Newsletter #88 | Marc D’Amelio's UConn collective, WWE's Next In Line, UW AD Jen Cohen + ICYMI Ticker
Welcome to the NIL Newsletter by Optimum Sports Consulting - providing valuable, actionable NIL resources for student athletes, administrators, agents and other sport professionals.
Recapping NIL This Week:
UConn’s Marc D’Amelio announces creation of D’Amelio Huskies Collective
UConn alum and social media star Marc D’Amelio announced the creation of the D’Amelio Huskies Collective on social media Friday. At least one athlete from each men’s and women’s sports at UConn will get the chance to be a part of it. Full story HERE.
Student athletes will submit their information such as age, grade, sport, position and interests online. After a student athlete is picked, D’Amelio will be a personal mentor to them in helping athletes create their own personal brand and advising them on brand deals. D’Amelio has expertise in this area with over 600,000 Twitter followers. He has also helped his daughters, Charli and Dixie, who have a combined 190 million TikTok followers, in choosing the right brand deals.
One of the biggest things D’Amelio wants to ensure is that kids don’t get taken advantage of when signing brand deals. “It’s the same thing we do with my kids,” he said. “We look at the deal and they say they are going to pay us ‘X’ amount of money. A lot of times, people get excited about the top-line number, but they need to know what their contract is and what responsibility they are going to have after they sign this deal.”
D’Amelio has contacted multiple brands that are interested. Some of these companies include Lightricks, who creates several popular video and photo editing apps and Step, a banking platform for teens. D’Amelio believes he can raise between $250,000-500,000 from the companies that have committed to the collective. He said he will take no profit from the collective. “I feel like so much of the things I have in my life, either directly or indirectly have come from UConn,” he said. “I’ve always had a love for the university.”
WWE to unveil second "Next In Line" class at inaugural NIL Summit in June
WWE will announce the second class of athletes entering its “Next In Line” program at the inaugural NIL Summit on Monday, June 13. The class of 15 athletes will be in attendance and unveiled live during the NIL Awards ceremony at the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta.
WWE will join Meta, Wasserman and Invesco QQQ and others as founding Partners of the inaugural NIL Summit and will also serve as the exclusive Presenting Partner for the Breakthrough Athlete of the Year Award. Additionally, WWE is nominated for the Brand of the Year Award which recognizes creative excellence by a brand or organization for collaboration with a student-athlete. More HERE.
Four of the 16 initial members of WWE’s “Next In Line” program are nominated for awards including Olympic gold medalist Gable Steveson (University of Minnesota) for Male Athlete of the Year, Haley & Hanna Cavinder (University of Miami) for Female Athlete of the Year and Jon Seaton (Elon University) for the Hustle Award.
“We are excited to unveil our next class of NIL athletes at the inaugural NIL Summit which brings together the brightest minds across this emerging industry for the first time,” said Paul Levesque, WWE EVP, Global Talent Strategy and Development. “WWE’s ‘Next In Line’ program has already proven to be transformational for our talent pipeline. We have forged many incredible partnerships with student athletes during the first six months of the program and look forward to ushering in the next wave of talent.”
Three athletes from last year’s class have graduated and are in discussions to join the WWE: Joe Spivak (Northwestern) John Krahn (Portland State) & Bama’s Isaac Odugbesan. Per Darren Rovell.
University of Washington AD Jen Cohen on the current state of NIL
In an annual presentation to the University of Washington Board of Regents Wednesday, UW AD Jen Cohen and chief financial officer Kate Cullen outlined the athletic department’s budget in the 2022 financial year- but moved the discussion to NIL. Cohen highlighted two issues:
“One is that people are still breaking the rules with inducement. They’re taking kids away from schools,” UW’s athletic director said Wednesday. “And I think (the NCAA) will make an example of a couple schools. I think they have to. There’s a lot of pressure to do that. But we’re not going to be in that lane. You don’t want us to be in that lane. But we are in the lane of trying to find every student-athlete at Washington who wants an NIL deal, an NIL deal.”
UW’s second problem: on a state level, athletic departments are adhering to different sets of rules. “Utah doesn’t have (state NIL) legislation, but their athletic director can drive a starting QB to go meet with a donor to get them an NIL deal, because their state laws are different than ours,” Cohen said as an example. “So even though they don’t have (state) legislation and we don’t have (state) legislation, we have state ethics laws here that are different than in Utah.”
“The problem with the model now is it’s not protecting students,” Cohen said. “There’s other third parties getting involved, and you (as an athletic department employee) don’t get to be involved. It’s really our responsibility to give them the best opportunity to negotiate great deals, but also make sure they’re protected. When we’re not involved in that, I’m concerned about it.”
ICYMI Ticker
Jackson State FB HC Deion Sanders posted a video to Twitter, which focused on team staffing issues surrounding NIL.
Legendary head coach Hal Mumme is making a move into the NIL game. He and his partners have launched Hal Mumme & Associates, an NIL agency intended to work with SAs to get deals with advertisers. The website for Hal Mumme & Associates features one client – Washington Huskies Softball IF Baylee Klingler.
Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) joined Outkick 360 to discuss her meeting with the SEC’s Greg Sankey, where federal NIL legislation could help, and NCAA leadership post-Mark Emmert.
Maryland MBB HC Kevin Willard on fixing NIL: “I think the easiest way to end this mess, is to have an NCAA Tournament bonus. I've been saying it for four to five years. You know, you bring tremendous value to your university when you go to the NCAA tournament. You get the recognition, you get the TV [money]. So I think instead of, you know, taking $400 million out of the NCAA Tournament revenue and repurposing that back to the players that, you know, it's like playoff bonuses. You make 'A' if you get to the first round, you get to the second round, you get 'B.' You get to the Sweet 16 ... And the guys that win a national championship, like the Kansas guys this year, those guys should have got a bigger playoff chunk. And I think that just stops everything,” Willard said. Full interview HERE.