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Q-and-A: NIL, transfer portal trickle down to GPAC and NAIA but impact is limited

the daily republic, mitchell, s.d.
·5 min read

Oct. 29—MITCHELL — The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics was the first in college sports to allow students to approve deals for name, image and likeness contracts for athletes to be paid.

But while NIL are the three magic letters that have changed a lot about big-time college sports, that remains a relatively small part of the NAIA's landscape, according to Great Plains Athletic Conference Commissioner Corey Westra, who visited Mitchell on Thursday. Westra spoke as a guest of the Mitchell Rotary Club at Blarney's Sports Bar and Grill.

"There are a handful of NIL deals in the NAIA," Westra said. "There are some GPAC athletes that have small NIL deals. But it's not rampant."

He alluded to the dust-up between Alabama football coach Nick Saban and Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher from the offseason, accusing each other of buying players and cheating over NIL policies.

"That's a different world and a different amount of money," Westra said. "It's a very low amount we're talking about here."

Similarly, he said, GPAC schools have to be cognizant and note what's happening in the NCAA's transfer portal, even though the NAIA doesn't have a portal of its own and technically, teams don't have access to that information. But individuals with connections to players in the portal can connect a potential transfer to a new institution.

"We have seen some benefit in the NAIA with the portal. ... There have been some athletes that have decided the NCAA wasn't where they wanted to be and they are coming to look at the NAIA or the GPAC. ... Is it a big thing? Yes and no. But I think it's only going to grow from here.

Westra spoke to the Mitchell Republic about a number of GPAC-related issues for a Q-and-A, with those answers below, edited for clarity:

Q: The NAIA has had a couple of years with the one-division format for men's and women's basketball. The pandemic is in that period but what is your impression of how that's being received so far?

A: I think it's gone very well. It certainly is different and it's been a learning curve. Now that we're going into our third year in this format, some of that learning curve is going away because we start to know who these teams are now. Last year, Campbellsville (Ky.) isn't one of these mysteries anymore or a Westmont (Calif.) isn't a mystery. Similarly, Dakota Wesleyan, Dordt, Morningside in the GPAC are not a mystery because they're starting to realize that you've got to learn about the other side. ... That first year out of the gate, it was certainly a sense of "We're D-I, they're D-II," or "We're D-II, they're D-I, we shouldn't even be in the same room together." That has broken down. ... From a branding perspective, it's been good. It's NAIA basketball, straight up. ... As a conference, we are competing. I was protective of GPAC schools and our interests but we're competitive with everyone.

Q: With women's wrestling, what has to happen to make that a conference sport or is the GPAC content having it in the Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference? (Eight schools sponsor women's wrestling in the KCAC, including four from the GPAC, with Dakota Wesleyan starting the sport this year.)

A: It's not in a bad spot right now. With the KCAC, we still have the chance to qualify for nationals. For it to be a conference sport, it would have to be a sustainable group of six schools that we know is going to be in it for the long haul to be under our banner. We would have to decide if we're going to have duals or if we're just going to have a (GPAC) tournament and let them go to open (tournaments) throughout the year. Long play, we're probably still a couple of years away. Dakota Wesleyan is just getting going and they have to build up their roster. Doane is just getting going, we'll see.

Q: GPAC volleyball is obviously a point of pride for the conference, with seven ranked teams in the top-25. What are the commonalities you're seeing in the conference that is leading to this success?

I think this year we have a lot of rosters with depth. We had a lot of kids that wanted to come back and complete fifth years. The experience level of the league this year is very high and gives us three teams in the top-five and five teams in the top-10 nationally. GPAC volleyball is recognized as high-level volleyball and players around this region are willing to stay close to home to play. They know they can play at Dakota Wesleyan and they're going to go to the national tournament. When programs turn that corner, it's a big deal. When you look at our schedules, and it's ranked team against ranked team every week, there's not a lot of conferences that have that kind of depth.

Q: The NAIA has 16 teams in the playoffs for football and the GPAC usually has two teams that qualify, with a third team usually knocking on the door. What type of conversation is out there about expanding the playoffs?

It was a topic at our fall meetings and it was surface level, but yes. More conferences are adding football and that means more (automatic qualifiers) from those conferences, which means fewer at-large bids. You have to start looking at whether really highly ranked teams are going to be on the outside looking in because there's fewer slots. I'd expect over the next few years that this is going to be a very high topic in the NAIA. Sixteen has been around for a long time and it's worked well for a long time. What that new number is going to be, I don't know. But it's definitely on the radar.