A PEEK AT TOMORROW
THE COMING OF MONEY FOR NAME, IMAGE AND LIKENESS (NIL)
In late April, the NCAA’s board of governors announced it was supporting rule changes that would allow college athletes to make money from their name, image and likeness (NIL), a decision that Michael V. Drake, the board’s chair, said will thrust college athletics into “uncharted territory.”
While it marked a rapid switch for an association prone to seeking change at a glacial pace, the news came with a bevy of questions. Underlying many of those queries are competitive curiosities and concerns. In an organization consisting of 357 members at the Division I level across 49 states, what types of athletes and what profiles of schools stand to benefit the most from what will be an unrecognizable landscape? Those questions loom larger in a world in which opportunities that weren’t available to college athletes for so long suddenly will be once the 2021-22 academic year begins.
In the western half of Pennsylvania alone, there are stark differences. Penn State, one of the largest public universities in the country, is tucked away in a sleepy college town in the mountains while Pitt, a slightly smaller research university, sits in the middle of a major city. How those differences play out and whatever advantages they
offer, from the opportunities a school and its location are able to provide for athletes to the impact that has on recruiting, has the potential to shape the balance of power in various NCAA sports.
“At the end of the day, sports are a form of entertainment,” said Dustin Maguire, an attorney who is the founder of NameImageLikeness.com, a marketing service for college athletes. “And will the athlete entertainers seek out opportunities with less overall competition in the entertainment industry? There’s a good possibility that high school athletes could look at this closely when making college decisions. It’s interesting looking at a lot of these schools that are getting out in front of NIL, such as Nebraska, Colorado, West Virginia. There’s some NIL posturing going on across the country.”
■
Exactly how much money an athlete is able to make in this brave new world of college athletics depends upon a litany of factors. There’s their individual talent, of course, and whatever amount of recognition and fame that brings them. There’s the sport and even position they play.
Beyond that, though, is a variable as fundamental as where these athletes compete. Once athletes can profit from their name, image and likeness, the question of which schools might have inherent advantages lingers.
Very generally, the 65 members of the so-called Power Five conferences — ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC — can be divided into two camps: schools in large cities, many of which have several professional sports teams, and institutions in smaller, sparsely populated towns. When it comes to athletes benefiting from a more open market, each side has its advantages and disadvantages.
For universities such as Pitt that are in a major metropolitan area, more opportunities theoretically exist. There are more people and businesses located in that area, giving athletes a wider, potentially more lucrative audience for autograph signings, endorsement possibilities and general visibility.
“They can use this as a forum to help attract players to their school, to say something like, ‘You should come to our school. We’ve got a huge market you can participate in. You can benefit from Pittsburgh’s audience as a whole, as well as the large alumni base,’” said Zachary Segal, founder of StudentPlayer.com, a crowdfunding site that aims to link college athletes with sponsorships. “Those schools might benefit the most.”
Those markets, however, are generally more crowded. Colleges have to compete with pro teams, among many other entertainment options, for attention and available dollars. Given that sizable gap, why would a local company seeking a celebrity endorser opt for a Pitt football player when it could have one of the Steelers?
Conversely, athletes at Penn State or West Virginia would be limited by the number of residents and companies in their towns, both of which are in metropolitan areas smaller than 250,000 people (compared to the Pittsburgh area and its 2.3 million inhabitants). But with fewer competing entities, both in and beyond athletics, interest in those teams and the public profile of its athletes rise considerably. They become, in essence, the most famous figures of what Southern California sports business professor David Carter described as “company towns.”
There are wrinkles in market identity. Some programs, such as Notre Dame football and Duke basketball, are national brands that transcend their status as small, private schools. Colleges such as West Virginia and Nebraska are not only in smaller towns, but also in states in which there are no pro sports, giving them something of a monopoly that Penn State, large as it might be, doesn’t have in Pennsylvania. There are college football programs in major cities, such as Washington and USC, that consistently draw big crowds for revenue sports such as football. Then there are universities that fall into something of an athletic sweet spot, places such as Texas and Ohio State with large enrollments, fat wallets, storied programs and campuses in larger cities with one or zero major pro teams.
“The college towns will see the big boon in this,” said Zach Soskin, an athlete ambassador with Voltage Management who has studied the space of NIL extensively. “If you go to Tuscaloosa, [Ala.] or Norman, [Okla.] and these other towns, the football team is the most popular thing there. The biggest loss of being in a big city could be for those in non-revenue sports. Because even in Lincoln, Neb., they’re selling out volleyball games. That’s not happening in most big cities. ... In general, it will be a negative for those in large cities.”
Under the current system, it’s a gap that is evident financially. According to data from the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, athletic departments in metro areas with two or more pro teams received an average of $21 million in donor contributions in 2018. For departments with one pro team or, more often than not, none, that average grew to $31 million.
The NCAA board’s recommendations included guardrails that would prohibit what could be considered “pay-for-play” opportunities and would limit the influence of boosters in recruiting, but such dollar figures reflect a larger interest gulf. In certain types of places, college athletics simply mean more.
“In those states, it may be that everyone bleeds for that,” Pitt men’s basketball coach Jeff Capel said. “That’s the whole state’s thing, that team, that program. There could definitely be more lucrative opportunities there. I don’t know how you level that. I don’t think the field is level right now. It’s just not.”
■
Outliers might exist. Think history-making Heisman Trophy winner Joe Burrow. Consider Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence, who, if NIL legislation were passed in time for the 2020 season, would be in for a seven-figure payday, Soskin said.
But, when NIL rule changes go into effect — and football players, gymnasts and wrestlers alike can profit off their personality — most won’t make millions. Ample opportunities will exist for college stars to cash in; just not on a national level.
“For 99% of athletes, you’re talking about local deals in their market,” Soskin said.
Maguire agreed that NIL opportunities, especially early on, will be regional. Car dealerships, sandwich shops, the usual suspects included.
But one primary source of NIL income could not only supersede any localized barriers of entry but also lead to what Soskin dubbed “free money” for both men’s and women’s athletes. It doesn’t take a lot of work to type up and hit send on a social-media post. And once NIL legislation passes, athletes will have the opportunity to make thousands of dollars promoting products on Instagram.
By analyzing the world’s top 100 pro athletes and their endorsement portfolios, Navigate Research, a sports branding advisory company, and AthleticDirectorU.com found a value of around $0.80 per Instagram follower, on average. By multiplying that $0.80 figure and the number of followers an athlete has, you can determine an annual endorsement revenue potential.
For example, West Virginia gymnast Erica Fontaine had 427,500 followers on Instagram as of February, when she was still competing for the Mountaineers. The sincegraduated senior’s endorsement revenue potential on Instagram would have been around $342,000 in the 2019-20 academic year — if she had the opportunity to send sponsored posts.
Iowa wrestler Spencer Lee, a Franklin Regional High School graduate and the Hodge Trophy winner, could pocket $74,240 on his 92,800 followers. Pitt defensive backs Damar Hamlin (19,900 followers) and Paris Ford (18,300 followers) would stand to profit $15,900 and $14,640, respectively, off their Instagram pages in a calendar year, based on Navigate Research’s calculations.
And keep in mind: That is strictly money made on socialmedia endorsements.
“I think the most important thing isn’t whether or not a particular group of athletes makes money. The important thing here is that they have the opportunity,” said Joel Lulla, a longtime sports media expert and University of Texas at Austin professor. “Whether they take advantage of that is another story.”
■
Maybe it’s because she spent the first half-hour talking about COVID-19 and the questionable return of football. But last month on a Zoom call with reporters, Penn State athletic director Sandy Barbour smiled and welcomed a question about the NIL differences between State College and major cities across the country.
“We reside in a smaller community, but we have over 700,000 living alumni that populate major metropolitan areas like New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and London and Paris,” Barbour said. “You name it. Every opportunity that a student is going to want for name, image and likeness is going to be available to a Penn State student through our unbelievable alumni network. It’s going to be our job to educate them on that.”
Sounds like a recruiting pitch, no? Something that
James Franklin might pull out of his back pocket during home visits in 2021?
Franklin and Penn State coaches always have utilized the university’s alumni base as a recruiting tool, selling players and parents on the prospect of job placement after football. And soon enough, programs will be able to cultivate an NILfriendly environment and (legally or not) pitch recruits on the possibility of making money before their collegiate careers come to a close.
There’s a reason why athletic departments are linking up with branding experts. On May 7, West Virginia football announced a partnership with marketing consultant Jeremy Darlow to “educate Mountaineer players and develop their skills in growing their personal brands that will take them beyond sports.” Nineteen days later, Pitt announced a deal with Darlow, who also has worked with Michigan, Notre Dame and Texas A&M, among other colleges.
In a Zoom session with local reporters, Darlow said his role is to teach players what they need to succeed post-career, not necessarily during it. But the way Carter sees it, colleges that aren’t partnering with branding experts will “lose a competitive edge” in recruiting and “fall behind” in the NIL conversation.
And of course, there’s more to it than hiring an expert. Coaches will continue to lean on the defining aspects that’s helped build their programs in first place, too.
For example, Penn State is known as Linebacker U. For decades, the Nittany Lions have sold that tradition to linebacker recruits. But now, there’s a potential monetary advantage to being a part of that lineage. Soskin noted that it means more being a Penn State linebacker than elsewhere, which could open up NIL opportunities that would otherwise be reserved for quarterbacks and running backs at other universities.
At Pitt, Pat Narduzzi emphasizes keeping the city’s best players close. He calls everyone from Hamlin and Ford to 2020 signee Dayon Hayes a “hometown hero,” trying to create an aura around staying put and playing for Pitt and in Pittsburgh. When NIL legislation passes, WPIAL stars could be lured to Pitt by more than just ACC football and a sense of pride.
“I believe there will be a new emphasis on high school recruits staying local,” Maguire said. “The athletes who choose to stay local will be able to monetize, for the first time, the equity they’ve built in their personal brands throughout high school.” Not a bad pitch.
■
Heather Lyke has experienced many of the different ways that a college’s location can shape its identity and success in athletics, with stops at places as large and domineering as Michigan and Ohio State, and as disadvantaged and overlooked as Eastern Michigan.
Those various points in the Pitt athletic director’s career have shaped the way she views the NIL issue. But as she discussed the topic and what challenges her school may face, she took a pause.
“There are other ways,” Lyke said weeks after the NCAA’s recommendation. “It’s not just the traditional advertisements and billboards and things like that.”
Maguire noted how “social media is going to be a huge piece of NIL.”
“Today, having an online following is perhaps more important to an athlete’s brand and earning ability than being a local celebrity,“Maguire said. ”Social-media posts and online interaction with fans could prove to be the largest NIL revenue stream for the athletes.”
Fontaine, a former West Virginia gymnast, has nearly 40 times as many Instagram followers as Darius Stills, the
“In [some states with big college towns like Tuscaloosa, Ala.] it may be that everyone bleeds for … that team, that program. There could definitely be more lucrative opportunities there.” Jeff Capel, Pitt basketball coach
“I believe there will be a new emphasis on high school recruits staying local. The athletes who choose to stay local will be able to monetize … the equity they’ve built in their personal brands throughout high school.” Dustin Maguire, NameImageLikeness.com
“Every opportunity that a student is going to want ... is going to be available to a Penn State student through our alumni network. It’s going to be our job to educate them on that.” Sandy Barbour, Penn State athletic director
“They’re leveraging the university to build their brand on the court or on the field, but now they’re also going to be looking at these schools as a way to help them build their brand off of it.” David Carter, sports business professor
Mountaineers’ all-conference defensive lineman who grew up in nearby Fairmont, W.Va. That wide reach becomes that much more attractive for companies looking for endorsers and that much more lucrative for athletes, even as Soskin believes a vast majority of the paid social-media posts will be from local companies.
An athlete’s ability to generate interest in themselves and their brand apart from athletics would have value once the NCAA’s recommendations become codified.
Alana Walker played for a Northwestern volleyball team that finished 5-15 in the Big Ten last season and had an average home crowd of 250 people, but with nearly 90,000 Instagram followers, the Navigate formula gave her an endorsement revenue potential of $61,000, almost $20,000 more than the projected haul for Obi Toppin, a Dayton star who was voted as the top player in men’s college basketball last season. Mark Titus, a walk-on for Ohio State’s men’s basketball team from 2006-10 who logged just 48 career minutes, built a beloved blog, Club Trillion, and sold $55,000 worth of Tshirts with “CLUB TRIL” emblazoned on them, all of which went to charity (since NCAA rules prohibited him from pocketing it).
Their stories are instructive. For athletes in metro areas as disparate as Morgantown and Chicago, there are ways, from their competitive excellence to their marketing prowess, to capitalize.
Those men and women are perhaps anomalies, examples of uncommonly enterprising young athletes. But in a scenario in which college athletes are able to receive what they were once denied, many others may follow in their footsteps — wherever it is they might call home.
“You’re going to have random kids with trickshot YouTubes and things like that,” Soskin said. “That’s what’s interesting, though, is just allowing kids to have those side businesses and see what they come up with. I think people will be pretty impressed with the entrepreneurial spirit of a lot of these kids.”