The Truth About NIL What Every Athlete & Parent Needs to Know

Rashad Bilal (0:00)

A lot of times people think NIL, and they're thinking of the most high level player in the world, that's somebody that's getting $5 million. But explain how players are getting NIL deals that you've never heard of. Players that, like you said, a fourth round draft pick that's getting $1 million, or players getting $30,000 from a mid-major or low-major D1.

Set that level of expectation, because I think that that's something that a lot of people could relate to, and they might not be aware that you can still get money in the NIL world, even if you're not a household name. And like I said, all you guys can chime in on that.

Greg (0:35)

Oh, okay. You want me to start?

Matt (0:37)

Whoever.

Rashad Bilal (0:38)

Tyne, you want to start?

Tyne (0:39)

Yeah, I was just talking about that the other day. There's a kid at Radford University that's getting $700,000.

So, and these are facts. So, what I say to the youth is that in parents, it was a time when people used to say, don't put your eggs in one basket. Sports matters. It matters a lot.

It's taking kids from high school to become entrepreneurs. Like, we don't need the NBA anymore, which is the organization. We need parents to really focus on that sports can make a huge difference. I'm not saying it's the all and be all, but because of my life has been helping sports, I think that's very important. So like you were saying, you don't have to be the McDonald American. You don't have to be the starting five on your high school team. You stay with it and you can benefit from NIL, which is excellent.

Greg (1:50)

There's NIL, which is a real NIL, which is what it was originally made for, where you can actually go out there and get a brand endorsement deal where you promote a brand or create a partnership with a brand and you get paid for that. The number two way is from collectives. Colleges now have created since this inception, they created collectives which are not run by the school at first. It was run by Boosters, which is an alumni. And they came in and they set up partnerships for you. And it was kind of hidden pay for play, but that was the way they disguised it in marketing brands. The third way now which came into play July 1st through Congress is called revenue share. And now schools can pay you directly from their funds. And that for the most part is pay for play. So those are the three ways you can get paid.

And with the revenue share, schools can play up to $22 million.

They have a budget. They're allowed to use up to $22 million for college rev share. And that's for their whole budget, for all their teams.

For the most part of that, football is gonna get the biggest part if they have football. Every school has a different percentage, but this has to be broken down. And that's the way, those are the three ways they can pay a college athlete.

Matt (3:18)

Yeah, football is gonna get the most because football is making the most money when you talk about rev share. But I guess to answer your question, the kids can make significant amount of money in college and it's not just the high D1 level, the power five level. You know, you got kids at mid major level making $100,000, $250,000 a year. That's more than some of these kids' families make. So college sports is actually a serious, serious business and it's very important that these kids get the right advice and have the right team around them.

I did a deal for a kid making $500,000 who might not even start at college. If you could do that for four or five years, you would have made more money than some kids' parents would have made in a lifetime. So you can't just gloss over this, what's happening and what's going on. It's serious business and it's serious money.

Rashad Bilal (4:18)

So you are a lawyer, you draw up contracts and you actually were just educating me backstage. All of you guys, as far as NIL deals, they're not all the same. I thought it was like a standard, like a scholarship, right? Where you sign a scholarship papers, they're all the scholarship papers are the same. So you're negotiating NIL deals, right? So what's some things to look out for? And what's some things to add? What's some clauses? Like what's some things to be aware of?

Greg, you can answer that as well.

Greg (4:44)

Well, I'll start off by saying this. The colleges now are going to a pro model. It's pro sports. If you Google and look what's going on, all these schools starting at the top, they're hiring people from pro teams, basketball and football. Most power five schools now, football and basketball, I say about 80% of them have what you call as a general manager.