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At the same time, a generous collective donation still has a mirage element. It is not the price of winning. There are no on-field, on-court guarantees. It’s merely the price of short-term optimism. Filling a collective’s coffers provides a jolt of adrenaline for an athletic program, however temporary. So for the garden-variety State U. collective donor, sources say, where’s the guaranteed return on investment? If the ROI is a College Football Playoff berth, that’s one thing. If the ROI is a Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl berth, that’s quite another. Well-heeled boosters have deep pockets. But those pockets are not bottomless. Leaning so heavily on donors begs the question: Is this model sustainable? “I don’t think that the current model will exist going forward,” Bubba Cunningham, the North Carolina athletic director, told On3. “The never-ending need for more resources will continue to be. But how we go about prioritizing and how we go about asking for resources is going to have to change.” More than two-thirds of NIL transactions come from school-specific collectives. Of the more than 200 collectives, some rank-and-file Power 5 school-affiliated ones raise $3 to $5 million annually, with the most ambitious SEC entities amassing anywhere from $5 to $15 million. Here’s the buzzkill: Until CFP expansion in 2024, there are only four playoff berths and only four Final Four berths. Not every season ends with a parade, so what’s the donor benefit? read more: https://www.on3.com/nil/news/what-donor-fatigue-means-as-nil-enters-its-third-year-of-impacting-college-sports-ncaa-collectives/