NIL Collectives Aren’t Harvard’s Ball Game

March Madness has again descended upon America. The bets are in, the brackets made — and mostly busted — as one of the most unpredictable and highly anticipated sport tournaments of the year is in full swing.

While Harvard’s squad did not make the tournament, the basketball gods have still managed to influence the team: Star guard Malik O. Mack ’27 has decided to enter the NCAA transfer portal after just one season at Harvard.

Harvard has much to offer as an institution, and Mack has performed well in the spotlight – so why leave?

Some have suggested that the answer may lie in the rise of name, image and likeness collectives, donor-organized groups that funnel money to attract star athletes to their universities. These organizations have proliferated at many colleges across the country, helping recruit the best talent to their athletic teams; yet donors have yet to form one for any Ivy League school.

Top college athletes today can treat their sport like a well-paying profession. Take the University of Texas at Austin as an example: One collective allocated $50,000 to every scholarship-eligible offensive lineman on the football team in exchange for their support raising awareness for charities.

Who would blame athletes for taking these deals? Basketball and football players at top programs can earn close to $75,000 from NIL collective agreements, with some even making six figures. These are real, powerful incentives that have the potential to change a team’s destiny.

While Harvard athletes can still profit from deals in which their name, image, and likeness are used by brands or other organizations, it has no NIL collectives to facilitate such deals or directly pay students.

In spite of that, we shouldn’t be too concerned about a looming mass athletic exodus. Players of Mack’s caliber — a starting freshman putting up big numbers — aren’t ubiquitous, and athletes who had their sights set on blue blood programs likely didn’t have Harvard at the top of their list anyway.

Harvard is an institution where athletics function as a high-commitment extracurricular activity — not a profession. While some Harvard athletes may graduate to play professionally, the main attraction of studying at Harvard is not preparation for the big league; it is the allure of a world-class education and a coveted Harvard degree.

Should donors form NIL collectives and woo students with extra financial incentives, Harvard’s policy of not offering athletic scholarships would de facto vanish into thin air, forcing athletes to prioritize their sports ahead of classes to the detriment of their education.

Rather than turning Harvard into a sports powerhouse, our donors can put their resources to much better use.

For those worried about Harvard’s ability to compete, look no further than the high-profile upsets that occur each year (including Yale’s massive underdog victory over Auburn) as evidence that big money and big names do not always transfer seamlessly to success on the court. The Harvard Crimson this season has gone 5-9 — evidence that star talent like Mack only gets the team so far.

In an ironic twist of fate, if NIL collectives did exist at Harvard they might disproportionately benefit those who hardly need it, like athletes in niche aristocratic sports that draw from the ranks of the already-privileged.

While NIL collectives continue to reshape the college sports landscape, it would be unwise to let them transform athletics at Harvard.

We wish Mack all the best as he navigates the process, but catastrophizing about the future of basketball at Harvard over the lack of NIL collectives overlooks the true purpose of a Harvard education.

This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.

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