Alabama, Ohio State, Nebraska Open CFB Practices to Public to Boost NIL Collectives

College football programs including Alabama, Ohio State and Nebraska are charging fans to attend practices and receive player autographs in order to fund their NIL collectives, Eric Olson reported for the Associated Press.

Nebraska and Ohio State are charging admission to preseason practices, while Alabama is offering fans the chance to pay for player autographs, per Olson.

Nebraska is charging $25 to attend open practice, while Ohio State is offering admission for $50, Olson reported. Receiving autographs from Alabama players meanwhile requires signing up for a $18/month collective membership.

NIL funding initiatives like these would likely only be effective for programs with significant fan interest, Olson noted. Nebraska anticipates 3,000 fans will attend practice this Saturday, while Ohio State caps attendance at 750 per practice, per Olson.

Ohio State welcomed fans to four fall camp practices between Aug. 1 and Aug. 4, for which admission included a commemorative pair of sunglasses.

The program also offered $150 "VIP" level tickets, which allow fans entrance to an "exclusive" viewing area, the school said. VIP tickets for Thursday's practice included a lunch with head coach Ryan Day.

Nebraska is meanwhile holding a single open practice on Aug. 3, while Alabama's open practice takes place Aug. 11.

Collectives, which have worked to fund NIL deals to college athletes since the NCAA first began athletes to benefit from them in 2021, were originally funded in large part by major donors.

But Seth Emerson reported for The Athletic in March that some members of the NIL industry were worried about "donor fatigue," or the concern that large contributors will grow tired of contributing funding.

The donor fatigue concern may be leading schools to pursue alternative methods of funding collectives. If Ohio State sells out all four practices, the program could make $150,000 from the open practice initiative alone, Olson noted.

The collective landscape could change as schools prepare to directly share revenue with athletes, a process that could start as early as the 2025-26 school year.

Ahead of the revenue sharing change, the NCAA has expressed interest in implementing new rules that would allow schools to directly run their own NIL collectives. That could eventually lead to even more creative funding methods, such as programs directly selling athlete-branded merchandise, in order to fund NIL opportunities that seem set to become increasingly important to building competitive programs.