What Are Your Alma Mater’s NIL Priorities for Student-Athletes?

What is your alma mater’s name, image and likeness strategy?

There is a good chance that unless it’s a Division 1 college with an established collective, it’s trying to figure out what it is!

The NIL industry is growing faster than the average casual observer can keep track of. If you are an industry insider you are seeing new suites of products, services, and tools. You are seeing new positions with new titles and new organizations forming to support the rapidly evolving and changing industry.

In less than two years we’ve seen:

1. A half dozen student-athlete directories emerge to offer a free profile to student-athletes so they can be found by sponsors, advertisers, and brands.
2. Over 200 collectives formed to give coaches and teams as much as $12 million dollars a year to recruit student-athletes and offer revenue opportunities to them.
3. Over a hundred marketing agencies and agents formed or expanded into the collegiate market to provide managerial support to student athletes.
4. A half dozen firms created to provide collectives, athletic departments and teams web based operational tools to manage the tracking of athletes’ sponsor/ad engagement.
5. Hundreds of professionals ranging from attorneys, business advisors, and financial experts now offering their alma maters expertise and support in areas coaches and student-athletes have little to no understanding. 
6. Marketing and advertising firms that have developed branding tools to not only help student-athletes develop an ever expanding network, but also create relevant and entertaining content.
7. Hundreds and soon to be thousands of brands, ranging from billion dollar companies to local car dealerships and fast food restaurants now sponsoring student-athletes, or creating branding and advertising opportunities.
8. Podcasts, newsletters, and blogs by the dozens created to support the insatiable interest in learning which athletes are signing million dollar deals and which brands are interested in playing in the NIL space.

There are mixed reactions to this enormous change in the marketplace! 

While coaches might agree student athletes deserve to be rewarded for their time, talent, and effort, all will tell you the NIL industry is killing their chances of creating stable, predictable, and well trained line ups of athletes.

This got me thinking about what your alma mater’s athletic department’s and team’s priorities should be. While your coaches will likely tell you their number one priority is to create an environment where they can help their athletes excel so they can create winning seasons, steamrolling NIL trends are FORCING them to refocus and pull together advisors, consultants, alumni, and administrators to help them figure out how to legally raise the most amount of money and build an inventory of brands, advertisers, and sponsors to give their student-athletes the greatest opportunity to take advantage of their name, image, and likeness! 

"The concept of TEAM is getting lost as athletes are focusing on THEIR personal brand."

On the student-athlete side, we are seeing-- time starved players –having to fit in the time and effort to not only learn how to build a network, promote their brand, and create engaging entertaining content, in lieu of spending time on weight training, academic commitments, or even participating in campus activities!

So I thought this might be a good time to reset and take a 30,000 foot look at our college sports industry and identify a formula or mix of strategies that college teams could refer to in developing and managing their NIL strategies.   There are a couple of things we need to keep in mind when considering what your alma mater’s athletic team’s priorities are.

• First, we need to keep in mind 98 percent of student-athletes will NOT be drafted after they graduate.
• Second, once they graduate, student-athletes will lose their brand identity including their uniform and their sacred number, and it’s likely their following and sponsorships will fade away.
• Third, because of their commitment to their team and the NIL frenzy to build their own brand and network, they will be clueless on how to manage their first professional job search.

Keeping those in mind, I would suggest coaches and athletic directors build their teams’ strategies, programs, and philosophy around the following priorities:

1. Sport, Practice, and Physical Training
2. Academic Support
3. Career and Professional Development Training
4. Business and Social Media Training
5. Sponsorship and Advertising Opportunities

…and in that order!

Sport, Practice, and Physical Training

The faculty and administration will disagree that their sport, practice, and physical training should be a coaches’ first priority, but let’s be realistic, student-athletes– while they are going to college to get a better shot at a job and career in the future –are driven by their love and commitment to their sport!  Student-athletes' focus is on the practice field and weight room, not the classroom!

Academic Support

Because student-athletes are putting an enormous amount of time in their sport, you might as well consider it a part time job!  In light of their commitment to practice, team meetings, game day road trips, physical training, they will miss classes, and study sessions.  It will be important to continue to provide academic coaching and support they will need to pass their courses.

Career and Professional Development Training

McKinsey research suggests less than sixty percent of students ever visit the career center and it’s likely that number is even worse for student-athletes.  This despite NACE research that suggests, “students that take ownership of their careers earlier in their college experience will increase their chance of getting internships, and jobs by graduation day that are relevant to their major.” Your alma mater should adopt scalable, on demand career and professional development programming student-athletes can participate at anytime!

Business and Social Media Training

Industry insiders are excited about the fact that student-athletes are learning startup techniques as they build their network, create their brand, promote themselves to advertisers and sponsors, create content to entertain their network, and manage contracts and obligations. There is NO question, they will need coaching and advice on how to handle not only the aforementioned areas but understand fundamental financial strategies from filing business forms, paying taxes, and saving!

Sponsorship and Advertising Opportunities

If you are a Division 1 college, you might bow to pressures to make this your number one priority as the student-athletes you want to attract will be looking at what kind of financial rewards you are able to offer them.  I’m suggesting it would be the lowest priority for a college that is not likely to have even 1 percent of their student-athletes drafted.  

Summary

It makes sense to pause and think about what kind of culture your college should be creating for its student athletes in these changing NIL times! 

Even Division 1 colleges need to keep in mind only a small percent (as little as 2 percent) of their student-athletes will be drafted and that the rest will lose the ability to leverage their uniform and their network to take advantage of their name, image, and likeness.  Athletic directors and coaches should consider where to spend limited resources on staffing, training, and decide what their priorities are, so they can best prepare their student athletes for their future business careers.

What do you think? 

Share your thoughts!

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