How Notre Dame utilizes NIL compared to other college football blue bloods
This story was written in June and appeared in the 2023 edition of the Blue & Gold Illustrated Notre Dame football preview magazine. Order a copy of the 160-page glossy football preview here.
Imagine what you’d do the day after the biggest victory of your life.
Super Bowl champions have proudly exclaimed their postgame plans loud and clear for years. They’re “going to Disney World!” To relax. To celebrate. To spend time with family and friends after the conclusion of several months of toiling culminates in winning the most magnificent prize the most popular sport in America has to offer.
Now step into the world of a Notre Dame men’s lacrosse player. On May 29, the Irish defeated Duke 13-9 to earn the program’s first-ever national championship.
And where were head coach Kevin Corrigan’s players 24 hours later? Not Disney World. In Philadelphia, the site of the title game, hosting a charitable clinic for local youths partnering with the HEADstrong Foundation, an organization created by former Hofstra lacrosse player Nick Colleluori from his hospital bed after being diagnosed with Diffuse Large B-Cell non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Colleluori passed away in 2006, but he also passed on a foundation to his family that has raised millions of dollars for cancer patients in the last 17 years.
Notre Dame players helped raise awareness for the cause by teaching young ones about the game that gave them so much so maybe one day it could shine the same light in others’ lives.
So maybe one day it could shine the same light that it did in Colleluori’s.
It’s far from coincidental Notre Dame student-athletes were at the forefront of HEADstrong’s clinic. The university’s mission has long been to “create a sense of human solidarity and concern for the common good that will bear fruit as learning becomes service to injustice.”
Friends of the University of Notre Dame (FUND), a third-party 501(c)(3) non-profit formed in 2022 as a collective designed to provide name, image and likeness (NIL) opportunities for Fighting Irish student-athletes, adheres to that statement too. The lacrosse players who devoted their time to the clinic had the chance to earn compensation from their NIL by being there.
That’s the Notre Dame way.
You won’t see Notre Dame players posing in front of quarter million dollar sports cars, but you will see them posing with children for charitable causes. FUND, which as of May 15 is paired with Notre Dame Global Partnerships — the company that manages the sales, marketing, sponsorship, multimedia rights and branding services for Notre Dame athletics — contractually links with Irish athletes and pays them for their contributions to the community.
That’s a whole lot different than being paid to stand in front of a Lamborghini.
“We see these student-athletes developing themselves as people and, frankly, leveraging their platform in a way that can really make an impact,” Kevin Klau, FUND’s executive director, told BlueandGold.com on June 11. “I think that is extremely powerful. It’s why we’re so excited about this. It’s a way to really compete in this environment, and it’s distinctly Notre Dame.”
‘Dollar For Dollar’
The competition is stiff.
Most universities with big-time athletics programs have independent collectives supporting them. They operate entirely differently than FUND.
According to On3 college sports business reporter Pete Nakos, Tennessee has a collective that is working with an annual pool of $8 to $10 million to pay players on the Volunteers football team. Eight to 10 million dollars just for football players. That’s enough to supply a salary that far exceeds the national median (just more than $50,000 for a 25- to 30-year-old in 2022 according to FirstRepublic.com) to all 85 scholarship players — and then some.
FUND, on the other hand, has only worked with 180 student-athletes across 12 different Notre Dame sports as of June 2023. There are no salaries involved. Just market-value compensation for spending an hour here at the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Michiana and an hour there at the Boys and Girls Clubs of St. Joseph County. And so on.
Platform leverage is nice and all. It can be powerful, as Klau said. But it’s not an instant generator of the almighty dollar.
Simply showing up in Knoxville and putting on a highlighter orange jersey in 2023 is worth tens of thousands of dollars. Hundreds of thousands and maybe even a million if your name has five stars next to it.
And it’s not just Tennessee. It’s Alabama. It’s Ohio State. It’s USC. It’s Texas and Texas A&M. It’s a lot of places.
“Nick Saban has been paying his guys the baseline salary of $70,000,” Nakos told BlueandGold.com on June 9. “It’s a well-known trade secret that if you go to Bama, you’re making anywhere from $50K to $80K just by being on the team.”
That’s not the case at Notre Dame.
Spyre Sports Group, the Tennessee collective, will accept donations from anybody. FUND will, too, but it’s not encouraged. FUND does not roll up to local banks in South Bend in an empty Brinks truck looking to fill it up.
Spyre, on the other hand, has employed marketing professionals based in Knoxville who are paid for grassroots fundraising. Local businesses there are ensuring the starting quarterback at Tennessee is always well compensated. That sort of synergy is a major reason why Nakos thinks Tennessee will play for a national championship within two years.
Nakos said a similar strategy in South Bend would be effective, but it’s not in the works out of choice.
“We are never going to be focused on competing dollar for dollar with some of the other collectives and some of the other universities out there,” Klau said. “That’s never going to be our focus. Instead, it’s going to be, ‘How can we do it in a way that’s distinctly Notre Dame that enables our student-athletes to be a force for good and our coaches and teams to compete for championships?’
“We think we can do that in this environment. And if people think we’ve been behind in the past, I’m excited about the fact that we think we’re in a great position today. And we’ll be in an even better position in the future.”
‘A Genius Move’
Collectives don’t tell the whole NIL story.
Sure, the salaries are nice where you can get them. But the individual deals student-athletes can strike with prosperous companies through the help of agents can be even more lucrative.
Multiple Notre Dame student-athletes, including former tight end Michael Mayer and current running back Audric Estimé, signed agreements with clothing brand Rhoback, a very popular apparel vendor among active people. New Notre Dame quarterback Sam Hartman charges upward of $800 dollars for an appearance at a youth practice or event according to his profile on OpenDorse.com. He just charged quite a bit for autographs and photo opportunities in Crown Point, Ind.
He is the starting quarterback of the Fighting Irish. That’s a price tag parents are willing to meet to put a smile that stretches from Winston-Salem, N.C., to South Bend on their son’s face.
“Sam Hartman making the move to Notre Dame was an intelligent decision,” Nakos said. “It puts him in the national spotlight. It’s going to be a lot easier for NFL scouts to go watch him play and watch film against good competition.
“From an NIL perspective, it was a genius move because Notre Dame is probably one of the most marketable brands in college sports. He is extremely more valuable to a company when he is wearing the blue and gold compared to playing at Wake Forest.”
Notre Dame has an in-house NIL team led by Dave Peloquin that specializes in educating student-athletes on the value of their own personal brands. Peloquin pumps up FUND and constantly brainstorms ways Irish athletes can thrive in the current climate of college athletics. That makes life easier on head coach Marcus Freeman, who isn’t consumed by baseline salaries like Saban, or fellow head coaches Josh Heupel (Tennessee), Lincoln Riley (USC) and Ryan Day (Ohio State).
Instead, he’s focused on consistent messaging.
“You can truly maximize off your NIL opportunities at Notre Dame as well as anywhere in the country for how it’s really supposed to be in place,” Freeman told BlueandGold.com on June 8.
Freeman fully believes that — with the caveat of “how it’s really supposed to be.” Who knows if other schools are bending the rules or even blatantly breaking them. There is a non-zero chance “pay for play,” which is still illegal in college athletics, is occurring at institutions that are tied to collectives that have more money than they know what to do with.
Alabama’s collective, Yea Alabama, is one of those in the eyes of some. In the eyes of Saban, not so much. Nakos said Yea Alabama has half of what Spyre Sports Group has to disperse at Tennessee every year — upward of $5 million as opposed to upward of $10 million.
It’s hard to imagine a world in which Saban, winner of six national titles at Alabama since 2009, feels the need to lobby to level the playing field in college football, but that’s exactly what he did in June on Capitol Hill. He led the charge to push for a uniform NIL payout standard.
Freeman is also in favor of one.
“You just want to make sure we have parameters that protect the integrity of the sport but also the futures of young people,” Freeman said. “You don’t want young people choosing a school based off who’s going to pay him the most NIL money. There is still an element of student-athlete.”
‘Thread The Needle’
Stricter oversight on collectives would benefit Notre Dame greatly.
FUND does things the right way. Corners aren’t cut. I’s are dotted. T’s are crossed. That’s the way former Notre Dame quarterback Brady Quinn envisioned it when he drew it up early in 2022, and that’s the way it’s been carried on by a board of directors comprised of people from all walks of Notre Dame life — from Quinn to former Irish women’s basketball player and current Irish color commentator Karen Keyes to former Irish men’s basketball player and ESPN media personality Jordan Cornette to former Irish football players Pat Eilers and Tracy Graham to successful alumni Greg Dugard, Jimmy Dunne, Jay Flaherty and Chris Reyes.
“I think the beauty of this board is that just like a great point guard you’ve got to be able to thread the needle in this kind of environment,” Keyes told BlueandGold.com on June 11. “Everything’s changing so quickly.”
The IRS released a 12-page memo June 9 stating “many organizations that develop paid NIL opportunities for student-athletes are not tax exempt and described in section 501(c)(3) because the private benefits they provide to student-athletes are not incidental both qualitatively and quantitatively to any exempt purpose furthered by that activity.”
Not being able to write off large contributions as tax deductions could dissuade donors from pouring vast sums of money into their school’s collective. But FUND’s model is not overly reliant on such allowances to begin with.
Klau said that despite Notre Dame having the country’s 10th-largest endowment — right up there with Ivy League institutions and massive public schools like Texas and Texas A&M — FUND has taken “a very focused approach to fundraising.” There is some sense in that. What’s the point of having $10 million in a collective if laws come down from congress (thanks, Saban and Co.) sometime soon that limit third-party payments to student-athletes in an effort to crack down on potential pay-for-play cases?
If the NIL space does get more rigid, FUND won’t have to pivot in ways other collectives will. It can keep walking the straight and narrow the way it always has, and Notre Dame student-athletes won’t have to feel like they’re missing out on large pieces of pie at other schools. Not that that’s the case anyway; Irish athletics programs look for culture fits first and foremost. Greed isn’t one of the sought-after character traits.
Irish coaches search for the type of recruits who don’t mind spending the day after the biggest victory of their lives teaching children their craft for a good cause.
“I don’t know what each and every coach is going to say, but I do know that when our coaches bring the right fit into Notre Dame those kids will get opportunities based on the alumni network and the Notre Dame brand,” Klau said.
“I don’t care what the other schools offer,” Freeman added. “I care how you’ll really benefit at Notre Dame. If you’re looking for the highest NIL money from a collective, you’re probably not going to choose Notre Dame. And that’s OK.”
It’s especially OK if Notre Dame wins at a high level in the face of it all because in that event, it will have been done the right way. The Notre Dame way.
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