow the pie even faster". It's been "we want to continue to keep most of the money for ourselves, and it's up the fans to help pay the players". Player compensation is not going away. Schools, admins, and coaches are going to have to realize that (a) their own compensation will inevitably have to decline in relative terms and (b) asking fans to be a primary source of funding player salaries is not a sustainable long-term solution.

I think the unvarnished truth though is as of the way the world is constructed today, is a VT, beyond the unlikely scenario where a very very wealthy individual or two want to underwrite MBB, that there isnt a way for VTMBB to financial compete for top players no matter how we slice and dice the other revenue legs of the money stool.

Its just that football fans wouldn't like the answer But on the flip side...you could take every dollar from every non-football sport at VT and still not be a perennial contender in football ** Edited by GCHokie34 at 5/6/2026, 9:49:07 AM

assuming the world remains the same (and I very much hope it doesnt) what happened with wrestling yesterday is going to be the lifeblood of every sport hoping to succeed, not named football. The problem is MBB by far requires the most to move the needle, and thus will be hardest riddle to solve. In your opinion , just for dreaming purposes, what type of 3rd party gift would it take to make VT MBB , really on par with UVa Louisville Cuse NCSU SMU (gonna leave out Duke and UNC)? $15-20mm over a 5 year period? ** Edited by Vippie1 at 5/6/2026, 11:32:57 AM

Has been playing a shell game with NIL funds. For example, lets say sport-specific NIL donations/contributions for the 3 major mens sports goes like this: Football: 10 million Basketball: 2 million Baseball: 1 million (What I mean by this is someone says "hey I want 1 million to go to baseball and baseball only" or football only, etc.) And on top of that lets say the University has 10 Million to put into any of these buckets they choose. This could come from donations that dont have a specific sport designation. It could come from other funds. Just anything not from sport-specific contributions. Lets say they decide to allocate the 10 million they have as follows: Football: 7 million Basketball: 2 million Baseball: 1 million That means in total it should look like: Football: 17 million Basketball: 4 million Baseball: 2 million Now lets say you come to the University and say, I want to give Basketball 1 million dollars...no one else. The Ath Dept will add your 1 million to the sport specific pile, but take away 1 million from the general pile and allocate it elsewhere. So after your donation it would look like: Sport specific Football: 10 million Basketball: 3 million Baseball: 1 million General donation Football: 8 million Basketball: 1 million Baseball: 1 million So now Football has 18 million, and Basketball and Baseball have the same amount as they had prior to your donation. Now, they can only get away with this if the sport has not spent the money they were told would be allocated. But if someone tells Basketball they have 4 million, and they go get a million dollars in donations and think theyre operating with 5 million and tell...lets say...Jordan Ivy-Curry that he can have 1 million...then basketball finds out "oopsie, someone has been playing with our funds" and Jordan Ivy-Curry doesnt have any money and so he decommits So...Id like to tell you it will take X dollars. But it truly doesnt matter...those funds are just going to be funneled to football one way or another. Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me to see it happen on a smaller scale to wrestling. They should spend that money quickly and kudos to them for making a big announcement, making it harder to take away that allocation.

methodology when it comes to funds that are recipient specific. Your post specifically talks about NIL funds, which are supposed to be funds handled by Triumph with no input from the AthDept, but we've all known that was a charade from the beginning. Also, Triumph has an advantage of not be subject to FOIA, which really allows the skulduggery to deepen. Again, good post.

Since July of 2025. That doesnt mean the school doesnt still coordinate with Triumph to pull this off...but they can legally distribute NIL on their own

when you write, "NIL funds can be handled by the university independent of Triumph Since July of 2025." Where can I find the rules that say that? I'm not disputing, just asking.

In State of Tennessee and Commonwealth of Virginia v. NCAA (2024), a federal court enjoined the NCAA from enforcing rules prohibiting Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) compensation as a recruiting inducement. Filed in response to an investigation into the University of Tennessee, the antitrust lawsuit argued that NIL bans violated the Sherman Act. This allowed Universities to coordinate directly with athletes for recruiting inducements starting July 1, 2025.

their athletic budgeting (TV money, student fees, etc) versus NIL. How that's reported and what additional NIL money gifted by alumni towards players pays off. Not only in performance/wins but colleges reporting it as revenue, etc. Then looking at the information from a cost/benefit perspective. Such as if we would spend several million dollars extra towards Y player, then maybe we could draw extra fans in attendance, tv money, make the NCAA tournament, etc. With your response as to how much of the information is masked/hidden and is reported/structured differently across colleges and universities; it is very hard to get true data to put together. Although I think you could get rough estimates across the spectrum. Many thanks for your response. ** Edited by JM397 at 5/6/2026, 5:09:41 AM

but rather is paid by the collectives. The collectives would show the expense on their books. Is that not the case?

Doesn't mean you have to...just that it was legal to do so Collectives still exist and individual deals between an athlete and entity can (and do) happen

(seperate from Rev Share). At least according to the AD

I dont know what "the AD" actually stated I dont know when it was stated I dont know if it was misheard What I DO know is that Virginia/Tennessee v NCAA made it legal to coordinate NIL funds in-house so if he said it, he was wrong

I bet at least 1 will be a very late high school addition

Portal closing only means you cant** enter the portal, not that you cant enroll after a certain time period. ** - you absolutely can still transfer out after the portal closure, its a very dumb due date

now with first rounders in the NBA

Sickening.

tournament and maybe wins a game, most VT fans will be happy. But if we spend $5-10MM and decline an NIT bid, something doesn't add up. I don't really care to see VT spending $15-20MM, even if that is what the top 5-10% of teams are spending. But if we could just strive to be above average, 90% of VT fans would be thrilled.

…just don’t be at the bottom. Or at least try.

and what you would consider an acceptable return, as far was W/L and postseason success? ** Edited by hokiehill1117 at 5/5/2026, 1:29:57 PM

ever happen? Have no clue. D1 is now NBA light.

NIL + revenue share, making the tournament should be an annual expectation and I think 22 wins most seasons would get us there. Ideally, we are at least making it through round 1 with that kind of money, with the occasional 2-4 game run. If we get to spending $15-20MM, expectations inflate to not only making the tournament each year, but being very disappointed at not making the elite 8 consistently, with the expectation that we should be in the final 4. The point I was making is that the average VT fan would be ok with us spending $8-10MM, if it meant we made the tournament every year.

You win because you can buy all the best players. So what? Give Tennessee a “preseason trophy”. I don’t watch Tennessee. I’ll continue to watch my $5M Hokies (or however much money they have) because that’s what I’ve always done. 63 year old habits aren’t easy to break. But our losses to higher paid teams don’t seem to sting nearly as much when I put this greed infested game all into it’s new perspective.

Its just hard to be interested anymore

factor is approaching zero. I will still pull for VT, but College sports has lost its way.