🏅The NIL Facilities Arms Race is On

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Hey there,

Thanks for waking up with NIL Wire today. Before we get to college football, let’s take a stroll around the NIL world, shall we? We’ve got updates on Cam Ward’s steadily increasing NIL presence, an NIL facilities arms race, and the Washington Post’s deep-dive on Deion Sanders’ NIL infrastructure. It’s all coming up right now!

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— Cole, Justin and Collin

The Big 3

Cam Ward is Cashing In

Miami’s Cam Ward is more than a Heisman contender – he’s also raking in NIL deals left and right. The quarterback currently holds a $2M NIL valuation, which is the sixth highest in college football. 

He just signed two high profile deals. The first is with Bose, where he was able to gift his own teammates headphones as a way of promoting the company’s newest product. Here’s the video of that: 

Ward also signed with Adidas just a few days ago, too, which will see him promote the company’s Adizero shoes for the rest of the season on and off the field. Adidas has a longstanding partnership with the University of Miami, which makes the deal a somewhat easy match. (More)

The NIL Facilities Arms Race is On

Building Design and Construction, a publication that covers exactly what you think it does, just released a story about the recruitment arms race happening on college campuses. It’s not just NIL money these kids want – they want access to the nicest facilities in the country.

While in the past that’s meant “cool” facilities – like pools and unique locker rooms – student-athlete priorities are shifting now. NIL has created a laundry list of money-making.

“You need digital spaces, technology, studios,” said Melvin Robinson, who worked for years at the University of Georgia, “Hollywood meets higher ed… The facilities are a big part of recruiting, enticing, and retaining athletes.” (More)

WaPo’s NIL Deep Dive

The Washington Post just performed a deep dive on a variety of topics surrounding NIL – from NIL deal transparency to gender disparities within collective payments. Some of their findings we have been talking about for a while… but others were pretty enlightening.

Among the latter was the following: Colorado has a unique NIL relationship with SMAC Entertainment, a management and production company that’s been tied to head coach Deion Sanders for multiple years.

How unique is this relationship? Well, the company has paid nearly $600K to Colorado football players for appearing on their show, “Coach Prime.” As a reference point, the school’s NIL collective has paid just $564K to football players since 2021. (More)

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ATHLETE SPOTLIGHT

Poohpha Warakulnukroh

• School: UCF

• Sport: Basketball

• Position: Guard

• Class: Redshirt Junior

 Accolades: 

•  Played in six games, coming off the bench in each and playing a total of 10:02 of game time.

• He earned his first career block against Jacksonville. (Dec. 6)

• Made a pair of free throws against Bethune-Cookman (Dec. 29) as well as pulling in his first career rebound in the contest.

• NIL: He’s a fan favorite, and his NIL is taking off landing deals with companies like Escape Insoles. 

NIL BLITZ

♦️ Clemson is now charging a $150 per-semester “athletics fee” to their students starting in 2025

♦️ NCAA President Charlie Baker thinks Private Equity could work with college sports 

♦️ Diego Pavia finally launches his officially licensed apparel collection

♦️ Basepath just launched a new debit card to ease NIL transactions

♦️ Longhorns’ NIL superstar Sam Hurley inks another deal – this time with Red Bull 

♦️ Dave Portnoy updates his pledge to get Michigan a QB with NIL: “I’m working on it.”

♦️ Iowa State basketball is trying their hand at NIL “Moneyball” 

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BATTER UP

Today’s Poll Question:

Last Edition’s Poll Results:

Will AJ Dybantsa reset the NIL market with his commitment?

• Yes, $7-9 million could become the new standard - 32%

• No, his circumstances will be a one-off case - 29%

• No, he's simply not going to get as much money as he wants - 39%