Dawn Staley continued her book tour by appearing on Michelle Obama’s podcast on Wednesday. Staley discussed a variety of topics, including how South Carolina handles NIL and revenue sharing.
Dawn Staley continued her book tour by appearing on Michelle Obama’s podcast on Wednesday. Staley discussed a variety of topics, including how South Carolina handles NIL and revenue sharing.
Staley was a guest on the IMO podcast hosted by Obama, the former first lady, and her brother, former Oregon State basketball coach Craig Robinson.
They discussed Staley’s book, “Uncommon Favor,” childhood visits to South Carolina, and leadership. For example, Staley spoke about the importance of building a strong staff when she first got into coaching, and continuing to hire the best assistants that she can.
“The best decisions that I’ve made was to hire somebody – somebodies – that are much smarter than I am, more experienced than I am as a coach,” she said. “I don’t know everything, but I want somebody in the room to know. We have to cover ourselves.”
But the most interesting discussion involved how Staley and South Carolina approach NIL and revenue sharing. Staley began by discussing the challenge of allocating money.
“You’re leaving the school because you’re not playing. You average two points, one rebound, right? They can go ask a school like us for $100,000. And won’t blink. Now, if I entertain that, they’re going to take it to another school. Hey, South Carolina’s offered me 100 grand. You got 150? And it’s just that. So, for us at South Carolina, we’ve got a certain amount of money that we have to work with. And I don’t overpromise. I stay within the budget, the revenue sharing budget that we have.”
Scheduling goes into the budget as well. South Carolina is playing more neutral site games like the Players Era Championship and last year’s game against TCU. Those games provide NIL opportunities for players to earn money.
“I do some innovative things as well to help our players out in this space,” she said. “Like we play games for money and that money goes directly to our players. Things like that now, we have to go away from our home. We got to give up home games and play a lot of games on neutral sites in order for us to do that. But to stay in this space and to be competitive, you have to do some out the box things. Understand we lead the nation in attendance for the past 10 years, so to give up a home game might mean you’re giving up some wins that you would have had at home.
“Are fans supportive of the athletes getting paid?” Obama asked.
“Yeah,” Staley said. “I’m supportive. I really am. I think it’s long overdue. Yeah. I do think it’s out of control as well. So we got to find a way to balance, to keep it an amateur sport while allowing young people to go out there and benefit from their name, image, and likeness, because, five years ago, it was all the NC2A benefiting, and it didn’t trickle down to the players. And now it’s a waterfall down to the players.”
“Has it affected the locker room?,” Obama asked.
“No, knock on wood,” Staley said. “I hope it doesn’t. I think I’m clear. I do all my talking to the agents. And this is what it is. And I tell our players, too, like, I do make them sign NDAs about what they get. I do. Now, whether they can stick with that or not, some of them get disgruntled and maybe transfer and just say what I was making, and then they could stir up the pot. But I’m very honest. And I’ll tell them, there’s a reason why you get paid this and you get paid that, right? And I’ll explain that to them.”
Robinson interjected, “But they’ll find out.”
“Some of them are represented by the same agent as well,” Staley said. “That’s helpful too, in that way. They can help explain it because I’ll give my message to the agent, and the agent usually does a really good job because they represent they have the same issue. Like, if they get player X a deal for this amount, player B, who’s their client, they get them for this amount, and they find out, they have the same issue, so they know how to handle that dynamic.”
Staley’s appearance on the show was overshadowed by another sports-related podcast
Unlike Taylor Swift, Staley did not use Wednesday’s podcast appearance to announce a new album. However, she did jokingly announce that her next book will be a basketball murder mystery.
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Category: General Sports
