Zack Cziryak
Trove Correspondent
Touching on Name, Image and Likeness, is it just the funds or having a small alumni base, not having that big name donor; is that the biggest thing holding Seton Hall back from a resource perspective?
"Like with a lot of things in life, the answers to this are complex. I would say there's a combination of things that puts Seton Hall in a challenging position right now. One is, will start with, that they're about a year behind, and I'm not going to point the finger at anybody, but I think Seton Hall's a year behind because the timing was bad for them, they just had bad luck in that they were like knee deep in this in this practice facility and devoting all their attention and alumni, donor base-type financial resources to this practice facility when the NIL really exploded into view. They were a year behind because it took them a year to really transition from like 'we've got to get this practice facility done' ... to 'we need to address this NIL thing.'”
"Could they have juggled it better and multi-tasked it? Yes they could have, but they had also spent years convincing their top donors that 'this facility is the priority and everything's got to go here.' And then it was a difficult pivot. And if I'm being completely honest, I think at the top of Seton Hall's pyramid, I'm talking above the athletic director, it's been a bit of an unwilling pivot. At Seton Hall you don't have a ton of big donors, and now you have to go from cultivating them on, 'we're going to do a building together' to pivoting to, 'we need to pay these players,' basically. That was a tough pivot for Seton Hall, and they probably didn't execute it very well. Some of that is because it was bad luck and bad timing. Some of it was because the donor mindset was all-in on the building and some of these old money donors don't want to pay players. They'd rather invest in a building that's going to be there than a player who might walk out the door next March. And yeah, I think Seton Hall's top, top brass, above the AD, was very skeptical of the NIL and they didn't want to make that pivot."
"So, when you put all that together, Seton Hall's a year behind. It doesn't mean they can't catch up, of course they can catch up, but they're about a year behind a lot of their peers in terms of NIL infrastructure. That's reason number one.
I don't think Seton Hall has as much of a donor base as some of these other schools ... but Seton Hall's not poor. They have people who can subsidize a solid NIL budget. It won't be tops in the Big East, but they have to make the pivot to do that. So, that's finally taking place. The light went on this spring and the pivot has finally begun with the hiring of an NIL assistant athletic director, with the transition of the Hall Ball events into the hands of a Frungillo, who's a big, longstanding legacy donor family with Seton Hall. These moves are all signs that Seton Hall is pivoting to really get behind NIL funding.”
"Seton Hall's not condemned to be poor at this but they're just behind and so that's manifesting itself in the roster they're putting together this year, but I don't think it'll always be the case. They'll eventually catch up to a reasonably competitive level, probably by next offseason."
"And part of it is Holloway's got to learn how to spend that money. There's no school for this, no way to experience it before. He's got to learn I have X budget, how much of that do I want to devote to a high-profile player who could be gone next year? How much of it do I want to devote to guys who I could potentially groom for a couple of years and develop together, you know? He has to make these decisions and there's going to be some trial and error here because a valuation mistake will be more costly to Seton Hall than say a Xavier that can afford to throw money at a big-man transfer SHU wanted but might not be academically eligible in the fall. Xavier can eat that cost if need be; for SHU it would be a catastrophic waste. That's the judgment calls that are playing out this spring.
I don't think Seton Hall is doomed in the NIL space, I really don't, but I do think that they're behind ... One thing about the NIL is you could fix that pretty easily. If you get some of these big donations of the kind that were made to the practice facility, suddenly next year you're looking at a workable budget and it's a new ball game come March once free agency season starts. I expect Seton Hall will address it and I expect Sha will figure out how to do this. Maybe he needs some help, maybe he needs some sort of GM-type voice in his staff who can help him figure all that out, but it is fixable for sure. I don't think they're permanently doomed, but they're a year behind and the results on the court are going to reflect that this year.”
It's been an exciting end of season and offseason for the Big East. Let's start with UConn. Fox kind of pushed for them to be brought in. They came in and won the whole thing. What does that mean for the Big East? For Seton Hall? And do you expect them to be gone in the next couple of years?
"It's a great question and this is really a big black cloud hovering over the league right now, right? I'll start by saying this. I was an advocate of the Big East adding UConn. I thought the UConn added a lot of value, traditional rivalry value, geographical value, brand name value and monetary value in that the Garden would just be hopping for the Big East Tournament and that they would really help the league in terms of their next TV contract, which is up for negotiation with Fox very soon and obviously the number one thing for the conference. That negotiation, that media rights deal that's coming up is the whole ballgame in terms of the revenue for the conference. Look, Fox wanted an 11th team, they wanted UConn, UConn moved the needle. Winning a national championship definitely moved it even further. And if UConn was to walk out the door for the Big 12 ... going back to ten teams everyone gets a bigger share of the revenue pie, right? But I think it would demonstrably hurt the Big East's leverage in media rights deal if UConn's leaving. And the people who were skeptical of UConn, who said, ‘they can't be trusted, they don't belong, they have football, you can never bring a team like this, it's a bad fit.' You know, they may well be right.”
“I don't know for sure I'm not reporting this, but my gut tells me UConn's going to leave. I think UConn's going to take the football money and run. Is it going to be this year? Is it going to be next year? I don't know what the timetable is going to be ... I don't know that any exit fee is going to be enough. Now, of course the Big East will take the exit fee money and spread it among their members happily, but they don't want UConn to leave because UConn's helping them with winning the title and giving them better brand exposure and a better atmosphere in the Garden and giving them better leverage on a TV contract. UConn's helping them. So, the Big East doesn't want them to leave, but I have to say, if they do leave, which I think they will, the naysayers who said you can't trust UConn, they're not a good fit, football is a fox in the henhouse. Those people will be right and I will have been wrong.”
“The Big East will have to learn the lesson, if you're going to expand again you cannot give a lifeline to another football school. Because right now, as volatile as the conferences are in the NCAA, the Big East is pretty stable. The ten basketball-first schools, where are they going to go? This is the basketball first home ... If the ACC collapses and Syracuse comes crawling back the way UConn came crawling back to the Big East when UConn basketball was dead in the water in the AAC, I would kick dirt in their face. I didn't say that three years ago. I would kick dirt in Syracuse's face now if they came back. They should have kicked dirt in UConn's face if they're going to walk out. They didn't get anything from UConn. They won a title. They cemented the Big East’s stature as a place where basketball-first can thrive, but ultimately the fox gets to the hens when you let football in."
