The 1890 Initiative

[Red Five]

15 minutes ago, desertshox said:

 

Okay, but are they eating the operational costs or are they using part of the donations as implied by the post I quoted?

 

Pretty sure they are eating the operational costs.  Or at least it says on the 1890 website they are:

 

1890’s operational costs are fully funded by Tom and Shawn Peed (including all expenses related to team salaries, office space, marketing, advertising, and more) so supporters can rest assured that 100% of their contributions will go directly to Nebraska student-athletes.

 

https://www.1890nebraska.com/about-us/

[SouthLincoln Husker]

1 hour ago, desertshox said:

 

Okay, but are they eating the operational costs or are they using part of the donations as implied by the post I quoted?

Eating the operational costs.  I'm paying part of it, as I'm a customer of Sandhills owned by Peeds, as my charges have doubled in the last 2 years. 

[Lorewarn]

13 hours ago, Dr. Strangelove said:

By all accounts, 1890 is a well run NIL operation despite weird message board missgivings about Matt Davidson. If you chose to donate, most of your money will go directly towards Husker Athletics - with a small amount going towards costs to run the operation. 

 

 

This might (mostly) be the case now, but seemingly always wasn't so. SSO has had a series of relatively informed/insider accounts of the state of NIL over the last few years:

 

https://herbieshangout.com/2023/12/22/nebraska-and-the-collective/

 

https://herbieshangout.com/2022/12/22/nil-reality-for-nebraska/

 

https://herbieshangout.com/2023/01/09/we-arent-getting-you-here-with-our-nil-bid-with-that-said-we-aint-losing-a-bidding-war/

 

Some highlights:

 

The reality is the fact that Nebraska was probably closer to 50th in terms of what we were paying guys and how we were organized. Don’t forget, we grabbed Trey Palmer by telling him he would sell NFTs to our fans among other things:

PRESENTING… Nebraska x Trey Palmer NFT. LIMITED quantities of these NFTs will be available for purchase beginning Saturday, April 9th at 12 PM CST until Sunday, April 17th https://t.co/IroV6Oktqe #PoweredByABM @treythekiid3

— Athlete Branding & Marketing (@_ABMusa_) April 8, 2022
That site can’t even be reached anymore. We did a little better grabbing guys like Ben Scott, Billy Kemp, and Jeff Sims the following year. But lost out bidding wars for guys like Walter Rouse to Oklahoma. Things just weren’t right. We needed a ton of help.

1890 Collective
I apologize for the language, but it was a f#&%ing s#!t show for Nebraska and NIL collectives the first 2 years. Luckily we had some of Nebraska’s most powerful donors Tom and Shawn Peed decide to reach out and ask what they could do to help. With Matt Davison no longer in a football role with the University, and having a pretty extensive resume for fundraising in different capacities, it almost made too much sense for them to have him heading the efforts of 1890. After all, Matt had already been doing most of the heavy lifting for securing the funds for the new football facility. Him being an alum helped, as he was going to have to have conversations with players on what the football team can do for them. And by the way, if football doesn’t work out, look what playing for the team can do for you like it did for him.

 

 

 

There was only one problem, Nebraska was trying to do it the way the NCAA intended it to be. We would talk to recruits and say “you can tweet about Runza” or other companies like that. “We have so much fan support here that as soon as you take off businesses will be lining up to get you in a commercial.” It made sense, there’s a ton of support for our beloved Cornhuskers. What Nebraska didn’t see coming was the fact that many schools were going to just give recruits money to sign. No need for the tweet or to spend time on a commercial, just ink your name and we are good.

 

 

 

Want me to really blow your mind? So we figured out that we needed to pay people to just come here… and we did a great job at that shortly after. Casey Thompson commits and Trey Palmer comes on up with Mickey with a sweet NIL deal. Only one problem, we actually ran out of money. Don’t believe me? One of our top transfers was told he had to wait to sign for us to get the cash to him. It’s almost too crazy to believe, but i’ll add some more points to this to let you guys see just how far behind we were. We were scrambling to scrape up any booster donations we could get to add a few more pieces.

According to On3 sports, Nebraska only had one player on the top 100 for NIL dollars, and that was Trey Palmer. You have schools like Illinois, Purdue, Minnesota, Northwestern, all with guys that according to On3 have higher NIL grades/deals than our top guy. Now, do I fully believe the valuations and those things on there? No, but they aren’t as far off as us being #3 18 months ago for NIL then finishing with the worst class since joining the conference. So again, either we are really good at NIL and just don’t promote that we are which would be the dumbest thing ever, or we just aren’t there yet.

[Dr. Strangelove]

21 minutes ago, Lorewarn said:

 

 

This might (mostly) be the case now, but seemingly always wasn't so. SSO has had a series of relatively informed/insider accounts of the state of NIL over the last few years:

 

https://herbieshangout.com/2023/12/22/nebraska-and-the-collective/

 

https://herbieshangout.com/2022/12/22/nil-reality-for-nebraska/

 

https://herbieshangout.com/2023/01/09/we-arent-getting-you-here-with-our-nil-bid-with-that-said-we-aint-losing-a-bidding-war/

 

Some highlights:

 

The reality is the fact that Nebraska was probably closer to 50th in terms of what we were paying guys and how we were organized. Don’t forget, we grabbed Trey Palmer by telling him he would sell NFTs to our fans among other things:

PRESENTING… Nebraska x Trey Palmer NFT. LIMITED quantities of these NFTs will be available for purchase beginning Saturday, April 9th at 12 PM CST until Sunday, April 17th https://t.co/IroV6Oktqe #PoweredByABM @treythekiid3

— Athlete Branding & Marketing (@_ABMusa_) April 8, 2022
That site can’t even be reached anymore. We did a little better grabbing guys like Ben Scott, Billy Kemp, and Jeff Sims the following year. But lost out bidding wars for guys like Walter Rouse to Oklahoma. Things just weren’t right. We needed a ton of help.

1890 Collective
I apologize for the language, but it was a f#&%ing s#!t show for Nebraska and NIL collectives the first 2 years. Luckily we had some of Nebraska’s most powerful donors Tom and Shawn Peed decide to reach out and ask what they could do to help. With Matt Davison no longer in a football role with the University, and having a pretty extensive resume for fundraising in different capacities, it almost made too much sense for them to have him heading the efforts of 1890. After all, Matt had already been doing most of the heavy lifting for securing the funds for the new football facility. Him being an alum helped, as he was going to have to have conversations with players on what the football team can do for them. And by the way, if football doesn’t work out, look what playing for the team can do for you like it did for him.

 

 

 

There was only one problem, Nebraska was trying to do it the way the NCAA intended it to be. We would talk to recruits and say “you can tweet about Runza” or other companies like that. “We have so much fan support here that as soon as you take off businesses will be lining up to get you in a commercial.” It made sense, there’s a ton of support for our beloved Cornhuskers. What Nebraska didn’t see coming was the fact that many schools were going to just give recruits money to sign. No need for the tweet or to spend time on a commercial, just ink your name and we are good.

 

 

 

Want me to really blow your mind? So we figured out that we needed to pay people to just come here… and we did a great job at that shortly after. Casey Thompson commits and Trey Palmer comes on up with Mickey with a sweet NIL deal. Only one problem, we actually ran out of money. Don’t believe me? One of our top transfers was told he had to wait to sign for us to get the cash to him. It’s almost too crazy to believe, but i’ll add some more points to this to let you guys see just how far behind we were. We were scrambling to scrape up any booster donations we could get to add a few more pieces.

According to On3 sports, Nebraska only had one player on the top 100 for NIL dollars, and that was Trey Palmer. You have schools like Illinois, Purdue, Minnesota, Northwestern, all with guys that according to On3 have higher NIL grades/deals than our top guy. Now, do I fully believe the valuations and those things on there? No, but they aren’t as far off as us being #3 18 months ago for NIL then finishing with the worst class since joining the conference. So again, either we are really good at NIL and just don’t promote that we are which would be the dumbest thing ever, or we just aren’t there yet.

I personally put very little stock in herbies hangout posts, particularly when he's using On3 Sports NIL valuations for players - numbers they completely makeup and use athletes Twitter/IG follower counts to  try and come up with an NIL number. Lets be honest: the reason Nebraska struggled in the early days of NIL was because the state of the team was terrible. Scott Frost was a terrible coach and Nebraska Football was at it's lowest point. NIL dollars aren't going to be flowing. I'm not sure if that's Matt Davidson's fault.

 

That doesn't mean what he's saying isn't true, but a lot of what he's discussing seems like collective growing pains and learning how to navigate the NIL space on the fly. I distinctly remember Oregon getting into NFTs for NIL purposes around that time as well.

[teachercd]

1 hour ago, Dr. Strangelove said:

I personally put very little stock in herbies hangout posts, particularly when he's using On3 Sports NIL valuations for players - numbers they completely makeup and use athletes Twitter/IG follower counts to  try and come up with an NIL number. Lets be honest: the reason Nebraska struggled in the early days of NIL was because the state of the team was terrible. Scott Frost was a terrible coach and Nebraska Football was at it's lowest point. NIL dollars aren't going to be flowing. I'm not sure if that's Matt Davidson's fault.

 

That doesn't mean what he's saying isn't true, but a lot of what he's discussing seems like collective growing pains and learning how to navigate the NIL space on the fly. I distinctly remember Oregon getting into NFTs for NIL purposes around that time as well.

I think you nailed it here.