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As Caleb Williams brought Oklahoma back from the dead, 21 through the biggest comeback in Red River history, phones across America started to vibrate. Williams, a true freshman, had never started a college football game before. As he was designing touchdowns, his star lighting up through play, fans noticed.
Businesses too.
Zach Soskin, an athlete brand designer, has texted people who work for them. “People who write big enough checks to athletes,” he says. People who, under the new NCAA name, image, and likeness rules, can sign sponsorship contracts with players. Everyone, Soskin said, looked at Williams, “I’m waiting to see, what does that kid have to say?” What type of person is he? How will he behave after the game? “
They were watching and watching, waiting for an interview that never happened.
ESPN reporter Holly Rowe asked for one. Williams, she said in a since deleted tweet, “I should be interviewed.” But head coach Lincoln Riley, who himself gave an on-camera interview, “said no.” Oklahoma too did not make Williams available to other reporters.
And that relentless athlete, because Williams’ moment in the limelight, with millions of viewers on ABC, was what Soskin called an “opportunity to have a ‘hello world’ interview and send your brand / earnings through the roof.”
“Media time drives media attention, which leads to growth in followers, which leads to NIL opportunities,” says Blake Lawrence, CEO of Opendorse, a sports marketing company.
Companies, says Soskin, “are looking for someone who can represent their brand. And how can they know [whether Williams can do] what if he doesn’t have the right to speak?
Ellen Staurowsky, a professor at Ithaca College who has studied the market value of varsity athletes, says: is negatively affected by this in terms of potential financial opportunities.
An Oklahoma spokesperson did not respond to an email asking why Williams was not available for interviews. The reasoning probably corresponds to a policy which is not uncommon in college football. Many top coaches, for years, have not allowed real freshmen to speak to the media. Prior to the NIL era, some viewed policies as authoritarian, as what Staurowsky calls “an exercise in control”; others have reasonably defended them as well-meaning, as a safeguard against the pressures of teenage stardom.
But now, NIL experts say, they’re expensive – and may soon be gone.
‘It is important to correct [things] for that next kid ‘
Williams, experts say, will still have plenty of financial opportunity. Most agree that Oklahoma and Riley don’t have necessarilydirectly cost him money. “I think his performance in the field will generate enough buzz,” said Peter Schoenthal, CEO of Athliance, a NIL company.
“He’s going to be a star with a great future,” Soskin says. NIL money, and maybe NFL money, will be part of that future.
And even if Williams’ football career doesn’t go as planned, “He can make money from that moment until the day he dies,” says Soskin. “He can sign Red River Rivalry memorabilia or do local Oklahoma advertisements about it. … No matter what happens now, he may own a sports bar in Norman, or something like that.
But what if Williams had “crashed the interview,” as Soskin expected? “If he’s mature, graceful, humble,” Soskin says, or if he had conjured up an iconic line, its market value could have skyrocketed.
What if, instead of a five-star rookie in blue blood, he was a temporary star out of nowhere? “What if,” Soskin continues, “he was a freshman who didn’t come from much and had just fallen in love with the bigger game?
“It is important to correct [these policies] for that next child.
Because the height of this child’s earning capacity, according to Staurowsky, “is now, not in five years”.
And because “personal branding and storytelling are essential elements in unlocking NIL value,” says David Carter, Founder of the Sports Business Group and founding partner of NIL Altius. Interviews, of course, are opportunities to tell stories.
“Any obstacle to that,” Carter continues, “will be detrimental to both the athlete, in terms of potential income, and the school, given the potential impacts on recruiting.”
Why it will inevitably change
And that is why many experts expect these policies to disappear. “Rookies,” says Carter, “may be less interested in programs that prohibit or otherwise restrict them from continuing to tell and monetize their story.” Schoenthal compares it to the very early days of NIL, when schools were initially reluctant to allow athletes to use the university logo in their personal branding. “And then we started to hear that it was being used against them when recruiting,” says Schoenthal. “So schools started relaxing their restrictions on athletes and allowing them to use branded logos, as long as they asked for permission first. “
Any similar restrictive policies, such as freshman media policies, will be highlighted by rival coaches in recruiting battles. “Schools are going to use whatever they can to strengthen their own program and maybe try another program,” Schoenthal said.
Said Soskin: “You bet your butt, the next time someone recruits against Lincoln Riley, they’ll talk about it.”
And so, “over time,” says Carter, “such policies will eventually fade.”
Soskin points out that none of them were explicitly designed to limit NIL’s earning potential. “Oklahoma does a relatively excellent job of building their players’ brand,” he said. “Lincoln Riley is generally a pretty pro-gamer. Politics, on the contrary, “is just a rule they forgot to change.” The NCAA has spent months denying the inevitability of the NIL era, leaving schools unprepared to navigate uncharted waters. “It didn’t give programs and coaches time to respond as they should,” Soskin says.
Instead, they react on the fly. Some experts expect it to be a few years before all freshman media policies are retracted. Others believe that the open market will accelerate change. Soskin could see a wave of it “after this season”.
“Or,” he said, “maybe even from tomorrow.”
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