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From NIL to ROI: Why Value Driven Tech is Winning in College Athletics

With the kickoff of the college football season this weekend, conversation will undoubtedly turn to the big recent changes in college athletics. This past June, there was a landmark decision when the House v NCAA settlement was approved, opening the door for revenue sharing with college athletes.

There have already been massive trickle down effects from this decision, but one of the biggest has been the significant new financial burden put on college athletic departments’ budgets.

Division 1 schools can now distribute up to $20.5 mil/yr with that figure expected to rise to around $32.9 mil by 2034-35. This has caused massive deficits even at the top echelon of college sports.

For example, even a high major powerhouse like the University of Michigan has already been scrambling to make immediate adjustments. Michigan had to make budget cuts and introduce supplemental revenue streams through alcohol sales and concerts to balance their budget after projecting an estimated $27 million deficit for 2025-26 following the House settlement.

That said, smaller and mid-major schools are feeling the impact the most, as many Group of Five and similar programs don’t even have $20 million in athletic revenue to begin with. This is posing a legitimate existential financial threat to college sports as we’ve known them. The disparity will increase, as Power 5 juggernauts fully fund athlete salaries, on top of already effectively buying out the top mid major performers each year through NIL money in the transfer portal.

All of this has caused schools to reevaluate their approach to athletics – budget cuts, reallocations, finding new avenues to bringing money into their programs (including private equity). Texas A&M is eliminating nearly $10 million via staff reductions, trimmed team budgets, fewer disbursements and restructuring scholarships. The sad reality here is that Olympic sports are on the chopping block at many institutions, due to limited funding and shifting priorities.

Tying this back to the world I live in, the world of sport performance technology … I have quickly found that college athletic departments, across the board (Sports Medicine & Rehab, Video & Analytics, Data Management, Strength & Conditioning, etc), are looking to save where they can, for all the reasons listed above.

One of the bigger line items for many D1 athletic departments is wearable technology, which has rapidly transitioned from a luxury item to a core pillar for the vast majority. The value of this data in reducing injuries and optimizing performance has been well-documented over the last decade. And the competitive landscape has intensified.

Five to ten years ago, there were 1-2 reliable GPS providers that monopolized the marketplace, given the quick rise in demand and the limited supply of trusted solutions.

Today, the marketplace has become a bit more saturated which has started to drive pricing down. Think of the TV industry over the last 10 years … a 55’ 4K Smart TV that cost $1,500+ in 2014 can now be found for under $400, due to mass production and scale, while LED and LCD panels became cheaper with improvements in production efficiency, increased market competition and feature standardization.

It’s been a similar story for the wearable technology industry. Through that process, there has been one company that has risen to the top in regards to value, with pricing that is a quarter of the cost; and accuracy that has equaled or exceeded that of the incumbents … all while providing a simpler workflow. That company is PlayerData.

As PlayerData continues to become more of a household name in this space and budgets continue to get tighter in today’s NCAA climate, I anticipate an increasing pressure on athletic department administrations to be more efficient with their tech budget allocation, while taking a closer look at PlayerData.

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The Changing College Soccer Recruiting Landscape

It’s a really tough time to be a good high school soccer player.

The upcoming NCAA D1 roster cap rule, limiting Division 1 soccer programs (outside of the Ivy’s) to carry a maximum of 28 players in the 2025-26 season, has caused a massive trickle-down effect.

To start, many programs are now cutting players to make room for their incoming classes. This has caused a record number of players to enter the transfer portal (+3500 on the men’s and women’s sides). In addition to players entering the transfer portal due to being cut, several others are entering the transfer portal to simply “level up.” Meaning, for example, if a student-athlete was at an all-conference selection within a mid-major conference, many of those players are now looking for opportunities to make it at a Power 4 school. And many coaches at those Power 4 schools, like the idea of a proven player at the college level rather than rolling the dice on a high school freshman.

This is a true story line across most NCAA sports.

With that said, I have seen this impact the 2025 recruiting class the hardest … As now there are simply fewer spots to go around. This has caused  several student-athletes to reclassify as 2026’s, and either take a gap year or enroll this fall, but join the soccer program after the 2025 fall season.

While I’ve estimated the top ~10% of D3 teams in college soccer could beat the bottom 10% of D1 programs on any given day, I suspect this percentage to increase a bit more in the upcoming year as more and more highly talented players get pushed to D3. With that said, there is often natural human psychology for talented 16-18 year athletes to want to go D1 at whatever cost, as most prospects are inherently competitive people. If you are a fringe low D1/high D3 prospect, it has become harder to “fight” your way onto a D1 roster in today’s current college landscape.

My general recommendation for prospects that fit that profile, is to take a real hard look at some of the top D3 programs. I advise this for a couple of reasons. The chances are if you’re a fringe prospect, you’ll sit on the bench your freshman year at the D1 program versus getting the opportunity to play right away with a top D3 program. Given the college soccer season is 3 months, if you’re not playing in games, you’re player development is getting significantly stagnated. Secondly, if D1 is in fact the end goal, having college playing experience (and film to go along with it), puts most players in a much better position to transfer up at the end of their freshman year versus not getting any minutes at a D1 a prospect likely won’t be happy at.

Needless to say, it’s a rapidly changing environment.

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GPS Wearable Technology in the NCAA

When I was playing college soccer at Georgetown 12 years ago, there wasn’t one team in the country using GPS wearable technology. 7 years ago, while I was working at IMG Academy in Bradenton, FL, the performance coaches had just started to experiment with wearables. Today, having worked at Catapult Sports for the last 4 years, I have found just about every single professional team use some form of GPS technology across the NFL, MLS, NBA, and NHL. While the majority of teams in college football and soccer use it as well, and a healthy percentage of teams in college basketball, field hockey, lacrosse, volleyball and ice hockey.

So, why are all these athletes wearing sports bras that hold these blinking devices between their shoulder blades? How does this technology help athletic performance and why do coaches care about this data?

The GPS device is secured with a compression-fitting device in between the athlete’s shoulder blades.

In this piece, I’ll talk about the evolution of GPS wearable technology specifically within the NCAA landscape and how it has become such a central piece to athletic performance.

What does GPS wearable technology do and how can it improve athletic performance?

If you don’t know what the specific physical demands are in your competitions, it’s impossible to optimize your training to prepare for those demands.

Athlete monitoring allows coaches to effectively measure the volume and intensity of their athlete’s training and competitions with an actual measuring stick to reduce soft tissue injuries, optimize performance and develop more robust return to play protocols. The ancillary benefits of using a GPS system allow coaches to use the data as a communication tool, as well as a recruiting tool reflecting the coaching staff’s commitment to student-athlete wellness, and ultimately instilling a level of professionalism within the team.

Where did wearable technology come from and who were the early adopters?

In what now is a very saturated marketplace, there were a few companies that were first to the table with GPS wearable technology, starting with Catapult. The Australian government decided to invest in the newly created Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) after a poor performance in the 1976 Olympic games.

Shaun Holthouse and Igor van de Griendt, eventual Catapult founders, began a project with the AIS in 1999. Taking a unique approach to evidence-based science improving sport, they began to measure all facets of athlete performance. Wearable sensors were then created to make science more accessible to athletes, and more routinely deployable across training and match situations. They were implemented for the 2004 Athens games, and then Catapult was born in late 2006.

Aussie Rules Football began using the sensors before the technology expanded globally to rugby, soccer and American Football in the following years.

How has it been adopted in the NCAA?

Inevitably this technology made its way over to the United States around 2012 as performance coaches started adopting it in their training. Florida State Women’s Soccer was one of the first Catapult NCAA clients, using the GK devices on a couple of their goalies. Jimbo Fisher, the Head Coach of Florida State’s football team at the time saw an antenna on the field at a Women’s Soccer practice. After doing a quick investigation of the tech, he started using it with his own team.

Florida State Women’s Soccer were one of the first NCAA Olympic teams to begin using GPS wearable technology. Here, they celebrate their 2018 NCAA Division 1 Women’s Soccer National Championship.

GPS tech quickly spread to football teams in the SEC Conference and then to the other Power 5 conferences. In a press conference after Alabama’s 24-7 win in the 2016-17 Peach Bowl, Nick Saban, the Head Coach of Alabama, went on record saying how much Catapult helped with their conditioning. Today, every single SEC Conference football team, but one, uses Catapult technology. Many athletic departments have taken a wholistic approach, doing multi-sport agreements, enabling cross sport communication between performance coaches.

“We use the Catapult system that gives us a scientific picture of where players are. After the season we did a total analysis of how we went through the season from a physical standpoint. We made some changes on how we practiced and how we monitored this systematically through the season … That has helped us manage our way through and keep our team a little more physically fresh.”

Nick Saban, Head Coach Alabama Football

Today, this technology has trickled down beyond D2 and D3, into high school programs and even youth academies. The largest growth of wearable technology in the college space in recent years has been in the mid-major/FCS level of the NCAA.

What do you need to look for in a GPS wearable system?

The Catapult Vector system includes the pod itself, a vest, a charging case and dock, and a live receiver.
  1. Reliability – Even on the cheaper side of the market, wearable tech is still a significant investment and therefore making sure the technology has been validated (white papers, etc) in its measuring accuracy is critical.
  2. Functionality – Depending on training environment and what the coaching staff values, there are a few features that you will want to vet out:
    • Live capability – If looking at information live is important, you want to make sure the system has that capability (some do, many do not). Live tracking is good for return-to-play and rehabilitation protocols as well as in-game decision making.
    • Indoor and Outdoor functionality.
    • Dual external & internal tracking capability (i.e. heart rate functionality)
  3. Support – GPS wearable companies have a wide range of sizes. Some are equipped to provide meaningful support while others only have a handful of employees. Every team is unique in their personnel structure, but for many, having sport science support is essential in making actionable insights from the data.

What is the next wave of innovation in the GPS wearable space?

Catapult acquired SBG, a video analysis software company for $40m in the Summer of 2021 to help enhance the integration of wearables and video.

While half of Catapult’s business is built around GPS wearable technology, the other half is built around video editing software. This past summer Catapult acquired a company called SBG, a UK-based video company that specializes in Formula 1 motorsport and elite soccer video solutions. The acquisition was a strategic one, as the SBG software has enabled Catapult to accelerate their ability to integrate wearable metrics onto video, allowing coaches to get more visual context to the physical data. With the wearable technology, you may know that your center forward made 40 high velocity sprints during the match, but now with this wearable-video integration, you see exactly when those 40 high velocity sprints happen and what has happening in the match. With the performance data married to the tactical information, the technology’s value has grown exponentially and has become more digestible to your average coach.

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