Study – HR departments could help with NIL, portal issues

To address the current disorganization in the NIL and transfer portal era, a study released Friday said each university should create a “human resources department” to enhance retention and relationships.

According to a study on the current climate in men’s college basketball by AD Advisors group, in conjunction with analytics firm Timark Partners, the headlines about top prospects who enter the portal and make millions with elite programs do not tell the full story. Most players — up to 70% — who enter the portal move to schools with lower profiles or even fail to find new destinations.

AD Advisors group is led by former Auburn athletic director Jay Jacobs.

According to the study, AD Advisors broke down college basketball into four tiers. Tier I consisted of programs that spent at least $4.2 million on basketball and maintained a top-30 mark on average on KenPom over the past seven seasons — a group that mostly features schools from the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC and the Big East. Tier II included mostly non-power conference programs, while Tier III includes the bulk of Division I programs outside those leagues.

Per the study, which addresses all transfers within the sport from 2019 through today, only 30% of the Tier I players who enter the portal stay in Tier I. The other 70% of those athletes either move down to a lower tier or fail to find a new home at all.

An HR department would help schools retain talent and also explain the challenges attached to the portal for those who might consider a move, according to the study.

“To better support the evolving intercollegiate athletics environment and to prevent the loss of students, the time has come for every athletic program in [Division I] to create a support program similar to a private-sector human resources department,” the study concluded. “Its purpose would be to help schools retain their student-athletes. Given the reality of the portal, either schools will get used to saying goodbye every year to players, or they need to find a new coordinated way to retain them.”

Jacobs, who hired Bruce Pearl at Auburn, said the portal and NIL climate have created a demand for schools to enhance the cultures of their respective programs.

“It takes three to five years to build a culture,” Jacobs said. “It can take 60 to 90 days to destroy one. And if you don’t do that with a student-athlete, if you don’t do what you say you’re going to do, they’re going to call you out and they’re going to leave. And, so, you can’t dance around it.

“The culture will come to the top regardless of what systems you put in place. If you do not have a culture of retention and relationships and onboarding, it’ll be destroyed. There will never be a foundation, and it will be revealed by those student-athletes so quickly, and it will be very difficult to rebuild that because the word will be out.”

In recent years, multiple schools have hired general managers to help them navigate the collegiate landscape. Jacobs said those roles are “transactional,” but an HR department at a school would be “relational.”

Overall, he said his group hopes its recommendations will help facilitate a positive change in college sports.

Jacobs said the data — the group has also studied the impact of the portal in college football — shows that most players aren’t entering the portal and signing with schools that have more NIL cash for them. That information could help those players make the right decisions for their careers and lives, he said.

“Beware, young man,” Jacobs said. “If you’re thinking you’re going to leave and the grass is greener on the other side, be careful of why that grass may be greener over there. It may be deceit and deception and you may end up not playing anymore or playing at a much lower level. And that can be good for some guys. For some guys, it may be that they were recruited to a Power Four or a big school and they can’t compete at that level.

“We’re not suggesting that everything is bad about this at all. We’re just showing the facts around these are numbers. This is quantitative and it’s undeniable.”