NIL orgs with media operations?

An interesting development has popped up in Miami. LifeWallet, which is a major NIL player at Miami, has apparently contracted students for media coverage for their site, lifnetwork.com. And they have acquired credentials to cover the NCAA Tournament, including the men's Final Four.



Curious to hear people's thoughts on this. There's an obvious conflict-of-interest angle that is plenty icky, but I'm a little more interested to see the long-term impact of NIL orgs publishing content.

 

Didn't an Alabama beat writer jump to an NIL? Do we know if that came with "coverage" (snort) responsibilities?

 

Aaron Suttles, late of The Athletic (and the Tuscaloosa News before that).

 

Does he provide "coverage" of Bama, or is there no pretense of what he's doing (which surely pays better than what I'm doing so good for him)?

 

No clue. I ain’t paying for that shit.

 

As you noted, it's all paywalled, but Aaron has a piece titled "Alabama basketball gave you lots of things to love and to look forward to" so yiiiiikes.

 

Speaking strictly as an amoral fanboi, I don’t want any NIL money getting diverted to some dude writing puff pieces. Put that towards another edge rusher.

 

Not the only Athletic staffer to have crossed the thin line between that outlet and the official, institutional side.

 

I think it's different from what Suttles is doing at Alabama because that is clearly in-house content. But the LifeWallet stuff is more insidious because they seem to be pretending they're sports writers. Which is not the case.

 

How did they get credentialed? That's disturbing.

 

I get that self respect don’t pay the bills but woof.

 

Truly gross.
NIL will siphon off cash that used to go to the annual fund for athletics, which most places use for current-use scholarships.
This is everywhere. Alabama just looks worse than others with that sort of appeal.