NIL Newsletter #132 | One More Year, Nationwide NIL Law, Reebok's NIL Campaign + ICYMI
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:
“One More Year Fund” Encourages Players to Return
Yesterday, Valiant, a Michigan-focused NIL collective, announced a campaign they call the “One More Year Fund” which is focused on retaining football student-athletes who are considering leaving school for NFL opportunities.
According to their launch, all proceeds from the fund will go to the players “in pursuit of the 2023 National Championship.” The fund named four players in particular: Blake Corum, Cornelius Johnson, Zak Zinter, and Trevor Keegan (pictured above).
The fund is reported to have hit $25,000 in the first four hours. This is not a bad return, but still pales in comparison to the estimated $700,000 NFL minimum salary.
Corum is ranked as the 114th best prospect in the latest ESPN release, while Zinter is 134th. Neither Keegan nor Johnson have a draft ranking at this time.
More information on the fund is available HERE.
Representative Gus Bilirakis Supports National NIL Law
In a guest column for Sportico, US Representative Bilirakis communicated his support of a national NIL law, as opposed to the individual state specific NIL laws that currently exist.
“The patchwork of state laws that have emerged in the absence of a federal law has made the NIL landscape difficult to navigate. Student athletes have raised concerns about navigating such a confusing and ambiguous environment, especially athletes that call one state their home and another state their home field.”
Bilirakis voiced concerns about the growing inequality in the landscape of collegiate athletics, and warned that the current state laws would only further that inequality.
His full column is available HERE.
Reebok Launches Major NIL Campaign
Sports marketing agency Postgame launched a campaign in partnership with Reebok which includes 60 collegiate student-athletes. The campaign includes notable athletes from men’s and women’s sports, including Georgia’s Darnell Washington, UCLA’s Tyger Campbell (pictured above), and Oklahoma’s Madi Williams.
Bill Jula, Postgame’s founder and CEO, stated that the athletes were chosen in order to attain “a nice cross-sampling of a combination of male and female [athletes], basketball and football, some different sports.”
What is most remarkable about the campaign is that every athlete involved attends a university that is not sponsored by Reebok. Instead, all have contracts with Nike, Jordan, or Under Armour.
Jula said there have only been two or three examples of athletes who have been unable to participate in a campaign because of an existing contract between the athlete’s university and a competing brand.
The full story is available HERE.
ICYMI Ticker
Early-bird registration for the 2023 INFLCR NIL Summit closes on February 17th. LINK
15 top football prospects discussed the use of NIL in their recruitments in an article from The Athletic. LINK
Miami (FL)’s new Football Operations complex will reportedly include an NIL suite. LINK
Hoosiers For Good and Hoosiers Connect NIL reached their $1 million fundraising goal, triggering a matching donation from an anonymous donor. LINK
SANIL launched the Georgia Tech focused “The Tech Way” collective, their 7th Power-5 collective. LINK
Following Tulane’s dramatic Cotton Bowl victory over USC, the Fear the Wave collective quadrupled in funding. LINK