Prohm talks NIL with Murray Rotary Club
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(On Thursday, Murray State Head Coach Steve Prohm spoke with the Rotary Club of Murray about a variety of topics surrounding the Racer program. The focus of Prohm’s speech, and many of the questions he received from the Rotarians, was about NIL — Name, Image and Likeness. If you weren’t at today’s Rotary Club meeting, I thought it would be best to present Prohm’s NIL comments in their entirety so Racer fans can continue to try to grasp this ever-changing, and incredibly important, world of NIL. After his presentation, Prohm took questions from the audience. I included all of the questions and answers that pertained to NIL. Some of Prohm’s comments were edited for brevity.)
“It’s great for them to have an opportunity to make money with Name, Image and Likeness, but there’s no question it’s become pay-for-play in many, many circumstances. Basketball and coaching is terrific. Our business is bad. When you listen to what certain coaches are doing with kids’ contracts for NIL, to be able to recruit the kid, sign the kid, but not pay the kid, it’s really sad. Anything we do NIL-wise, it’s going to be done the right way, done first class to make sure we’re able to do right by the community member and do right by our player. Anything outside of that is not what it’s supposed to be.
“You’ve got to try to get creative. The community has really been great with this. We’ve all kind of popped around. I gave all of our coaches about five-to eight restaurants. We’ve gone to different restaurants here, and what we try to get is a restaurant card where our guys can go anywhere in the community once a month and eat for free. Whether it be The Keg, whether it be Zaxby’s, whether it be La Cocina, you can name different spots. From August to May, we’ve been able to put a card together for those guys.
“We’ve had some really good people in our community step up. Popeye’s, Kevin Newell owns that. David Taylor and several other really, really key people have played a big, big part. The one thing I wanted to get out of the conference meetings is, ‘Hey, guys, we want our league to grow.’ We went from what the (Ohio Valley Conference) was to a Top-10 league in the country. We want our league to be a multi-bid league. That’s why we came to the Missouri Valley Conference. I asked all the coaches, ‘Put all your cards on the table. What are you spending on NIL? Where do we need to be as a league?’ I think, probably, six-to-eight of our teams in our league are right in that wheelhouse about the same amount. We’ve got to be able to figure out how to push the envelope because each year, talking to one school, they went from $200,000 one year, $400,000 last year, and $600,000 this year. That’s another mid-major that we’re competing with for recruits and national exposure. That’s just the reality we’re in.
“I’ve been connected to this program in some form or fashion for 20 years. I’ve seen Isaiah Canaan for four years. I know Kenny (Roth) coached Marcus Brown. Marcus Brown was here for four years, then (Marcus) came back here and coached. Donte (Poole) was here for four years and now he’s come back and coached. You can have a love affair with these guys. The hard part when you have these four-year love affairs is how do you get used to change? From a coach’s standpoint when you’re trying to build your program off family, heart-centered relationships, to where it’s a lot of business now. Everything is a lot more business-like. How do we adjust to that? The biggest thing I can say to you guys, it’s kind of like Ja Morant and Cameron Payne. We had two guys that came here for two years. You’ve just got to treat it like they’re going to the NBA. Invest to get them here, do everything we can to keep them here, but if they have an opportunity to better themselves and go on, we have to be OK with that because we know they did everything right by us in our program. I’ve had several kids leave early for the draft. You’ve got to treat it like, ‘Congratulations, Tyrese Haliburton. Congratulations, Cameron Payne. Congratulations, Taylor Horton-Tucker.’ But, we’ve just got to go find the next guy. That’s where you guys come into play. You guys are needed more than ever now, and that’s just the landscape we’re in. Whether we like it or we don’t like it, we all have to adjust and totally buy in.
“I’ve said it from Day One: Coaches change here, players change here. The one constant in this program has always been the community. That’s why we’ve been good, but you’re not selling tradition and you’re not selling the notoriety anymore. You’re selling the opportunities that you can give these student-athletes.
“BlueAndGoldStandard.com, there’s a thing we’ve kind of really tried to promote: $100 a month celebrating 100 years of athletics here at Murray State. If you did the math, $100 a month for a year is $1200. If you’ve got 100 people, that’s $120,000. In our landscape, you may be thinking, $120,000, you can probably get seven good players with that. No, you can’t. It’ll probably get you one or two in this landscape we’re in. Just think, $100 a month for a year, $1200. But if we had 100 people, that’s $120,000 and that is an enormous, enormous, enormous help.
In the Missouri Valley Conference basketball programs, what’s the middle of the pack budget for NIL?
“The teams, probably 1-8, are anywhere from $300,000-$600,000.”
And where are we?
“We’re in that tier of the top six-to-eight teams. There are several teams in our league that are right there in the same little wheelhouse. I think with teams in our league, it’s not that we all have the money sitting in the piggy bank, it’s that this is what our goal is to be at every year. When you’re in that room, one coach wants to be at $1,000,000, one wants to be at $600,000, one $500,000, and there were several in that $300-$350,000 range.”
How do you determine what a player receives in NIL? Plus, how do you manage if one player gets double what another player gets?
“If we had Isaiah Canaan coming back as a junior, then we know if he’s not going to the NBA, he’s probably worth paying. The guys that you think, whether it’s returning or recruiting, it’s the guys you think can impact winning the most. This is the first year we’ve had true NIL. I talked to my buddy at Furman, and he’s, to me, one of the top coaches in the country, and does a terrific job. NIL bothered his team. It’s a business now. You’re going to pay your best employee more than you are your second best employee. I think you have to do the best job you can possible to keep everything in house and to make sure whatever which you can, you may not be treating everyone exactly equal, but you’re treating everybody as fair as possible to make sure they know you have their best interest at heart. That’s the biggest challenge now in our business.”
Are the players required, if they’re getting NIL money, are they helping with community service and camps, and things like that?
“Everything is different. That’s why I’ve said it’s become more pay-for-play, to where your business is giving a kid that signed with a school $1,500,000, but he’s only got to make one appearance. It’s not Caitlin Clark doing State Farm commercials — that’s Name, Image and Likeness. That was the intent of the rule. Anybody that will receive any NIL money from our collective will do several community service appearances, (social media posts), appearances at the restaurant or a business — whether it’s four, six, eight, ten, that’s something that comes along with that.”
Thanks for posting this. Interesting read.