Name, image and likeness with a smaller scope

The era of name, image and likeness is gathering force heading into the 2022-23 NCAA athletic season. The entire landscape of college athletics, specifically for the athletes themselves, has changed.

“Finances are a serious concern for many college athletes, especially those who are not on full scholarships,” David Kale, outfielder for Fordham University, said. “Significant NIL deals can help reduce some of these students’ financial concerns.”

Since the NCAA started permitting scholarships in the 1950’s, it was always a traditional belief that student athletes were already being “paid” for playing sports through their athletic scholarship. As big programs, and even small ones, began to generate substantial amounts of revenue a year as time progressed, it became severely unbalanced regarding the ratio of how much money these athletes were generating for their respective programs through their product on the field or court.

Now, student-athletes can earn money through licensing their names, likenesses and images, and that already has altered collegiate athletics in ways that few understand a year after NIL began.

“A college athlete today can go do a 45-minute lesson for their sport and easily make 50 bucks. They couldn’t do that a year ago,” Dave Meluni, an assistant teaching professor at Syracuse University, said.

Meluni is a former NCAA Division III baseball player. When discussing this new era of collegiate sports, he mentioned how he noticed the overall unfairness that held back student athletes even dating back to his playing days.

“I had a friend in the music school. He was in music, I was in management and played baseball. While I was working at a pharmacy during school, he was doing music lessons making ‘x’ amount of money,” Meluni said. “I couldn’t monetize my craft [baseball], but he could monetize his.”

This period is new to everyone. The immediate winners are the top tier power five schools and their athletes. But taking a step back, what about the other schools? The smaller, lower conference schools? Well, their athletes are thrilled about it too. Just ask David McCain, sophomore long-snapper for Bryant University.

“I think that the concept of being able to profit off of NIL is awesome,” McCain said.

“As an FCS D-1 athlete, I'm not going to act like guys like me were huge reasons that it got passed, but I will definitely try to capitalize on it. In terms of those that were the reason behind the change (power 5 program athletes, etc.), I love that they finally have the opportunity to get the profits that they are rightfully earning.”

McCain added how he has a small NIL deal with Liquid IV, an energy drink that provides an energy boost as well as immune support. They send him boxes of the product regularly.

NIL licensing will benefit Power Five conference athletes the most, generating in some cases contracts worth millions of dollars for individuals in football and men's and women's basketball. But even for athletes at smaller, less prominent schools, income streams from NIL licensing are in reach.

Companies such as Opendorse, have formed to help student athletes regulate their NIL and form their foundation as an NIL-earning athlete.

Per the Opendorse “About” page, Opendorse “Serves the full lifecycle of supporting athletes: educating, assessing, planning, sharing, creating, measuring, tracking, disclosing, regulating, listing, browsing, booking, and more. Our industry-leading NIL solutions help athletes and their supporters understand, build, protect, and monetize their brand value.”

A common question regarding NIL is “where is all this money going?” According to Opendorse, through May 31, 2022, college football generates about 29 percent of all NIL-related activities. The second most is baseball, but only a mere eight percent. Football again takes the cake regarding total NIL-related compensation with 49 percent. Following it is men’s basketball at 17 percent, and women’s basketball at 15.7 percent.

Rarely do you see multi-sport athletes in college anymore. A respective season for one sport is grueling in itself, let alone two. However, there are plenty of multi-sport NCAA athletes still out there, and NIL gives them the chance to market themselves across multiple avenues for their sports. And that's exactly what Rayquan Smith did. According to a report posted by FOX TV, Smith plays football and runs track for Norfolk State University and has since been nicknamed the “King of NIL” after signing almost 70 different NIL deals with respective companies.

Blake Jeresaty is an offensive lineman for the Illinois football team. He previously transferred from Wofford University, an FCS school. While he has only been around NIL for a little over a year, he said he is fully behind the pure concept of this era.

“If student-athletes have a value to their name in their sport or program, and businesses see that they can help them promote their brand, then I totally support NIL,” Jeresaty said. “It’s really a true exchange of value.” 

An issue with the newness of NIL is the lack of experience some athletes have establishing their own brand. Meluni teaches a marketing course regarding NIL for student athletes, and even non-athletes.

“The key is education. I tell students in class, what you put into it is what you're going to get out of it,” Meluni said. 

“This is a whole new avenue of the industry, you don't have to be a lawyer to be an agent. The course is focused on learning how to build a brand,” Meluni said. “How to do camps, how to do marketing plans, how to evaluate social media and how to create infographics. I don't even consider it a class, I consider a full semester marketing agency for athletes."

Meluni added the pivotal importance of social media in regards to brand-building. Today’s society is often viewed through social media. It’s where all the attention is. Highlights, interviews and so much more.

“This (Instagram) isn't a four-year thing or a five-year thing or now with COVID a six-year thing. This is a 40-year thing,” Meluni said. “Your Instagram account is becoming your resume” 

Maribeth Kuzmeski, a marketing professor at Oklahoma State, teaches a course that helps athletes earn NIL income. She said universities must help athletes understand the process.

“All the things that we've been doing, are just to help that student athlete make a little money from his or her name, image and likeness,” Kuzmeski said. “We're a university, let's turn this into something where this is really an opportunity to teach the student athletes how to be better at their personal branding, even if they never go on and play any sports after their four years of college. Personal branding is a great strategy for being able to just understand how to manage your personal, and professional, persona.”

Kuzmeski said athletes from smaller schools can deploy their marketing efforts on social media at little or no cost. If the platform is there, businesses will be interested, as they are all coveting exposure to that age 18-24 window to draw in younger audiences. Social media has even sparked out-of-nowhere athletic careers, as Meluni became enamored with.

“We’ve seen baseball players signing contracts because scouts are able to see them on Instagram and Twitter,” Meluni said. “It's unbelievable to me.”

It's surprising that social media posts are the most popular content for NIL campaigns. According to Opendorse, 67% of athletes post content on social media, with 34.2% monetizing that through NIL deals.

When thinking about smaller universities and their programs on the business side, it’s a different world. No blockbuster TV deals. Not a lot of exposure. So, what can these athletes do?

The answer, according to both Meluni and Kuzmeski, is local businesses. Who is paying more attention to a program than the local fans and restaurants they watch the games at?

“There’s nothing wrong with an athlete evaluating their social media and starting to approach local businesses. What are local aspects of the community you can work with?” Meluni said. “There's definitely an avenue there.”

An interesting aspect of the local avenue for college athletes pursuing NIL is the formation of group deals. Meluni added that when teams take groups of players, for example position groups, and strike NIL deals, it’s the perfect recipe for a tension-free locker room. 

And that’s exactly what Jeresaty did at Illinoi.

“Offensive lineman like myself obviously don’t have the biggest following, and we’re not on the TV screen that much,” Jeresaty said. “Instead we decided to combine it into a group “Illinois O-Line” and began to work with local restaurants. We have about five or six restaurant sponsors right now.”

Jeresaty is in a unique situation where he began his collegiate athletic career in the FCS, which features teams that aren't as nationally prominent as FBS schools, and is now a starter for one of the biggest programs in the country at Illinois. He mentioned the “massive” transition from playing at Wofford to Illinois.

“I could probably write a 100-page essay about the difference in football caliber between Wofford and Illinois. It’s so much more than just the Saturday Gameday,” Jeresaty said. “The resources the program has are just so different. When your program has a $100-million-dollar facility, literally anything you need is available to you.” 

Jeresaty stressed that the FCS teams draw large audiences but even these do not compare to the FBS schools whose football games are broadcast nationally on FOX and other networks.

NIL clearly has its benefits, specifically to the student athletes. But are there any negative sides to it? A possible concern could be the mass differences in NIL revenue student athletes bring in within a single locker room. Jeresaty said he thinks it’ll be fine, but could definitely create a little animosity. 

“If these college athletes want to get paid and act like grown men, they’re going to have to learn how to deal with it like the pros do,” Jeresaty said.

Another major concern, according to Kuzmeski, is the development of these so-called “Collective” groups formed by donors connected to the large schools. These Collectives pool millions of dollars to attract student athletes to their respective schools and programs, even though it’s against the rules instituted by the NCAA.

“It's not a clean, wholesome, ‘if I'm gonna make money off your jersey University, maybe I should be able to make some money from this as a student athlete’ type of situation,” Kuzmeski said. “It's gone in a completely different direction.” 

Going from the football field to the baseball diamond, Kale sees potential concerns as well, but on the competition side of the game.

“I think whenever money and finances get involved, it becomes a little harder to focus on the task at hand,” Kale said. “These deals might provide additional stressors to a population that already has significant demands. It’s an added level of competition, and probably not a good form of it.” 

Jordan Bradley is a senior tennis player for the Quinnipiac University women’s tennis team. A small program at a small mid-major university, Bradley sees the majority of the disadvantages NIL will bring to a school like Quinnipiac. 

“When high-level tennis players see all the perks that going to a big school would give them, they will never choose a smaller school over that,” Bradley said. “In the end, the big Division I schools will get even bigger, leaving the smaller schools that don't have all those resources scrambling to find talent.”

Bradley said athletes competing for the 10,000-student school in Hamden, Connecticut, don't have the media presence that leads to NIL deals. That means opportunities are few.

“I think it (NIL) defeats the whole purpose of being a college athlete, because once people are paid for their athletic ability, they are considered professionals,” Bradley said. “I think if a tennis player wants to play in college, they should not be paid for it. If they are skilled enough to get paid, they should join the pro tour.”

It’s not surprising to see some student athletes be opposed to the idea of NIL, or at least the idea of what it could potentially turn into. The future of the NCAA will be going through drastic changes these next few years. So what about the athletes coming into it within that time frame? High school recruits, at just 17-18 years old, are being exposed to this NIL atmosphere just like the current student athletes are. The theoretical numbers regarding how much quarterback phenom Arch Manning could generate at Texas seem mythical. What about the other high school athletes pursuing to play their respective sport at the collegiate level?

Luke Green, of Pelham, New York, is that classic three sport high school athlete. He plays football in the fall, hockey in the winter, and baseball in the spring. He just came off visiting a few potential college destinations, mostly FCS Football schools. He has already received an offer to play football for Butler University. What does he think of all this?

“Personally, I’ve aspired to be a collegiate athlete since a young age, it’s not about the money or sponsorship for me, but solely for the love of the game,” Green said. “As for others, I’ve noticed that this whole NIL process is their ‘why’. This is why they want to play college athletics, not for their passion for the game, but instead for the economic benefit.”

As a potential FCS athlete himself, Green said he sees the non-power five schools being impacted negatively by NIL the most. He said the idea of choosing the right program for them as an athlete will begin to fade, and NIL will take the driver seat.

“The pure competitive drive to win will indefinitely take a back seat for a while,” Green said.

This brings in the fear of NIL becoming a recruiting war zone for universities and their athletic programs. While legally universities can’t use NIL opportunities as a “recruiting tool”, it’s only a natural factor considering the type of exposure those top tier programs can provide.

“Once it starts impacting recruiting because of pay to play, It's a slippery slope, and that's what we're in right now,” Kuzmeski said.

While the NCAA has indeed started down that slippery slope already, Kuzmeski said it hasn’t really impacted Oklahoma State in terms of recruiting. She added that most of the time, a school like Oklahoma State wouldn’t previously be “in the market” for some student athletes, so they’re still successfully recruiting without obstacles.

“We have to show that we have some positive things happening as it relates to NIL, because the high school students are going to ask those questions. Transfer students are going to ask those questions,” Kuzmeski said. "So you have to have a program and a plan for helping the student athletes navigate all of this.”

The transfer portal has been a big gray area in college sports for a while now, and over the last year, it has been absolute mayhem in sports like football and basketball. Meluni expressed his concern over the portal in regards to its impact on mid-major programs. 

“I’m very concerned with the transfer portal. It’s good and bad for mid majors,” Meluni said. “You can lose recruits to bigger schools, but can also get athletes from bigger schools that weren’t playing a lot and want to play. Such a small percentage of college athletes go pro, so they want to play as much as they can.”

Regulating both the transfer portal and NIL as a whole is arguably the biggest responsibility the NCAA will confront over the next several years for athletics. Generating money, and sometimes a lot of it, is a realistic possibility for college athletes now. The idea of “one and done's” and student athletes leaving for the pros early might begin to fade. This means more students in school, more, and sometimes less, playing opportunities for student athletes, and an extra pressure on coaches too.

“I think the transfer portal and NIL will keep students in school for longer for more years. It also keeps the coaches on their toes as well,” Kuzmeski said. “If some coach is being a real jerk, players can say ‘I'm not sticking around for this. I'm going someplace else.’”

Kale added that on the baseball side, we could begin to see less players entering the draft at younger ages due to the presence of NIL, which will overall improve their development and possibly their potential athletic careers. 

The current state of college sports is, as Meluni described perfectly, “the wild west” right now. And in terms of NIL, while a strong brand is essential for establishing a following, it’s what you do with that following that will determine your success in generating value off your name, image and likeness. 

“It's more about the specific silo that you want to participate in,” Meluni said. “If you're an athlete that’s comfortable doing videos on Tik Tok, that's great. If you're an athlete that wants to get into podcasting and spend that time, you're going to do that.”

When asked what NCAA athletics will look like in 10 years, Kuzmeski provided some positive insight.

“I think that there could be some health in college football and just in college athletics in general in 10 years,” Kuzmeski said. “But it matters what the NCAA is doing about regulating NIL, and they're not doing anything right now.”