By Elena Durnbaugh
Assistant Editor
Posted: May 28, 2024 9:55 PM

MACKINAC ISLAND – Michigan State University coaches and administrators discussed the recent changes to college athletics during a panel Tuesday afternoon at the Detroit Regional Chamber Mackinac Policy Conference.

The discussion was moderated by House Speaker Joe Tate (D-Detroit), who once played for the MSU football team.

"We know just how important athletics is, not only to individuals that play it, their families, but their communities and what it means to the fabric of this state," Tate said. "I truly believe from the bottom of my heart, I wouldn't be speaker of the House if it weren't for my time as a student athlete, if it wasn't my time playing team sports."

Tate was joined by MSU women's basketball head coach Robyn Fralick, MSU men's ice hockey head coach Adam Nightingale and MSU Vice President and Director of Athletics Alan Haller.

In 2023, Michigan began allowing collegiate athletes the right to profit from the use of their own name, image and likeness. The transfer portal and new collegiate collectives are also changing how collegiate athletics operate, from recruiting to retention.

Haller addressed last week's proposed settlement between the NCAA and the Power Five Athletic Conferences, in which the NCAA agreed to distribute about $2.75 billion to athletes who competed before July 2021, when the NCAA first allowed athletes to earn money from their name, image and likeness rights and agreed to create a future revenue-sharing model in which schools could each distribute around $20 million per year directly to athletes.

Haller said it was still unclear how the agreement would affect MSU athletics.

"Many of the details still have not come out yet," he said. "We've been working on this for the last six or seven months. … There's just a lot of details haven't come out here. It's a 10-year process for the back damages. What are the payments over 10 years. There's escalators in there at 4 percent per year. What does that look like? So, there's still a lot to be determined."

College athletes should be paid, Haller said.

"There's a lot of money that flows through college athletics, and I think it's the right time for athletes to participate in some of that revenue," Haller said.

Revenue sharing won't change the availability of sports at the college level, Haller said.

"I'm not an advocate of cutting sports," he said. "What we've done in the time that we've been in leadership at Michigan State is … we use our resources in a way that allows all of our teams and all of our student athletes to be successful. … Things are changing. The way we're going to use our budget will change in the near future, however, we still want to be equity, opportunity and excellence."

The changes to laws around NIL and the collegiate athlete transfer portal has fundamentally changed the way recruiting works, Fralick said.

"There are so many more opportunities," she said. "The really good things haven't changed, but recruiting has."

That makes it more important for coaches and schools to communicate what's important to them when seeking athletes for their programs.

"We're really clear about what were about. Our core values. And I think our core values: you either want it or you don't, and I think it can filter people," she said. "There's great reasons why people leave, I think there's terrible reasons why people leave, but a lot of that also goes to what's important to a kid and what's important to a family. And I think with the portal, the way that we've used it is we really feel strategic about it."