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 concludes our coverage with Jeff McKean of the Boilermaker Alliance NIL collective, who discussed what his group is about and what it has accomplished so far.
You co-founded an NIL collective called “Boilermaker Alliance” last July: how complicated was it to create (if at all), and why did you do it? It was actually very complicated. We established a sizable charitable foundation from the ground up so there were months of behind-the-scenes work by a lot of people. A few other attorneys and I did a lot of research about creating a charity/raising money: we started the process/incorporated in May and then launched in July with the bare-bones structure as we were building things out. Everyone involved is very invested in Purdue and most of us are Purdue grads. I approached the school in May about doing something independently from the outside. We have learned a lot along the way.
How much of your focus is on basketball compared to football? 1 of the things that makes us unique is that we have made opportunities available to all 385 student-athletes at Purdue. We have former players on our executive board and are committed to engaging all of our athletes with deals. Football/basketball are certainly important since they are revenue sports, but everyone should have a platform to use their NIL. We have had some amazing athletes in track and field/volleyball/etc. so they can all contribute.
What kind of connection (if any) will your group have with former players like Robbie Hummel/Cuonzo Martin and/or Athletic Director Mike Bobinski? Robbie/Cuonzo are both part of our advisory board, along with some other recognizable names like Drew Brees: they help provide educational/networking opportunities with current athletes and also actively help us with development/social media. Robbie has already participated in a couple of events that we have hosted, including 1 with former player Rapheal Davis: he is 1 of the best dudes there is. We also have former stars from other sports like 3-time Super Bowl champ Matt Light: everyone we have reached out to has been really excited to help because Purdue is a family atmosphere.
What kind of deals have you been able to work out so far? Our model is to vet charity partners and then match up the athlete with the charity. Just yesterday our men’s basketball team did an event in West Lafayette to encourage people to come to a blood drive. A couple of players even gave blood themselves despite their practice schedule (after their trainer said it would be okay). A couple of weeks ago Ethan Morton/Cassidy Hardin, who both have family members that have battled cancer, did public appearances and signed autographs to help promote cancer research. Rapheal has a phenomenal charity up in Fort Wayne that gives back to underprivileged kids with camps/clinics/life lessons. Caleb Furst is from Fort Wayne so we matched him up with that charity: he gave some of the kids a tour of the campus and brought them to a football game. We have lot of great events and survey all of our athletes about what is near/dear to them. We want to make it a good fit from a passion standpoint, and also try to match up athletes with their hometowns where they remain heroes and their NIL is at their highest level.
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? That is exactly why we chose the approach that we did. I wondered how to approach donors about such issues so that is why we went with the charitable model. We want to be part of the solution and think it has sustainability. 1 of the events we did with Rapheal helped him to double his attendance and triple the amount of money he raised. The charities absolutely love it: we provide the athletes free of charge so that they do not have to tap into their marketing budget. We have done calls with entire executive boards because we can help their mission. My director of operations was so fired up after the blood drive yesterday!
A couple of months ago you announced week that you are expanding your scope to include all 385 scholarship athletes at the school: why do you feel that the focus should be on helping all student-athletes rather than only student-athletes from revenue sports? We knew that is how most people are doing it but it did not feel right to us at all. From the very beginning we thought that all of these kids have great stories and deserve a platform whether they play golf/tennis/other. We want to include everyone…even though it is a logistical nightmare. It is important to us to make it work because we want to lift the reputation of the school as a whole.
You plan to raise $6 million annually for a fund to compensate your student-athletes: how did you come up with that number, and how close are you? We do not talk about numbers much but that did appear in some literature. Our university has been incredibly supportive: they do not direct us but we keep the lines of communication open. They put out a letter that explained how we are important to the cause even though we are distinct. We think it is a good number to provide a robust program to our athletes and is very competitive with what everybody else is doing. There are a lot of operating costs involved (website/software/lawyers) but we wanted to ensure that at least 85% of the funds went to promoting the athletes/charities so we worked backwards from that. We feel comfortable that we will be able to meet our commitment to all of our athletes in a way that is competitive with other groups.
Last month a former top high school prospect 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? We are really fortunate with the types of kids that Jeff Brohm/Matt Painter/others attract. As we have gotten to know the kids better we have reaffirmed our tremendous faith in the recruiting process. Obviously, they are college-age kids so it is a concern, but we have a vetting process because it is important to us. We are effectively loaning the kids out to charities so we try to do everything we can to alleviate the risk but we feel very good about the kids who represent our university.
What kind of cool stuff do people get if they became 1 of your top donors? Our model is not really set up that way. We have IRS requirements so we are unable to give much back to our donors, but that is not the reason that any of our donors give us money. There might be some event-driven things that allow our donors to interact with our athletes. We are a charitable organization so we have done some fundraisers that our athletes have appeared at, but we do not want to get involved in mailing out jerseys/footballs to anyone. The 1 thing that has been really neat was to see Ethan explaining how much he has enjoyed the process from a community-engagement standpoint. It is a great by-product of this effort: bringing our community together in a way that benefits everyone involved.
