[Goose]

Maybe we're thinking about NIL the wrong way, at least in part.

We'll get a certain number of 18-year-old freshman recruits interested in graduating from the best University in the world. Others will want to maximize their NIL elsewhere, graduate...and then realize that a Tinkertoy Tech degree is not quite as compelling as that of Stanford. They're 23, they studied hard, graduated, but they have a year of eligibility left, so...perhaps we recruit, hard, all along an undergraduate's career.

I support the idea of recruiting hard, all the time, athletes that can be admitted to Stanford and help our programs. However, IMO the Tinkertoy Tech degree will work just fine for virtually all of them. Their career paths, even if they do not involve athletics, generally require a degree as a "credential", not as an actual tool. Almost any accredited institution can provide that.
 
It is possible that a very, very few may decide they want a graduate degree that allows them to move forward in an academic career track or they decide they want a technical/scientific/somewhat specialized career where a Stanford degree (and the associated education) would actually be useful to them. Maybe we could find one every five years. Getting them admitted then becomes the challenge. As we know from recent experience even getting students that have a Stanford degree admitted isn't at all easy. Somebody from Tinkertoy Tech will be much more difficult.

[Goose]

Maybe we're thinking about NIL the wrong way, at least in part.

We'll get a certain number of 18-year-old freshman recruits interested in graduating from the best University in the world. Others will want to maximize their NIL elsewhere, graduate...and then realize that a Tinkertoy Tech degree is not quite as compelling as that of Stanford. They're 23, they studied hard, graduated, but they have a year of eligibility left, so...perhaps we recruit, hard, all along an undergraduate's career.

I support the idea of recruiting hard, all the time, athletes that can be admitted to Stanford and help our programs. However, IMO the Tinkertoy Tech degree will work just fine for virtually all of them. Their career paths, even if they do not involve athletics, generally require a degree as a "credential", not as an actual tool. Almost any accredited institution can provide that.
 
It is possible that a very, very few may decide they want a graduate degree that allows them to move forward in an academic career track or they decide they want a technical/scientific/somewhat specialized career where a Stanford degree (and the associated education) would actually be useful to them. Maybe we could find one every five years. Getting them admitted then becomes the challenge. As we know from recent experience even getting students that have a Stanford degree admitted isn't at all easy. Somebody from Tinkertoy Tech will be much more difficult.