Sun Tzu and the Art of NIL
Winning the Arms Race in College Sports
In the ever changing landscape of college sports, the Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) revolution has sparked a fierce arms race among universities, coaches, and student-athletes. As the stakes rise, the principles of ancient Chinese general Sun Tzu from his book "The Art of War" offer invaluable insights for navigating this new frontier.
I am a businessperson who happens to be a sports fan. Not the other way around. That means among other things that I should be careful about giving advice regarding sports, even if it involves the business of sports. Lately, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the enormous disruptions brought onto the college sports landscape through the introduction of NIL. I’ve tried to draw parallels to other discontinuities in business to learn from the patterns of the winners and losers. I decided to look at the situation as I believe General Tzu might.
For any of you who have not read, “The Art of War” leave this page immediately and go read it. Although it’s a book about war strategy, it is often interpreted for use in business, politics, sports, and life in general. Quotes in framed posters adorn offices throughout the world. To me the overall concepts of the book revolve around the principles of harnessing and applying knowledge wherever possible, being open to what this tells you about the strengths and weaknesses of your opponent and yourself, looking for an opportunity in every situation, and a whole bunch of tactics about fighting in the Asian wilderness circa 400 BCE that I hope none of us need to learn today.
Not surprisingly, as a technologist I’m going to work out from the principle of looking for opportunity.
College sports has been a rigged game for as long as I can remember. Rigged is not to be confused with the term cheating. Here it simply means that no two programs start from the same point year-after-year. Winning begats winning and losing begats losing. Programs with rich histories of success find it easier to attract new athletes as well as to persuade administrations and donors to support their efforts. For others there are often single years when expectations are exceeded, when recruiting spikes, when the winds of improvement are at your back. However, as a graduate of one of these schools myself, more often than not we see the winds cease and our programs regress to the mean. But can NIL change the pattern?
To state the obvious, NIL has brought a form of free agency to college sports. But it’s not completely free. Athletes make an initial choice coming out of high school. There is the opportunity for a second choice via the portal. And graduate school transfers offer one last chance to choose. At each opportunity, the athlete tests the market. Whether each athlete’s assessment is as thorough as suggested by General Tzu or not, athletes consider many factors from softer things such as family allegiance and proximity to home, to the traditional tipping factors such as the coaching staff, facilities and expected playing time. But the radical change today is obviously an open discussion about money. Historically, for elite football and basketball players college was often viewed as a pathway to the pros because that was where the money was. Today all other factors are weighed against the reality of “show me the money” now.
I believe that innovators should not look at the shift in the landscape with lament but should see it as the single largest opportunity to reset the college sports landscape of winners and losers since integration. Bear Bryant was a lot of things to a lot of different people. He coached in a time and a geography that fundamentally forbade the integration of much of society through the 50s and 60s and Bear Bryant adhered to these social constraints. In 1970 Alabama scheduled a home game against Southern California, fully aware that would mean competing against an integrated team. Southern California ran roughshod over Alabama and, the next day, Coach Bryant asked the Board of Trustees to be able to recruit players regardless of color. A 42-21 loss on the field drove the coach to candidly assess the future of his program. A change afterwards led to perhaps the greatest triumph in Alabama’s storied football history.
NIL is another seismic change. Student athletes have unique needs from college sports programs. Universities have different tools to allow them to reset the balance of power between themselves and their rivals. Obviously, money is the clear capital that is most coveted. But stopping there is not gathering knowledge and General Tzu would be disappointed. How is the money to be amassed? How should it be dispensed? How can resources be amplified?
Innovation. Like with any other discontinuity smart innovation has the potential – almost the inalienable right – to change the balance of power and to turn winners into losers and vice versa. Overarching opportunities with NIL that stand out to me include:
• Creative solutions to improve fan access. I’ve written previously about the fan pyramid and how sports harnesses tribalism to enhance individual self-worth. Fans at the top of the pyramid have unmet needs for access to their favorite sports programs and student athletes. Unmet need to the innovator equals opportunity.
• Going beyond social media. While social media is the tool to drive connection and engagement between athletes and fans today, most platforms are now a bit long in the tooth and change is the true constant. Facebook took the world by storm and now your mother uses it more than anyone else in the family. Twitter exploded in popularity. Now it seems to be “X”-ploding in other ways. TikTok is everything today, but how long will that last and more importantly what will be next?
• Fun. Extremely simple and extremely motivating. What innovations in technology are on the cusp that the student athletes, athletic departments, and fans all embrace as fun.
Obviously, I bring some bias, so here comes the pitch. My bet is on 3D. 3D content with student athletes that fans can lift off the field and engage with anytime, anywhere is here today. This fall at Popins we will be releasing digital collectibles of student athletes in partnerships with some of the most innovative universities and collectives in the country. Fans will be able to conjure their 3D collectibles, place them in their individual environments, take pictures and photos, and share them on their socials. The student athletes absolutely love the experience of being turned into what one recently described as a video game character. Rather than being another begrudging stop on what must feel like a seemingly endless list of promotional work, we’ve had people bring their friends to the filming simply because it is so much fun.
Whether my bet that 3D will be a 2023 application of General Tzu’s principles proves to be right or wrong, only time will tell.
Regardless, as the NIL revolution transforms college sports, embracing the principles of Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" offers a strategic advantage to college coaches and athletic departments. By knowing their rivals and themselves and seizing opportunities visionaries can thrive in the fiercely competitive NIL environment. Perhaps when others look back 50 or so years from now, they will point to the innovations made as a reaction to NIL as the key elements that set college sports up for its next golden age.
- Bryan Lee, Popins Co-Founder