After Historic Week, St. Joe’s Calls For NIL Funding
Last Wednesday, Saint Joseph’s University men’s basketball beat historic rival Villanova 78-65. This was SJU’s first win in the annual Holy War since 2011 and their first win on the road since 2004. Since the Hawks’ last victory in 2011, Villanova has accumulated nine March Madness appearances and two national championships. The Hawks have failed to make the tournament since the 2015-16 season. To call this a cathartic win for Hawks fans is an understatement.
After the game, the team’s Twitter account took to social media to promote Hawk Hill Alliance, SJU’s NIL collective that began operations at the beginning of the 2023-2024 academic year. The founding of this entity coincides with the team’s best season start in almost a decade. The Hawks sit comfortably in contention for an A-10 title.
Three days later, on Saturday, Saint Joseph’s played in the title game of the inaugural reconfiguration of the Big Five championship against yet another Philadelphia rival, Temple. Once again, the Hawks triumphed, this time by a score of 74-65, subsequently being crowned kings of the Philadelphia Big 5 (which now, thanks to Drexel, includes six teams). The Hawks once again took to social media to cash in on fans’ excitement and solicit capital to improve the NIL capabilities of SJU.
Coincidence or not, the NIL resources available to Hawk athletes have overlapped with the men's basketball team’s best start in recent memory. Taking the then-ranked Kentucky Wildcats (16) to overtime and then knocking off a ranked opponent in Villanova (18), SJU is relevant in the basketball world.
The women's hoops team currently boasts an undefeated 8-0 record. As a result of the department-wide athletic success, facilitating the robustness of NIL capabilities has become a large part of University messaging.
While most discourse around NIL is focused on high-major institutions, mid-major programs have seen tremendous gains by embracing NIL collectives.
St. Joe’s Conference, the Atlantic 10, has embraced NIL more than many non-high-major conferences, as twelve of the fifteen member institutions have established NIL collectives for their athletes. In comparison, only three of fourteen Coastal Athletic Association – formerly the Colonial Athletic Association – have established NIL collectives (according to On3 data).
While the robustness of these NIL programs certainly fluctuates, it will be interesting to see the correlation between programs’ embrace of NIL and end-of-year performance. According to Bart Torvik’s rankings, the A10 finished as the 12th-best conference in the nation in 2022-23; this year, they are ranked 8th – only bettered by one mid-major conference, the Mountain West, which features last year’s national championship runner up San Diego State. Last season, the A10 had six teams finish the season in the top 150 of Torvik’s ranking; so far in the 2023-24 season, ten teams in the conference hold a top 150 position.
Is the A10’s rise due to the development of NIL collectives? It certainly seems to separate themselves from their peers in the CAA. For mid-major teams, being able to point to both collectives and institutional NIL efforts seems to be a very valuable factor in player retention and recruiting. NIL is for all, not just the most prominent institutions; schools that have yet to realize this are likely falling behind.
