What wins college football championships? A potent defense? An explosive offense? In the era of name, image and likeness, it is money.

Lots of it.

It can cost as much as $10.5 million for a title-contending starting offense and defense in the new Power Four conferences. The big-ticket item, of course, lines up behind the center.

A blue-chip quarterback in a Power Four conference — schools like Alabama, Michigan and Washington — can expect to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars annually through name, image and likeness, or N.I.L., deals. A quarterback in the Southeastern Conference can bring in more than $1 million, on average.

And that is merely an average. Ask the Texas Longhorns.

Between the cash pouring into athletic programs via collectives — a fancy name for boosters who funnel much of the N.I.L. money to players — and more lenient transfer rules, a sort of eBay to buy athletes has been created, transforming how powerhouse teams are built.

“It’s whoever wants to pay, the most money raised, the most money to buy the most players, is going to have the best opportunity to win,” Nick Saban, the recently retired football coach at the University of Alabama, told Congress in March.

But how do athletes, coaches and administrators determine the going rates? Many consult the Black Book, a kind of Zillow for college sports, which details an athlete’s expected annual earnings, and, in the case of sports like football and men’s and women’s basketball, even breaking them down by position and conference.

Still, the Black Book is a must have for university collectives and collegiate athletic officials, as well as the lawyers involved in House v. N.C.A.A., an antitrust case in which the Black Book and all Opendorse data from 2016 through 2022 were subpoenaed. The sides recently agreed to a $2.8 billion settlement.

If a federal judge approves it, schools will be allowed to set aside around $20 million per year, beginning in the fall of 2025, to pay athletes. (The proposal also calls for a program by which athletes’ N.I.L. deals could be reviewed.)

The Black Book, copies of which were obtained by The New York Times, shows that, even as football remains the dominant sport financially, sports like women’s basketball have become increasingly lucrative. In her final season at the University of Iowa, Caitlin Clark sold out arenas, increased television ratings and had sponsorship deals valued at $3 million.

Clark may have been the sport’s unicorn, but title-contending programs are expected to spend more than $730,000 on their starting five, with guards being the most valued at $225,000.

The N.I.L. era has also created a new generation of entrepreneurs and given them a more concrete sense of their earning potential. For instance, Alex Glover, a star volleyball player who recently concluded her career at Southern Methodist University, made more than $100,000 from sponsors who wanted to be associated with her Instagram video series, called “Day-In-The-Life of a D1 Volleyballer.”

The top N.I.L. earners in women’s gymnastics usually make around $20,000 annually, about 10 times as much as their male counterparts, according to data from Opendorse. Besides the major men’s sports — football, basketball and baseball — collegiate female athletes typically earn more than male athletes in the same sport.

“By nature, athletes are disciplined and purpose-driven,” said Blake Lawrence, the co-founder of Opendorse. “What has been really cool to see is how many athletes on our platform, especially the women, lean into the opportunities to be creative and build a brand. They don’t want to get paid just for going to practice and games.”

Lawrence, a former starting linebacker at the University of Nebraska, began Opendorse in 2012 to help his former teammate Prince Amukamara monetize his brand after he entered the N.F.L. as a first-round draft pick with the New York Giants. Lawrence understood the commitment required of college athletes and anticipated that the pay-to-play model was coming sooner rather than later. More than a decade on, some 150,000 athletes have used his platform to grow their name, image and likeness revenues.

The company compiles its numbers based on previous N.I.L. marketing deals signed by a large cross section of football and basketball players and competitors in the so-called nonrevenue Olympic sports. Clients that pay for the information include university athletic departments, their collectives and athlete agencies.

“I know what it takes to be an athlete and wanted to create something like Expedia or Zillow that took the mystery out of getting good value and putting that power in the hands of athletes,” said Lawrence, who offers tutorials on topics like marketing and pay benchmarks on his Instagram feed. “This is all new to them. I see six contracts a second and want them armed with information to make what could be life-changing decisions.”

Like the American economy, college sports have a hierarchy, and its “1 percenters” are the so-called Power conferences like the SEC and the Big Ten.

The expected annual N.I.L. compensation for a top-10-earning football player at any position is $216,000 for the Big Ten and $565,000 in the SEC, which is more than three times the annual earnings of $159,000 in the Big 12.

The SEC’s stature is even more pronounced this year. The former Big 12 powerhouses Texas and Oklahoma have joined the conference, which is made up of state universities that have long taken football seriously and invested heavily in athletics. The top-10-earning SEC players at every position — except for tight ends and specialists — earn more annually on average than players in any other Power Four conference. A running back in the SEC can now expect to make about half a million dollars, almost as much as a Big 12 quarterback. Offensive and defensive linemen in the SEC do even better, tallying upward of $700,000.

For the smaller, so-called Group of Five conferences, which include Conference USA and the Mountain West, the new N.I.L. environment puts football championships even further out of reach. The average value of top 25 players at any position at schools such as Liberty (part of Conference USA) or Boise State (in the Mountain West) is just under $50,000.

The money is lucrative in the top tier of men’s and women’s basketball, as well: A starting five of top-25-earning men’s basketball players costs about $3.3 million, with forwards on the top of the pay scale making around $750,000. And while women’s basketball earnings are comparatively much lower, top-level women’s players have had substantial growth since last year, with pay across all positions up by $30,000.

Even better for basketball stars? With their faces and personalities in full view during games, it is easier for them to enhance revenues beyond collective money through sponsorship partnerships with national brands.

This new market allowed Armando Bacot, who played at the University of North Carolina, to remain in college last season and begin work on a master’s degree in business. His partnerships with the Opendorse clients Dunkin and Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes, as well as others with regional and local companies, have made him a multimillionaire.

Many star players like Bacot are now forgoing the ritual of leaving school after just a year or two to enter the N.B.A. Instead of jumping (ready or not) into the draft in search of riches, more players are choosing the ample N.I.L. pay and more time to work on their games and degrees. (Bacot went undrafted and signed with the Utah Jazz this summer.)

“With more and more veteran guys staying in school longer, it’s going to be harder and harder for freshmen to get big minutes, because coaches would rather have veterans,” said Daniel Hennes, the chief executive of Engage, which represents college basketball stars like Bacot in N.I.L. deals. “So, underclassmen will stay in school longer, and the draft will get older and older. In a lot of ways, that’s good for everyone.”

Mike Boynton is among the many college coaches who are not so sure. He brought the future N.B.A. star Cade Cunningham to Oklahoma State with four years of shoe leather. He outworked more accomplished rivals with national titles on their résumés with the promise of doing right by the young star.

“I can’t work that hard anymore,” said Boynton, now an assistant at the University of Michigan. “Not when you can say, ‘Hey, here’s $500,000 to come spend nine months over here.’”

For many athletes — those who aren’t top stars in the marquee sports — the N.I.L. era is different, though no less exciting. Zoe Ledet, a 19-year-old sprinter at West Virginia State University, joined TikTok in 2020, at the height of Covid-era teenage boredom. She said she quickly amassed a following for “funny skits, hair care, you know, relatable stuff” and now has 1.7 million followers on the platform and nearly 300,000 on Instagram. Still, Ledet never thought brands would be interested in working with her as an athlete.

“I knew that big track athletes like Sha’Carri could get deals with Nike, but I didn’t know there were smaller deals to be had,” said Ledet, referring to the Olympic sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson.

For Ledet, those earnings aren’t life-changing money, but she has been able to use platforms like the BE Collective+ and Opendorse to gain a better sense of her value in the new marketplace. Her followers now ask her to post more about track and to share videos from meets, content that she hopes will in turn lead to more N.I.L. deals.

“There are a lot of athletes bigger than me, of course, but N.I.L. has allowed athletes like me to widen our platform and get more recognition, too,” she said.

These are tough days for pharmacy chains.

From Gardena to Venice to Koreatown, storefronts that used to be Rite Aid drugstores sit empty. On Lincoln Boulevard, the outline of the Rite Aid logo can still be seen above shuttered doors.

The retail pharmacy chain has closed more than 200 stores since filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023 and announced plans in July to shut down 18 more locations in California as it struggles to deal with creditors and lawsuits over opioid prescriptions.

Competitors CVS and Walgreens are also cutting costs and closing stores, reflecting challenges in the industry that have been brewing for years but have recently begun to accelerate, experts say. In June, Walgreens’ chief executive said about a quarter of the company’s 8,600 U.S. stores were underperforming and that a “significant number” of them could be closed.

Walgreens, CVS and Rite Aid are not in identical financial positions, but all three are being forced to examine their footprint and business model as they deal with lowering margins and changing consumer trends.

“Between the pressure on the front of the store plus the pressure on the pharmacy, it’s just getting harder and harder for these guys to operate,” said Brian Tanquilut, an industry analyst at Jefferies.

On the retail side, chain pharmacies are facing heavy competition from giants such as Amazon and Walmart, a drop in consumer spending and an increase in theft that can eat into profits, analysts said. On the pharmaceutical side, they’re seeing lower margins because of lower reimbursement rates for the drugs they provide to customers.

Much of the pharmacy pinch is rooted in the companies’ dependence on intermediaries called pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, who have significant control over how much pharmacies get reimbursed for the drugs they sell to customers.

Two of the largest benefit management companies, OptumRX and Caremark, are owned by insurance companies that have been looking to cut costs by pushing down reimbursement rates, which has punished the pharmacies’ bottom lines.

“The PBMs, all of which now are owned by the insurance companies, have been squeezing what they pay for drugs,” Tanquilut said. “As that has continued to come down, the profitability of these pharmacies has also waned,” he said.

Overall, the three pharmacy chains have struggled on Wall Street this year.

Walgreens stock price, which closed Friday at $9.25, has plummeted more than 65% since the start of the year. In June, when it missed earnings expectations for the quarter, the company warned investors it was bracing for more gloomy performance figures and cut its financial forecast for the fiscal year that ended in August.

Rite Aid’s languishing stock, meanwhile, took a nosedive when the company entered bankruptcy late last year and the New York Stock Exchange moved to delist it.

CVS stands on slightly more solid ground, said Raymond James healthcare analyst John Ransom, because it owns insurance company Aetna, as well as Caremark, the pharmacy benefit manager.

“CVS is an integrated company,” Ransom said. “They’ve been able to integrate Caremark into the drug retail business in a way that’s made the drug retail business more healthy.”

But that has not made the company immune to market forces. Its stock, which closed at $57.24 Friday, is down 29% this year. CVS slashed its financial outlook and embarked on a $2-billion cost-cutting plan in early August. The company has also been closing locations since 2021, when it announced a realignment plan that would close 900 stores over three years.

CVS is on track to finish its store closures by the end of this year. After the closures, 85% of U.S. residents will still live within 10 miles of a CVS, said Amy Thibault, lead director of external communications for the company.

A woman walks by a CVS/Pharmacy on Friday, Aug. 30, 2024 in Venice.

(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)

“The store closure decisions are based on population shifts, consumer buying patterns, a community’s store density, maintaining access to pharmacy services, and future health needs to ensure we have the right kinds of stores in the right locations for consumers,” she said.

There is an overcrowding of drugstores in the country partly as a result of a real estate binge in the ‘90s, Ransom said.

“They’re shutting these stores down in urban markets where you go to a street corner and you see four pharmacies,” he said. “I think part of it is they did it to themselves.”

Walgreens external communications manager Samantha Stansberry said the company is being affected by increased regulatory and reimbursement pressures as well as higher levels of inflation, theft and other types of losses.

“Like most retailers, we have been facing a challenging operating environment,” Stansberry said. “These factors have resulted in a growing number of store closures across the country as we invest in our other locations to deliver a consistent customer experience.”

Walgreens was poised to acquire Rite Aid in a merger in 2015, but the deal ultimately fell through.

Koreatown resident Darleen Stoker was recently shopping at a Rite Aid on Larchmont Boulevard in Hancock Park and noticed rows of empty shelves. She wondered if it was a sign that the location was closing, she said.

“My kids go to Costco now,” Stoker said. “Rite Aid is more for when you realize last minute you need nail polish.”

Other customers in the store said the shelves have been empty for at least two months.

Rite Aid did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

“The remaining Rite Aid stores face a lot of the challenges that they were facing when they were trying to bridge with Walgreens,” Tanquilut said. “It’s a lot of pressure from other retailers, whether that’s the dollar stores, the Walmarts, the Targets of the world, or online retail like Amazon.”

Retail pharmacies are also struggling to adapt to a changing consumer more focused than ever on value, Tanquilut said. Customers have started to realize that sodas cost less at a grocery store than a drugstore, he said.

As inflation drives everyday costs up, consumers are tightening their belts and may be limiting impulse purchases on items found at a drugstore such as snacks and beauty products. A significant portion of purchases at drugstores are spontaneous, Tanquilut said, as customers roam around waiting for their prescription.

Tanquilut said the closing of locations could help CVS, Walgreens and Rite Aid weather the harsh industry conditions that have prompted cost-cutting measures. The density of pharmacies in the country is higher than it needs to be, he said.

“We are ‘over-pharmacied’ as a society,” Tanquilut said. “From a profitability perspective and from a competition perspective, reducing the number of retail pharmacies is not a bad thing.”

The Shohei Ohtani bobblehead doll, with the Japanese star holding his dog, Dekopin, was free when the Dodgers handed it out to fans with tickets — and those persistent enough to line up for hours outside Dodger Stadium before Wednesday night’s game.

Now, if you want to get one, you better get ready to dig deep into your wallet.

The sought-after bobblehead dolls are currently selling for hundreds of dollars online, just two days after the Dodgers’ giveaway.

“I kind of cringe, as a dealer, at how much some of this stuff is going to cost,” said Matt Federgreen, owner of Beverly Hills Card Shop, who has dealt with sports collectibles since 1983.

A total of 40,000 bobbleheads were given away before the game against the Baltimore Orioles, but more than 53,000 tickets were sold. Unless fans arrived at the stadium early, they were out of luck.

Fans did get to see Ohtani’s dog, whose nickname is “Decoy,” throw out the first pitch.

To get the in-demand collector’s item now, people are paying anywhere between $150 to more than $1,500, according to listings and bids found on eBay and Facebook’s Marketplace.

The Dodgers also gave away a limited gold-colored Ohtani bobblehead, which is selling for hundreds of dollars more.

One listing for the gold-colored Ohtani on eBay asked for a tongue-in-cheek amount of $69,420, but it had no bids as of Friday afternoon.

Ohtani’s international popularity has sent prices soaring for some of his memorabilia. Some of the gold-colored bobbleheads have already sold online for $1,500 or more.

“Everything Ohtani that comes out right now, there’s profit to be made and people are going to jump on that,” Federgreen said.

One listing on eBay was selling the Ohtani and Decoy bobblehead for $169.50 on Friday afternoon, while another asked for $227.77. One seller has sold more than 30 dolls.

Another posting, on Facebook’s Marketplace, asked for $150 for the doll, but noted the box had been opened.

But listings for the gold doll, or for both of them, were found for more than $1,000.

One person in Anaheim, in a Facebook post, asked for $1,600 for the gold doll. Another, for both dolls, asked for $1,000, and included a picture of the dolls with Dodger Stadium in the background to add a bit more authenticity.

The Times reached out to several people who were selling the dolls online but did not immediately hear back from sellers.

Some postings asked for more than $2,000 but, as Federgreen noted, showed no signs that someone had bid or paid that price.

The Dodgers gave away another Ohtani bobblehead in May, five months after he signed a 10-year, $500-million deal. Fans also stood in line a good three hours before that game to make sure they got one.

For Federgreen, he said Ohtani is one of the reasons why his business has been doing so well recently.

Trading cards and memorabilia have seen increased popularity in recent years, he said, and stars such as Ohtani have helped.

On Thursday Topps, which is owned by Fanatics Collectibles, announced it was partnering with Ohtani in an exclusive trading card deal that will include cards, autographs and game memorabilia.

Details of how much the deal is worth weren’t released, Fanatics said it was a long-term agreement.

For Federgreen, he understands the demand for the Ohtani doll, but issues a mild warning for people willing to drop a few hundred bucks for it.

“There’s a lot of profiteering going on,” he said. “I don’t mess with stuff with things that are maybe short-term value.”

He notes that some collecting items that suddenly spike up in price will often dip down just as fast.

“It’s a cute bobblehead,” he said. “But you can buy something vintage for the same amount of money that retains value.”