Long Beach State Athletics!: Not competing on NIL but what about this idea?

I know this wreaks of desperation but we are where we are. For MBB, what if all or virtually all of our non-conference games are big money games against the blue bloods of college basketball, in other words, body bag games? Instead of paying the coach (like CDM) with the money earned from playing those games, it goes to the revenue sharing pot for MBB players. If we played 10 non-conference games with an average payout of $150,000 per game, that's about $1 million after subtracting travel related expenses. Dividing that up between the 13 players on the roster would have to be way more than the NIL each player is currently receiving. I know this almost guarantees that we'll be 0-12 before Big West conference play starts, but at least the players will get paid. I know this is wacky but couldn't this work?

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even if we could average $50k for 10 MBB players and $20k for 10 WVB, MVB, WBB players (leaving out baseball),

that would be a 'budget' of added $1.1 mil a year alone on top of schollies.

Beach would basically need about a $20 mil endowment for NIL which would probably keep Beach atop the Big West in key attendance sports

I was told by a Big West basketball player that AJ Mitchell got $300k his last year at UCSB, whether that is really true I'm not sure, and how in hades they are getting donors year after year to fund that obscene amount of $$$ have not clue.

funny money seems like

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https://longbeachstate.com/news/2025/12/3/womens-volleyball-womens-volleyball-adds-kyler-birkelbach-emma-garnder-in-november-signing-window

I guess proof reading is not on the supervisor checklist before putting out a press release. It's Gardner, not Garnder for heavens sake...

In any event, we're adding some nice height for 2026. Gardner is a 6'3 OPP/OH from Oklahoma and Birkelbach is a 6'3 MB from Texas.

There was a 3rd 6'3 girl who committed earlier, Ashton Nelson, from San Clemente but wasn't released as a signee. Not sure what that means but probably not good.

Players can enter the transfer portal starting, Monday, December 8. That's become a dreaded day for most schools outside of the elite P4 programs. Unless LBSU alum Palmer Luckey contributed millions for the NIL program, I suspect we're going to have defections. It's kind of obvious who the likely ones are - the ones who played well and any out of staters who may want to play closer to home. That's kind of like most of the team LOL...