THE REMARKABLE NUMBER 87

 

Dear George, 

Last night at midnight I turned 87. A record of sorts — the oldest I’ve ever been. According to numerologists, 87 is an angel number (a divine message from the spiritual realm). 87 centers on creativity and expression, signaling that one should use their creative skills in art, music, and writing to express themselves and develop their talents. Here are some of the other things I’ve learned about 87.

AGE 87 FACTOIDS 

Approximately 2,204 Americans turned 87 today. Only 2% of Americans are age 85 or over. Of persons born in 1937, about 22% are still alive. People who survive to reach their 87th birthday are more likely to be women, white, higher socioeconomic status, more education, married, and from the West or the Northeast. 87 year old women are expected to live another 5.8 years; 87 year old men, 4.9 years. At age 87 one has lived for 762,000 hours, their heart has pumped 60 million gallons of blood, they’ve yawned 320,000 times, and they’ve perspired 8,000 gallons of sweat. About 22% of 87-year-olds have dementia, and 90% have some form of cardiovascular disease. On the brighter side, 87-year-olds typically report greater happiness than they experienced in middle age. Only 1% say that their lives turned out worse than they expected. 

THE MANY MEANINGS OF 87 The number 87, of course, encompasses much more than a birthday year. If you google “87”, it turns out that it is connected to countless aspects of our lives and worlds. My theory is that one can learn what age 87 portends by examining what’s associated with this mysterious number. Thanks to Google, here are some of the many examples. 

AIRLINE UPROAR: Recently customs officials arrested a woman who arrived on a flight to Bangkok with 87 live animals taped to her body, including marmosets, bushbabies, barred owlets, green iguanas, Nile monitors, tortoises, and snail-eating turtles. 

ALCOHOL: Retail alcohol sales increased 87% during the first year of the pandemic. 

BAD BREATH: 87% of women won’t go on a second date with a man if he had bad breath on their first date. 

BIRTHING: In Ireland in 2013 Maria Jones-Elliot went into labour four months early and gave birth to twins who were born 87 days apart, a world record. 

CANNIBALISM: The 87-member Donner party was infamous for resorting to cannibalism when trapped by heavy snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains. 

CAT MALTREATMENT: Citing unfit conditions, authorities removed 87 cats from a home in Rosamond CA; removed 87 cats in Sedalia MO; 87 in Winsted CN; 87 in Salem OR; 87 in Hales Corner WI. 

CHILDREN: In 2022 the CDC found that 87% of kids tested had toxic weedkiller in their urine. 

DISASTERS: 87 years ago the Hindenburg airship exploded in New Jersey, resulting in 36 fatalities. DOGS: 87% of owners say that having a dog makes them a better version of themselves. 

FATHERHOOD: Between 1725 and 1765 Fyodor Vasiliev, a Russian peasant, fathered 87 children with two wives. 

HEROISM: A Crimean Tatar woman named Saide Arifova saved 87 orphaned Jewish children during the Nazi occupation of Crimea. 

HOMICIDE: 87 people died from smoke inhalation in the Happy Land Social Club homicides in New York City in 1990. 

ICE CREAM: At any given time 87% of American households have ice cream in the freezer. 

KILLER HIPPOS: Up to 87% of hippo attacks on human beings are fatal. 

LONGITUDE: The longitude of my birthplace and home town, Menominee, Michigan, is 87 degrees. 

MARRIAGE: A 61-year-old Indonesian man known as “Playboy King” has been married 87 times to 46 different women. 

MARRIAGE BANS: At the beginning of World War II, 87% of school boards would not hire married women as teachers. 

MATH FERVOR: 87% of Calculus students consider calculus an exciting subject. 

MERCY KILLINGS: Donald Harvey confessed to killing 87 patients while working as an orderly at Cincinnati’s Drake Hospital and other area locations. 

OIL SPILLS: The BP Oil Spill pumped crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days, making it the biggest oil spill in history. 

PARTY AFFILIATIONS: 87 registered Democrats and 0 registered Republicans occupy editorial positions at NPR. 

PEEING: 87% of dogs do not like to go out to pee in the rain. POLITICIANS: Pennsylvania has 87 election deniers in its legislature, more than any other state. 

POLYGAMY: According to former church members, Warren Steed Jeffs, Arizona cult leader, has 87 wives. 

POPE IN THE NEWS: In March 2024 87-year-old Pope Francis washed the feet of 12 women inmates at a Rome prison. 

POWER OF PRAYER: 87% of Americans who pray say that at least one of their prayers was answered over the past year. 

PRESCRIPTION DRUGS: Americans are 5% of the world’s population and take 87% of the world’s prescription drugs. 

PRIVATE HABITS: 87% of people pick their nose when they’re alone. 

SEXUAL HARASSMENT: 87 women accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment and assault. 

SORE FEET: 87% of people have painful feet at some time in their lives. 

SPERM DONORS: Dutch sperm donor Ed Houben sleeps with women to help them conceive naturally and has fathered 87 children to date in Australia, Israel, Britain, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Belgium, and Holland. 

SPORTS VIOLENCE: Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease, is found in 87% of American football players’ brains. 

TELEVISION ADDICTION: 87% of American children exceed the daily screen time recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics. 

VACCINATIONS: A German man was paid 87 different times to get Covid shots. 

WAR: Russia has lost 87% of the active-duty ground troops it had prior to launching its invasion of Ukraine. 

HEALTH: Jeff Bezos paid $87 million in 2024 for his third waterfront estate in the Miami area. 

I have to say, 87 is a complex, multi-faceted number. Health, wealth, and happiness, on the one hand. Disease, death, and disaster, on the other. The negatives are a little more frequent than the positives, but it looks like there are very different life paths that 87-year-olds can take. I am going to adopt an optimistic approach. I am delighted to be around for age 87, and so far it’s every bit as pleasant as 86 and 85. Starting this moment, I am charging forward into the year ahead. 

Love, 

Dave

CLUTTER

Dear George, 

One of the unfortunate truths about getting old is that one accumulates a lot of stuff. Katja and I are definitely above average on that dimension. Katja’s method of dealing with the blues is to go shopping, Buying clothes or kitchenware or pillows is like a miracle cure. She used to do this only at the mall, but now she’s discovered QVC (Quality, Value, Convenience) on television, and I often find her late at night, pencil and notebook in hand, jotting down things that strike her as indispensable. We have popcorn makers, ice cream makers, waffle makers, endless other machines that rarely if ever get used. I am definitely not any better. I’m just cheaper, preferring to get bargains at flea markets, yard sales, and thrift shops. If we each were to buy just two items a week, that doesn’t sound extravagant, but if you total it up for 64 years of marriage it amounts to 13,312 items. Since we rarely throw anything away, that’s a pretty good estimate of what we’ve got. 

Our house looks orderly and attractive on the first and second floors, but the basement and the attic are horror shows. We could be on one of those reality TV shows about hoarding, and I worry that the authorities might find out and confiscate our entire collection. Years ago Katja bought steel shelving for the basement to accommodate her extraneous belongings, and they’re filled to the brim. Among other passions, she buys a lot of exercise equipment. This makes her feel good about getting in shape, but she never opens the boxes and they are relegated straight to the basement. My equivalent obsessions are bric-a-brac and paper ephemera, and I have a room and about twenty file cabinets filled with treasures. It started when I our son J went off to college in New York City, and I began collecting antique postcards of the Big Apple. Over the years, however, my categories expanded from New York to everyplace we’ve been to essentially every place in the world, so now I have tens of thousands of postcards. In the process, I branched out into old greeting cards, old photographs, old magazines, old letters, and miscellany. This sounds like a fire hazard in our attic, and it probably is. 

My main recurrent nightmare these days is disposing of all of our belongings. For one thing, I can’t bring myself to start doing it. And, even if I wanted to, it seems like an impossible task. I do feel some moral responsibility to accomplish this before my demise, but I don’t know when I’ll manage to take the first step. Time will tell. 

Love, 

Dave

PLACES

 

Dear George, 

In many ways, we are products of the places in which we exist. Our environments shape our experiences, opportunities, activities, outcomes. Having grown up in a rural area of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, I’m a different person than if I’d spent those same years in New York City or Hoboken. Here are places that have been most important in my life. 

MENOMINEE, MICHIGAN (1937-1955) 

I was born in Menominee in the midst of the Great Depression and lived there until I left for college 18 years later. Menominee was a great place for kids to grow up. Bordered on the south by the Menominee River and on the east by Green Bay, we spent much of the warmer months in or on the water. My family moved from town to the country when I was 9, and the forest became my and my siblings’ playground. I developed a love for camping that persists to the present day. Menominee had all the virtues of a small town. The people were kind, generous, and neighborly. My parents left their beloved home to their kids, and we continue to visit to this day. 

YELLOW SPRINGS (1955-1960) 

I went to college in Yellow Springs by mistake. An Antioch alumnus became so annoyed with my mother’s questions about fraternities and sororities that he told her that Antioch College had formal balls every weekend and that owning a tuxedo was mandatory. Antioch, of course, was home to beatniks and Marxists, far afield from my staunch Republican parents. As students we came to view Yellow Springs as a small piece of paradise. It was home to the Little Art Theater where we watched and tried to make sense of films by Bergman, Fellini, and Truffaut. Yellow Springs had two bars, Ye Olde Trail Tavern on the main drag which catered to preppies and Com’s, a black-owned bar where Com tended bar to black clientele on the upper level and his wife Goldie waitressed and baked pizza for college students on the lower level. We spent many hours at Com’s, drinking 3.2 beer and debating the meaning of life. 

NEW YORK CITY (1957-1958) 

I had my second co-op job in New York City, and the city blew my mind. The skyscrapers, the crowds, the ethnic diversity, the cultural attractions. I decided at age 20 that this was the only place I wanted to be for the rest of my life. Steve Schwerner, one of my college friends who had a jazz show on our college radio station, recruited us to go to Greenwich Village jazz clubs on weekends. I spent many wonderful nights listening to Thelonius Monk at the Five Spot Cafe, as well as enjoying Charlie Mingus at the White Horse Inn, John Coltrane at the Village Vanguard, and a host of others. We still enjoy visits to our in-laws in Manhattan now and then.

SAN FRANCISCO (summer 1959) 

In the summer before my final year of college I drove out to San Francisco with the explicit goal of deciding whether or not I wanted to pursue fiction writing as my life career. I found a job as a dishwasher at an upscale boarding house in Pacific Heights which didn’’t pay money but did offer room and board. I spent a lot of time in North Beach, home turf of Jack Kerouac and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and worked on writing in the reading room of the San Francisco public library. home to my favorite author, William Saroyan. I submitted 17 short stories for publication that summer, mostly to detective and cowboy magazines. I got a rejection form letter for every one which effectively ended my aspirations for a writing career. 

ANN ARBOR (1960-66) 

We moved to Ann Arbor for graduate school in September, 1960. Coming from a small liberal arts school, we were very skeptical about this Big Ten public university. However, as students, we got free tickets to Michigan’s football game, and, after the first game, we never missed another one. While we’d been Yellow Springs devotees, Ann Arbor was a fantastic college town with multiple book stores, restaurants, art galleries, and movie theaters. We realized we’d been totally ethnocentric as undergraduates. 

CINCINNATI (1966-present) 

We moved to Cincinnati in 1966, first taking a townhouse at Williamsburg Apartments on Galbraith Road. Williamsburg was over-run with young P&G executives and there was an annoying commute to the University, so we moved to a first-floor apartment in a former beer baron’s mansion on Clifton Avenue. The fanciest place we’ve ever lived. We were initially taken aback by the right-wing slant of the local newspaper and worried about the city’s conservatism, but we soon became enamored with the Cincinnati’s restaurants, cultural attractions, wonderful park system, and many enjoyable neighborhoods. After more than half a century, we’re pretty much natives. 

NEW ORLEANS (1990’s-present) 

Our son J and daughter-in-law K moved to New Orleans in the early 1990’s, and we’ve visited them once or twice a year ever since. New Orleans, in my judgment, is tourist heaven. It has wonderful restaurants and an energetic music nightlife that is accessible to oldies like us. We spend lots of time in the French Quarter, visiting art galleries and antique stores, eating beignets, and people-watching in Jackson Square. The city’s history is told in several museums, the World War II Museum is one of the nation’s finest, the parks are great, and we love the New Orleans Museum of Art with its sculpture garden and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. Most of all we love being together with our family who always make us feel welcome. 

There are many other places that could be included in this list: Santa Cruz CA, Dixon CA, Seattle, Philadelphia, Chicago, Milwaukee, Beach Haven NJ, Atlantic City, Miami Beach. It strikes me that people’s lists of personal places are probably quite unique. In doing this task, I realize that I have positive feelings toward every one of these towns and cities, wouldn’t change a thing, and owe them all a big thank you for what they’ve given to us and to many others. 

 Love, 

 Dave

DOMESTIC TERRORS

 
Dear George,  

It started with the big storm. Our son J was here at the time, and, when he went up to the attic, he discovered water dripping through the ceiling. We called the roofers the next morning, and they came and gave us a sizeable estimate (about the price of a new compact car) to fix all our roof problems. Slate tiles, new downspouts, repair the box gutters, new roofing on the porch. Such a shock. Then, at the roofer’s request, we had a tree service guy come and remove an oak tree branch that had collapsed on the roof. The tree service guy said he used to be a roofer himself, and he gave us an estimate of about half of the roofer’s to do the work that he thought needed to be done. I showed him the roofer’s estimate, and he said “Wow!” He added that our house would be good for another hundred years if all that were done. We struggled over what to do and finally decided to go with the roofer and his anxiety-producing estimate (even though we don’t expect to be here for a hundred years). 

Meanwhile Katja had purchased a fancy new refrigerator. I didn’t know why we needed one, but she said our refrigerator was old and she wanted to replace it before it started having problems. (I learned long ago not to disagree with this line of reasoning.) In preparation for the delivery, we took all the food out of our current refrigerator and its freezer compartment. The refrigerator was filled to capacity, and it was a lot of food. The freezer stuff by itself filled a large Coleman cooler, two styrofoam coolers, and half of a large cardboard box. The refrigerator guys came with our new refrigerator and moved our empty old refrigerator out to the driveway. However, our new refrigerator was too tall to fit in the space in our kitchen. (Gasp.) The refrigerator guy said we should have a construction guy come and sand down the wooden bar which was blocking the refrigerator. We put as much food as we could into the new refrigerator, but its freezer compartment was considerably smaller, and so we had boxes full of frozen food left over. 

The next morning the construction guy came, and it took him less than thirty seconds to pull off a wooden bar that was blocking the refrigerator’s access. His minimum charge for the visit was fifty bucks (i.e., at an hourly rate of $6,000 per hour). In the meantime the animal exterminator guy also arrived. The roofers had said raccoons had been up on our front porch roof and had been trying to tunnel their way into our house. The exterminator guy went up to our attic to check it all out. While he was up there, the mattress delivery guys arrived, bringing our newly purchased king-sized mattress. I didn’t know about this purchase either, but Katja said she was worried that we were going to fall out of bed because of our old mattress. She had gotten confused looking at about 50 new mattresses and wound up buying the one endorsed by Tom Brady. In preparation for the movers, I rolled up the rug in the foyer to make access easier, and the mattress guys carried down our old mattress. In doing so, they knocked down the valuable multi-level paper lampshade that hung from our foyer ceiling. Fortunately Katja was standing there and caught it, and I was able to reattach it. 

The animal exterminator finished his inspection and was telling me about it when Katja tripped over the rug I’d rolled up and fell flat on her hip. The exterminator and I helped her up, and, while shaken up, she was able to stand. The exterminator said that he saw only slight evidence of raccoons, but there were dead bats in our attic and holes where they were getting in. He explained that bats can spread a disease that causes blindness in humans. He gave us an estimate of many thousand dollars to get rid of the bats and clean up the mess in our attic. We said we needed to think about it. 

The refrigerator people came and moved the new refrigerator into its space. We have an old freezer in the basement, and, because the new freezer couldn’t hold all our frozen goods, I went down to check it out. Our basement freezer is like Siberia for frozen goods. The basement is dark and dungy, and Katja never goes down there. Consequently food we store there stays for years, some of it seemingly forever. The freezer was jam-packed to capacity and its shelves were covered in ice an inch thick. When I checked, many items were dated between 2018 and 2020, pre-pandemic purchases. My AI Chatbot told me that frozen meat could be kept indefinitely, but the taste begins to deteriorate after 4 to 12 months. We started throwing out frozen food — turkeys, briskets of beef, lamb chops, steaks, hundreds of dollars worth. Our 64-gallon City of Cincinnati trash receptacle became so full of frozen food that I barely could roll it out to the curb. 

The roofers finished up their work several days later, and the refrigerator people finally came and removed our old refrigerator from our driveway. We are sleeping well on our new mattress, eating tasty delicacies from our new refrigerator, looking forward to another hundred years under our excellent roof, and pretending we don’t share our house with bats. The current downside is that Katja is still experiencing severe pain from her fall. An X-ray and a Catscan ruled out fractures and muscle tears, so it’s likely she has a bad bruise. 1% improvement each day. She’s toughing it out. 

Love, 

Dave

DOGS OF OUR DAYS

Dear George, 

Last week Katja and I watched the Westminster Kennel Club Show, an annual tradition in our household. Such beautiful animals. We were thrilled this year because four of our own family pets’ breeds wound up as winners or runners-up in their respective groups: the German Shepherd and the Old English Sheepdog (herding group), the Poodle (toy group), and the Schnauzer (working group). Here are a few stories about our pet sweeties from 1960 to the present, running the gamut from tragedy to joy.

Heather (1960-61). Katja and I got married in August 1960, and we moved to Ann Arbor for graduate school two days later. A few weeks later I came home to our apartment and was surprised to find that Katja had bought a German Shepherd puppy. It was love at first sight. We named her Heather, and she became the center of our young married lives. I spent so much time playing with Heather, it was hard to keep up with my studies. By early spring our eighty-year-old landlady was tiring of Heather’s barking while we were away, so we arranged with a friend to have her stay in his backyard during the daytime. We came home one afternoon, and our friend was waiting there in tears. Heather had been tied to a chain, and she tried to climb over the fence, got hung by the neck, strangled, and died. I still get teary-eyed writing about it. 

Jacques (1966-1973).  We were winding up our time in Ann Arbor a few years later when my brother Steven started law school at Wayne State in Detroit. He and his wife Margie had acquired a black poodle named Jacques in Florida, but their new apartment complex in suburban Detroit didn’t allow dogs so we agreed to take him. Jacques was a remarkably smart and loyal dog, though also capable of mischief. One evening during exam week we stayed on campus much later than normal, basically forgetting that Jacques was at home and needed a walk. Katja had recently sewn red velvet curtains for the living room and dining room. When we got home, we found that Jacques had pulled every curtain down onto the floor and pooped on each one. A clear message for his negligent owners. Like Heather, Jacques came to a tragic end. We spent the summer of 1973 on a research project in Bethel, Maine. On our last night we hired a baby-sitter so we could have a farewell dinner out. The baby-sitter was crying when we returned home. She had let Jacques out of the house, and he had gone out to the road and was run over by a lumber truck. We buried him by the little creek in back of our rented mobile home. 

Winston (circa 1975-1992). I came home from work one day in the mid-70’s and was surprised to find an exotic-looking dog in our house. He was a Bedlington Terrier that Katja had had flown in from a breeder in Northern Illinois. Winston was our most sociable dog, prone to approaching every passerby on the street to get petted. Because of his unusual appearance, people frequently asked if he were a dog. After a while I started saying, “No, he’s a lamb,” and people didn’t know whether to believe me or not. His groomer participated in national grooming competitions, and she took Winston on trips through the Midwest and the East Coast. We felt like we were parents of a Hollywood star. Winston lived to a ripe old age — blind, deaf, demented, and incontinent in his final year. 

Mike and Duffy (circa 2000-2015). Some years later I came home one day from work, and Katja was on the porch talking to a neighbor. The back door was open, and I saw two little furry creatures which I first took to be baby raccoons. In fact, they were Old English Sheepdog puppies, three months old and frisky as could be. Katja had gone to see the litter in Fairfield, thinking she might buy one, but two of the puppies were so attached to one another that she couldn’t bear to separate them, and she brought both of them home. Mike and Duffy became a famous fixture in our Clifton neighborhood, and everyone wanted to give them a pet or take a selfie. I spent a lot of time with our friend Donna and her sheepdog Sophie walking our group in Mt. Airy, Miami Whitewater Forest, Eden Park, and Burnet Woods. Our hearts were broken once again when the dogs had to be put down in old age. 

Iko (2020 - present). Our son J and his family live in New Orleans, but, when the pandemic began, they decided to move temporarily to California where the “plague” was less severe. J drove up to Cincinnati with their two family dogs, Iko and Li’l Paws, and we took care of them for about three months. Iko, a miniature schnauzer, had spent his early years in a brothel on Tulane Avenue in New Orleans, then became a street dog until my daughter-in-law K and a friend Alex rescued him at an SPCA Outreach event. When J returned from California he asked if we would like to keep Iko, and we said yes. Iko is the cuddliest of our dogs. He gets on the couch to watchTV with us, resting his head on one or the other of his parents’ legs. He’s definitely made our lives more enjoyable. 

I think we’ve always been meant to be a dog family, and we’ve treated our dogs pretty much like human beings and as full-fledged family members. Getting a dog is a complicated matter. They can be expensive, require walking whether rain or shine, make traveling more complicated, and have a relatively short life span. However, in my mind, they’re such a source of happiness than it outweighs all of the cons. All of our dogs have been wonderful. If one is craving love and affection, hardly any living creature can rival a pet dog. They go out of their minds every time you walk in the door. 

 Love, 

Dave

CUTTING TIES: A NASTY BUSINESS

Dear George, 

I have a huge decision to make. When I took a job as a social psychologist at the university I held a joint appointment and had separate offices in Psychology and Sociology. I retired some forty plus years later and moved out of my Psychology office. However, Sociology had access to some vacant space in their high-rise building, and they offered me a new office as an emeritus faculty member. Though the department was on the tenth floor and my new office would be on the thirteenth floor, it suited my purposes and I took them up on it. I like having a place to work other than home, and having an office at the university made my transition into retirement much easier. I went into work regularly — I just didn’t get paid. None of the other retired faculty were interested in an office, so I got to have my own space. Perhaps the biggest attraction for me was that I didn’t have to dispose of the five large file cabinets full of stuff that I’d accumulated throughout my career. Tons of lecture notes, data and records from research projects, published and unpublished papers, assorted graduate student files, miscellaneous angry memos, and my library of a couple hundred books. I’ve used my emeritus office mainly for writing — most recently for poetry, OLLI writing classes, stories for my blog, and papers for my writers’ group. While I had occasional contact with former colleagues on the tenth floor when I first retired, that’s declined over the years, and my visits have become less frequent and more solitary. 

Recently I got an email from the Sociology department head saying that in August the department will move to a different building on campus. The head said that I could have office space in the new location though it would be shared with several adjunct faculty members. She added the adjuncts spend little time at the office. I went over and looked at the space. It’s much smaller than my current office, with room for one desk and one or two file cabinets at best. It didn’t seem to me that two people could use it at the same time. This office will be right in the middle of the department, allowing for more potential contact with faculty and staff, though I’m not attracted to that. Now I am pondering what to do. It’s a quandary. The most clearcut option is to discontinue office space on campus, discard all the stuff I’ve accumulated over the decades, and move a few things home to our crowded attic. I can write poetry at home just as well as on campus. That choice, however, would close down one of the main places outside of home in which I spend time. Alternatively I could move a few things to the new office and see whether I want to spend time there. Part of me says it’s better to have crummy office space on campus than no office at all. I waver back and forth on a daily basis. I have started to throw things away, and I must say it’s been brutal so far. Fortunately I have some time available to make a final decision. 

Love, 

Dave

NIL: A Nightmare for College Sports?

Dear George, 

College sports have been turned upside down in the last few years. For over a century the NCAA treated college sports as an amateur enterprise and prohibited college athletes from earning anything beyond a free education (tuition and fees, room and board). Following the Supreme Court’s rejection in 2021 of the NCAA’s “amateurism” argument, the NCAA ended virtually all restrictions on what athletes could earn from deals involving their own identities. 

“NIL” stands for “names/images/likenesses” and refers to an NCAA rule change that allows athletes to earn money from endorsements, social media postings, personal appearances, and other similar activities involving their personal identities. They can even accept money from boosters, usually longtime wealthy donors with ties to a university. Social media influencing is most frequent NIL activity performed by athletes, accounting for nearly 75% of NIL deals. If athletes have 10,000 or more followers on Instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook, etc., they can earn money from companies by adding personal endorsements of products and services to their media posts. 

The main rationale for NIL is that college athletes generate billions of dollars for their universities, TV and radio networks, and the NCAA. Up until recently athletes haven’t been able to profit a single penny from their own names and images. Advocates of NIL argue that it’s simply fair for athletes to be compensated for the value they create. 

Soon after the NCAA changed its rules in 2021, groups called “NIL collectives” formed in order to help athletes profit from NIL. These groups are most often composed of boosters and fans, and they operate independently from the university. There are also new NIL collective business firms that specialize in connecting athletes with potential sponsors. Most NIL collectives raise money from boosters, alumni, fans, and businesses, then use the funds to compensate athletes for their NIL activities. It’s estimated that over 250 NIL collectives are currently in operation nationwide. 

In 2022 about 17% of athletes at Division I universities participated in NIL activities. Local deals have been far more prevalent than national brands. It’s expected that NIL earnings will reach over $1.5 billion in 2024. The size of NIL deals for individual athletes varies dramatically. The average NIL deal during the first year was about $1,300, and the median was $65 (meaning that about half of all NIL earnings were below $65). However, top athletes are known to have secured NIL deals exceeding $1 million or more, sometimes 30 or 40 times annual faculty salaries at their university. To take a few examples, the University of Alabama quarterback received 3.1 million in NIL deals in his senior season, and the University of Colorado quarterback earned between $4.8 and $5.1 million. A freshman on the USC basketball team earned $7.5 million this season before he played a single game. Last year a high school quarterback in Florida was offered $9.5 million by a booster to commit to the University of Miami. He initially accepted the offer but changed his mind with University of Florida boosters offered him $13.5 million. Evaluations of NIL are all over the map, with lots of arguments pro and con. 

My own opinion is mostly skeptical. Here are some of the problems: 

     (1) Negative team effects. Star players are much more likely to secure lucrative NIL deals, potentially creating resentment or jealousy by teammates, many of whom do not receive any NIL money. 

    (2) Inequality across universities. Schools with wealthy boosters are likely to offer richer NIL opportunities to attract top recruits, widening the gap still further between well-funded and less-funded schools. Likewise, athletes may be even more prone to use the transfer portal to transfer to schools with better NIL deals. 

    (3) Gender inequity. Female athletes have fewer NIL opportunities compared to males. Studies indicate that male athletes receive about 70% of total NIL earnings. The top 100 recent NIL earners this past season included 94 men and 6 women. 

     (4) Inequality across sports. NIL deals are concentrated in a few revenue-generating sports, mainly football and basketball. Athletes in those sports have a much higher chance of getting NIL deals (i.e., 92 of the top 100 earners in 2023-24). Further, as donors redirect their donations to individual athletes in football and basketball, athletic departments will receive less general funding which they could have used to support secondary sports. 

     (5) Academic disruption. With its emphasis on financial gain , some athletes might give NIL money-making activities priority over academics. 

Overall, I think that the NIL system is potentially unfair in lots of ways. However, the situation is rapidly evolving, and it will be interesting to see what happens in the future. 

 Love, 

 Dave 

SOURCES: 

Carter, Bill. Seven data points that will tell the story of NIL in 2023. sportsbusinessjournal.com, Jan. 17, 2023 

Grady Capstone. Collegiate Female Athletes Pay As Males Dominate Revenue: Exploring the NIL Gender Pay Gap. gradynewsource.uga.edu, Apr. 12, 2024. 

Rudder, Paul. Who is the highest paid college athlete? NIL endorsement deal money in NCAA sports. en.as.com, Mar. 25, 2024. 

Schoenfeld, Bruce. “Student Athlete. Mogul.” New York Times, Jan. 24, 2023. 

Teamworks.com. A Changing Game: The Rise of NIL Collectives. Sept. 6, 2023. 

Wikipedia. Student athlete compensation.

AN ODE TO APRIL

 

Dear George, 

All the months have something special about them, but I think that April might be the best. It’s the month when the flowering trees in our neighborhood come into full bloom — dogwood, redbuds, magnolias — signaling the full-fledged arrival of spring. The trees are not only beautiful, but they symbolize rebirth, new beginnings, the warm and abundant future that is waiting for us. The birds return, the squirrels and lizards are busy, the flowers begin sprouting in our garden, and Katja and I go to Rahn’s greenhouses to pick out pansies for planting. I do still wear my winter coat on the cooler April days, but the college kids I pass by are dressed in T-shirts and Bermuda shorts, probably viewing me as a daffy old geezer. 

When I was a kid our family lived in the country on the Menominee River, and April meant the total transformation of our forest world. As the snow and ice melted our gravel road turned into muddy ruts, and we couldn’t get to town, consequently enjoying our own personal holidays from school. The ice on the river melted and flowed out in early April, making a massive tinkling sound that led my parents to name it “Chinese Bells Day.” My brother Steven and I would put on hip waders and step into the flowing ice near the shore with bamboo poles, retrieving miscellaneous objects that were floating along with the ice, e.g., tin cans, rubber balls, lawn furniture, whatever. The trillium were the first spring flowers to bloom in the forest, and my mother would have us bring potted plants to our grade school teachers. Once the road dried out sufficiently we were able to ride our bikes to town and school. 

Easter, of course, occurs in early April, and we painted Easter eggs in school to bring home in preparation for the Easter Bunny’s visit. The public schools in my home town closed for the Good Friday and Easter Monday holidays. Our family was not very religious, but we did go faithfully to the First Presbyterian Church every Easter. My brother and I were always amazed at the amount of the check that my father put in the collection basket. He explained that he was covering the whole year. 

In Cincinnati the warm weather arrives earlier than in Northern Michigan, and April, with average high temperatures of 65 degrees, is one of the most pleasant months of the year. When our son was a teenager he played high school tennis for Walnut Hills, and we parents waited all winter for the arrival of April and the beginning of the boys’ tennis season. In retrospect, I would say that we were the stereotypic insane tennis parents. We attended all of our son’s matches, ecstatic with victories, anguished with defeat. In addition to Cincinnati, we travelled as a family to other tournaments in the region, e.g., Middletown, Dayton, Columbus, Indianapolis, Charleston, West Virginia . 

In addition to tennis, Cincinnati Reds baseball starts around the beginning of April, and the Cincinnati Zoo hosts its annual “Zoo Blooms” event throughout the month with its millions of tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths. The Greater Cincinnati Restaurant Week is held in late April, as is the Greater Cincinnati Earth Day Festival. 

It’s believed that April was named after Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love. Diamonds are the April birthstone, daisies and sweet peas are the April birth flowers, and April is the National Poetry Month. George Washington was inaugurated on April 30, 1789, and the Titanic sank on April 15, 1912. Of course, many famous people have been born in April. These include William Shakespeare (April 23, 1564), Leonardo da Vinci (April 15, 1452), Queen Elizabeth II (April 21, 1926), Babe Ruth (April 8, 1895), and Billie Holiday (April 15, 1915). 

I’ve been around for well over eighty Aprils, and each becomes more significant as time goes by. Our sweet family from New Orleans already came to visit this April, making it a special month this year. I look forward to what’s to come. 

Love, Dave