SeaTown Sports Brew: Huskies, NIL, and Seattle's Tough Week in Sports

Weekly Seattle Sports Roundup: Washington Huskies NIL player valuations, last week's scores, and a Substack link roundup

Oct 14, 2024

The SeaTown Sports Brew is a weekly briefing and roundup providing insight into Seattle’s sports teams and athletes. Have a tip? Leave us a comment or email me at kevin@seatownsports.org. Subscribe below if you want this in your inbox every Monday.

The Leadoff - What are Jonah Coleman and Will Rogers’ NIL Valuations?

I returned to Seattle a few weekends ago for the Washington-Michigan game. My wife and I (and now our son!) make an annual trip around this time of year to see the marquee Husky football home game. We saw Washington beat a ranked conference foe for the second season in a row. It was a treat.

The night before, my mom hosted family and friends for dinner. Besides showing my cousins how our baby could smile, I spent the night enjoying a few cans of the Montlake Gameday Gold Lager, courtesy of my brother-in-law. The beer is the official beer of the Montlake Futures NIL collective that supports athletes from the University of Washington.

I love the idea of drinking beer to keep Washington running back Jonah Coleman compensated. I don’t know if the pack of beer helps as much as going to a $25,000-per-plate dinner with Bill Belichick, but any little bit counts, right?

Eventually, this money finds itself in the hands of Montlake Futures. And eventually, this money gets players paid.

But, how much?

I’m not aware of any public database that shows how much college athletes are being paid, and I’m unsure whether a FOIA request to the University of Washington would turn anything up. Montlake Futures is an independent non-profit organization. This means that it is not a public/government institution that must release documents and records to the public.

Maybe, the closest to knowing how much a player like Coleman is paid is through On3’s NIL Valuation rankings. The rankings combine “Roster Value” and “NIL value.”

Roster Value acts as the value the athlete brings on the field, relative to the sport (football players are worth more than cross-country runners).

NIL value is the licensing and sponsorship value of a player.

On3 takes these two numbers and uses a proprietary algorithm to spin up its own “NIL valuation.” On3, to its credit, goes into great detail on how it comes up with these numbers and the authority behind them. It’s hard to evaluate without knowing the algorithm, but a gander at the list shows it might not be too far off.

Here’s the top 3, regardless of sport, as of last night (10/13/24):

Shedeur Sanders (Sr.) - Colorado QB - $5.8 million NIL valuation
Livvy Dunne (Sr.) - LSU gymnast - $4 million
Travis Hunter (Jr.) Colorado CB/WR - $3.3 million

Coleman is ranked No. 48 amongst all college football players with a valuation of $803,000. His teammate, quarterback Will Rogers comes in at No. 61 at $716,000. You can see the rest of the NIL100 here.

I’ll end with this. The valuation of a player isn’t necessarily an estimate of how much they are being paid. I’d have to imagine it is a starting point for a player in the transfer portal to know their worth. For example, Coleman likely wouldn’t transfer somewhere where he could only get NIL deals adding up to $400k.

I’ll leave you all to speculate on the valuation of Michael Penix Jr. last year.

Onto the rest of the Brew . . .

Winners and Losers

Losers - Washington Huskies (4-3) - Iowa smacked the Huskies, 40-16. Here’s my post-game analysis:
Huskies Fall Hard: Iowa Dominates Washington 40-16 – What Needs Fixing?
Kevin Cacabelos
·
Oct 13
Read full story
Losers - Seattle Seahawks (3-3) - The Seahawks embarrassed themselves on Thursday Night Football, being completely manhandled by the San Francisco 49ers, 36-24, on National Amazon Prime Television. That ends a brutal stretch where Seattle lost three games in eleven days.
Losers - Seattle Reign (5-5-14) - The Reign fell 3-0 to the Utah Royals. The team has not scored a goal since September 6th.
Losers - Seattle Kraken (1-2) - The Kraken lost two of three last week, including a 2-0 shutout against the Dallas Stars.