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 Chris Schoemann of the Boulevard Collective, who discussed what his group is about and what it has accomplished so far.
Chris Kleinert/Kyle Miller co-founded an NIL collective called “Boulevard Collective” last month: how complicated was it to create (if at all), and why did they do it? The motivation behind the creation of the Boulevard Collective was to create an NIL Collective that would serve as an augmentation to the SMU student-athlete’s experience, be rooted with community-based NIL activations, and be based on a concept that we become a trusted and valued partner of the University. Its creation was not necessarily complicated, but we took a great deal of care to make sure that we were pursuing common goals.
Your title is Executive Director: what does that entail? In my role with Boulevard I serve as the managing administrator. We have resources that we employ to provide world-class marketing services to the members of the Collective and we have a sales team that assists us in the Dallas-Fort Worth market. I serve as the primary contact person between the University and the Collective.
How much of your focus is on basketball compared to football? Boulevard’s initial focus is on football and men’s basketball but we are not limited to providing services to just those two sports. We have already done NIL activations with members of the women’s basketball/volleyball teams and our aspirational goals are to incorporate all SMU student-athletes (regardless of sport) into the Collective.
What kind of connection (if any) will your group have with new coach Rob Lanier/Athletic Director Rick Hart? We really want to be viewed by the University as a partner here. My level of communication with the University may be a little different given my familiarity with its administration due to my prior engagements. We are in regular communication with Rick and his office as well as other areas of the University’s administration. It cannot work any other way in our opinion.
What kind of deals have you been able to work out so far? To date, we have created deals for SMU student-athletes that have been team-based. We are currently finalizing a number of individual student-athlete deals and our goal is to continue down both of those tracks. In addition, we also provided member of the Collective with a brand-building seminar where we brought Aaron Rapf (former NIKE Sports Marketing rep) into Dallas: he engaged the student-athletes with a great brand-building presentation.
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? Sure, but what we want to do with our Boulevard deals is to ensure (to the best of our abilities) that the deals themselves align with efforts that have a community good associated with them. That is why we were so excited to do a deal last August with the Dallas Independent School District and provide something meaningful to the six middle schools we worked with (Note: a group of football/basketball players helped assemble more than 400 backpacks with school supplies for local students). The response from our donors has been positive when we expound on that concept as our value proposition.
It has been reported that your group will be supporting every basketball/football player at the school: why did you decide to “spread the wealth” rather than just focus on 1-2 high-profile student-athletes? We feel strongly that such a concept helps to build the entire program. However, that is not to say we will not work with the high-profile athletes as well.
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? SMU provides its student-athletes with world-class Student-Athlete Development resources. We look at Boulevard as a companion to that program. Part of Aaron Rapf’s presentation on behalf of Boulevard last week talked extensively about personal conduct and responsibility to this end from the athletes perspective. It was impactful.
What kind of cool stuff do people get if they became 1 of your top donors? We have some gear that we have been working on as well as student-athlete “meet and greets.” As with other Collectives, this is still a work in progress.