The marketplace for college athletes to engage in Name/Image/Likeness (NIL) deals was created last year after the NCAA v. Alston case and now it seems like every college is ready to start spreading the wealth. There are already more than 100 “collectives” either in operation or being formed. They allow alumni/fans/whoever to donate money to assist a specific school in creating opportunities for student-athletes to make some money off of their celebrity. We have reached out to many collectives and will try to interview representatives from as many of them as possible to see how each of them operates. HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel commences our coverage with Adam Fleischer of the Illini Guardians NIL collective, who discussed what his group is about and what it has accomplished so far.
You and Tom DiSanto co-founded an NIL collective called “Illini Guardians” last January: how complicated was it to create (if at all), and why did you do it? It was very complicated! The 1st factor is that the law was changed in Illinois during the summer of 2021 to allow college players get paid for their name/image/likeness. The 2nd factor is that it had never been done before so each legal conclusion was new ground: it has been described as the “Wild, Wild West” due to the uncertainty involved at the time. It was a careful/complex undertaking.
How much of your focus is on basketball compared to football? At Illinois the fan base is driven by basketball as the most visible part of the athletic program and football as the biggest revenue-generator. Our NIL effort begins with those 2 sports but by no means ends with those 2: it is the hook that will allow us to bring in the widest swath of donors but we are aiming to focus on our female student-athletes as well. It will be a holistic effort with basketball/football as the most visible flags to start, but we have top-rated golf/tennis programs so there is a lot of interest in spreading it out through the entire athletic department. We are committed to developing a broad-based fan collective.
What kind of connection does your group have with former players like Kendall Gill or current people like Coach Brad Underwood/Athletic Director Josh Whitman? The most important relationship we have is with the university and people like Brad/Josh as well as football coach Bret Bielema. The reason is that we need their tacit support and ensure we are pushing the fan base in the direction that matches their vision within the parameters of the law. A lot of collectives do not always match the vision of the university with the vision of the fans, such as at places like USC/Miami. That relationship with those individuals is really important/collaborative. It is also “unofficial” because they cannot/do not direct our collective but help create a system of mutual support.
What kind of deals have you been able to work out so far? The most innovative example that stands as a guidepost is the contract called “Help Tackle Hunger” (https://illiniguardians.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Tackling-Hunger-Press-Release.pdf). We worked with some benefactors to raise money and have 9 linemen who are coordinating a food drive. The NIL contract will pay those linemen for various uses of their celebrity. They met with the food bank to educate themselves, then met with some schoolchildren to explain how to set up a food drive. We had them sign some glossy photos to promote the food drive and will also promote it on social media. The schoolchildren will get to attend a practice and take photos/get autographs…and the players will get paid for all of that. Every donation will help buy meals for an Illinois family. It has a lot of different tentacles but you can see how a group of student-athletes can make money in a permissible manner while also helping to engage the community and give back to it. It is a really cool example of how it can/should work.
People are obviously free to do whatever they want with their hard-earned money…but do you ever have any second thoughts about whether you should be encouraging your donors to do something else like fight cancer/reduce homelessness? Very broadly, the concept of paying student-athletes is a difficult concept to understand/accept. Anyone who was in college prior to 2021 earned their own money with the sentiment that college athletes could not get paid for their celebrity. There is a mental hurdle to get over based on the revolutionary change that has happened. Josh Whitman has called it the biggest disruption in college sports since athletic scholarships, which was a mind-blowing concept at the time. It is uncomfortable…but it is here and here to stay. All student-athletes can leverage their celebrity, so the question for a fan base becomes do you want to take a stand that the laws should not exist or find a way to embrace the change and bring it to your university so that you can remain competitive and carve out an area that makes you feel proud/ethical? Our basketball program is a top-10/top-15 program: if these kids do not have NIL opportunities here then they will have them somewhere else. You might not like it but that is the reality of college sports in 2022. We are trying to take it/embrace it and have it become a centerpiece of what the school offers, along with some of its top academic programs. It is a necessary evil in today’s college world so we are trying to build some long-term strength.
You had a “Meet the New Guys” event earlier this month: how excited is everyone about newcomers like Matthew Mayer (who won the 2021 NCAA title with Baylor)/Terrence Shannon Jr. (who made the NCAA tourney with Texas Tech each of the past 2 years)? The excitement is crazy/palpable! It was a great event where the players met some fans/signed some autographs. When you see the fans circling around them you start to really feel the expectation/camaraderie. The school has a new tagline of “FamILLy” for our people who bleed orange/blue. You see very small children crowding around these student-athletes…next to 75-year old ladies with autograph pens in hand. The conversation starts off with, “What position do you play?” and continues to, “You better win this year because I am a long-time season ticket holder!” It connects fans across the country to engage the players in a way that was impossible before NIL. My wife came to the event and wondered who would attend…and then 500 people showed up and were thrilled to meet the new guys. Coach Underwood has recruited players with a common character that you can see: when Terrence/Matt are there with 3-4 freshmen who have never done this before, you get the feeling that they are building a program that lends itself very well to NIL programming. They are not arrogant/upset that they have to be there or afraid to look a fan in the eye and thank them for coming. I think you can connect the dots in a very powerful way. In an era of social media/TV it is sometimes hard to connect them but you see the power of it via NIL.
An article on your website from last March said you were “ready to rock” if Kofi returned: how disappointing was it to learn that 2-time All-American Kofi Cockburn decided to declare for the NBA Draft last April? It was disappointing in the way that you see a child go off to college. You are sad to lose the relationship but still have pride for your kid’s next steps. The university got a lot out of Kofi and the fan base had a lot of great experiences with him. You could see that he was not going to be there forever so it was somewhat expected but folks were still sad to see him go. People are excited to see what lays ahead both for him as well as the “new slate” for the current team. When you have a 7-footer in the center the program is literally/figuratively built around that! When he leaves a place like Champaign you can see immediately the next page with a group of run-and-gun athletes, but it is always disappointing to lose an All-American.
Your website also says that your focus is not on 1-2 high-profile student-athletes but rather all student-athletes: why did you choose the latter over the former? To build our collective’s continuity you need people to buy into it as an ongoing effort, otherwise you define it as a group that is only about the next star athlete. When Kofi leaves you have to figure out a new sales effort. It means that you have to constantly redefine the organization, which we do not want to do. We want to be a figurehead organization working in partnership with the athletic department that goes beyond the identity of a student who will be gone in 4 years (or less). If you are a female basketball player or male swimmer, you have to know that there is an NIL group that is not just focused on Kofi but has a broad foundation to benefit all student-athletes. Just do the math: if you pay 1 athlete $100,000 to be on your billboard, it is a hard pill to swallow when you could pay 20 athletes $5000 each to do 20 different things. We wanted to build something more programmatic since that would be most advantageous to the fan base/athletic department.
Last Sunday former top high school prospect Emoni Bates was arrested after sheriff’s deputies found a gun in a car he was driving: how concerned are you about entering contractual relationships with teenagers who might end up behaving badly? The concern is no more/less present than with any other contract involving a teenager: you have to gear opportunities toward who they are. As a teenage student-athlete you should have opportunities that do not put any extra spotlight on you: they already have tremendous pressure AND an academic schedule AND a significant athletic commitment. We want to hold them out to the public as the shining student-athlete they are, rather than a role model for your own family: they are just kids. The expectations are already higher due to their profile, but it should not be so high that it creates undue pressure.
What kind of cool stuff do people get if they contribute over $10,000/year as part of the Illini Championship Circle? The nice thing about collaborating with a university is that we have access to a lot of cool events. If someone wants to engage at that level then we have such relationships that we can set up dinners or private Zoom events. Depending on the sport/season we can even give someone access to practices, which you can only get an insider.