Blue White Illustrated

May 2022

Penn State Sports Magazine

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M A Y 2 0 2 2 5 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M P enn State football is, at last, over- coming its reservations about the ever-evolving NIL landscape. With the unveiling of the Success With Honor collective in March, an ini- tiative backed by the powerful former board of trustees chair Ira Lubert and boasting a who's who of former Nittany Lion athletes as an advisory panel, the most organized name, image and like- ness outfit supporting Penn State ath- letics is now off the ground. Eager to ex- pand the pool of NIL donors, the group promised upon its launch to "work tire- lessly to ensure that every current and future Nittany Lion has the opportunity to maximize the power of their name, image and likeness during their time in State College." Penn State football is counting on the initiative, and others like it, to do exactly that. While inferences have been plentiful since the advent of le- gal NIL compensation last July, two of Penn State's senior support staff mem- bers appeared on Steve Jones' radio show recently to say so. Through their comments, they demonstrated just how much importance PSU has placed on these new efforts. "This is going to differentiate pro- grams going forward," said Andy Frank, Penn State's director of player person- nel. "There will be a lot of other factors that go into it, but this is a major key to success. "There are people who have jumped in already for us, and we need a whole lot more. It's the future and it's the present of college football and college athletics as a whole. I think that where we go from here is going to determine our course." In Frank and Dann Kabala, the pro- gram's director of football player rela- tions, no closer vantage point exists at Penn State. They are the point men for the Nittany Lions' recruiting efforts, and their comments show that NIL is no longer a hypothetical issue to be dealt with in future recruiting cycles, but in- stead is a matter of immediate concern. "As we get going in this and as people across the country are being as aggres- sive as they possibly can, it's starting to come up earlier and earlier in the [recruiting] process," Frank said. "And there's going to be a day here very, very soon where it's going to be our first con- versation in some cases. "The schools that are competing in the playoffs … don't have a class that slips even a little bit. Every class that they sign is a top-tier class, and we need to do the same thing. It's still about ev- erything. It's about the education, it's about the passion that people have for this place, it's how great a college town it is … it's the professors who care about them as individuals. But it's also about name, image and likeness, and it's about money. Now that's the reality that we're in." Kabala went so far as to predict that from here on out, every recruiting class is "going to be significantly impacted by NIL." In addition to sounding the alarm, Kabala and Frank were looking to re- frame of the conversation. They urged fans to accept the school's NIL approach as a necessary evolution, a way for Penn State to keep pace now that the rules have changed. "You can look at it from an old-school perspective and say, 'Hey, I don't know if I like this.' The reality is, we didn't like it because of the negative connotations to it. Now, those aren't there, and I think that it can be a great thing," Frank said. "For all of us as we get older, we don't want to be that old guy that says, 'Back in the day, it was better.' This is an op- portunity for a bright future, and those that embrace change are always the people that are most successful moving forward in any aspect of life. "It's something that we need to em- brace, and that's OK. We've got the power of over 740,000 living alumni, and a huge percentage of those people care deeply about this place. If we can get all those people pulling the rope in the same direction, this is an oppor- tunity for us. We just need to convince everybody that this is the right way forward for us. And I think that's a huge piece of this." With the Success With Honor Collec- tive claiming $500,000 in seed funding and another $100,000 in committed subscriptions, that process has started in earnest. Facing an urgent challenge to match or exceed the program's national competi- tors, Penn State has proven it's no longer comfortable sitting on the sidelines as the NIL landscape takes shape. With one radio show appearance, and many more public comments likely to come, the re- ality is as clear as ever. "You can't spell Nittany Lion without NIL. And you can't spell alumni without NIL," Kabala said. "This is critical to the success of the football team, the success of the athletic department, the success of the community. This is the era we're living in, and it's exciting. We need to look at it as an exciting opportunity to be a leader in the space." ■ Andy Frank, director of player personnel for the football program, said that schools across the country "are being as aggressive as they possibly can" in using NIL opportu- nities as a way to entice recruits. PHOTO BY RYAN SNYDER O P I N I O N NATE BAUER nbauer@bluewhiteonline.com HOT READ NIL Has Changed The Game. Will Penn State Adapt?

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