Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University proudly showcases the work of undergraduate honors students by sharing this collection exclusively with the ASU community.
Barrett accepts high performing, academically engaged undergraduate students and works with them in collaboration with all of the other academic units at Arizona State University. All Barrett students complete a thesis or creative project which is an opportunity to explore an intellectual interest and produce an original piece of scholarly research. The thesis or creative project is supervised and defended in front of a faculty committee. Students are able to engage with professors who are nationally recognized in their fields and committed to working with honors students. Completing a Barrett thesis or creative project is an opportunity for undergraduate honors students to contribute to the ASU academic community in a meaningful way.
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- All Subjects: Business Marketing
The NCAA’s legalization of athletes to profit off of their own name, image, and likeness (NIL) was met with mixed response from fans of collegiate sports. A popular talking point among people against NIL was that its legalization would cause talented athletes to “follow the money” and increase the recruiting quality at schools where NIL opportunities were plentiful. In essence, a theoretical “talent gap” would form due to this movement of athlete talent. The goal of this paper is to determine the talent gap’s existence or lack thereof while also setting stakeholders directly involved with NIL deals (colleges, businesses, companies) up for success in the age of NIL. This was executed first through the issuance of a survey that collected five categories of data: fandom and interest in college sports, industry sector interest, NIL preferences (structure, money, form), NIL recruiting preferences, and demographics. Following this collection of survey data, recruiting and transfer data for the years 2011-2023 was obtained and analyzed to determine the influence of specific variables in the recruiting process. The survey used in this paper was sent out to over 300 Arizona State University students from Dr. Eaton’s fall semester marketing class, with 158 participants filtered out in order to exclusively measure the responses of students with a similar perspective to athletes. The recruiting and transfer data was derived from the recruiting websites 247 Sports, Rivals, and On3 sports, with On3 Sports additionally providing NIL valuation estimates. Findings from the survey and recruiting data analysis could neither prove or disprove the existence of the theorized athletic talent gap. Results suggest that football or basketball program prestige is the true primary driver of talent movement, not NIL. Businesses looking to issue NIL deals should focus on the marketing obligations and payment structure of the deal rather than payment value, as money does not significantly influence the decision to take an NIL deal offer.