Hoops HD

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 Brenden Hill of the Triumph NIL collective, who discussed what his group is about and what it has accomplished so far.

Your group founded an NIL collective called “Triumph NIL” in April: how complicated was it to create (if at all), and why did you do it? It is an interesting dynamic. We view ourselves as a marketing agency who has stepped into the college sports marketplace. It was not too complicated: we have an experienced group including Kevin Jones (who runs an award-winning agency that has worked with Facebook) and Jim Cowan (a partner in a local law firm). We just wanted to help Virginia Tech due to our ties to the university/area: Jim reached out to me in January because I played football at Virginia Tech and he had some local business clients interested in the space.

How much of your focus is on basketball compared to football? We have about 60 athletes so far in a variety of sports. Football is a big percentage of what we do due to the sheer size of the roster, but our focus is on working with all of the top athletes so that every program can thrive. We had a great baseball run last spring and our wrestlers have been extremely successful as well. We want to help the student-athletes across all sports and the momentum that our basketball team created off of its ACC Tournament championship last March has been awesome.

Your role is “strategy”: what does that involve? I primarily coordinate with our other team members to direct us in what are we trying to accomplish, the road map to executing it, etc. There is a lot of idea development across different sectors: business development, internal strategies, etc. Kevin is in charge of the creative side so I work with him a lot to see how we can execute our collective vision.

What kind of connection (if any) does your group have with people like Coach Mike Young/Athletic Director Whit Babcock? There are “connections” but due to NCAA rules it is informal: anyone considered a donor has certain restrictions but we have a great relationship with Mike/Whit. There are also no “directives” from the athletic department: we just want to figure out how to facilitate things while remaining in compliance.

What kind of deals have you been able to work out so far? Justyn Mutts has a housing deal through CMG Leasing: he performs some marketing opportunities on behalf of Triumph and receives housing in return. He also got a car lease in exchange for using his NIL. We have also facilitated deals with CMG Leasing for Sean Pedulla/Darius Maddox as well as a similar housing deal with some of our women’s basketball players.

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? It is free will so the person spending the money has the final decision. If it does something good for the community or for a good cause that is awesome, but NIL has gotten a bad rap because it is under the microscope. The ultimate goal is to help people leverage their brand for financial gain, which is no different than someone on Tik Tok/YouTube who does not have any restrictions. Whether that includes endorsing a charity/cause is not as big a deal: I do not get into the weeds about how the exchanges are executed.

Your motto is “Recruit/Retain/Reward”: what does that mean? Recruit is about competitiveness in the marketplace so if an athlete/family has questions about what is compliant then we can help them find answers. Virginia Tech has a group that is active in that space so we just make high school athletes aware that the playing field is even when evaluating their choices at the next level. As far as Retain, our partnership is not as official as the one at South Carolina but we believe that stability is great for both the university and its athletes: we cannot induce anyone to stay. Reward shows athletes how they can leverage their brand due to their blood/sweat/tears and how they can monetize that using NIL.

When you played football at Virginia Tech you were a starter for the #1-ranked defense in the nation: how would your life have been different if there were NIL opportunities back in the day (if at all)? That is a hard 1. I was on full scholarship but still had student loans because my scholarship did not cover things like my cell phone bill or getting my transmission replaced. A lot of athletes in non-revenue sports are still on the hook for cost-of-living. You see the headlines about the best players getting millions of dollars but a lot of athletes still need help with cost-of-living expenses. My student loan debt is equivalent to what most athletes are getting each semester in NIL money. I am happy that it is here but we realize that we have do to everything in compliance otherwise it will go away.

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? That risk in inherent for anyone on scholarship: it is the cost of doing business in a way but it does not discourage us. We try to vet everyone we work with but if the school feels comfortable giving them a scholarship then we feel comfortable giving them a deal.

What kind of cool stuff do people get if they became 1 of your top donors? Different groups set up their collectives differently. We have not tapped into the subscription model yet but it might be an opportunity down the line. I joke a lot about how some SEC schools were doing NIL under the table before NIL was legal! The “Michael Vick Effect” happened back in 1999 so a big part of what we want to do is to teach our fan base about how NIL works specifically at Virginia Tech and the needs of our athletes. We are living in a period of high inflation, which we do not take lightly, so we just want to facilitate things for donors and be considerate of the impact the current economy has on a family’s monthly bills.