NIL Things - All Sports

[GoBearcats31]

https://theathletic.com/3916775/2022...shared_article Cincy Reigns launches as NIL collective for Bearcats athletics

Cincinnati's athletic department is adding another significant avenue into the name-image-and-likeness space with the launch of the Cincy Reigns collective on Monday.

Cincy Reigns, which has been in the works for several months, is founded and chaired by Brian Fox, a local lawyer and graduate of UC College of Law who has been a supporter of Bearcats athletics and is known among fans for his Bearcat Sports Radio social media persona. The collective intends to benefit Cincinnati athletes from all sports, is in alignment with the university from a mission and compliance perspective and has the support of coaches and other major stakeholders within the athletic department.

[Lobot]

Updated guidelines have been issued by the NCAA Board of Governors today.

https://theathletic.com/3733149/2022/10/26/ncaa-division-i-nil-guidance/

https://ncaaorg.s3.amazonaws.com/ncaa/NIL/D1NIL_InstitutionalInvolvementNILActivities.pdf

[GoBearcats31]

https://www.espn.com/college-football/recruiting/story/_/id/34769258/bronny-james-5-hoops-players-land-nike-nil-deals

Nike has finalized NIL endorsement deals with five top amateur basketball players, headlined by LeBron James' son, Bronny James of Sierra Canyon High School.
...

In addition to Bronny James, Nike also finalized NIL deals with Iowa point guard Caitlin Clark, Stanford guard Haley Jones, Sierra Canyon High School star guard Juju Watkins, and top 2023 guard D.J. Wagner of Camden, New Jersey.

[Lobot]

https://gobearcats.com/news/2022/10/...athletics.aspx

Longtime University of Cincinnati sales and marketing professional Greg Harrell has been hired by Altius Sports Partners (ASP) – the Name, Image and Likeness launch program for elite athletics departments – as the full-time, on-campus General Manager of UC Athletics' exclusive NIL program. Harrell, who previously served in UC's Office of Innovation, will lead the Bearcats' NIL strategy, education, and new athlete business opportunities.

They sold him short. He used to be head of ticketing for both UC and FCC in other previous stops

[GoBearcats31]

https://gobearcats.com/news/2022/10/3/general-greg-harrell-named-gm-of-altius-sports-on-campus-nil-department-at-cincinnati-athletics.aspx

Longtime University of Cincinnati sales and marketing professional Greg Harrell has been hired by Altius Sports Partners (ASP) – the Name, Image and Likeness launch program for elite athletics departments – as the full-time, on-campus General Manager of UC Athletics' exclusive NIL program. Harrell, who previously served in UC's Office of Innovation, will lead the Bearcats' NIL strategy, education, and new athlete business opportunities.

[bearcatbret]

From this article about College Basketball: Candid Coaches: How do you feel about the state of college basketball in 2022? - CBSSports.com Concerned

• "(There are too many) commissioner- and president-driven decisions that put basketball in the hands of football-centric decision-makers more than ever. (You have to) run your program with a front office/coaching mix, in that order, and you'll be able to compete. (You have to) get one or two administrative people that have a genuine seat at the school's decision-making and priority table -- and then you have a chance. Without that, you'll be run over by football decisions and entitled boosters."
• "No direction or leadership. We need a college basketball leader that sits and works with the head of the NCAA. Also got to start thinking of college basketball without football. Might not be a bad thing. Proactive, not reactive."
• "We are the only sports entity where every day is free agency."
• "Initial meetings with kids now, it used to be about, 'Am I going to start, how much playing time am I going to get?' Now that's the last thing on the list. The portal, that whole thing is a disaster. Tampering is a disaster. These things are good for the student-athlete, but the ideal and what it's supposed to be is all great, but that's not what's happening right now. How do you build rosters, teach lessons, fight through adversity?"
• "Every rule has taken control away from the coach and given it to the teenagers. Every new rule is anti-program building but pro-individualistic. The coach has less control over his program than ever before."
• "NIL combined with transfer portal combined with Overtime Elite and the G League Ignite combined with conference realignment (because of football and TV revenue) combined with a lack of leadership in NCAA makes for very unstable ground. If you don't know where you want to go, any road will get you there. Feels like we don't know where we want to end up with all of this."
• "We don't have great leadership from the NCAA and need a strong personality with great knowledge about the college basketball landscape to provide guidance at a pivotal time."
• "The transfer portal is the least of my concerns. I wouldn't say that if I was at a mid-major. But NIL is the biggest. To boil it all down, every organization and every entity comes down to leadership. We have a leadership vacuum at the NCAA level. I think we've got good leadership at the NABC level. I think Craig Robinson's doing as good of a job as he can do. We need absolute autonomy as a sport and we have to figure out what's best for our sport as a whole. ... The problem basketball coaches run into: the presidents want men's basketball to be treated just like every other sport and we're not like every other sport. We're different than field hockey, baseball, lacrosse. I think every sport should be given that autonomy to some degree."

[Lobot]

Nice to see Kroger getting involved here. All female athletes got an NIL deal from Kroger yesterday.

https://www.on3.com/nil/news/cincinn...hletes-kroger/

[Lobot]

The NIL marketplace for student athletes is now open.

https://gobearcats.com/news/2022/8/23/cincinnati-athletics-launches-bearcats-nil-exchange.aspx

[Lobot]

Steve Berkowitz at USA Today is report the Senate will have an NIL bill introduced today by Sen. Machin and wait for it......Tommy Tuberville. The bill would be Alston compliant and I'm fuzzy what that entails exactly but here's the text and sceenshot.

https://twitter.com/ByBerkowitz/status/1554896806860947456

[swilsonsp4]

Here's an espn.com article regarding a questionnaire that they submitted widely across the CFB landscape. It deals not only with opinions of NIL, but realignment, the future of the NCAA and other issues. It's a long piece:

https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/34307234/what-future-college-football-200-coaches-players-administrators-respond

[Lobot]

ON3 reporting on the Altius Press release.

https://www.on3.com/nil/news/altius-...-nil-in-house/

[Lobot]

Does this mean the players won't need an agent to find deals? The one thing I dislike about NIL allowances is people like Drew Rosenhaus or Scott Boros can get a kid to sign with him before coming to college just to get the NIL deals. I understand that is one of the jobs agents do for their clients, but I dislike a kid being tied to one of these guys. I'd rather the NCAA only allow agents who not qualified/certified sports agents, or affiliated with one of the firms. I could be wrong for the umpteenth time today, but I feel that marketing agents may do a better job at finding NIL endorsements and not line the pockets of the super rich sport agents.

I don't think you have pro agents like Rosenhaus muddling around with this type of client. And I'm not even sure guys like him are cleared by the NCAA to work with NIL. The NCAA does vet the people in the NIL space although I'm short on details on how that all works.

Here's a good example of an agency that a lot of UC athletes are signed with. I'm not endorsing them (or not not endorsing them) . They just seem to be the most popular org. in the space for UC right now. Not sure how the link above will affect all their signees though.

https://bsbgroupintl.com/sports

[red_n_black_attack]

Looks like we’ve ratcheted up a level here:

https://gobearcats.com/news/2022/7/2...gh-impact.aspx

Does this mean the players won't need an agent to find deals? The one thing I dislike about NIL allowances is people like Drew Rosenhaus or Scott Boros can get a kid to sign with him before coming to college just to get the NIL deals. I understand that is one of the jobs agents do for their clients, but I dislike a kid being tied to one of these guys. I'd rather the NCAA only allow agents who not qualified/certified sports agents, or affiliated with one of the firms. I could be wrong for the umpteenth time today, but I feel that marketing agents may do a better job at finding NIL endorsements and not line the pockets of the super rich sport agents.

[Lobot]

Looks like we’ve ratcheted up a level here:

https://gobearcats.com/news/2022/7/25/cincinnati-athletics-partners-with-altius-continues-to-embrace-nil-through-impact.aspx

[bearcatbret]

From the article about the top 10 QBs for 2023 - Where the top 10 quarterback prospects in 2023 are headed (usatoday.com)
2023 QB Jaden Rashada has reportedly agreed to an NIL deal with Miami booster John Ruiz worth $9.5 million