UCLA's New Westwood Exchange is a Step in the Right Direction

This won't get UCLA to the NIL level it needs to be at to compete at the highest level, but it does open the door.

(Photo credit: uclabruins.com)

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On Thursday, UCLA announced the creation of the Westwood Exchange, a free registry designed to help facilitate NIL deals for UCLA athletes by creating an avenue for businesses and donors to contact athletes about any potential deals. From UCLA’s press release on the creation:

Once registered, a company or individual can search and initiate a conversation with student-athletes through a customized portal that includes access to every UCLA student-athlete, unless an individual chooses to opt out. Once an agreement between the company and a student-athlete is in place, payment can be made securely through the portal and a compliance disclosure will be automatically created as well as a 1099 tax form that will remain in the student-athlete's account for tax reporting.

On its face, the Westwood Exchange is a good step. The Exchange is designed in a way so that UCLA compliance can monitor activity and help keep student-athletes from running afoul of any NCAA violations while providing a secure space for NIL deals to take place. This will be especially useful for smaller businesses and donors who want to set up deals with athletes in smaller sports. For example, I imagine baseball, softball, and gymnastics will see heavy use from this exchange.

UCLA Athletics @UCLAAthletics

Introducing 𝗪𝗲𝘀𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝗘𝘅𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲 💫 UCLA’s official NIL marketplace. Register today to connect directly with our student-athletes on NIL opportunities. ➡️: uclabruins.com/westwoodexchan… ℹ️: ucla.in/3L56IQN #GoBruins

But I think it would be unwise to believe that the Westwood Exchange by itself will put UCLA at the level required to compete in the new NIL landscape. The Exchange is essentially a clearinghouse that focuses on current UCLA athletes; any potential recruits would not become part of the exchange until they enrolled at the school. The Exchange mostly exists as a way for UCLA to provide accountability to the NCAA on the NIL front, which is an understandable concept even if you believe like I do that the NCAA is now a toothless organization that should be ignored at all times.

It is in that framework that the Westwood Exchange proves its full worth because with this system now in place, UCLA’s major donors now have the cover to create the kind of donor collective that exists at other schools. I have a general suspicion that some in the athletic department, including athletic director Martin Jarmond, have been looking for ways to get the normally-conservative UCLA apparatus on board with the rapid changes that NIL has created in the revenue sports, especially in football. Again, this is gut feeling and not any insider information, but I have to imagine a lot of the entrenched old-guard bureaucrats at UCLA saw things like the contracts recruits are signing at places like Tennessee and immediately balked at getting involved. The Westwood Exchange creates the level of plausible deniability these administrators need to feel comfortable about a system that has been taking place under the table for years.

Here is the other side to this coin, specifically from a football standpoint: UCLA continues to put the tools in place for the various sports teams to succeed, and it’s on these teams to utilize them to their full potential. Just looking at the basketball team, UCLA has done a good job in the NIL game; Johnny Juzang leveraged last year’s Final Four run to have a pretty successful year on the NIL front, with other Bruins cashing in as well. In fact, just a few days ago, Fat Sal’s just announced a Fat Jaime sandwich to complement the Fat Tyger they rolled out last year.

Chris Vannini @ChrisVannini

Chip Kelly recently said schools have "weaponized NIL” for recruiting and UCLA will not do it. However, UCLA has today announced Westwood Exchange, a business registry for fans and companies to partner with athletes on NIL deals (as many schools have done).

In football…this has happened less often. Certainly you have success stories like Chase Griffin, who has been one of the better NIL athletes in the nation, but that story has been about Griffin grinding to make it happen rather than UCLA being receptive to NIL opportunities. In an article at the Athletic on NIL and recruiting, Chip Kelly was even quoted as saying the following:

“I think there are some places that have weaponized NIL and are using it in recruiting,” said UCLA coach Chip Kelly. “That’s not going to happen here, so we don’t even discuss it.

For me, this comes across as a lazy choice on the part of a coaching staff that has been the poster child for lackadaisical recruiting effort. Leveraging NIL opportunities is a tool that a top program should and does utilize in order to get recruiting success, and as we have mentioned time and time again, recruiting success is a huge indicator for on-field success. Just in this past recruiting cycle, we saw Texas A&M get the jump on leveraging NIL opportunities, leading to a top recruiting class full of the type of blue-chip athletes that will let the Aggies compete with the top teams in their conference. Miami has long been one of the first programs to embrace this change, and in the Pac-12 Oregon has been leading the charge.

But then again, this is Chip Kelly’s UCLA we’re talking about; doing things like a normal college football program is simply too difficult for this coaching staff. Consider the Spring Showcase; where everyone else in the country had a spring game where they could show off to recruits, UCLA just ran a glorified practice. It was the kind of low-energy effort that has typified this program, and it does not matter if the staff now features stronger recruiters like a Ken Norton Jr, because the guy at the top is not interested in doing what is necessary to win at a high level. At this point, a failure to utilize the Westwood Exchange would not be a failure by Chip Kelly, but a failure by an athletic department that continues to enable him.

Go Bruins.

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