Meet Dropback the New GM Software Ready to Disrupt College Athletics

Front office management software Dropback has partnered with Northwestern's NIL collective TrueNU to bring professional level data analytics to college sports

Oct 5, 2024; Evanston, Illinois, USA; Northwestern Wildcats wide receiver Hayden Eligon II (80) scores a touchdown against the Indiana Hoosiers during the second half at Lanny and Sharon Martin Stadium. Mandatory Credit: David Banks-Imagn Images / David Banks-Imagn Images

On the field, college sports are as exciting as ever.

This weekend, fans gathered in droves to watch a top-3 matchup - and the first Big Ten meeting - between Ohio State and newly minted conference member Oregon, culminating in 10.2 million viewers, making it the most watched primetime regular season Big Ten broadcast since 2008.

This season, that game has only been bested by the SEC rivalry showdown between Alabama and Georgia in Week 5, which garnered an incredible 12 million viewers, making it the most-watched regular-season broadcast in any conference since 2017. 

Off the field, an athlete’s rights renaissance has brought massive structural changes to college sports: unlimited penalty-free transfers, NIL pay-for-play payments to revenue athletes, and conference realignment.

On the horizon is athlete revenue sharing, which looks primed to begin next academic year. While viewership and intrigue have not slowed down, college sports, more than ever, mirror their professional counterparts. However, one newly developing area of college athletics has not yet caught up to the professional standard –– front-office management.

Dropback, a new venture-backed company, aims to disrupt college sports and give athletic departments a competitive edge in scouting, roster creation, and player valuation. 

Dropback is a graduate of the Y Combinator, a program that has supported companies like Airbnb, Instacart, Twitch, Dropbox, and many more unicorn tech startups. According to Dropback CEO Luke Bogus, the software looks to give athlete departments pro-level functionality in three key areas: 

Calculate: Powered by a first-of-its-kind DIY Valuation Modeler, Dropback enables College GMs to value their athletes their way — via custom metrics, baselines, and weights.

Construct: Optimize roster construction and spend with infinite budgets, versions, and rosters that update in real-time.

Compete: Compare athletes across active rosters, the transfer portal, and high school head-to-head — with teams’ custom models — to build the most competitive roster within the bounds of your budget.

In the current system, college athletic departments operate like MLB teams: neither the MLB nor the NCAA operates with a hard salary cap, and like big market teams in baseball, colleges with robust NIL collective funding can spend more on their athletes; however, collegiate coaching staffs have quickly learned that simply throwing money at a roster does not win championships.

Nick Saban succinctly described this phenomenon when talking about Ohio State’s massive NIL budget on College Gameday, "You guys keep talking about a $20 million roster, but if you don't pay the right guys, you'll be s*** out of luck."

It is usually a good thing when you are aligned with the seven-time national champion coach. Saban’s snub towards Ohio State is precisely the problem that Dropback aims to solve; after talking with dozens of professional front offices, Bogus gained a proper understanding of what happens behind the scenes of our favorite pro teams: “For years, they’ve spent millions on in-house engineering departments and data gurus to develop custom software for General Managers and front office staff to manage rosters financially and optimize spend to remain competitive. Managing a salary cap is more than a spreadsheet; this massive complexity is slowly making its way to college sports.”

Small-market baseball teams have known this forever, and those who have invested heavily in advanced analytics have been able to put together solid rosters at a fraction of the cost. The Cleveland Guardians currently sit in the ALCS with a real chance to win the World Series –– their 2024 payroll ranks 23rd in the MLB at $106,45,407. The Guardians payroll is well under half of the total spend of the next cheapest team currently remaining in World Series contention: Mets ($317,777,899), Yankees ($309,434,607), and Dodgers ($241,010,117). 

Now, collegiate sports may not always mirror the MLB model; the House v. NCAA settlement proposal, which is currently pending final judicial approval in April, looks to create a $22,000,000 revenue-sharing payroll for colleges to pay all of their athletes. The language of the settlement would simultaneously give the NCAA the power to restrict the ability of NIL collectives to function with the same freedoms they currently have, holding pay-for-play payments only to the $22,000,000 pool –– effectively creating a hard cap, like the NFL or NBA, for collegiate programs. 

Concerns regarding the legal enforceability of NIL collective payment restrictions under antitrust laws remain a giant question mark for the NCAA. However, whether the future of college athlete payment has a hard cap, soft cap, or something in between, maximizing the value of the finite money programs have at their disposal will be imperative to future success. For Power Conference programs, front office strategy will ultimately lead to championships in revenue sports. For Group of 5 schools that lack the NIL resources and ability to compensate the entire $22,000,000 rev-share payroll allotted, being hyper-efficient with their limited resources can help them remain competitive in a landscape stacked against them. 

Dropback has already garnered attention from many schools looking to hit the ground running in a professional collegiate sports model. TrueNU, Northwestern's NIL collective, is the first Big Ten partner to leverage Dropback’s Moneyball-esque offerings. It is fitting that such a premier academic institution would jump at the opportunity to leverage advanced analytics for athletic success.

Jacob Schmidt, the Executive Director for TrueNu, defines the collective’s role for the football team as already mirroring professional analogs, “We feel as though we are currently the GM for Northwestern Athletics, and I think a lot of collective leaders would say the same thing. At the end of the day, we are in control of the budgets behind our programs, and we work hand in hand with the coaching staff, different administrators, and the recruiting departments; we are heavily involved in building competitive rosters, retaining our best athletes, acquiring new talent and putting the dollars and cents behind those acquisitions.”

Dropback’s capabilities fit seamlessly into what NIL collectives across the nation are already trying to accomplish –– often without the proper tools or data scientists to do so.

Schmidt finds these tools valuable on many fronts, “I think we're trying to find the differentiator. You are trying to maximize your dollar and deploy your funds in a really strategic way to allow schools and your programs to compete in the current form of NIL… How are you maximizing every penny? How are you thinking about what these kids are worth? How are you defending those values to the agents, the kids, and their teammates.”

Not only does Dropback enable college sports’ new front office role to operate at a higher level, but it also allows coaches to justify their payment to athletes, hopefully leading to more objective discussions about value and less toxicity around athlete compensation comparisons. 

Dropback separates itself from any other competitor in the space through its deep levels of customization. Every coaching staff member has different qualities and attributes they seek in players. Coaches who run a particular offensive scheme may prioritize speed over size. 

To Schmidt, the ability to tailor Dropback precisely to the needs of Northwestern coaches in all sports makes the company stand out, “It is the ability to build out an algorithm that is unique to the values of your place and your programs. There are certain metrics that everybody across the country will want to involve in determining a player's value. Those are the obvious ones. But every institution, program, athletic department, and coach has some nuance to what they're building… What this software allows you to do is build out a custom mathematical, data-driven approach to how you're deploying dollars.”

The future of college sports is already here. Maximizing existing NIL payment resources through pro-style front office management will prove more beneficial than any NIL funding arms race.

The teams that embrace that reality will be positioned for success in the current NIL model and will be even further ahead of the curve in a model that implements a hard salary cap for collegiate sports.