Recruiting battles for both high schoolers and transfers in the NCAA are turning more into bidding battles. While a school’s reputations and winning pedigrees are helpful, it now has to be combined with a hefty check to land top names in the sport.
This makes fundraising and donors all the more important. A big jump was made this past year with the ‘Cuse Athletics Fund, the primary fundraising outlet for SU athletics. It was announced this week that $50 million dollars was donated to the ‘CAF across the 2023-24 school year. This is the highest fundraising total ever and came from 14,367 donors.
While this money isn’t directly used for NIL (it can help with other athletics endeavors like facility renovations), it represents bigger fan investment into SU athletics. This growth goes hand-in-hand with three NIL initiatives directly sponsored by the School: Orange United, Athletes Who Care and SU Football NIL.
Additionally, the more cash that SU athletics can have in hand will be imperative as Power Four conference schools may be allowed to pay athletes directly soon. This is going to make fundraising all the more important, and with four straight years of growth for ‘CAF, the $50 million number seems destined to get higher and higher. This year was already $5 million more than last season.
It’s been an up and down past year for Syracuse athletics and money. It started in April 2023, when SU lost one of its top NIL donors in Adam Weirsman. This was a major setback, but SU then was able to get a major NIL boost behind the announcement of new football head coach Fran Brown.
The boost in NIL coincided with some big time transfers, including Ohio State transfer quarterback. Recently Syracuse AD John Wildhack said that McCord took half of what Nebraska was offering to come to SU, but there is no concrete number.
The world of NIL is an increasingly complicated one, but it seems like SU has been getting a better grip on it with fundraising over the past year. If Syracuse can keep up the positive momentum, that is how the school can keep competing for top of the line recruits in the future.
