Binghamton University Athletic Director Gene Marshall spoke with Fox 40 on his department's newest initiative to help students make money in the NIL (Name, Image and Likeness) era of college sports, its consequences and provided an update on the potential of bringing in an ice hockey team.

"I think [NIL] hurt college athletics as a whole and in particular mid-majors, Division II and Division III," Marshall told Fox 40. "Because now every student-athlete thinks they deserve something. And what I'm afraid of is that they put the money over academics. As you can see, people are moving there in the transfer portal and then leaving to make more money rather than leaving to get a better education. And so the transfer portal is filled with student-athletes and they're not latched on to another school, which means they will not get an education. And that hurts us. So I think it's a great question, but it does affect everybody."

Marshall also provided an update on the potential of bringing a men's and women's ice hockey team to Binghamton University, saying the discussion has been tabled at the moment and that a field hockey team is likely not coming to the department. 

"We're probably not going to do field hockey. In a perfect world, we'd have men's and women's ice hockey," Marshall said. "We still have some logistics to work out. We still don't have an arena right now. So those are some of the logistics that have to work out in time. But at this moment, my focus is on the 21 teams that we have to continue to raise the bar. We have a new indoor practice facility that's going to open or be completed hopefully in November. We have the outdoor throwing area that's just about completed. We've done resident renovations in this building and so we've been pretty busy and we're going to keep hockey on the burner. We'll see how that goes."

On July 1st, Binghamton University announced an exclusive NIL partnership with MOGL, which describes itself as "the leading athlete influencer marketplace and NIL software provider powering the NIL era of collegiate athletics," per its website. MOGL allows BU students to connect with fans and businesses for endorsement deals, personal shoutouts, and appearances. You can find BU's MOGL landing page here.

"We're trying to help our student-athletes and SUNY doesn't really want us to be intimately involved in this NIL process," Marshall said. "But the student-athletes do need help. They do need educational support, and they do need an opportunity to make some additional revenue through this venue. So MOGL is our third-party vendor who will interact and interface with our student-athletes to help them through this process, to help them to find out what their value is, to then also look at opportunities that they can pursue and also make sure that their tax implications and anything that goes along with the financial part of it is taken care of." 

Marshall says this is one way the school is trying to help students realize their worth in the NIL era and combat students jumping into the transfer portal to pursue monetary gain.

"MOGL  is a way to combat it, to give a student-athlete an opportunity to assess and evaluate their individual worth and help them to find an opportunity and then go out and see how it works," Marshall said. "But now MOGL is also going to kind of be a mirror because there's going to be some student-athletes that will do alright. There's some that won't, but it's not because they didn't try. And so this is a way of kind of having the best of both worlds and letting our student-athletes know and the community know that we support our student-athletes to the fullest, even with the restrictions that we have to function with."

Binghamton men's basketball was one of five teams in the country to have zero players transferred out. The women's basketball team had only three players transfer out and that was in the midst of a coaching change.

Marshall continued to say that he's not optimistic that the NIL era will change any time soon and that student-athletes will continue to jump in the portal for monetary reasons.

"I just think that once you open it up, the door is hard to close," Marshall said. "And so what we're trying to do is ensure that all student-athletes have the best opportunity to capitalize. But all student-athletes here at Binghamton, they know why they're here. We're not losing a lot of kids. They're getting a great education and they're going to go on to do great things. And this is a stop on their journey through life."

Gene took over in January 2023 and enters his second full year as Athletic Director at Binghamton University having won back-to-back Commissioner's Cups which is awarded by the America East for the most successful athletic department overall based on regular season and postseason wins.

"I think that everybody understands that winning is important in the classroom, on the field of athletic competition and in the community," Marshall said. "So far we're doing all three. So my goal is to continue it, to work on some of the sports that haven't won championships so they can get that feel maintained. The ones that are winning championships, continue to rise academically in the classroom and be a major force in this community."