When Heather Lyke played softball at Michigan, an athlete profiting on his/her name, image and likeness was nothing more than a wild concept from someone’s imagination.

Today, however, when she is athletic director at Pitt — a school trying to keep pace in an increasingly competitive NIL world — Lyke has aligned herself with reality.

“It’s not a taboo topic. It’s what we’re living with,” she said Wednesday afternoon during a 45-minute question-and-answer session with reporters.

Pitt AD Heather Lyke on NIL and the “wild west” type of free agency it has created. pic.twitter.com/qADS2OlMeF

— Jerry DiPaola (@JDiPaola_Trib) December 7, 2022

Yet, NIL and its complicated sister, the NCAA transfer portal, have been — and can be in the future — a game-changer for many programs (positively and, potentially, negatively).

“It’s literally free agency, and there are no limits,” she said.

Lyke didn’t go so far to predict that it could turn the collegiate model into something akin to Major League Baseball, where the richest franchises, more often than not, get the most expensive players. But she believes it needs more uniform regulations across the U.S.

“It’s just hard to predict where NIL is going to go because the current model, in my humble opinion, is not sustainable,” she said. “We have to have a better solution as leaders in college athletics.”

Lyke said her department documents NIL opportunities, and Pitt athletes have earned their share. But it’s not consistent across the country, she said.

“There is no documentation that is shared among everybody. It is a bit of the Wild West in that sense. Ideally, you don’t have 50 different laws across the country, and, ideally, there is probably more structure designed around it.”

Pitt has stepped into the new world by forming a task force to internally monitor NIL and a collective of donors, called Alliance 412, to raise money to fund the system.

Lyke said state lawmakers also will help.

“Pennsylvania law will be changing slightly in January to make a few modifications to allow us to be a little more involved in arranging NIL,” she said.

Player movement has reached an all-time high, with high school seniors looking for dollars just like their older brothers and sisters in college.

1. In just 24 hours, over 1,100 players entered the transfer portal.

2. There are just over 11,000 available scholarships.

3. That's 10 percent of college football players searching for a new spot.

4. Early Signing Period is two weeks from now.

5. Not everybody is coming out.

— RJ Young (@RJ_Young) December 6, 2022

The NCAA transfer portal opened this week, and there were an estimated 1,000 players placing their name in it, but Lyke is banking on Pitt players’ relationships with their coaches to help stabilize rosters.

“At the end of the day, relationships matter,” she said. “I don’t know if you run for X dollars in college that it helps you that much more in the pros. Not sure if the example last year is in a better draft position today than they would have been staying here. I would argue that they aren’t.”

Pitt lost 17 players to the portal in 2021, most who had been reserves, but also Biletnikoff Award winner Jordan Addison, who transferred to USC and is projected to be an NFL first-round draft choice in 2023.

“Chasing finances, I’m not sure that’s going to be the right solution in the long term,” she said.

Pitt also had seven high school seniors who had made verbal, non-binding commitments change their minds this year in advance of national signing day Dec. 21. Lyke said she didn’t know if NIL played a part in those decommitments.

She didn’t accuse any school of tampering, but it’s a potentially concerning concept.

“The biggest thing I struggle with is the tampering aspect. That part does not reflect incredibly well on our profession,” she said. “The best thing we have going for us are our coaches and the relationship our coaches have with the student-athletes.

“When student-athletes have real, genuine relationships with their coaches, as I think a great majority of our kids do, they’ll go to a coach and say, ‘Look, I’m being offered something by another school. What can we do at Pitt?’ ”

Donors always have been an important element in college athletics. Now, many of those dollars are going to the collective, which, in turn, funds NIL so schools such as Pitt can remain competitive.

“We’re grateful for the support we have through our collective to help manage it,” she said.

---

Copyright ©2025— Trib Total Media, LLC (TribLIVE.com)

---