Senate Standing Committee on Higher Education

Good afternoon. Aloha, everyone. It is Wednesday, November 12th, 2025, 1:30 on the dot. We are here to convene a joint informational briefing between the House and Senate Committees on Higher Education. I'm pleased to cohost this briefing today with my counterpart, Senator Donna Mercado Kim.

So, in terms of level setting, today's discussion centers on how the University of Hawaii Athletics Department plans to stay competitive in this new name, image, and likeness, or NIL era. As we've seen nationally, the rules governing college athletics have changed dramatically in just a few short years.

With the House first NCAA settlement taking effect, universities will soon be able to make direct NIL payments to student athletes, bringing both new opportunities and new financial and compliance challenges. For UH, the question is fairly simple. How do we remain competitive and sustainable while maintaining our values as an institution that serves the entire state?

I'd like to thank Athletic Director Matt Elliott for being here to walk us through UH Manoa's approach, and also Coach Laura Beaman and Coach Timmy Chang for sharing their perspectives from the field and the locker room and where these policy changes ultimately play out in real life.

So, in terms of the briefing today, our intention is to have each of the coaches maybe speak for about 10 minutes each about how this is playing out in your respective teams. And then, Athletic Director, if you can kind of connect the dots and say what the approach is for the Athletic Department as a whole.

So with that. Senator Kim, any words?

No, I just want to thank them. I had a meeting with earlier and she kind of educated me on NIL and I thought she did an excellent job, and I thought she would be best to start us off and especially how this impacts our women's sports and NIL as well.

So, thank you.

Floor is yours.

Mahalo for having me here today. As Senator mentioned, we spoke probably a year ago and what came out of that. What came out of that meeting was that we need to do a better job of educating everyone about what NIL was.

And I appreciated the honest conversation about what our responsibility is to our athletes, to the state, to our community. And from a women's basketball perspective, I can tell you that it's already affected us in our recruiting cycles.

You know, we are going into our second and third recruiting cycles and we've already lost six to 10 kids because we do not have the funding available currently to retain the type of kids that we need. And when I say kids, I mean student athletes, respectively.

It's just easier to say to recruit the kids that we need to come into our University at the Mountain West level because that is the conference that we will be going into next year. So, we've probably lost six to 10 kids to not mid power force schools, but actually mid major schools...our colleagues, because they have been able to offer them money.

What I want to say to that is it's—recruitment is a part of this. But the retainment issue, I think is what's more important for me as a coach, on my side of the ball, if you will, that we are retaining our student athletes.

That we are not going to spend all the time in the world on helping these young women develop into amazing people and then we lose them a year later because someone walks in and says, I'm going to pay you X amount of dollars. We want to keep these kids.

We want to put stories and faces in front of our community so people know who these student athletes are. They say, I saw you walk in as a freshman and now you are leaving as a senior. There is nothing more frustrating than spending the time we spend with these young women and then they leave.

I don't think we have greedy student athletes. I don't. I think we have kids that want to live comfortably. I think we have kids that want to be recognized for the value they bring to our institution.

I think we have kids that feel like they are making money for institutions and want to see some of that money come back. I don't think at the mid major level at the University of Hawaii, I have amazing young women who are saying, just give me money. If I did, I wouldn't recruit them. I want culture kids.

We want kids to step in our locker room that want to represent this amazing place, be something bigger than than just themselves and play for something bigger than just themselves. I say that all the time.

It has been one of the best honors of my life to coach at this institution because I have felt from day one, I have been bigger than something than myself and that is how I will coach. I was sharing with Representative Garrett earlier that I spent a year and a half in the pros.

I got out of it because it was transactional. I don't want to be in a transactional business. I want to be in a transformative business. And we can do that and give NIL. If we don't give NIL, we won't have locker rooms to talk about.

I'm going to get a drink of water here because my mouth is dry. I'm a little nervous, I'll be honest with you. Easier to coach in five seconds left in a game than.

Coach, while you're drinking your water—still being a rookie Chair, I forgot to introduce the members of the Committee that are both here. So, if you can just take a quick break.

Thank you. I appreciate that.

To my right—members, if you could introduce yourselves, please.

Good afternoon. Thank you for being here. I'm Representative Terez Amato. I'm the Vice Chair. Thank you.

Aloha. Jeanne Kapala. I represent House District 5. I'm a former, UH Rainbow Warrior dancer, so I appreciate you folks very much.

Learned something new. In the Senate?

Troy Hashimoto. State Senator, from Maui.

Okay, please proceed.

I don't have to start over, right? Okay. As I was saying, I think it's important that we remain transformative in this landscape of change. We did not create these rules, and that's what makes this even more difficult for us as athletic directors, administrators, and coaches. We wanted kids to keep their amateur status.

We want kids to realize that the education piece, that degree, is the most important thing they're going to receive from the University of Hawaii. I don't think that goes across the board in our country. I think a lot of people are chasing dollars. I think coaches are trying to keep jobs.

And I do not believe that that is the thread that runs in our athletic department. I believe the thread in this athletic department is about the education. It is about the life skills, and you can do all of those things while continuing to win. We've had our challenges at the University in our Department.

We're all aware of that. We're moving forward. We have to. And I think with the leadership of President Hinsel A.D. Elliott, what Coach Chang is doing with football, we are on the right path to continuing to grow young people in the right direction, and we can pay them. We have to pay them.

If we don't, we will lose them, and our rosters will not look the same four years from now. We will have different kids, revolving doors, and in a place like Hawaii that believes in Ohana, believes in community, believes in that they want to see familiar faces. Will we have student athletes that leave? We will.

I hope that is not the case across the board and at high numbers. There is a challenge in your locker room, and I think it is our jobs as coaches to explain what NIL is.

It is our jobs to say, you have private conversations now with your families and with your coaches, and you don't go into the locker room and ask kids, hey, how much are you making? I would not walk in this room and say, hey, how much do you guys make? It would be inappropriate.

So, we can flip NIL on its head a little bit and say, let's use these opportunities to teach our kids some really adult topics. Get them some financial literacy. Let them understand you are now being thrust into adulthood, maybe too young, but we're going to help you navigate that.

As you navigate that, we're going to navigate community service. As we navigate that, we're going to navigate compassion and empathy because if I'm making money and you're not, let me go buy you dinner. That helps a team be successful. We have had these conversations with our players already where I've told them your money conversations are private.

They are yours. If you want to know, come talk to me and we'll have a conversation, why or why not? If you want, you know, to make more money, unfortunately, it's the same in life. Maybe you have to be better, or maybe you have to go to a different program, which we don't want.

But there are some real threads that are trickling through NIL that we can teach our players, and that has to remain in our locker rooms, and I truly, they will. I think as far as Title IX, and I don't have all the information—I don't know the formula—I believe everybody in the country is struggling with it.

We are not in a fair playing field as far as what sports generate the most amount of money. It happens at the professional level. We see that all the time. I do with all of my heart, or I would not be sitting in front of you today.

I believe that UH will do it with equity and honesty and transparency. If they did not, I would not be here today because I will not come in and fight for women and my program knowing that we're going to be shortsighted. What that formula is, I don't know.

But I do believe it will be fair and I will be given the NIL money that is reflective of my colleagues in the Mountain West. I believe that. If not, I will have hard conversations with my Administration because I will continue to fight for women. So, I don't want to go over my time.

I know we have questions on the backside. Again, I want to thank you for this opportunity. And if there's anything else, obviously, I'm here to answer questions. So, thank you for your time.

Thank you, Coach Beeman. Coach Chang, want to say a few words as well?

Yeah. Thank you, guys, for having us here today. It does mean a lot. Being here now coaching, going on my fourth year and having bled, you know, green and black and laying it down for the state, it does, it does mean something different coaching my alma mater in this world of NIL, it has changed the landscape.

You know, our football teams across the country are using a lot of money to pay players and it makes it difficult, needless to say. The thing, the two things that I would love to focus on is just retainment and recruitment.

You know, we had a tough conversation with a lot of community leaders going into last December, a year ago, on the state of our team. And when there's this thing called the transfer portal, the transfer portal is an allowment for your student athletes to get in.

It's a window, 6 days, 7 days, 14 days for them to get into a window where they can choose to go to another school, they can bow out of their scholarship and say, hey, I want to be recruited again by anybody in the country. That will happen on January 2nd to the 16th for the football window.

Last year, the dates were a little bit different. There was a two-week window in December and when that two-week window happens, you're kind of, you're kind of on your, you know, you're, you're trying to hold on to those guys. You know, there's guys that you recruited in high school.

Half of our team comes from Hawaii, half of our team comes from the mainland, and there's a good, there's a good number of guys that come from different parts of the country or out of country.

And you know, you build them from high school, you build them from junior college recruitment, and you start to develop these guys 1 year, 2 year, 3 year, 4 year. The value of these guys really start to go up as much as they start to play, they start to perform, they start to get better.

And in our sport, that dollar amount starts to get really high when you talk about NIL and house settlement money. Going into last year, we did not have a bank of money to go and retain our players and so, I really try to reach out to our community.

And it was at the same time where, last year, where we were changing over athletic directors, so a lot of our business leaders stepped up to really keep key contributors on our team to want to be here and stay in Hawaii and want to play for the State of Hawaii.

There's a couple guys that I want to mention and talk about through NIL that could help, that have helped and could help, and this is why we're targeting guys like this. Zen Satelo, who happens to be a fourth year starter on our offensive line.

He started last year, he had an opportunity to go into the portal, into this window and get big NIL money. He's a Waianae bred and born kid, played at Kapolei High School, but ended up staying here and staying home with the minimal amount of money that we got him. He also has a kid.

And so, as he's juggling student athlete life, he has a child that he's trying to raise and driving back and forth to be a student athlete.

This is where a lot of—some of—the NIL money goes to guys like him that are proven, valued guys that, you know, that really want to be here and will be a pillar in our community.

There's another player of mine named Jamar Sakona, and this story really resonated with a lot of the people in the community where, you know, he was a USC graduate, used the transfer portal to get an opportunity to come here to play in Hawaii, got really badly injured last year in Washington State. Had a bad knee injury.

He ended up—he ended up having to recover, but also, you know, he didn't have enough money to kind of live. His mom moved in with him, his family moved in with him, his sister.

And what he had to do is he had to work four days out of the week, from 10:00 to 2:00 at night just to make more money on top of just scholarship, per diem, stipend money, and then he had to show up at 6 o' clock workouts every morning and talk about a leader and a true leader.

He's the leader of our defensive line room, our defensive tackle room. He got healthy. He's a starter because of the work ethic that he puts in.

But, you know, NIL money found by Hawaii Warrior Football Network was able to help provide just a little bit more for him and his family, just to make him, you know, just take a little bit of burden off, you know, right now, currently, and these are issues that currently arise on the move.

You know, I just got called last night that one of my players, you know, is worth $300,000 on the market right now. And they're, you know, it's just back log, backdoor talking through agents in the world that we live in, and the guy does not want to leave. He wants to be here.

He wants to be part of this culture, loves the guys that he's playing next to. But that's just the world we kind of live in right now through NIL and some of the issues.

So, just retaining our guys, recruiting our guys, you know, that's, it's just part of what we're dealing with to maintain our roster and be at a level where, like Coach Beeman said, we want to compete and live on top of the Mountain West. And so, that's just some of the things.

But, you know, again, thank you guys for taking the time here, and I just wanted to share a couple stories with you guys about, you know, some of the things that, you know, maybe just enlighten you guys about some of the things that we're dealing with—on—the home front.

Thank you, Coach Chang. Also want to note the presence of Senator Kurt Fevella. Thank you for joining us today. Okay, are you all queued up with your PowerPoint there, AD?

I believe so. Yep. Looks good. Aloha. Good afternoon. Chair Kim, Chair Garrett, and members of the committees. Thank you so much for the opportunity to be here today. It really is an incredible opportunity for us to be able to speak about college athletics here in the State of Hawaii and especially at UH Manoa.

The title of our presentation, and I will keep these slides short. We've, we've produced them so that you all have them and can refer to them and we're sharing them with the public as well so that they have the information.

But in terms of going through the slides today, I will do so briefly so that we can get to your questions. But the title of the presentation, "A Vision for Excellence," is intentional.

We believe very much in the trajectory of this University and all that the University represents, both in how it presents an incredible education to our students across the board and represents the State of Hawaii in such an important way. And we believe in President Hensel's leadership that UH athletics can be a part of that.

This presentation though, specifically, is about how we navigate NIL—the name, image, and likeness issues. Our outline today is to just touch briefly on the impact of athletics overall and our vision.

So, I've been on the job now for about four and a half months, and after the opportunity to learn from our stakeholders around the community, our coaches, and our leaders in the Department and our student athletes, we've started to articulate what we believe is important for us to be successful.

And then, we'll really focus on name, image, and likeness, both nationally and here at home. So, our impact. There are elements of an athletics department that can benefit the community overall, and we feel strongly that these are true at the University of Hawaii. There's the economic benefit.

We have a report that is about 10 years old now that talks about some of that value and what we are committed to doing right now is figuring out a way to get an updated version of this report. Go out and find out. Let's get an economic impact study to show the real value across the community.

But some of the stats are in that report. We also speak to the impact of our student athletes and students in general, that athletics has always consistently, 500 students enrolled in our University, about 3% of the population, and achieving generally a 3.18 GPA, graduating at a very high level.

Over 150 degrees were awarded last year to student athletes. And then providing employment opportunities for students across the University. Really powerful for them to be able to go into our programs and start their careers as they move on.

So, that might be an athletic trainer, for example, who gets great experience with our student athletes and take that into their professional career.

In terms of community involvement, connections, exposure, we want our student athletes, their stories to be told so when we have the opportunity to have a football player on NBC Nightly News, that's great for our students, it's great for our community, and the University, but also, our goal and our objective is to be out in the community doing community service.

You saw work this weekend at the food pantry, food drives, things like that. So, it's about telling our story. Our vision is four elements.

And the four elements of our vision are to create an outstanding student athlete experience, to recruit and retain elite student athletes, create competitive excellence where we are competing at the highest level of the Mountain West, and to, again, have that bond with our community so that it is our team, Hawaii's team, and everybody can be part of our success.

And these are just a few photos for everybody to see. Some of our great alumni, our current student athletes, and the successes we've had. But let's get to name, image, and likeness, because that's what you all wanted to hear about today.

This is really just some highlights of the chronology of what has taken place in college sports to get us to this point that we're at today. And we've seen college sports operating for over 100 years with a couple key components.

One is that the participants have to be student athletes, and second, that they have to be amateurs, that they weren't allowed to make money from their experiences. The most important thing for us to take away from today, I think, is that they are still student athletes.

UH, as Coach Beaman and Coach Chang said, is 100% committed to the fact that our student athletes, whether they get NIL money or not, will still be here performing academically and earning their degrees, and we've shown a track record of doing that, and that won't change.

The fact that they're able to now share in some of the revenue, the overall revenue that athletic departments bring in, that is something that we are going to embrace so that we can be successful in this new landscape.

The bottom line is things have changed. Through litigation, through legislation, through a number of different things that have happened over the course of the last five or six years, we are now in a place where name, image, and likeness is a possible opportunity for student athletes to be able to earn this income while they are competing.

And really, this next slide shows kind of the two phases of this. From 2019 to 2025, we were subject to a lack of regulation. Name, image, and likeness allowed student athletes to work with collectives or to go out to third parties who weren't connected to the institution and get funding, individual funding.

This is from the point that California passed their first state law. About 30 other states passed laws since then. And some of these state laws are very positive, and we think that there is value in that.

For example, if there's a state law that says, you know, we don't want to see an NIL deal that, you know, is involved with alcohol or with marijuana or something like that, some states have done that, or to say that we would like to see regulation of the agents who work with student athletes, states have done that to protect student athletes.

We think that is really positive in steps like that. So, in terms of assessing the potential for a state law, that's something that we understand could make a lot of sense.

But we've lived in this period for these last few years, as Coach Chang was talking about, where there were outside forces that had control and input and influence on how college sports was run. We're now into a new phase, and this new phase started on July 1st.

And this is the space where we believe UH athletics can really thrive, and it gives us the opportunity for institutions to now control NIL payments to student athletes. There is a bunch of information here on this slide that says how the system is set up.

But what we want and what we are investing in is a concept and a program that brings control back into the institution so that our coaches can make decisions about how to build the best roster, as they were just talking about, and give our student athletes the funding that they need to just live their lives, pay their rents, be able to afford the food that they need to be successful, and maybe put a little bit of money away that they could set up themselves for graduate school or maybe a down payment on their first apartment.

Because we want, as they said, to retain and recruit our future leaders and have them stay here and be part of our future and if they can do that in Hawaii and we can help them, then we believe that would be really powerful. So, finally, how do we do NIL in Hawaii to be successful at our institution?

We believe that, again, if we put the focus on retaining and recruiting elite student athletes, it gives us a chance to be successful. We can absorb some of these transfer portal issues that they've talked about so that a student who's having a great experience doesn't want to leave; they want to stay.

We are requesting a $5 million annual fund to create a foundation for NIL because as Coach described, both coaches described, if we are just chasing dollars, constantly chasing dollars to be able to retain our students, that'll put us at a disadvantage.

But with that kind of funding as a foundation, we believe we can be extremely competitive in the Mountain West, and we will inform all of our coaches, these are your budgets, so that you can go out and then make your plan, and that is really important.

But we're not just asking the Legislature to do it on its own. Our job as an athletics department is also to be there and be an economic driver. So, what are the steps that we have to take? We are fundraising. We are actively fundraising in the community and asking philanthropists to support our team.

And we've created an account, it's called the Boost the Bows account, which is available for every single team, that people can provide donations and then those dollars can be used to give to our student athletes for NIL.

And then, we are facilitating NIL deals, both individual deals where student athlete might go to a local business and say, yes, I'd be happy to be in a commercial for you and get paid a few $1000 for that deal. That's great.

And then, also, through our corporate sponsorship program, all of the folks that, you know, buy in basically to advertising signage, video boards, commercials, et cetera. With UH, those corporate sponsors can do deals with our student athletes as well. And then, finally, licensing deals allows them to sell hats or shirts with their names.

So, it's our responsibility as well for us as a Department to execute and give ourselves the best chance to be successful, and if we do all those things, then, at the level we're at in the Mountain West, we believe NIL can be a successful program and support our coaches and our student athletes.

Thank you very much and of course, happy to take your questions.

Thank you, AD. I just want to introduce Representative Trish La Chica has just joined us as well—member of the Higher Ed Committee. So, with that, members, we'll transition into Q and A. So, Senator Kim, honor—honor is yours.

Okay, why don't I start? I'm a little confused listening to what you folks are saying about compensating athletes or compensating people to help pay their bills, to help take care of their family, help pay their rent, and maybe put even some money savings.

And maybe I'm wrong on this and I should be corrected, but if I read from the HALT settlement, my understanding that this is name, image, and likeness, and that the compensation should be based on whether their use of their name, their image, and their likeness, not necessarily whether they have bills or whether they have stuff like that.

And if I read this correctly, it also states that reporting will be conducted through NIL go, the College Sports Commission will determine whether reported NIL payments from boosters' collectives are at fair market value and any NIL payments that fail to satisfy the conditions of valid business purpose and fair market value must be adjusted or considered arbitration.

So, which is it? Is it just money to pay team members that you think need a helping hand, or is it based on name, image, and likeness?

Yeah, so there's—actually, it's both. The answer is both to your question. It's a very good question because there are so many different ways where NIL money can get to student athletes. So, the money that the institution provides, where we have direct relationships with the school, that's within our discretion.

And we can build whatever combination of dollars for the student athletes on those teams as our coaches see fit. That does not have to be submitted to the NIL, the NCA, NIL system. That just all has to stay within the $20 million cap.

But then, if it's an outside deal, so if it's a student athlete making a deal with a corporate sponsor, that does have to be submitted to the NCA and then they have to say yes or no, does that meet market value? So really, we have two different processes in which the dollars are being distributed.

And for us as an institution, yes, it's based on the NIL value that they provide to the school. But really, at the end of the day, it's what are the—what is it going to take for that student to be happy and successful here at our school? And that's what we're trying to address.

So, the monies that come from the institution and monies that will probably come from the state...

Taxpayers, can that, can that be challenged? Can another member, another member on the team say, well, you know, I think that I have more presence, I think that I should be getting more money and can that be challenged in the court?

No, as of right now, there is no challenge of that kind. This is really to the discretion of the institution and the coaches to put together the best possible roster.

So I think, I mean, maybe I could defer to the coaches here to talk about how they make those decisions so that they can be successful as a program overall. I don't know. Coach want to take that.

You know, the interesting thing for me is it's. They try to put a value on a certain position, let's say. And I think that the value is going to come back to what your roster requires.

So let's say I have 15 young women on my program and I have a starting center and she gets hurt late in the season, I know I'm not going to have her that following year.

I can go into that transfer portal, find a center, find out, you know, a mid major level center in the Mountain West, what is that young lady going to come to, uh, for. And that's how I'm going to look at assessing this is the nil money I would give her.

So from year to year it can fluctuate and it really depends on what your roster requires. Is that. I think that answers the question.

Yeah, I'm sure that does.

But what they use the money for is up to that player. It's less about what they need it for and more the value that they, that is required to get them to your roster.

Because having read and not in full detail, but the settlement and the judge said at the end of the day some of these issues are going to be litigated and that these student athletes have the ability to, to go to court on it.

And I'm not sure they don't explain which areas, but I can imagine that the fact that this has been taken to the courts by student athletes, that these are just things that are going to start to boil over.

And if we don't have a clear policy that is fair and equitable, then I think we will be in trouble. I mean, whether or not it allows it or not. But you know, you can go to court and sue for anything, right? So that's just a concern.

That's true.

Okay, thank you, Senator. For the athletic Director and Members, if you can just say who your question is directed to. So for the athletic Director you mentioned, you're going to come in for a request for $5 million annually for the NIL Fund. How did you come up with that number?

And how does that compare to our competitors within the Mountain West Conference?

Yeah, thank you for the question. There's a lot of different factors here. As you saw, the cap is $20 million. So that would be the maximum that we could provide institutionally to our student athletes. And that was derived from a formula that was essentially 22% of revenues at the highest power four level schools.

Those revenues were ticket sales, media rights, et cetera. So when you looked at our number in terms of where would that 22% be, it's not exactly $5 million. I think our football income is depressed because we don't have a stadium.

If you compare us to the rest of the Mountain West schools, but the 22% puts us in that ballpark. The other piece of it was taking the information from our coaches.

So talking to Coach Beeman, talking to Coach Chang, volleyball, baseball, et cetera, and trying to understand from them what are they seeing in the market that they need to make them competitive. The challenge right now is this is year one of this process.

So on July 1st was the first time any schools could write checks directly to student athletes. So there's not a lot of data out there yet that we can say this is what this school is doing or this is what that school is doing.

Most of it is anecdotal at this point, so I do hear occasionally from another coach or another athletics Director where they're at. I do genuinely believe that $5 million as a baseline for us allows us to be competitive and pursue our objectives of winning Mountain West championships. Again, we will also do work on our side.

I don't want this to come across as that's it. We have a lot of work to do on our side to fundraise and work on corporate sponsorships as well.

Can you speak to some of your fundraising goals within the private sector? If we're giving 5 million, are you hoping for like a dollar to dollar match out in the community or how are you envisioning this playing out?

Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's a good question. In terms of dollar for. I didn't think of it as a dollar for dollar match. I thought of it more as, okay, we have specific needs within our rosters, and if we've been able to create a baseline for our coaches that they know, this is what I can rely on.

So when I go to the beginning of each transfer portal window and build my roster, that's what I have. But then they will be able to educate us. This is what I need. On top of that, and if the dollars that we raise for NIL are sufficient, we also have operational needs.

So that our fundraising really has two elements to it right now. We've put for every team, not just name, image and likeness Fund, but also in our team's team, which is our operations Fund. And that's where we would need to raise money for additional nutrition to cover travel costs and things of that nature.

So I think if we got to that total of the, you know, sort of $70 million budget and then the nil starts at five and we could, we could go on top of that, then I think we'd be successful.

Okay, thank you. So, Senator, one more question. zero, you have a follow up just going on.

Yeah, the $5 million, can you tell us how it's broken down? I know 22.5 for football. How is the other 2.5 being breakdown?

Yeah, so that is a. The, we don't have the exact breakdown yet. We don't have the money. So right now we're just basing it on the dollars that come in. We are working with council, outside council.

For asking us for 5 million. So how is that 5 million going to be divided? Yeah, you should have a plan already.

So we do, we have a, we do have a plan. I just want to be respectful of the attorney client privilege because, because we've been guided by outside counsel of how to do this with Title nine. So that's the only element that I.

Would just say we give you is public money. So any dollars we give you, you should be able to tell the public how it's going to be used. And that's why the question is already football have said 2.5, so how is the rest going to be divided up?

Yeah. I can say that we, we have a plan. We have a thought of how that would happen. I just want to make sure that I don't violate the attorney client privilege in this setting. But in whatever way we can communicate to you that's appropriate, I would be.

Happy to share that you already asked for 5 million, so you have to have a reason for the 5 million. We already know that football is asked for 2.5. I don't know what you'd be violating where you say, okay, basketball is going to get a million, so this is ideal, right? If you give us only four.

Well, but we'll have to adjust it, right? Give us only 3. If you give us 10, we're going to adjust it. But you got to tell us how? I mean, how did you come up with five if you can't tell us what the breakdown is?

Yeah, we absolutely can. I just want to make sure I do it in the appropriate way.

This is not the appropriate place.

So do you think AD maybe in a few months time, once we convene the 2020 succession, you might be in a position where you can share those details?

Yes, again, I just want to make sure that I'm not doing something that's inappropriate based on legal counsel advice. But other than that, I would be happy to share those numbers as soon as we're able to.

Okay. Just. If I can ask one more question before we switch back to the Senate. So what is the approach for the University? I know you mentioned recruiting and retaining elite athletes, but is the University committed to making sure every One of the 500 student athletes gets some kind of a deal? I mean, who's the onus on?

Do they come to you folks and they say, I'm interested in this, or is it really market driven where these potential businesses out there target certain, you know, the elite, you know, the starting quarterback, for example. How is this going to work in real life?

So again, the two elements, the institutional side of it will be very much the discretion of the coaches. So if they know what their budget is or their allocation, then they will decide how to build their rosters that will not go to every student. So all 500 students will not receive.

I don't think that's the likely outcome in terms of outside entities. So it's a corporation or a local sponsor. That really more is how they are motivated. And they may be looking for a specific sport that they want to sponsor. Might be an athlete that has X number of followers on social media. That might be the motivation.

So that piece of it we really can't control. And the NCAA actually says that we should not be driving the external partners in terms of two specific athletes. It's more their choice and their opportunity to meet with the students, find the right fits, the right matches.

Okay, thank you, Senator. Back to your side.

Yeah.

So I guess going back to the cap then. So the 20 million cap is essentially just for institutional. So the external stuff, we don't even count then. So that's where it gets really interesting. Right, because the external stuff is kind of uncontrolled and you can't compete with that. Right.

So I guess in the Mountain West, what are we looking at? If it's a $20 million cap, what are other schools institutionally trying to give to the Nil. Do we know that right now?

We don't know yet again because it's all shifted. It was all external prior to July. Everything was collectives and third parties providing these dollars and there was no great way to track that.

We don't know. Intel people are I'm sure going to their legislatures as well having these same info briefings. We, we don't know what others are doing. Again, we have a lot of it.

Anecdotally, I can't point to any study or anything.

Anecdotally. What is it? Are they up to the cap or. In the Mountain West?

Are you asking? In the Mountain West, yeah. Our competitors. No, I don't think in the Mountain West schools are at the cap. The cap is really, that's the power four conferences. So the SEC, the Big 10, the Big 12 and the ACC, those are the schools that are talking about the cap. Other schools are not saying it.

The reality is, is that other programs kind of have this mindset that it's a competitive issue of we don't want to talk about our exact nil dollars because then it allows other schools to recruit against us. They're not spending as much as we are and things like that.

So for most programs they're trying to keep their, their numbers kind of internal if they can.

So I guess from the NCAA perspective, are they essentially telling you stay out of the business of the external deals or does the University still can play a helping hand in that?

We can, we can facilitate. It used to be stay out. That's how it started. So once the rules changed in 2019, we weren't allowed to be involved at all then.

It's evolved over the last six years where schools were allowed to have a more proactive approach and now we could know, facilitate connections if you will, but we really shouldn't be telling this entity how much to pay this student. That again has to really be market driven.

Right. But I think the connection is the powerful thing. And so I think what is uh, doing from institutional perspective to help build up that capacity to, to get those external deals right, like waiake Water right there, that, that I see that all over social media that your players are pushing.

But, but who is the, are we bringing on people to help us to make those connections and build that capacity up? Right. I think it's very Oahu based. I don't know if we're going neighbor islands, but I think there's a lot of businesses out there that probably would want to partner with one of your UH, players.

But part of it is they haven't been asked. Right.

Yeah. We have enormous potential in that space as an athletics Department to grow not just with the local businesses where we could facilitate the one on one deals, but, but also with the corporate sponsors who are supporting the University's athletics Department already and then they can do nil deals with the students. So our staff.

So have we allocated more dollars to that, you know, hiring on the people that we need? Because I think for me, great, we give you $5 million a year. I think we talked about this before. I'd rather build capacity versus just give you every year, 5 million. 5 million.

I'd rather give you the tools so that you can be sustainable with all these partnerships. But I don't know what is the value that you're putting on that of building up the capacity at the University.

Yeah. So we haven't been able to add a position for that, but we've added that to job descriptions and put that in the responsibilities of a number of different staff Members that we have.

And then we also have a third party partner who manages all of our corporate sponsorships and we're working with them to bring their program to uh, that allows corporate sponsors to understand kind of, okay, I see how I can get a value of an nil deal with a student that exists at a national level.

And we need to internalize that and do better at uh, for that. So you're absolutely right. This is the work that we have to do to do better on our side to get those deals.

So we don't have. So you don't. The ask part of your ask isn't about the capacity building. Because I would be like, okay, yeah, that position really makes sense if we're going to build capacity. But I hope you really think about. Because I think that's something I personally would rather fund. Right. As part of a bigger package.

But I think the capacity building is really important. So hopefully when you come to the Legislature, you'll be like, okay, yes, I'm asking for money, but we're building capacity too. Because if you're not going to ask for the position, then you're not going to have the position. Right.

Okay, that's a great point. Thank you.

Okay, Rep. Kapela, then I think we'll go to Senator Fevella after.

Thank you so much, Chair. Thank you for being here. I'm trying to fully wrap my head around nil what have other states. And you mentioned that it's still very new and that most of the other states don't really have.

Don't want to share what they're paying through nil, but what other states have committed public money to essentially pay these players to play at their schools?

I think it's about how each athletics department builds their budget. So whether they are going to cover, if you will, the deficit that the Department runs every year, they may just do that as part of how the institution covers those costs.

I think what we're doing right now is new and perhaps other states will do it as well. But what we want to be is very transparent about it.

That's why we're here and why we think this is such a great opportunity to say that this is money we would like to take if allocated to our budget for this specific purpose.

So again, I don't know that any other school has done this or state has done this, but that's, that's why we think this is such a positive way forward to talk about it very.

Openly, trying to be transparent. But to come here and ask for $5 million in the State of a like a budget crisis and then to not be transparent about how you're going to allocate that money is really shocking, if I'm being honest.

And then I think, I think the other question that I have is if you're essentially going to give away like private scholarships on top of the scholarship that these students are already getting, how are you also going to layer on that third party private nil deal that some of these people may have already through, whether it's through the portal or whatever else?

How are you going to account for all of those things? And are you going to account for a private deal that's made between a third party entity and a student athlete on top of, I guess this new public money that could be used as an nil deal on behalf of the University, if I'm gathering that correctly.

No, absolutely right. So I think, number one, just back to the attorney client privilege piece. Just in terms of how they are helping us create a formula to distribute those funds. It is based on a legal assessment. I'm not saying that I don't want to share that or tell anybody that.

I just want to make sure that I don't violate the attorney client privilege. That's the only point I wanted to make today, but absolutely would be happy to share how we intend to break those dollars up.

Was there a legal formula for football to get 2.5?

It's all part of that same consideration. Yes.

No, see, you're conflicting when you say that. Because if we can know what football is getting what's the legal issue with the rest of it? I don't understand. I mean, we don't have to know the formula to the detail. But like I would ask coach Beeman, how much do you think you need for.

For women's volleyball, for nim. Women's basketball.

I mean, basketball. I've. I've asked for 450,000 as my. As my minimum, including fundraising efforts that I'm going to continue to do. And then I do know that I'm going to have some young women that are going to give some of those third party collectives. So if I can jump in. So let's say give an example.

I have a young lady that I'm recruiting and I know that I have $100,000 in my nil budget today. Let's just use easy numbers for my brain. So I say to this kid, I can bring you in at a $10,000 nil deal, that you're going to get money from the institution, right?

Institution's going to cut you a check. However, that 10 months, eight months, whatever it is, we have that contract. It goes there. All of a sudden a third party comes in and says, hey, we really like your social media. We want to also coach. We are going to do this. I have to stay out of that.

I don't want to track those numbers. I have to stay out of facilitating those third party deals. Otherwise it becomes tampering in a way and I don't want to mess with compliance. So if Wikea approaches me, I can say, you can go to anybody on my team that you want.

I don't want to know what you're doing with them because I don't want to facilitate outside money because we're talking about a $20 million cap that our institution can have. These third party deals. Coaches stay out of them. They do count for the kid.

Do they count for the 20 million cap?

No. No. The 20 million cap is the cap that came to be because of the house settlement. And every institution in the country can go up to $20.5 million. They cannot go higher than that as an institution. Third party collective deals are, are completely different.

So I could have a waikea come in and say, I'm gonna give you Sammy, whatever. I'm gonna give you an extra $500 a month. Do these extra posts. They have to write up a completely different contract. That contract has a value on it. I don't get into that.

I don't want to know what they're getting from that third party because I don't ever want people to think I'm asking boosters to pay my players because that's illegal. The 20 million cap, I can set that number and say, I need this position. I have X amount of dollars.

And so you're going to come in and you're going to get $10,000. I am going to track that money. I am going to know about that. So when I'm talking about a $450,000 pot of money for me, I've talked to some of the people on the Mountain West, I don't get straight answers from a lot of them.

And again, it goes to the competitive advantage that Adeliot was talking about. If I can go in and say, well, I know San Jose State's only giving 2000 I can get this kid, but I know someone else is giving this, I've got to stay away from those kids.

We're not going to publicly state the amount of money we have in our nil because it puts us at a disadvantage. So that's part of why allocating money out publicly becomes a little bit treacherous for us. And I'm saying $450,000 because I'm just, I'm going to say because I want this to be transparent.

I want you guys to understand.

But that's, that's the issue when you ask for public monies. That money they can easily go to the budget and see, zero, you know, Legislature gave the supports at University of Hawaii, $5 million. How they cannot might not be in that budget, but they're going to know that.

Now in a lot of cases, my understanding having been this across the country, a lot of the schools do not get state monies. Hawaii is one of the few and even President Henso will say that we give more state monies than a lot of colleges and universities.

And that goes true for athletics because they have big boosters, they've got big alumni, they've got a lot of money that they generate for their institution through that means that does not have to be transparent.

Yeah, I don't have the professional athletes that maybe someone else will or across the board to your point that we don't have that same pot of money that's kind of unending. And when you hear the money that's going on across the country in these power fours, they've already reached that $20 million cap.

And now the third party collective money is just mind boggling. We're not going to get there. We're a mid major. We just need enough to Fund so that we can be competitive within our conference. And whether that $5 million is going to go up, down, that I don't know, you know, as far as formulas or whatever.

But I know if each of us coaches are asking for what we really, truly believe, we need to be competitive, not dominant. If I wanted to dominate, I would say I want $800,000 as a women's basketball coach in the Mountain West, then I can go buy a roster that's going to win every single year.

I just want to be competitive and funded so that I can bring in the athletes. And then as coaches, we have to do our jobs. We have to develop these young women.

Of course, please, I think, okay, when we're talking about these third party collectives, what is the University doing to protect some of these students? I recognize now you're not taking any money. There are, I think there have been universities that have taken portions of some of the NIL money that has been given through third parties.

I recognize you're not going to do that. But what, what are you doing to protect these students from bad deals that might hurt them in the long run and thus hurt the University?

So the deals themselves do have to be disclosed to us. So there's a process where we can still review the deal. And again, now that it has to go through the NIL GO system where it gets approved whether or not it's on market value. So there's really two checks there to make sure that the student is not.

There's not something happening inappropriate.

And then one of the things you mentioned is this. You can essentially buy a roster.

I think a concern for me is that if we're spending Hawaii public money, so Hawaii taxpayer money to essentially buy a roster, could that mean that we're now going to be spending Hawaii taxpayer money to get these students from the continent to come and play here on Hawaii teams to make us more competitive?

That's not something that I want to fund. I do not want taxpayer money from Hawaii island where I represent, going to people that aren't even from here at all, not even from a neighbor island, but not even from the state. That's a concern for me.

May I be completely honest? I have to recruit worldwide. Hawaii is not a basketball state. I offer the best talent every single year. Those kids are leaving here to go to the continent because they're getting more money than I can give them.

I've lost three kids in the last two years to different schools because I could not pay them to stay. So kids are leaving here because we can't Pay them. And I have to recruit across the continent because we are not a basketball state. I don't have 15 young women that are Division 1 level. I just don't.

I wish I did. zero my gosh. It helps everything about attendance, community, all of those things. I have already offered 27s and 28s, meaning that's when they graduate, hoping they will stay here to represent their state. But if someone pays them from the continent, guess what they're going to do?

So I don't want to go build a roster from around the world. I want to keep the best local kids here. Absolutely. But we're going to have to find the mix and the balance. Football is different. This is a football state. It's a volleyball state more than it's a basketball state.

So Timmy does have that opportunity to keep more of these guys here. But guys are leaving here all the time to go play on the continent for the money that they're getting paid. So it's a double edged sword or the exposure.

Well, Konawaena is in my district, which I know is one of the big basketball schools.

Konowena is great. And I recruited the Molina girls and they went to Washington State because they wanted a better opportunity.

So if you would have had a fund like this here, could you have kept specifically local talent 100%?

What is there, is there an opportunity, Is there a potential legal challenge if we are only using this money to fund local talent to stay here in Hawaii as opposed to being able to use it for say anyone you recruit from the continent. Right. Or globally?

I don't know. It's a good question. We can look into that.

Thank you. Sorry, Chair.

Thank you, Senator Fevella and then Rep. Amato afterward. Thank you.

Sorry, I just kind of, you know, 2.5 million going to football. She's saying 400,000. You're saying it's. It's a legal situation, why you cannot do the breakdown. But then you, you okay to ask for $5 million of taxpayers money. See, we have to sell this to the taxpayers. You guys don't.

So now you're talking about legalities then illegalities that you just can't get 2.5 because he's selling over 400,000 to me. We're doing this thing right now. This is the entitled generation. We will keep you because we're going to pay for you. This is college, not professional. Because we like to be successful and we want winners.

We will pay to be a winner. Give everybody one trophy, give everybody one check. So when is that Going to stop. So now the last player on a team that don't maybe have as much talent, they're not going to get so much. But they're there working every day, working hard, Blood, sweat and tears.

But they may be never going to reach their potential. They're having a hard time. They're getting a hard time making ends meet. They cannot afford to park, probably even go to the school. But what about them? What about the ones that don't have the name, image and likeness that is being solicited by outside resources?

What are we going to do to them? What about the other sports though? We get women's basketball, right? What about the other, how much other sports we have in the University? This is just two. Now what is the rest of the Sports?

We have 21 teams.

21 teams. 2.5 for 21 teams. Reason why you're not gonna say that is because a lot. And you said Title IX and I understand that. Because the women's sports are gonna get the less of the amount. And that's what you guys working on legally. And that's always the case. It's always the case.

So how are we gonna get the brightest and the best? Where we always gonna get again highest and the best is gonna go to football. Who gets all the boosters? We get all the fundraisers, we get all the corporate sponsors. But then we will give them one time 2.5 million.

Not even a big eye because football is a football state. But what about fairness? Everybody got a trophy. Shouldn't everybody get the same amount of money? Every single team from the University of Hawaii get the same amount of money for the $5 million. You don't think they should. Every team, 20 teams.

Shouldn't we give the $5 million, spread them out to all 20 teams evenly. Then you don't have to worry about anything legal. You see what I'm saying? So we come in over there, half of the pie is gone. I got a problem with paying anybody to come to our school.

If we cannot because our coaches or our school is not good enough for them to come, then we got to give them money, right? The whole thing was with having certain coaches at the school was to attract that kind of players, not money.

When you have one well known basketball, football or baseball coach that kids want to come and play for them. That was not attraction. Now we're using money so you can be a second fourth week coach. But you have a lot of money. You can buy the team, you can buy a roster. I have a problem with it.

You Guys say there's a 20 $1.0 million cap. So now all of these other guys are going to be making side money on the side and everything that you guys gonna stay away from. Yeah. Again, football really get 2.5. So the football team get 2.5. Image and likeness, they probably gonna get plenty corporate sponsors.

Football team gonna make 10,10 times more than a basketball player. So why wouldn't we be fair? Why don't we be fair and, and say right here today, don't worry about any legal, at least $5 million.

We're going to spread them evenly on all the sports and then let them go make little corporate deals and decide deals on the side. But we're going to be fair. Every single team at the University going to get the same amount of money. Why can't we do that? That's my question.

Because I have a problem with that, Senator Favela.

Unfortunately, we already do pay our are players in the form of scholarships, grants and so forth, waivers of tuition. So it's not the actual dollars, but they do add up to dollars.

Right, all of that, but the scholarships on top of the 5 million. Right, right.

So to your point, the scholarships are compliant with Title Ix and that is an even equal balance to be consistent that those scholarships are shared across men's sports and women's sports. This is a new model of adding these payments directly to student athletes.

And it came out of a whole bunch of lawsuits and litigation and sorry, legislation that said now some additional dollars can be shared with student athletes based on the revenue, essentially the revenue they generate through their nil.

And that's why the dollars are now not being, these additional dollars are not being spread evenly across all teams because it's supposed to match with the players who came to the courts, the football players and the basketball players and came to the courts and said, we've been generating these dollars all of these years, television deals, all of the money that's coming in based on football and basketball, that was essentially the lawsuit.

And as a result the settlement and the structure the courts put together was okay, you should be able to share in that revenue. So the sports that are generating the revenue are disproportionately getting the proceeds from the lawsuits. And that's how they built the model going forward.

And again, this is just, you know, we're only four months into it, as I've said. But the idea is to avoid future lawsuits where students would again come and say I didn't receive anything, even though I was on a team that generated additional revenue. For the institution, this is a way that you can share the money.

And that's why I've said that we are referring and working with outside counsel to, to make sure we distribute the money in a way that is compliant with Title IX and the spirit of these lawsuits.

And then the only other thing I would say in response is, it goes back to the beginning of this conversation, is that we believe college athletics has a tremendous impact on all of the students who participate.

So if you're one of any of the 500 that are participating in college sports right now at the University of Hawaii, you, you are getting an excellent education. You are getting a tremendous opportunity to pursue your dreams and participate in your sport. You're being taught by outstanding coaches, and we do have outstanding coaches.

And you're getting to live out your dreams. You're getting to play at the Division 1 level in Hawaii in this special place surrounded by an incredible community and a chance to compete for conference championships and in some sports, national championships.

So for most of those student athletes, they are getting an extraordinary experience and they want to be here. They want to be here. The dollars are not the issue.

What we're talking about is in some sports now, the landscape has changed and we want to surround that incredible experience of being a student athlete at the University of Hawaii. All the wonderful things that happen when you're here with dollars, additional dollars that are based on this revenue share model so that they can then move forward.

So all the things you just said now selling points of these athletes coming over here, right? But then now we're going to give them money. You just want to hype up the whole thing about having coaches and great education and the whole reason why they're coming here with scholarships and everything. But then now we'll be competitive.

We got to get divided up $5 million. That's the issue that I have because again, it was very successful before, very successful. We won titles and we won national titles. Very successful in what we had. So now I don't know why the formula changed because of this so called lawsuit, right?

But then you asking the taxpayers to give you guys 5 million to compensate those players that thinking that, hey, I should get this, I make the best water, I'm a good water boy. I want to make sure I get a composition because I'm on TV, I'm great on social media for Gatorade.

So now I want some money too. Now because I'm on social media, I get about 3 million followers watching me fill up the water jug.

I'm going to turn it over to Representative.

This is a scenario.

Thank you, Senator. I'm going to turn it over to Representative Amato in just a second. But I certainly respect my colleagues and their desire to protect taxpayer dollars. That's something, a responsibility I take seriously. But I think from my standpoint, what's different now is we live in a different competitive landscape.

And I think we have to decide as a community do we want, uh, to remain competitive or not. And if the answer is yes, then I think we're going to have to step up as a state to give this University the resources that they need.

How we go about it, of course we need to be committed to transparency as part of that. But let's say ad like say, you know, the 5 million doesn't come through, what is going to be the impact on the program?

Because my concern is that we're going to be talking about, you know, we're not going to be able to recruit the best and the brightest, as Senator Favela said. And it's going to be kind of this death spiral where people, fans are going to lose interest because the teams aren't going to be competitive.

And then before you know it, they're going to be talking about possibly moving down to Division 2 or just, you know, disbanding the athletics Department altogether. So just like, how do you respond if you don't get the 5 million? What do you see as the impact on the program going forward?

If we don't have the dollars to support nil, then it'll be harder for us to retain our student athletes. The long term consequences are that we know conference realignment is a constant challenge. Right.

Even though we are in the Mountain West today, whether that's in four years or six years, whatever it is, there's going to be a reshuffling. And that's why we've identified as part of our vision the belief that we have to be the best program, the premier program in the Mountain West.

Because whatever happens going forward, we want to be at the front of the line. We want people to recognize how valuable our media rights deal is, how valuable our programs are in our student athletes success.

And if that happens, then that allows us to continue to compete at this level and represent the state in such a positive way. If it doesn't happen, then we risk, you know, whatever's the down consequences of realignment or, you know, as you're saying, student athletes just won't be here and our teams will lose at a much.

More frequent level going lie down and roll Over.

Absolutely not.

That's what we're asking. What's. What are you going to do?

Well, and that, that's how we ended the presentation is saying that it is on our part as. And that's what they've been doing. We've been out there every day raising money. Exactly. To do that this year. Because this year we have no money. It's just what we can generate on our own.

And, and all the fundraising have raised money. Right. For the program.

That's, that's what we are doing to keep up month to month.

This past year for the, the program, we.

We've committed about $1 1/2 million right now. Now all of that is not raised, but we've committed about one and a half $1.0 million at this point for nil for this year.

How much money did the foundation bring in and your corporate sponsors bring in for the football program last year?

Last year? Oh, I don't. I don't know that number. Off the top of my head, I can find out.

It's quite a bit. Right. Because the state only give you so much. I think at the last meeting we had it was like 40 million they raised.

Isn't some of that though for operational expenses? Right? Yeah, sure. I think some of that's. And I don't have privy to the budget. That's way above my pay scale. I just have mine.

But I think a lot of that stuff goes towards operational expenses for the Department, like our operate, travel, recruiting, salaries, all the fringe, all of those different things.

I understand, but I just want to know what that number was raised. Raised. Right, because the community has in fact raised money in excess of $5 million for the whole program right now, whether we can step it up. And that's part of the recruitment.

When we recruited for the AD position, who can come in and bring in corporate money because we know that we have a limited amount of budget.

Right.

I'm sorry. Can you...?

Not at all. Thank you, Representative Amato, for your patience. Your question, please?

No problem. Thank you, Chair. So, I have a few questions, if you don't mind. First of all, quickly, if you've committed one and a half million so far to this, is all of that going to football, because you stated that you want two and a half million for football?

So, the money that you have committed thus far, is that all going to be directed towards the football program?

It is not, no. It's across multiple sports. Yeah. But again, it's—we're trying to raise money to pay the students as the year's going on. So, we're actively fundraising right now.

Yep, understood. And you also mentioned teaching the student athletes financial literacy. This is quite important. Is—what are those requirements for the students?

Requirements? I think. Do we—I don't think there's specific requirements. Right?

I don't think there's requirements. I mean, this is—they're receiving money from the institution. I think it's our obligation to sit them down and say, hey, this sounds like a lot of money. It's not, or this is a lot of money, so have you talked to a financial planner, you know, give them some financial advice without getting ourselves in any kind of trouble?

Obviously, I know through our student affairs program downstairs, they have done some financial literacy classes as well. A lot of this comes down to this is just such a different landscape with these kids.

So, is this taxable income to the students then?

From—yeah, we're not tax attorneys, but from what we understand, yes.

Okay. So, will they be guided in how to set money aside to pay taxes? I mean, I know a lot of college students that they get money. and they get really happy. They stick in the bank, they spend it all, and then it's tax time, and they're like, oh, no, what do I do?

Financial literacy and high school.

Yeah, this is definitely something that is discussed, and it's been discussed across the country that all of these kids that are making a large sum of money are going to be hit on the backside. And yes, I would hope—I know that downstairs when they're filling out paperwork, there is a conversation about, you need to fill out this form.

There are—what is it? NIL Go. Some other platforms on social media.

Not social media, but software platforms that they have to enroll in that do advise them on what forms they have to fill out, dates to times, because this is a monster of a situation that we're dealing with. And again, we're coaches. I'm not a tax attorney. Right?

So, going and talking to someone about taxes is something that's not in my, my experience. So, we make sure that they are filling out and joining the different platforms, getting educated in all the different areas that they, they need to be educated in, so they do not get themselves into trouble.

When it comes down to it, we can remind them, but it's just like us—we have to turn our taxes in on time or there's going to be, unfortunately, some consequences.

So, how much does it typically cost for the third party to manage these contracts for the students? Do they charge a percentage? How much are they taking from the student?

So, we are in the procurement process to try to find a third party to help us manage NIL overall. That would be—the models there are mostly a flat fee that's charged to the Department, not to the students. But then if they have an agent, that agent could certainly charge them.

That's what she's asking. How much those agents charge for the student?

Yeah, that's a variable. There's no limitation or rule in terms of what a college attorney—a college agent—could charge an individual student.

And what is the projected program implementation overhead cost?

So, a program like we were talking about with the external advisor or an external program to help the pitches that we've received are between 60,000 and 80,000. That's what we're looking at right now for that kind of third party.

But then, as Senator Hashimoto explained earlier, you know, we probably need additional staff as well to help us manage this.

So, are you going to be pulling that from the 5 million that you're asking for? Or are you going to ask for that in addition to the 5 million?

No, we were not intending to ask for that out of the 5 million. No.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Representative Amato. So, continuing the questions, we'll go to Senator Hashimoto—or Senator Kim first—and then just want to acknowledge the presence of Representative Kila, district 44 coaching. I think he still has two years of eligibility left.

Okay, couple questions. First of all, in one of your slides, it said back pay to former students. So, who determines the back pay and is that included in the 5 million?

It's not included in the 5 million. It's being taken out of our distribution from the conference. So, it's NCA is basically going to settle—settling—that litigation. Goes back about 10 years to student athletes who played in the past and then those dollars will just not be distributed to us from the conference.

So, we've already budgeted for that in the budget that we've set for this year that we will not...

What's that budget?

I think the average expectation is it's about $400,000 a year that we will not receive from the NCA that we would normally have received.

So, these former student athletes will come in and ask, what if it's more? What if they ask for more?

This is the settlement. This same lawsuit that we're talking about, the house settlement, the back pay is part of that, so the plaintiff's attorneys have agreed, and for all the class members who opt into the settlement, that's how they would get their money.

Yeah, but the student themselves didn't opt in, right? So, they could go to court. The families could go to court.

You could. Yes, I think you could have students who choose not to opt into the settlement. That's possible.

And then where would that money come from? From your budget.

Yeah. I mean, then you'd be starting this litigation all over again. I mean, this has been going on for years and years with this class action, so I think that's, you know, certainly, it could move through the courts.

Local families may not be aware of this. And so, they're going to find out, hey, junior, you played six years, four years over there. You age and weren't you the leading score? You should be—you should get some money.

And then you tell them, oh, yeah, you know, 200,000 and go, no, I think my son should get 500,000. And then they end up getting Attorney Green or some attorney to come in and fight for them. Right? I mean, come on.

Yeah. I think that I know personally, because I was part of the process at a different institution, the NCA spent a lot of time over the previous years identifying every single person who could be a member of that, collecting contact information so that they could reach out to them.

And do we have a list?

Yeah, I know that that was part of the process. I certainly could.

What's the list? I mean, how many kids on the list do we know?

Yeah, I didn't do that here. I don't know. We'd have to go back and get that for you.

Can you check and see on that?

Oh, sure.

Okay. The other question is, as you're raising money for NIL, or as students are getting contracts from private businesses, at what point does a company sponsors a student or give money to the institution? How does that?

Directly to the student. So, the corporate entity...

Oh, I know it goes directly, but it's in competition. So, now they said, oh, we were going to give this to UH, we're going to give 10 million, but now we're going to—we're going to, you know, get your quarterback and we think he's doing a great job, so we're going to give him 5 million.

And so, sorry, UH we're only going to give you five or we're not going to give—we're not going to have enough money left over to give to the school.

Yeah, that, that is one of the challenges now in, in managing college athletics is some of the dollars that would have been given to a school directly are now being used for, for NIL purposes. Yep, you're absolutely right.

So, is, is this individual that you folks are contemplating hiring would be managing that or is this the foundation now is going out and competing with companies to, instead of giving it to the student to give it to the institution?

We're trying to do it all together as one team effort. So, we have foundation staff members trying to raise money from philanthropic purposes. We work with a multimedia rights partner, which is Learfield, and they work directly with our corporate sponsors. And then again, we have a marketplace where individual students and companies can meet up.

Our goal is to say all of these things help us. All of these things help us retain our student athletes and market that and promote it. That's what we're developing right now is sort of that communication to make sure that our entire community understands the different ways.

So, there are different roles within our department or within our vendors that work with us, but all of this together hopefully puts us in a position to retain our students.

The other part though, is that as you're recruiting money for your programs overall, right, for your operational program, then you have another pot of monies that you're recruiting for NIL, and then you have another pot where they do directly with the students. So, now you go to, you go to bank of Hawaii and say, okay, can we get so much for NIL and can we get so much for operational?

I mean, who's going to decide as to how that money is going to be divided? Because you're coming to us for 5 million.

But if we don't, we say we're only going to give you a million. So now when you go out, you're going to be recruiting and asking for funding for the additional 4 million plus for the operation. How is that going to work?

Yes. So, the idea is that we present to our corporate entities and our sponsors all of the options, like a menu, if you will. These are the different ways that you could support.

So, if a bank comes to us and says, I'd really love to support Wahine Volleyball, and we'd like to put $100,000 into their NIL account, but then I'd also like to give $200,000 just for operations, for the whole department.

We are showing them all the different ways they can support us and how that will then enhance our partnership. So, it's our job to present all of those to them, and then ultimately, it's their choice of what's best for them as an entity.

But the reality is, and having been in marketing and sales, is that they don't normally come to you. You go to them and you go to them, and you don't give them a smorgasbord. You tell them, you know what, we need this amount for this.

Right. That's what we're doing.

You know, instead of giving them options, you want them to fund the most important thing that you need. And right now, you need operational funds, and then you're going to need NIL, so I'm just kind of trying to figure out, how are you going to prioritize which one becomes the ask? Yeah, if you give them 10 different, 10 different choices, it's—that doesn't work well.

Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. These are nuanced conversations where we get to know our partner, we have good conversations with them to see what their objectives are, and then we try to align.

Because I think for anybody, whether it's a corporate entity, a philanthropist, somebody who wants to support a program, they want to know what's the vision, what is the impact of their dollars and how can they be a part of that? That's what we're trying to show them and then be accountable for.

But you have some leverage over leading them to where you want to go.

Right. Absolutely. I agree with that.

You're going to lead them.

100%, yes.

I know I'm asked that question quite often—hey, Coach, we want to give money to your program. Do you want it in your boost the bows or do you want it in your—our team, Hawaii's team? And that's, that's very challenging because I need more in both. And so, I'm just being honest.

I need more than both so that I can, again, my operational budget is also on the same level playing field with the Mountain West. And I look at my NIL and it's kind of the cart of the horse, right.

If I win, do I get more money from my operational budget because we get units or we get money for going to the tournament that's going to require me to have players, or do I need an operational budget so I can do things differently?

And so, it is very nuanced, and it keeps me awake at night to try to figure out what I'm doing with this money and how we're going to juggle because we do need to be funded in both of those areas.

And honestly, for me, I'm looking at my roster daily and I'm like, this kid's going to be really good. I don't want to lose her. I need to start boosting up this account now or I'm going to lose this player. And I'll try to figure out how to trim the fat, not that there is any in my operational budgets. I don't know if that helps, but it's both. It's both.

And I think the University has to trim a lot of their budgets to get rid of some of the fat.

Representative Kila, then Senator Hashimoto.

Thank you, and I know there was discussion about ticket sales and then potentially mechanism that could allow somebody to further with their purchase of a ticket if they wanted to potentially send money to the NIL program. Is that still the intent or discussion of UH athletics?

Um, yeah, we, I don't think we've paired those two things directly. I think we've been saying since day one that there are so many different ways to support our program. And ultimately, the dollars that are generated by ticket sales will do one of those two things—go into our operations account or go into our NIL account.

But I'll look at that. That's something we could, we could check into in terms of whether or not as the ticket sale is being made, do we also solicit the NIL funding. Totally understand option.

And then maybe if it's too early, then, if you were to solicit then the NIL sale or donation, does that go into a master pot or would it stay in the athletic—the athletic sport it was collected? Like could a woman's basketball solicitation NIL donation then go towards another UH athletic program?

Yeah, we've set up the NIL page where it's a choice for the donor, so every single team has their own account.

So, if we were to tie them back to that account, I mean tie them back to that page, once they made the purchase, then they could give their donation to any team that they, that they chose. Or we have one overall account that we could also use the dollars to go back into.

Are there other schools in the country that use that model?

Yes.

And has it been effective?

Again, effectiveness, effectiveness is hard to measure because we've only been doing this for four months. So, we don't really know what the outcomes are in terms of the fundraising. We know what schools in the Power Four are saying because they're saying we're going to do the 20.5 right away. For everybody else, I don't think that that information is, you know, it's just not available yet. It's too soon.

And then one more question, Chair. So, what the—are then the NIL pots that are generated under UH athletics, is that a—I'm assuming, yes, it's a reportable account for—so Legislature?

Each one is a foundation account. So, yeah. Okay. I think that would be very easy to see.

Oh, they're set up as a foundation account.

Each—yes, each account is a foundation account. Within UH foundation, there's a boost, the Bows account for every team.

Oh, okay. Thank you, Chair.

Senator Hashimoto.

I'm just trying to understand, from a, from a student athlete's perspective, how do they know—so when you take a look at a formula of what you're trying to offer them, if you can't control the external stuff, how does that even factor into them wanting to stay then if you can't give them some type of concrete amount of the external stuff?

I know you can tell them the institutional stuff, right? But I would assume the external stuff plays a very big role now because it's uncapped. But it sounds like the coach can't coordinate.

I would assume someone in athletics can coordinate, but at some point, they got to know, okay, I know I can get this much in external stuff, so maybe there's incentive to stay. I'm just trying to understand how that all works.

Yeah, I think you're right.

In an ideal world, it's all happening at the same time. We are presenting what the institution is able to offer and the corporate sponsors are there at the same time saying if you stay, if you going to be on the roster again for the next year, here's a deal that we're ready to sign with you.

So, we've got to get that timing right as transfer portal windows are about to open, you know, we're going to a position a timing right now where the football season is going to be over in a few short weeks and these important decisions are going to have to be made.

So, we need to be communicating with our corporate sponsors that this is the time where we really need you all in a collective way to step up and help our student athletes. So, you're right, that's very complicated puzzle, but we need to try to coordinate it to happen simultaneously.

But, but I assume—okay, so the coach is not going to be in that conversation, but someone at the University.

Again, we can work directly with Learfield and then there could be third parties as well who don't want to do a corporate sponsor, who want to do it directly. Those deals have to be reported to us. We may not know about them at the outset. So, there could be some activity that we don't know about up front.

That's fine, but I guess if you take that step further, so what is the coach involved in? I think—so, is the coach expectation to be you go out and get the corporate sponsors versus the one-off deals? Because I think I was—I went to an event and I was talking to the golf coach and I was like, I was just curious, cause we were just sitting there, I was like, so what's your role in fundraising?

Oh, I gotta do everything. And I was like, everything? So that's kind of crazy, right?

And I would assume that's for every other coach. And of course they're there to coach golf, football, you know, basketball. Fundraising is not their thing. But I guess institutionally, like, what is the delineation?

So, if you have a really good coach, you can fundraise, are they gonna be really successful versus you just have a really good coach that can coach, not so good at fundraising. I guess, what, what is the athletics department's plan?

Yeah, I think that's why we're making this ask, because we would love for our coaches to focus on student athlete development. Coach the players, allow them to get what they need academically and grow as, as student athletes. Not worry as much as what's happening off the field or off the court in terms of raising revenue for their department. They've had to do it.

That's been the reality. These two coaches and many others in our Department have had to sponsor a dinner, go out to a golf tournament, do all the things, have the lunches, all the things to bring revenue in.

I'm not saying they're going to stop that, but if we have some sort of foundation, some funds that we can say, at least as a baseline, we're in a good place to maintain this roster, that puts less of that external burden on them, because we'd love for them to spend as much time as possible with the student athletes. That's our goal.

No, I totally get it. And I think the power of the coach is very, very real. I think, you know, if Timmy makes the call, of course it's going to be hard to say. No, but, but I think what, what is it, what is the goal though? Like, you know, we're going to give five.

What, what is the athletic—what is the ballpark we can expect of increasing in the fundraising? Right? I talk a lot about capacity, and I think now is the time we need the capacity, but are we looking at half? Are we looking, you know, what are we looking? Just a million and a half? I don't know.

You just, you got to give us the numbers, so at least we know we give the five, we will expect to get something out of that. That's more than what we did before, right, because we know the times are extremely different these days.

That might be the right number.

It might be half of that on top.

That's very realistic. I don't know that for sure, but that's the goal. Yes.

That's aspiration.

Sure. Oh, I would love that. Aspirationally, I would love that.

Thank you.

Okay. Coach Chang, I know you've been very patient there, sitting for the last hour. Just a couple of questions. Want to make sure you have a chance to put, provide your perspective as well. So, in terms of your approach, I mean, I give you all the credit in the world.

I think in many ways, you're kind of dealing with one arm tied behind your back and the fact that a lot of schools that are power forward, they have world class facilities like University of Oregon, that just is a draw itself. But I think what you're doing with establishing a winning program, that's probably the strongest recruiting tool.

But can you explain to us, not giving any trade secrets or anything like that, but say it's your Alma mater is St. Louis, you have a four star or five star recruit, knowing that they're gonna potentially get, you know, a seven figure deal, do you even talk story with them or you just figure, you know what, chances are slim, I'm gonna focus like maybe on the two or three star and try to build a competitive team around that?

Yeah, 100%. I think our approach to recruiting is we start with the guys that want to be here and represent the state, whether they're, whether they're from here born and raised, the way we start our recruiting process is always is trying to give as much.

You know, we try to look at talent as who can help us win in the Mountain West, and that's what we start with. And that's where scholarships are given to or awarded to the local players first. If there's needs. If there's needs.

And football is a tricky sport because you need big guys, you need speed guys, you need a different plethora of guys, guys that kick the ball. And so, you might have to go out elsewhere to get other parts or other, other team, other team members.

And so, half the team is made up of the guys in the island, the other half is going to be made up of people all around the world, including the continent of the United States.

If there are really good players in Hawaii, and we've been blessed, I think that's where, that's where the Hawaii Senator Curtis talking about us winning is that, I mean you got three quarterbacks starting in the NFL, you know, in the last three weeks, all from Hawaii. You know, you got world class talent here, football wise.

And so, we really celebrate from that. You know, we pull from that. But the fact of the matter is that we can get all of them, especially in this day and age of NIL. You know, there's just a dollar amount that sometimes you just can't compete with or there's other opportunities of going away.

But we do well with, you know, starting with the guys that want to be here, recruiting them, loving them, just, you know, and really the expectation and the sell point is really the 20 to 30 year plan.

It's about building, building community leaders, building people that are going to stay here and you know, you're going to, you're going to give them a great education, you're going to give them a great place to play where football is very loved.

And then, on top of that, you'll put them in front of leaders in the community that they're going to build relationship with and then one day raise their family and be here. And that's the goal. And so, we keep the door open to everybody. The fact of the matter is we're not going to get it.

We know we're not going to get everybody, but we do also track all the players that are going away and with the portal opening back up, we also give opportunities for guys to come back and come and represent the state on the back end.

And so, you know, it does start with our Hawaii players and a lot of the NIL money does go to those guys, just on the fact that we're just appreciative of them being here and representing the state.

Thank you for that. I know the local kids that you do recruit are very aware of the situation at Chang Field, but players from the continent or from abroad, they probably played in high school stadiums that were nicer than Chang Field. How do you like pitch that to your players?

Do they come in and say, like, coach, what is this, you know, kind of a thing or how does that impair your ability to recruit?

Yeah, you know, they really don't mention anything about anything other than just an opportunity to play. I think that's where, you know, Division 1 football, you know, there's, there's 130—32—teams and there are only so many spots, even with the house settlement, there's only, there's only so many, so many kids that can be on a team.

And so, that's the opportunity that we sell. And so, when, even though you look at Clarence TC Chang Field, you know, we practice on it, we play on it, we might be the only, the only school in the country that only has one field to practice on, but, you know, I think we just don't make excuses.

Just like, just like everybody else here, you know, all the people that love Hawaii football, all the people that grew up here, all the people that follow us and then are appreciative is that we just don't make excuses. Just like how these people, how our people here in Hawaii don't make excuses.

And we just go out there and we play what we have and we go. But, but the thing is, is that college athletics has changed and we are, we are trying to change with it and that's, that's the fact of the matter and, and stay competitive.

But our Hawaii, our Hawaii players, families, they continue to be the, you know, the, the ones that provide for our football team in our state.

Thank you, Coach. I just have one question for the AD, then we'll give it back to Senator Kim and maybe we'll try to wrap up this hearing at that point.

It was noted that the Mountain West Commissioner made a statement about the expectation is that the University will get a new stadium or is continued membership in the Mountain West is contingent on UH having a new stadium to play in. What would be the impact, hypothetically speaking, if that stadium didn't come through on the University?

I think the consequences could be whether or not we retain membership in the Mountain West Conference. I think that's pretty straightforward.

Okay, and then what would be kind of the, just kind of playing that scenario out, then where would that leave you? Again, no one's wishing for the new stadium to fail or anything, but just in terms of any contingency planning on the University's part, are you guys thinking about that just in case it doesn't come through?

Sure, yeah.

I mean, certainly in the period that I've been here, the focus and the emphasis has been on the project in Halawa to be able to build the stadium in that site and working closely with the stadium authority, Stanford Car, and understanding that plan and supporting it because it's the, it's the plan on the table right now.

If that's not going to be the plan, then obviously we do need to have contingencies and, and look at what else is possible, but that's where we're putting our energy right now to support that project.

Understood. Senator Kim.

Yeah. Let me just comment. You know, when NCA said that we needed to have a stadium that sat 15,000 people and then they changed it and now no longer is a requirements, so things change.

So, I don't know the fact that requirements of a certain kind of stadium might be in the picture a year or two from now and you know, the issue about not being able to recruit people because we don't have a good stadium, I think the media has hyped that up more than is actually happening. Right, Coach?

And I've said over and over again we've had Aloha Stadium for 50 somewhat years and we didn't get a winning season or championships all the time. What do we have, three championships in the whole 50 years? I mean, so the stadium itself I don't necessarily believe is why people come here. Right?

So, for all the reasons that you brought, but I just thought I'd say that because I know the media always writes that up. Question for the AD is these individual deals with the companies, you said that they have to—UH has to know about it. Right? They have to disclose it.

So, the question is, does that just get disclosed to the public?

No, they have—they have decided from the standpoint of a student athlete privacy, right, that they do not have to disclose their personal deals publicly.

Okay.

That's my understanding.

What about disclosure of how state funding is being allocated to this to NIL students?

I would assume that is fine.

So, you folks will disclose that?

I absolutely would. I have no problem doing that. I just want to make sure we do it the right way.

Right. Okay. We just want to make sure exactly what gets disclosed because we talk about transparency and so forth. Members want to know what's being going to be transparent. As far as going back to the Title 9 requirements, the settlement said that NIL must comply with Title 9 requirements.

However, it is unclear whether payments made by third parties, including brands and booster collectives, must comply with the Title 9 and that Judge Wilkins issued opinion. She wrote that student athletes may continue to sue for damages over potential Title 9 violations. So, is that something that the University and the state should be concerned about?

So, we're moving away from the collectives piece. So, I don't think that's going to be an issue for us. That's, again, more for the schools that are over the $20 million cap. And we've met with most of those third parties and feel comfortable that they support the institutional plan.

We've not seen any litigation from a Title 9 standpoint for corporate—right, right—yet from corporate sponsorship standpoint. But we believe that, you know, we are going to do it. We are going to do everything from an institutional standpoint that is compliant with Title 9. Absolutely.

And finally, how will NIL change how you award athletic scholarships?

So, that's part of the equation is that if we have the $5 million, it doesn't all have to be just dollars. It doesn't have to all just be direct payments that some of the coaches would like to use those dollars for additional scholarships.

So, sports like basketball and football, the vast majority of their players are already on scholarship. A significant amount of other sports, historically, you look at a men's volleyball, we only have four scholarships, four and a half scholarships for the entire roster.

So, a men's volleyball coach might say, I want to take those NIL dollars and actually use them to provide additional scholarships, so that can be done as an alternative to more dollars. But again, that has to be done in a Title 9 way.

Is there any discussion going on with the Administration regarding the amount of—right now, University gives up, I don't know, some $200 million worth of scholarships or I forget what that amount is, but quite a bit.

Is there any discussion as to how they alter some of that to be able to funnel it to some of the NIL?

Could we do more scholarships for those?

Students take what they have already because it's such a huge amount and move it around. I mean, we do a lot of waivers for out of state. We do a lot of waivers—scholarships—for nonresidents, out of state students. So, maybe some of that can be. I don't know. But that's certainly a discussion to look at.

Okay.

Because I was surprised at how much scholarships the University already give out and how many waivers we already give out.

Okay. Yeah.

Okay, that's good for me. Well, just want to thank you, all of you. Coach Beeman, Coach Chang, Elliot—did I say Elliot? Matt, we appreciate you folks being here.

You know, this is a lot of information that we have to digest and it's good that our members and the public, because this is being streamed, understand that this is what we're facing and have an understanding that it's not because we want to pay our student athletes.

It's because of the lawsuit, because of the requirements and the issue of competitiveness. And that's something we have to discuss. And whether or not Hawaii is going to be able to sustain such a program.

I mean, we've always talked about whether or not Hawaii can sustain a D1 football program and now with NIL, that even adds a lot more pressure to that issue. And so, we are—the legislators—are looking at this coming session if there's legislation that we might need to help support the program or support our student athletes.

I did do the research and yes, Hawaii already has a law that requires that any agents be registered and have the qualifications to be able to represent the student athletes. So, that is already in the law and there are penalties in if they're not.

So, I think that takes care of that issue unless we want to shore it up even more. But yeah, there are a number of issues that we've talked about today that possibly can look at legislation. So, we'll be following up. And if you folks have any thoughts about that, you're welcome to contact us.

With that, I want to thank all of the audience for being here and for all of our boosters out there that supports the University of Hawaii and support—supports—our sports program. We thank you very much and we hope you continue to support them. So, with that, we're going to adjourn. Thank you.