Penn State Sports Magazine
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3 6 S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 1 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M "We're allowing our student-athletes to have an opportunity that every other student on the college campus has been able to take advantage of forever," he said. "Obviously, there's a different plat- form and there's a different opportu- nity, especially when you're at a place like Penn State with our fan base and our alumni base. We're trying to prepare these guys for life after football, and this is going to be part of that. "We've embraced it. We want to be bold and aggressive in everything we possibly can do. For me and for us, it's really about the student-athlete and making sure that they're going to have an opportunity to capitalize on this." Franklin said he doesn't see NIL con- siderations as enticements to lure high- level prospects to Penn State. "I don't really look at it as something to use in recruiting," he said. But while the Nittany Lions' coach may be wary of how a more-materialis- tic recruiting pitch would be perceived, there's no doubt that such approaches will be made by schools all over the country. In fact, it appears they're al- ready being made. When Nick Saban told attendees at a high school coaches convention in July that quarterback Bryce Young had al- ready lined up nearly $1 million in NIL deals — without ever having started a game for Alabama — it sounded as though his message was aimed primarily at future Crimson Tide recruits. Franklin may be publicly downplay- ing the recruiting angle, but he's going to have to compete against schools that have already had some high-profile suc- cess stories and have been eager to get the word out. The Crimson Tide are cer- tainly not alone in that regard. At Miami, a booster who owns a chain of mixed martial arts gyms has pledged $540,000 to be divided among all the scholarship players on the Hurricanes' roster in exchange for personal appear- ances and social media promotion of his Florida-based training academies. At Michigan, an apparel store called The M Den will give players a portion of the sale when someone orders a custom- made jersey with their name and num- ber. And at Notre Dame, the Midwestern barbeque chain Mission BBQ has become the official sponsor of the Fighting Irish offensive line. Those sorts of deals have been facili- tated by people in the local business com- munity who want to see their hometown football program succeed. And while those athletes are going to be making money, the same principle can be scaled up in ways that no barbeque joint could possibly match. At Oregon, the birthplace of Nike and the recipient of more than a billion dol- lars in Phil Knight philanthropy, star defensive end Kayvon Thibodeaux col- laborated with Air Jordan designer Tin- ker Hatfield to create a piece of digital art called a nonfungible token. NFTs are seen by some as investment opportunities, and Thibodeaux is also said to have signed a six-figure memorabilia deal, making him one of the biggest beneficiaries of the new NIL rules. Few schools are going to be able to bring that kind of high-profile corporate firepower to bear in the effort to assist athletes with their personal brand-build- ing and merchandizing. Most players are probably going to promote barbecue joints and sub shops. But every school is going to try to pitch itself as uniquely positioned to help athletes make deals. At schools in big metro areas, coaches are promoting the size of their markets. Ohio State head coach Ryan Day, for ex- ample, said during Big Ten media days that the combination of the Buckeyes' on- field success and its urban location — Co- lumbus is the largest city in Ohio and the 14 th -largest in the country — amounted to a "perfect alignment." "The opportunity for our guys is going to be unlike anywhere else in the country," Day said. That may be true, but it didn't stop Northwestern's Pat Fitzgerald from de- claring that his school has "the best op- portunity for NIL in Evanston, in Chi- cago." And later, Minnesota's P.J. Fleck noted that the Twin Cities metro area is home to 3.5 million people and 18 Fortune 500 companies. "This isn't a small, little college town," he said. "We have busi- nesses galore." Fleck's comment might have seemed like a shot across Penn State's bow; PSU is located in a little college town. With only 42,000 residents, State College is the smallest of the Big Ten's 14 markets. But the Nittany Lions have histori- cally been the most prominent Power Five program in the Northeast, and their campus is within a four-hour drive of New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Bal- timore and Washington, D.C. Those five metro areas have a combined population of 36.5 million. Penn State is one of only three schools in the Power Five conferences that are located within 250 miles of three top-10 markets (New York, Philadelphia and Washington), with Maryland and Rutgers being the other two. And then there's the alumni base. The Penn State Alumni Association is the largest of its kind in the country, and as athletic director Sandy Barbour has noted, the abundance of highly engaged Penn State graduates is likely to create opportunities. Said Barbour, "Penn State's brand and more than 700,000 living alumni are huge advantages for our students as they explore these new opportunities to make an impact." "We've embraced it. We want to be bold and aggressive in everything we possibly can do. For me and for us, it's really about the student-athlete and making sure that they're going to have an opportunity to capitalize on this." J A M E S F R A N K L I N