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 continues our coverage with Steve Cicciarelli of the Home of the Brave NIL collective, who discussed what his group is about and what it has accomplished so far.
You are 1 of the co-founders of an NIL collective called “Home of the Brave” that was formed last June: how complicated was it to create (if at all), and why did you do it? It was not so much “complicated” but did involve a fair amount of work. Bradley basketball is part of the social fabric of the city where I live (Peoria, IL). I am a Notre Dame alum so I joined an NIL collective called Irish Players Club, and later realized that there were plenty of people in Peoria who wanted to keep Bradley relevant in the MVC.
Your entire focus is on basketball: how/why would you decide to open it up to other sports? We picked the men’s basketball program because that is what is important to Peoria. We will consider helping other sports but our group was formed solely for basketball: we want to crawl before we walk and then jog/run. We did not want to bite off too big a piece of the apple, but if we gain more traction and there is not another NIL formed to help athletes in other sports then we will consider doing that in a couple of years.
What kind of connection does your group have with former players like Hersey Hawkins/current Coach Brian Wardle/Athletic Director Chris Reynolds (chairman of the D-1 Men’s Basketball Committee for the 2022-23 season)? We have contacts with all of them. I have known Coach Wardle since he came to town and remember watching Chris back when he was playing high school basketball! We have 50 influential donors and reached out to legends like Hersey/Jim Les because we wanted their support and to use their information to draw interest.
What kind of deals have you been able to work out so far? We brought in people from auto dealerships/construction companies and had the basketball players sign annual contracts. They also participate in several events/year such as a golf tourney and a chance for donors to attend practice.
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? Part of our program is to have events where half of the money goes to non-profit organizations. Participation in our NIL will not affect people’s donations to other causes.
Do you think the NIL model will be as effective at an MVC school, and what is the biggest difference between your collective and those at high-major schools (if any)? The biggest difference is the size of the money. The Irish Players Club is a Notre Dame NIL that supports only the football program by doing things such as selling leprechaun NFTs! The MVC is not a Power 5 football conference and we will never be able to compete at that level, but we feel that we have enough support to do what we need to do to keep Bradley relevant.
Your website appears to allow NIL deals with every member of the basketball team: why did you choose to focus on the entire team rather than just 1-2 high-profile student-athletes? Our intention is to do it the right way: we are not allowed to use it to recruit people. The key to a mid-major is to keep players at your program by giving them some money when they are freshmen, so if another school later offers them $25,000 and they are already getting $18,000 from us we think they will stick around due to the connections that we have made. However, if another school offers them $500,000 then that is another story! We have to “play old” with juniors and seniors.
You also have an FAQ regarding athletes who leave the program: how can you compete with other schools who might offer deals that are less limited in time/scope? We had a player last year named Terry Roberts who led our team in scoring before transferring to Georgia: if we had an NIL then he probably would have stayed here. If we have a player who is being offered more money by another school then we can do a “capital call” and try to raise some money to close the gap: we just hope it does not spiral out of control.
Last month 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? There is a concern but it is no different than the concern of a coach when recruiting players. We tend to recruit high-quality kids so it has not been a problem so far.
You are not accepting 1-time donations but only annual donations: why did you decide to do things that way, and what kind of “priority access” will members receive? We do annual donations with a payment at the beginning of the year. We had or 1st meeting and limited it to 50 people…and it sold out the very 1st night! Going forward, we will develop our membership to include corporate donors to help expand the money base.