When Ford Family Director of Athletics John Mack ’00 sat down with The Daily Princetonian in April 2024, college athletics was shifting rapidly.
Name, picture, and likeness (NIL) offers had reshaped recruiting; donor-funded collectives had been a normal throughout many power-conference packages; and Ivy League stars had been starting to depart for faculties providing athletic scholarships and ample NIL alternatives.
Still, Mack was unequivocal.
“I don’t think we institutionally see [collectives] as a path of success for us,” Mack mentioned on the time. “It’s been a means to attract kids to your institution, just because you are the highest bidder. That is never going to be who we are, it’s never going to be our philosophy.”
Two years later, the broader college athletics panorama has continued to alter.
Last June, a federal choose authorized the $2.8 billion House v. NCAA settlement, paving the best way for collaborating Division I packages to immediately share athletic income with student-athletes, with as much as $20.5 million within the first yr.
Maintaining its prohibition of athletic scholarships, direct revenue-sharing, and “pay for play” compensation, the Ivy League selected to not decide into the settlement.
In the midst of the settlement, former Princeton standout Xaivian Lee transferred to then-reigning nationwide champion University of Florida, marking probably the most distinguished portal departure in latest Tigers historical past. That similar summer time, Caden Pierce ’26 announced his intention to redshirt the 2025–26 season to pursue NIL alternatives in his commencement season at Purdue University.
Across the Ivy League, the compensation hole stays a subject of rivalry. In an interview with The Harvard Crimson, Harvard Director of Athletics Erin McDermott noted that NIL has raised recruiting challenges for lower-income athletes. Generous monetary support packages can now not compete with full scholarships mixed with six- or seven-figure NIL alternatives.
In a second sit-down interview with the ‘Prince’ on Tuesday, Mack’s confidence stays unshaken. When requested whether or not he nonetheless believed “the lifetime value of a Princeton education will almost always exceed NIL opportunities at other institutions,” his reply was clear: “Absolutely.”
“I think the value is as strong, if not stronger, than it’s ever been — of not just the Ivy League experience, but the Princeton experience,” Mack mentioned.
Mack pointed to what he described as a “really, really low number” of athletic transfers throughout his tenure, including that student-athletes proceed to quote the identical causes for selecting Princeton: a constant four-year expertise, a extremely lauded tutorial atmosphere, and the chance to compete at a excessive stage with out sacrificing campus life.
“While I’m very aware of what is happening everywhere else in the world … we are more competitive now athletically than we’ve ever been,” he advised the ‘Prince.’
He additionally pointed to the 17 convention titles this season and the present top-10 rating within the Learfield Directors’ Cup Standings, which is a nationwide rating of Division I athletic departments.
“Our model is far from broken,” Mack mentioned.
“We can be successful being true to who we are … the more time that I spend worried about what other schools are doing is less time that I can spend focused on our teams, our coaches, and our student athletes.”
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Despite Mack’s confidence, throughout the Ancient Eight, the boundaries of that model are being examined.
In November, new University of Pennsylvania males’s basketball coach Fran McCaffery advised alumni that supporters may contribute to what he known as a “collective,” with cash disbursed by means of “true NIL opportunities” and paid internships. According to The Daily Pennsylvanian, round 30 alumni had been concerned.
With the Ivy League barring direct compensation from establishments, the initiative launched by McCaffery and the Quakers is probably the most organized alumni-backed NIL effort publicly related to an Ivy League program up to now.
The Quakers have additionally benefited from the switch portal, just lately garnering a commitment from Notre Dame switch Sir Mohammed, a former top-100 recruit out of highschool.
Mack advised the ‘Prince’ that he doesn’t consider Penn’s efforts put Princeton at a comparative drawback.
“Every school has always had different levers that they pull. I think competitive balance is something that’s easy to say, but it looks very different in reality,” he mentioned.
Princeton too has benefitted from high-level student-athlete transfers prior to now. Former quarterback Blake Stenstrom ’25, who performed on the University of Colorado, re-classed as a sophomore at Princeton in 2021. Similarly, Sondre Guttormsen ’23, an NCAA gold medalist and two-time Olympian, enrolled at Princeton as a sophomore in 2020 after transferring from UCLA.
Mack emphasised that apart from remoted instances, “it’s really, really, rare” for Princeton to confess athletic transfers. “That’s not what our university’s transfer program was designed to do.”
Princeton reopened undergraduate switch admission in 2018, emphasizing community-college college students, army veterans, and different nontraditional candidates.
When requested in regards to the present guidelines relating to athletic transfers coming into Princeton, Mack mentioned that “there’s no one-size-fits-all process,” whereas emphasizing that every one coaches recruit with an “eye towards” longevity.
Mack added that the portal’s accelerated timeline is ill-suited for Princeton, which focuses on a long-term recruiting course of that permits coaches time to evaluate athletic, tutorial, and tradition match.
“You can’t replicate that process in the transfer portal the same way,” Mack mentioned. That tradition, he argued, is a part of what makes the Princeton model sturdy.
“We have a name recognition that very few institutions in America have, which carries a lot of weight. We don’t have to do what other schools are doing to be successful,” he mentioned.
Mack didn’t dispute that cash issues, however famous that the problem of scholars weighing monetary incentives is a problem that has at all times existed with Ivy League recruiting.
“We have always, as a non-scholarship school, recruited against money,” he mentioned. “Now our financial aid has increased, so it’s our financial aid policy against someone else who has a scholarship and maybe a little bit of NIL — different side of the same coin.”
Recalling his personal resolution to show down a scholarship to Michigan to attend Princeton, Mack mentioned the recruiting pitch stays centered on Princeton’s long-term propositions: an elite undergraduate diploma, Division I athletics, a robust alumni community, and what he described as a predictable four-year atmosphere the place athletes know their coaches and teammates.
“I don’t pass judgment on people who choose other options, because the reality is that depending upon the sport or the family situation, there are some decisions that just work better for families,” Mack mentioned. “But for people who want the kind of quality experience that we have, who want the lifetime benefits of what this experience provides, I tend to think that there’s no better place.”
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In 2025, that argument met its most distinguished stress-test.
The yr earlier than, when different Ivy stars transferred — Yale’s Danny Wolf to Michigan and Harvard’s Malik Mack to Georgetown — Princeton had appeared to have escaped dropping a participant of that profile. That modified in 2025, with Lee’s resolution to switch and Pierce’s to redshirt.
However, Mack pushed again on the concept Lee’s switch taught him a broader lesson.
“I can both acknowledge that [Lee] had an opportunity that very few students at Princeton or in the Ivy League will have, but also believe that our model still works and is still the right model for 99 percent of student athletes,” he mentioned.
Mack’s argument mirrors McDermott’s, who mentioned that Harvard has “largely stopped” dropping athletes earlier than commencement over NIL, including that present athletes are arriving with a clearer understanding of what Ivy faculties are capable of supply.
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The eligibility panorama, in the meantime, is additionally shifting.
Last month, the Division I Board of Directors directed the NCAA’s Division I Cabinet to advance an age-based eligibility that — if adopted in its present kind — will permit athletes as much as 5 years of athletic eligibility. Students’ eligibility intervals will start within the tutorial yr both after they flip 19 or after they graduate highschool, whichever comes first.
The proposal is expected to cross and go into impact for present members of the Class of 2027. The rule change will successfully get rid of traditional redshirts at power-conference packages and hardship-waiver extensions, changing the present system with a clearer five-season window.
Mack is in favor of the change.
“I think it actually will be helpful for us and for the Ivy League,” he mentioned.
Mack argues that the five-year window strengthens Princeton’s pitch. Because Ivy League guidelines don’t permit graduate pupil recruitment, the proposal would permit athletes to finish 4 years within the Ivy League with out foreclosing a fifth yr elsewhere.
The COVID-era eligibility additionally created the same construction, as dozens of Ivy athletes completed their levels and used their remaining eligibility at graduate packages outdoors the convention. Mack expects the proposed rule, if adopted, to make that pathway extra frequent.
“You get a four-year Princeton education … at the best institution in America, and … you have the opportunity to then go on and do an extra year and do graduate work, and, if you are at the level, to get NIL or revenue share payments,” Mack mentioned.
Nevertheless, Mack was cautious to not scale back Princeton to a feeder system for fifth-year packages.
“I don’t want people coming here just because they think it is a pathway to something else,” he mentioned. “This opportunity is for student athletes who want a specific kind of four-year experience where you don’t have to choose between practice or class … Those are the kinds of kids that we have always attracted and are still continuing to attract.”
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While the panorama of college athletics has advanced all through the previous couple of years, Mack’s reply has not.
“I’m more confident now than ever in our model, and being true to what has worked at Princeton for the 160 years or so that we’ve been playing college athletics,” he mentioned.
Hayk Yengibaryan is a senior Sports author for the ‘Prince.’ He is from Glendale, Calif. He may be reached at hy5161[at]princeton.edu. This is Yengibaryan’s 250th piece for the ‘Prince.’
Please ship any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.