December 1, 2023 • 59 mins
Up On Game Presents NIL Playbook with The Coach LaVar Arrington and The Professor Bill Carter. This is the show that combines experience and knowledge in the NIL space. No one else is bringing the experience of a college & pro athlete at the highest level, combined with academic and research experience focused on NIL. Our perspective will be of great value to our audience. NIL PLAYBOOK with the Coach LaVar Arrington and the Professor Bill Carter.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Colleges, parents, and the world have been trying to figure
out NIL. We now have the show. It will educate
you in a simple way. This is the NIL Playbook
with the coach, LaVar Arrington and the Professor Bill Carter.
We're going to educate the world on NIL. And it
all starts.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Now, what's up? Everybody's Arrington here, and that, my friends,
is your new friend, Bill Carter. That's right, he's the professor.
I'm the coach. We're bringing you a new NIL educational
podcast show. It's called NIL Playbook with the Professor and
the coach. As you can tell, I'm probably the coach
(00:40):
and Bill is probably the professor. But maybe our roles
could enterchange Bill and it could be I'm the professor
and you're the coach. This is the type of show
that this is going to be. It's much needed. You
want to check us out, go on Twitter, you could
go to at LeVar Arrington, or you could go at
NIL Playbook with the Professor and Coach. All right, you
(01:02):
can hit Fox Sports Radio and you can listen in
by searching up on game wherever it is you get
your podcast from. So, without further ado, this is the
new show. It has been long overdue, it has been
much needed. NIL is a space that has a lot
(01:22):
more gray area than it does defined area. And who
better than to bring the experts of the expert of
experts into the podcast world to talk about what's going
on in NIL, the details of it, the ins and outs,
(01:43):
the dudes that don't the common sense approaches, the wrong approaches.
It's Bill Carter. So let's get some introductions going. Bill,
tell the people who you are, my guy, LaVar.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Thanks so much for the great introduction of your great idea.
And I want to say that first and foremost, you
came up with this idea, and I totally agree it's
long overdue, and I'll only praise you like this, maybe
this one time. There's nobody better to have developed this
(02:18):
idea than you. And I'm so thankful that you believe
in NIL the way you do, and I love even
more the way you think about NIL, that you can
be an advocate for it, but you can still pick
it apart a little bit where it's needed and talk
(02:38):
about what could be better, what could be improved, where
we might be three five years from now. And so
I'm really excited to be doing this with you I
really appreciate it. My name is Bill Carter. I am
a part time professor at the University of Vermont. I
live in Burlington, Vermont. I basically see the campus from
(03:03):
from where I am today, and my full time gig
is NIL. I do a lot of education for universities, brands,
professional service providers like agents and advisors, attorneys, financial advisors,
(03:25):
tax attorneys, all of whom want to participate in a
new and exciting and important industry and landscape. And I
think for the most part, people want to do it
in a way that's really supportive of student athletes. And
so I'm excited to be doing that and I'm excited
(03:46):
to be teaching an NIL class at the University of Vermont.
I also write a monthly column on NIL for Sports
Business Journal, usually comes out the last Tuesday of every month.
And now I get to do this podcast with you.
So this is awesome.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
I love it. I did a lot of research. I
sought you out, I sought the Master of Masters. I
didn't know if it would be doable to get a
hold of you and us to make this a reality,
but as fate would have it, we were able to
connect and after many many many amazing conversations. We came
(04:27):
to the conclusion that there are synergies here and that
what I come to the table with as someone who
has exercised and learned in IL from not only the
athletes perspective, but I have also learned it as a
parent and also someone who has wanted to support mentorship
and as it applies to families and people that are
(04:50):
involved as well as to the benefit of the schools
and the institutions. That matters so much to me. So
people you know who I am, I would hope so,
and I would assume a point if you're seeing this.
I am LeVar Arrington. I did play at Penn State.
I was a number two overall pick for the Washington
now known as Commanders. I've done plenty of things where
(05:13):
I would say I'm proud of the fact that I
understood an I L name, image likeness before it became
a thing where it is now monetizable at the college level.
So let's let's jump into this, all right, we are
in the show. This is a n I L playbook
(05:34):
with the professor and the coach that's Bill Carter. I
am LeVar Arrington. And the topic that we want to
jump right into out of the gate and you'll be
able to see this and be able to read along
with us. Is what's an N I L deal? We're
going to start with what's an NIL deal? You're you're
(05:55):
looking at it right now as we speak. Bill to me, Man,
let's get this thing going. What is an NIL deal?
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Well, so, LeVar, because because we're committed to making this
partly education, a lot of education, and we hope that
people are entertained as well. But we want to be
the ones that are that are pointing out the data
and the facts and and and some of the stuff
that is false out there. I want to start with
(06:28):
what nil is not? Right?
Speaker 2 (06:30):
All right, wonderful, Let's let's do that. Let's do that.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
There's a term that a lot of us, you and
I included, often use out in the sports industry. We
like to call everything an endorsement, right, and that was
a term that you know you heard almost exclusively as
a pro athlete. That's when when people talked about your
and your work colleagues off field endeavors, they were talking
(06:57):
about endorsements. I don't like that word in NIL, and
I'll tell you why, because it's not descriptive, right, So,
and your background, my background, and a lot of athlete
marketing on the pro side, And when somebody says endorsements,
we don't really know what the relationship is between that
(07:20):
pro athlete and a brand or a small business or
a nonprofit, no matter what it is, because endorsements not descriptive.
You could be doing something on social media, you could
be doing something in a retail store, you could be
shooting a thirty second television ad. We don't know. All
of that is sort of endorsement, right. I don't like
(07:41):
to apply that term to nil because it doesn't really
give the full picture. And by the way, ninety nine
percent of the time, the relationship between say a brand
and a college athlete is not that vast.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Right.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
So, if a brand came to you when you were
a pro, they might use you in a retail store,
do a thirty second television ad with you, bring you
to a live event. All of that we call athlete activation, right,
They would use you, they'd activate you across all these
different platforms. That doesn't really happen in college. What happens
(08:22):
in college, for the most part, is that an nil deal.
And now it's not the first time. I'm going to
be long winded, but I'm finally gonna answer your question.
Is master get nil nil deal between a brand or
a nonprofit or even a collective. I know we'll talk
(08:43):
about that collectors on other shows that we do, but
any of those deals will be very specific, right the
brand hires a student athlete to post on social media,
or hires the student athlete to make an appearance a
retail store, or to sign autographs, or to be part
(09:06):
of some instruction a camp, a clinic or doing private instruction,
or a trading card deal or an NFT deal. But
it's almost always LVAR, almost always one thing. There's a
million reasons for that that we're going to get to,
but nil deals right out of the gate. I'd love
(09:26):
for the audience to know, don't use that term endorsement.
You're not wrong, but you're also not right because endorsement
doesn't cover it. It's not specific enough.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
I think that's interesting because when you talk about endorsements,
that's where the Michael Jordans came from endorsing Nike. That's
where so many different athletes have built a lot of
wealth is through endorsing the different brands that are connected
to them. I would ask you this and looking at
(10:02):
the specifics of what an NIL deal would represent, what
is what is the way in your estimation, how do
these how do these companies or advertisers look at who
it is that they want to work with or or
(10:22):
potentially perspective will want to have the name and the
image and the likeness of these college athletes doing this
one specific thing for their company that they would be
able to leverage because obviously it's all about taking that content.
It's really about taking the content of what it is.
NIL is really about taking the content of what people
(10:44):
are doing, what the athlete is doing, and leveraging that
content for their gain. How do you suspect that they
go about figuring that out?
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Yeah, well so in some ways, Again, it's similar to
you know what you're playing career in that a brand
who might be interested in a professional athlete, they look
at a number of different factors. Probably the highest on
the list is does this person fit with my brand?
(11:16):
Is their personal brand aligned with my corporate brand? And
then is this person gonna give my brand visibility to
the point where they might even bring in an additional audience.
So not only am I not only do I have
the advantage that our brands are alive, but they might
introduce me to an audience that I might not even
(11:36):
have right as a brand. Now, is that the case
for college athletes and these NIL deals somewhat? But I
think there's more because they're usually they being student athletes,
are usually being hired to do one thing at a
time on a short term basis. But I got to
(11:56):
say something. You bring up Michael Jordan and Nike and
sort of you know how the term endorsement became part
of our language. It's a great example. Can you imagine
if NIL have been introduced when Jordan was at North
Carolina Nike. Probably Nike wouldn't have come to him and said, hey,
we want to do this long term deal with you,
(12:18):
because it was what wouldn't be allowed. They would have said,
let's pretend social media was around in the eighties. They
would have said, Michael, we want you to promote a
basketball shoe, but just for six months preseason and then
through March Madness, and we want you to do it
a couple of times a month on social media. That
(12:41):
would have probably been how somebody like Jordan would have
started a relationship with a brand like Nike, it wouldn't
have been all the things we think about with Nike
and Jordan today, and certainly not his own signature shoe, right,
it would have been really tactical and specific. But levardy
(13:01):
your question, how are they getting chosen? Well, a lot
of the same pieces are in place. A brand goes
to an athlete because that college athlete represents in their
personal brand something the brand, really corporate brand really appreciates.
They think that the student athlete can give them visibility,
(13:22):
particularly on social media. Right, So, I mean I'll use
and I probably I'll try not to use this example
every week because you know, everybody gets sick of uh,
you know, examples with Livvy Dunn, Jymnast at LSU. But
Livvy Dunn has created her nil empire mainly because she's
got such a tremendous social following in the you know,
(13:45):
millions and millions on Instagram and TikTok, and so what
she delivers for every brand that she works with is
immediately she can post one thing on Instagram or TikTok,
wore a million people see it. Most of them are
between the ages I would say of sixteen and twenty eight.
(14:07):
And if you're a brand and that's your target, she
is a vehicle and unbelievable vehicle to deliver that audience.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
And that becomes monetizable, those those clicks, those those impressions,
that becomes monetizable for these agencies to say, look, we
hit our mark, We put our money into this athlete.
This athlete got so many impressions, got so many clicks.
So you got the value of introducing your product that
(14:35):
was connected to this athlete successfully to a certain demograph.
You have to assume a certain demographic that is connected
to that athlete in particular. That's beauty one hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
And there's so many things about I mean, and again
you know from your experience, your special unique experience at
Penn State, you know there are college athletes that have
a national following right they become they're the one of
the ten best maybe in their sport, and there's a
national audience that pays attention to them. But there's also
(15:12):
this hyper local, unbelievable like energy associated with the college
town and their following of that athlete. And so when
a brand taps in and utilizes an athlete, say again
for social media, they're getting a big national audience in
a lot of cases, but they're also getting a really
(15:35):
energized fan base that's in that college town. And again,
I promise I won't use that every week as an example,
but Penn State is a perfect example of this. Penn
State's got alumni all over the country, all over the
world really, but all over the country. There are Penn
State fans. It's a national university. So when a brand
(15:57):
creates a partnership with a Penn State athlete and that
person is recognizable not just in state college, but all
over the country, they're reaching you know, Penn State and
other fans of that sport. It's really a great investment.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Indeed, that's Bill Carter right there. I'm LeVar Arrington. This
is nil playbook with the professor and the coach. You
can make sure that you go on to up on
game and check out search out this very show to
be able to hear and listen. There also will be
programming opportunities based off of the things that we're talking about,
(16:35):
so you can continue to educate yourself on an even
deeper level of the things that you hear us discuss
on this show. Let's keep it moving, determining your NIL goals.
This is a big one. I love this topic because
goals are important. I'm all about purpose and purpose driven.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
Backing.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
I'm all about purpose driven marketing and branding. I think
when you build and we'll get to your personal brand.
My personal brand, as you can see on my hat,
I love the military. I'm a military kid. I come
from three generations of military men that have served our country.
(17:22):
Anything that has to do with our veterans, anything that
has to do with our active military, our first responders,
that's me. I'm all about it. So for me, understanding
that purpose of being able to help bring awareness to
veterans needing services that can help them from taking their
(17:44):
own lives. I mean, suicides of military vets is such
a high rate on a daily basis. So for me,
that's what my brand aligns with. There are a lot
of great companies out there and agencies that want to
align themselves with these types of storylines. So in talking
(18:06):
with you, my goal when I go out after my name,
image and likeness deals are to align my brand, my
name and my image and my likeness to those types
of companies that align with what I'm doing. Because I
found an NIL the best way for an athlete to
represent that agency or that company that's advertising with you
(18:29):
is to have the passion behind what it is that
you're talking about. So while I might not be the
most passionate about that product in particular, my passion will
still come through and it will shine through because we
align on what our purposes are and what really matters
most in the scenario of what that deal would look like.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
Yeah, I know we're going to talk a lot about
the importance of personal branding when it comes to NIL,
and I say to student athletes all the time that
it's going to be almost impossible to have NIL success
without first taking a step back and determining a couple
(19:18):
of things about your personal brand. The first being to
accept the fact that you already have a personal brand.
You know, whether you dedicated any time to it or not,
you have one. And we know that because I can
go into a room, you can point to a room
and say, hey, you know, if I have five friends
or five people that know me in that room, I
(19:41):
can walk in that room without you, and I can say,
what do you think about this person? Or when I
say this person's name, what's the first word that comes
to your mind, that is your brand, right. Jeff Bezos
of Amazon is sort of famous for saying this exact thing,
which is that your personal brand is what other people
(20:02):
say about you when you're not in the room, right.
And that's a great, I think description, I think, particularly
for a student athlete, to recognize you have even from
high school on, from high school and college, now you're visible.
You may not be famous yet, but you're visible. People
(20:23):
know who you are, and they've read about you. They've
seen an interview, they've watched you on the sideline, they've
seen you in class, they may have interacted with you.
All of that contributes to what your brand is and
it's I think important for student athletes to accept that,
take a step back and then and then decide LeVar
(20:46):
the way you did. And you it probably came very
very naturally to you because of your upbringing and your
military background with your family, that felt probably so natural
for you to grab it tap towards that you know.
But for some student athletes, I say the second step
(21:07):
is really to decide what your purpose is and la are.
One of the things I say to sort of simplify
it for student athletes is because they don't like to
hear words like mission and purpose as much. Right it doesn't.
It's hard for this.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Too old, it's too old, too old, and.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
It's not specific enough. Right Sure, But if I say,
if I say to them, I'll get to your purpose
right now with this question, what could you stand up
and talk about right now with no notes for the
next thirty minutes. What could you talk about stanton think
(21:49):
about that or what could you promise to post about
on social media once a week for the next year
right now? That would feel good to you. And with
those questions you can very quickly get to a student
athlete's purpose because they'll tell you I care about mental health,
(22:13):
I care about physical fitness, I care about nutrition, I
care about leadership, whatever that thing is. And to your point,
then I'll stop talking of oar. But like to your point,
when you find that purpose, even when you're nineteen twenty
years old, that thing you want to talk about, stand
(22:35):
up in front of a room and talk about or
post on social media, it makes it much easier for
you to identify the companies, like you said, that you
want to work with, because they're companies that are going
to step forward and say that thing that you always
post about let's say it's mental health. My brand is
about that too, and so that's why we're going to
(22:57):
be a great partner here.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
So how does that specifically play into determining the goal
the goals of getting involved in the nils, whether it
be from the deals, whatever it may be. How does
that brand development because that was actually a topic that
we were going to touch on after program or NIL,
(23:23):
what are your goals? But they do? All this all
fits together. It's like tetris, right, it all fits together,
and it just I'm curious, how does how much of
a role does building your personal brand and what that
represents to you? Like you just explained, how much does
that play again into the goals or how much should
(23:43):
it play into the goals that you're setting for NIL?
Speaker 3 (23:49):
Well, well, i'll see, I'll mention one or two things,
but I'm going to I'm going to pitch it back
to you because I'm really interested in terms of how
you approach some of these things throughout your career as
a very young person in college, as a pro and
then career wise after that. But like I think we
(24:10):
get so, I mean, we're so quick, not you and
I because we're going to break this. But people are
so quick to talk about compensation associated with ni l's
to see the big picture, right, and so like, if
if all you talk about is money in terms of NIL,
(24:32):
then you're going to miss out on career development or
opportunity to align with a nonprofit uh social mission that
you that you want to get behind, or maybe you
look at it as a professional development opportunity where there's
(24:52):
an ni L opportunity. Maybe it's going to pay you
a little bit of money, uh maybe you know, uh,
maybe it's not as much as you would want, but
maybe it's a in a career, in a in a
in an industry that you're trying to learn about because
you could see yourself in that career later in your life.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Right.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
So there's the goals are so important and and and
and and here's where I'm gonna stop talking because I
want I want to hear your view on this. But
as we get older of our how many times do
you ever make a decision that's completely about money?
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Never?
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Never?
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Never? Because here's the thing, right, I I am a
goal chaser. I am a goals chaser. So it's so
interesting that we would say what determines your NI l goals.
I set goals based upon how I want to be
remembered in my life, how I want to feel about myself.
(25:51):
So when I I look at the things that I
want to accomplish, do I want money? Hell? Yes, I
want money. But what I also understand is that the
goals that you set are generally the products that money
is chasing. Did y'all hear what I just y'all went?
(26:13):
Generally speaking, when you're a goals oriented person, the money
is chasing the outcomes of what your goals are that
product that I work to be great. And when I
work to be great, I set my sights. You want
to know how did I approach my goals when I
(26:33):
was younger in terms of how that was represented, because
there was no money really represented in my time. My
goals were still to build a strong bond with my community.
That was my goal, and that was probably because I
come from a military family and I come from a
Christian family. So I grew up in the church, and
(26:55):
I understood what the reverend and the deacons and the
mothers of the church and the first Lady, and I
understood the structure of what that represented to those specific communities,
what I will say is that I think is super
important and vital and interesting now that we're in the
NIL era is I was open to a lot of
(27:17):
different things Bill right, So I was okay with going
to and I still am okay with supporting other things
that I'm passionate about, but it's just not That's not
my main driving home passion. I was always in children's hospital.
I was always a part of Make a Wish and
(27:39):
granting final wishes of kids I've lost, kids that I've
been with through Make a Wish and Ronald McDonald House
and all those different organizations and entities that took care
of children pediatric cancer thown at Penn State always been
a major part and contributor of it because it was
(28:00):
something that was near and dear to me. But what
I've learned in the NIL space and in this era
and time and thinking about my goals is that you
need to be specific to what you're connected to so
that you can narrow the scope of what it is
that you're you're sending out there and capture that community
(28:23):
and let that community know that I'm your beacon. Like
some people can pull it off where they do it
across different categories. But I found in looking at it,
I think that to be specific and to be laser
start focused. What they say the business term is, you
want you want wide, you know. You don't want wide
(28:43):
and shallow, you want narrow and deep, you know, and
and so that the opportunities are plentiful. And what it
is that your narrow scope of focus is. So for
me when I was growing up, before I realized that
I needed to dial in what my focus was in
terms of purpose, I still realized that my purpose was
(29:05):
to leave my fans, my community with an experience, and
so that ultimately connected me to these different categories. This
person over here is into the other things. You know,
we talked about the different topics of conversation, right that
you had purposes for. This is a cancer over here.
They're probably a passionate person about that. This person is
(29:29):
passionate about batter women, this person is passionate about homeless people.
No matter what their passion was, Bill, they were a
Penn State fan, and that connected us. And so for me,
I never wanted to leave a Penn State fan and
someone who believed them bought into me. Their passion was me.
(29:51):
I always wanted them to leave with the most amazing
experience in that moment of time, a moment enough time
that maybe they don't remember every single detail, but the
detail that they did remember is that that LeVar Arrington
is a good dude. He's a solid dude, Like he's
(30:12):
a genuine dude, Like I love my time with him.
That was my that was my goal. That was my goal.
And the interesting thing about that is there was no
money connected to that goal. Bill, There's no money connected
to that, right. That is purely an investment of people equity,
time equity, right. And so for me, I ultimately feel
(30:36):
like when building your goals in this nil space, if
you can understand that even if you're a natural introvert
and you don't want to be around and you don't
want to open your mouth and you don't want to
deal with people, ultimately your brand is going to be
contingent upon how your community believes, subscribes, loves, supports who
(31:03):
you are. And the only way you can get to
that place is by being able to communicate properly with
the people that you're building your community with. So now
in my older age, I focus in on who I
specifically appeal and I apply to from age, demographic to
(31:23):
what they do, to where they live, you name it.
I am very very specific in the community that I built,
and I build my community out one person at a time,
and it's because it matters and it's genuine, and so
that's how I align my goals with how I connect
with brands that I am going to represent and connect
(31:47):
my name and my image and my likeness to.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
So I got to tell you this, Lara's quick story.
Do you know you don't even know how effective you've
probably been with that goal. I mean, hopefully we all
are in somewhat, we're all a little bit in the dark.
In other words, it mattered. You know, you had a
(32:12):
goal in the way you were treating people interactions, the
way you know, you left those situations you wanted them
to you know, remember the positive nature of that interaction.
And it's so funny. I got to tell you this
quick story. You know that after you and I spoke
the first time several months ago, and you and I
(32:32):
had never met before, and I was on the phone
with somebody, uh you know, a few hours later, and
I mentioned to him, who's in the sports industry, and
I mentioned to him that I had been speaking with you,
and you know what he said to me. He said,
my dad met LeVar at Washington Football Club function and
(32:56):
he came home telling me about that interaction. That's awesome.
And this was obviously, you know, I don't know the year,
but obviously it's many many years ago, you know what
I mean. And so that's probably not the first time
you've heard something like that. But it's the world.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
That's what that's you asked me, is it about the
The compensation to me is what you just gave me.
That's my compensation knowing that whether I hear it or not,
whether I get that or not, I know, for me,
I gave my best, my best me to the person
that I met every single time. I don't care what
(33:36):
type of day I'm having, Bill, I could be having
the worst day ever. But if somebody from my community
approaches me, they see me, they want to talk to me.
I immediately put any and everything that is impacting me,
maybe not even most positive way, and it does not matter,
because that investment in that moment of time is really
(33:59):
about the importance of what that person that thought enough
of me to recognize me and talk to me, to
leave them with that experience that that gives you hope
for humanity that actually people are okay, they're good people.
There there are some people that have done some really
cool things in life, but yet there's still people. So
(34:22):
that's that to me, that's always been my compensation.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
Well, you know, you know, when you put it in
the context of NIL goals again for a second, I
think you know a lot of times and again you
know this from your pro experience. You know, even before
even before NIL, there were ten thousand professional athletes in
(34:50):
this country. So all the major leagues and if you
include you know, all of the individual sports, you know,
pros and skiing and surfing and snowball and bike and
you know, bike racing, you had them all up. You
had ten thousand professional athletes in this country. And so
I'd like to, you know, joke to people. You know,
(35:11):
back before NIL, there was never a brand whoever said, gosh,
I'd really love to get into athlete marketing, but I
just don't. I can't find any athletes. Okay, there were
always a lot of athletes to choose from, and the
difference between oftentimes between one athlete getting a deal of
some kind and another athlete not getting a deal was
(35:37):
how committed that athlete was in showing the brand that
it wasn't just about the the monetary compensation, that they
were going to go the extra mile, and that they
cared about the brand or the brand's mission. They were aligned,
and I remember this. I'll tell you one other quick,
quick story, LeVar. Like you know, for many many years
(36:01):
that the sports marketing agency I owned, which is still
in existence but I sold a few years ago, we
did a ton of PEPSI work. I was around a
lot of professional athletes in different sports. I'm gonna leave
the names out of this, but I'll tell you this.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
There were.
Speaker 3 (36:17):
There were race car drivers and there's only been a
few in the Pepsi family, so people can probably figure
out who this is. But there were race car drivers
making five to seven million dollars a year at PEPSI,
and you know what it wasn't and they knew. They
(36:38):
knew it was a lot of money, and they would
always come to PEPSI and they could work the room
like you've never seen. They would stop at every single
desk and say hello. They would meet everybody in the building.
They were not in a rush to get in and out,
and they knew what the relationship needed to be, like,
(37:02):
you know, and there's an NIL version of that. Going
back to to the goals conversation, there's an NIL version
of that, which is when a student athlete says to me,
and they don't usually say it this directly, it's more indirect,
but I can tell that they're only doing stuff, they're
only doing nil deals for the money. I say, that
(37:24):
is absolutely your right. And by the way, congratulations for
putting yourself in a position where you even have that option.
You've obviously worked very hard and so you deserve whatever
you choice you make. I'm okay with right. It's your choice.
But NIL can be much more than that. It can
(37:44):
be about professional development, career development, social impact, and.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
It's impactful. That's the way. That's the framework right there.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
Yeah, I agree. And by the way, for a lot
of student athletes, it's you know, we talk about compensation.
For a lot of student athletes, the compensation is not
going to be an.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Overwhelming life shop there stop anyway, Stop there, Bill, Stop there.
That's Bill Carter right there. That's the professor and he's
teaching y'all right now, man, that is the man. That's
Bill Carter. I'm LeVar Arrington. This is the NIL Playbook
with the professor and the coach. Make sure you check
us out up on game wherever it is that you
(38:30):
subscribe to get your podcast from, make sure you check
us out. This is the show that you need. If
it's all about NIL, you need to learn about NIL,
you need to understand nil. This is the show for you.
It's about time we knew. It's been long overdue. That's
Bill Carter. Let's wrap this thing up with compensation. You
(38:53):
got the compensation. You touched on compensation. Compensation has been
a part of the entire conversation. And for what it's worth, Bill,
let's be real here, most people in the NIL situation
will not be people that are wealthy. There will not
be a tremendously large amount and percentage of families and
(39:15):
athletes and people. For what it's worth, these are young
men and women, so most of them don't have jobs
or have had jobs, or if they do, they're very
simplistic jobs, entry level jobs in terms of what it
is that they're doing. But most families of athletes aren't
going to be super super super affluent families where they're
(39:37):
looking at it from the standpoint of money and compensation
doesn't really matter. In fact, when you think about it,
a lot of the stories that I hear are very
sad stories. Right, you got these families of these athletes.
They're able to go to school and get an education
and play, but they don't have enough money, enough resources
to actually even be of very, very involved or present
(40:04):
presence and influence on their kids just for the simple
fact that they can't afford to do it. Can't afford
to drive into a college town and be there for
the time that that kid, their kid is performing and
having a game because they can't afford a hotel room.
(40:24):
So you hear stories about parents staying in the kids
dorm room. They'll stay in the kids dorm room because
they can't afford a place to stay in order to
be able to go see their kid play. There's so
many different stories that have surfaced, and you start to
hear about, oh, maybe that's the reason why that kid
left early. Now it makes sense why the kid didn't
(40:46):
stay to get their degree or whatever it may be.
They left for the pros to go get the money
and go get it earlier. Now that you have nil,
there's not necessarily the rush to leave to go at
that check. But understanding that compensation is certainly a very
very important part of In fact, it's probably in a
(41:11):
lot of ways, if we're being honest, it's all about
the bottom line in life. People will monetize things differently,
but no matter whether it's love, whether it's hate, whether
it's helping, whether it's being selfish, it's always about the
bottom line of what it is that you're going for
(41:31):
and that compensation. How do we approach the conversation of compensation.
Speaker 3 (41:38):
Well, there's a lot here, LaVar, I'll tell you. I'll
start it this way, and these are really it's a
great kickoff show because we're going to talk about all
these things over the next many weeks, like individually, get
into the detail and a lot of these things. But
I'll start this part of the conversation about compensation this way.
(41:59):
The the listeners should know that compensation really starts it
really it really stems from three places. Right now, there's
three revenue streams in NIL. The first is mainly through
NIL marketplaces, and think of these as like the dating
apps of NIL. So a brand goes on to the
(42:22):
marketplace and creates a profile and says you know, I'm
a footwear company and I'm looking for people to post
about my brand on social media and I'm going to
pay everybody X number of dollars who wants to do
this for the next six months. That's a marketplace. And
student athletes go in the marketplace as well, and they
create profiles and that's how they find each other.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Right.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
The second place of revenue are collectives. And again we're
going to probably spend a lot of time on another
podcast talking about collectives, but collectives, for those who may
not be totally aware of, maybe listening for the first time,
collectives are mainly alumni donor led organizations. They're independent of
(43:05):
the athletic department, but a group of donors has come
together independent of the school right to support that specific school.
And then the third revenue source is just pure entrepreneurship.
It's a student athlete who says, I'm going to create
(43:26):
my own merchandise, whether it's a peril or something else.
I'm going to create my own camp, a clinic, or
start a private instruction business of some kind, something to
that effect. Right, there's a swimmer, just a quick example,
and I wasn't planning on talking about this I'm blanking
(43:46):
on her name right now, but there's a swimmer at
the University of Illinois who you know, she sees nils
an entrepreneurial endeavor. She just built her own marketplace to
to match up people that can teach swimming, probably other
student athletes at Illinois with kids in the market who
(44:09):
want to learn to swim. Like, that's a great example
of nil entrepreneurism. And there's a lot of.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
Going to extra mau right. That's going to extra mau
right there. Bill, Not only are you building a marketplace
for yourself and for others to benefit from, but now
you're showing those brands out there that will directly connect
to your community that you're investible because you're building something
that is sustainable to build that type of a platform
(44:37):
to be able to create those opportunities, says to those advertisers,
this represents the American dream. You took something from nothing,
You took something that you do and you created it
and you turned it into a revenue generating space, which
is awesome.
Speaker 3 (44:55):
Yeah, And you know what I think about when I
see these stories about businesses is that student athletes are developing.
I always, you know, like, look at it through the
lens of an entrepreneur and think to myself, you know what,
it doesn't matter if this thing makes a dime. It
really doesn't matter. I mean, I hope it does. I
hope that the student athlete has that success. But what
(45:18):
it's really showing that student athlete is how to build
a business, how to put things together, how to fundraise,
how to scale, and and if the thing blows up
and becomes an enormous success, that's awesome. And if it doesn't,
that kid probably gets the next interview at Google because
she built this thing right. And so it's an unbelievable
(45:41):
opportunity anyway you look at it. But so back to
compensation for a second. So those are the main sources
of compensation. The compensation itself is not just cash. It
can be free product, discount, entertainment, you know, tickets to things.
(46:01):
There's all sorts of uh, loaner compensation, you know, beyond just.
Speaker 2 (46:08):
Payment, right, loaner TV, exact loaner, loaner furniture you know, Hell,
if you get good enough at it, get a loaner home,
you know what I mean. Like, Hey, there's there's a
lot of compensation out there that doesn't have to be
necessarily cash cash driven. So you're you're correct there.
Speaker 3 (46:26):
Well, and so my final two things var again. I
know we're going to talk about this stuff a lot
in the future, is you know, but I'll start with this.
There's always a lot of discussion about specific numbers. You know,
how much is a Power five quarterback making, how much
is uh, you know, another student athlete maybe on an
(46:49):
Olympic team sport making if anything. And one of the
problems we have in NIL right now is that there's
no central day database of shared compensation information, right and
so you and I can make educated guesses of what,
(47:11):
say a Bryce Young might have made as a senior
at Alabama, but we don't really know. And there's a
lot of I think, speculation, and there's a lot of
modeling out there for some that makes very interesting reading,
and I really support it. I want to make that clear.
(47:31):
You know, for instance, the valuations that are done by
on three dot com. I really appreciate what they're trying
to do, but that's not an indication of what those
athletes are actually making. It's a it's a valuation, it's
speculation as to what their value might be in the
(47:52):
open marketplace. So that's one of the things we're probably
going to talk about a lot is let me.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
Let me add a little bit of insight to that
as well, because the interesting thing is is that it's
such a turbulent space right now and it's not defined.
So you don't have you know, you don't have unions,
you don't you don't have players, associations, you don't you're
you're basically introducing a professional model into college and what
(48:22):
has been relatively known as amateur athletics. And so now
when you talk about what you just spoke on the
market is being really defined by the agencies, the agencies
being the agencies of like agents or the agencies collectives,
(48:43):
and and those are contracts that are being done that
say you will make X amount of dollars for for
these months, over the course of a year, or whatever
it may be, and here are your commitments. So you're
not even necessarily repri ending a brand and a specific
(49:03):
brand deal. You're supporting the wishes of what you're being
paid for by that agency. So if the agent can
bring back a deal that says, oh, yeah, I get
my client this deal, this, that and the other. Okay,
but I'm paying you to have your services. So I'm
going to pay you up front, and this is what
I'm going to pay you monthly, so that I can
(49:26):
have you do x amount of social media posts, I
can have you do x amount of appearances, I can
have you do x amount of signings. And that's a
lot of the way of how these these values are
beginning to be kind of defined, if that information is
even able to be accurately captured by what's going on
(49:48):
through certain agencies or agencies collectives.
Speaker 3 (49:55):
And you know what, Laura, one of the things is,
as much as I guess as a human being, I
would always err on the side of privacy, right, I mean,
everybody deserves absolute privacy.
Speaker 2 (50:12):
Which protes do not. Pro Coaches do not get that
type of benefit. Everybody wants to know and everybody gets
to know what it is that pros are making, which
is I've always felt was like the most asked backwards
way of doing something. But I find it to be interesting.
Speaker 3 (50:31):
Right right, and and unfair in a lot of ways
that people get to know a professional athlete's playing contract,
you know, like Nope, it's really one of the only
industries in the world in which you can do that
right with that information is public and there's a and
then so you and I could probably you know, argue
(50:52):
there's a lack of fairness to that. And but I'll
say this about nil. If we were able to find
a way to share anonymous data. In other words, if
I'm a quarterback at Tennessee and you're a linebacker, and
I've just got to say Penn State, because if I
(51:13):
said another school, you get mad at me, and you're
a linebacker at Penn State, it would be good to know,
but neither one of us was named by name. It
might be good to be able to share that information
for one reason and one reason only, I think, which
is to establish fair market value. Right, because if my
(51:36):
buddy who's a linebacker at Tennessee is making one tenth
what you're making earning, I shouldn't say making what you're
earning at Penn State through a collective or through deals
that you're finding in state college. I think my guy
ought to know that so that he can try to
(52:00):
write the ship his own ship, you know, and figure
out if if he's not if he's being underpaid. Right,
And to establish fair market.
Speaker 2 (52:09):
That works transversely as well, right, the trans side of
it is a is you get there, they might go
ahead of you. So now you know what they're getting
and they went ahead of you, So now you're able
to perpetuate or propel yourself to a different space as well.
I mean you're talking about the pro model. I mean
that's that's that's a pro model. Is what what being
(52:31):
explained right now? Salary aabs you know, and what I'd say.
Speaker 3 (52:36):
The difference is you know if possible, and I don't
know if it's possible. I mean, you know, I think again,
I think we're going to talk a lot about it
and maybe we'll come up with some solutions. I do
think there's a way, though, to do it where you
can do it anonymously. In other words, we can see
data for howide athletes, right.
Speaker 2 (52:58):
Yeah, because you'll be able you'll be able able to say,
all right, any linebacker that I look at that's starting
out of power five. I know I could look at Bill,
this is what you're making, Bill, and it's anonymous, right,
But I know that you're somewhere in that price range
because that's been established. But it is an interesting conversation
(53:19):
that I'm sure we will continue to delve into because
that whole process of defining the marketplace in the nil
space of college is going. That's when I liking where
we're at right now. Live bullets are flying in college sports. Now,
(53:41):
when we start to get to the place of what
we're talking about right now, where you're starting to establish
market places for or excuse me, market value for the
different positions of these different athletes that are going into school,
that is that is going that. That's not just live
(54:04):
live bullets. That's like that. Those are bombs, those are
missiles that are coming. You're you're now not dealing with
foot soldier issues here, You're dealing with tanks. You're dealing
with jets, like fighter jets. Because now you're talking about
you can't duck. You can't say, oh, I got a value.
(54:27):
I got Bill Carter for just a regular entry level
contract to come to our school. And you know why,
You're not gonna be able to do it because of
the transfer portal. Oh oh you thought you got me,
you snuck me. Huh, you thought you got me. Okay, well,
I'm going over here or you're either gonna pay me
my value, my market value, or I'm going over here
(54:48):
and I'm gonna leave here. Through the transfer portal. So
it's not any real way that you're able to kind
of prevent yourself from not having to be a part
of being competitive, which it's already competitive now to be
able to get the top guys. But imagine that's going
to turn into any guy that comes to your school
(55:09):
by position. You're going to have to know what it
costs to get a player by position. As this thing
continues to unfold and develop.
Speaker 3 (55:19):
So and one of the things that I mean, it's
one of the reasons what you're describing is one of
the reasons that I'm so fascinated by anil. It's why
it's so easy for me to get up every morning
and work on it all day long. Is you know
what you just described is I one hundred percent agree
with that that is what the future could look like.
(55:42):
But what you just described is, and you even use
the word top a top player, you're describing that one
set of things that will occur at the top of
the market power five football and high level athletes. By
the way, maybe not even high level athletes, right, maybe
the backup kicker because somebody needs that guy. He may
(56:05):
be a backup with you, but he could be he
could be a starter somewhere else. So everybody's going to
be really critical. But one thing Levar's it's a reason
that I actually, even though I'm not in favor necessarily
of federal legislation, one of the things I one of
the things I do advocate for is some sort of
(56:26):
shared system around compensation that we can understand it better
because actually, a lot of times I'm not thinking about
the top of the marketplace, but think about what could
be going on and what I think is going on
at the I'll call it the bottom of the marketplace.
There's a field hockey player at the University of Vermont.
(56:49):
She gets contacted by a local business and that local
business wants to pay her one hundred dollars for every
social media post, and she's sort of thinking, well, was
that right? I mean, it seems low, but I don't
have any information, so I guess I'll just do it.
And we want to empower that young woman too, to
(57:09):
say no, no, no, I did my homework and for
a mid major in my sport, at my level, I'm
the leading scorer, I'm the captain of the team. My
rate it really ought to be four hundred dollars a
post and so I think that's why this stuff is
so fascinating because these two athletes, they have nothing in
(57:32):
common really day to day, but they can both be
helped by things like what we're talking about.
Speaker 2 (57:40):
Yeah, well, it's a whole lot to get to and
as you guys can see, there is so so much
to discuss. We will be taking you on this journey
of educating you all on what the NIL is, what
it represents. We're the playbook and this is the NIL
playbook with the professor and the coach. I am here
(58:01):
with my guy Bill Carter, and I am LeVar Arrington.
We will, as I mentioned, be educating you on what
NIL represents and all of the different facets, all of
the different topics that are connected to the NIL. So
get ready, buckle up. Is going to be a wild ride.
There will be programs, there is this show. There's going
(58:24):
to be in person events. There are going to be
so many things connected to this much needed resource and
guide for all of you people who are getting involved
or are already involved with the NIL. So until next time,
we hope you enjoyed this first inaugural initial show that
we're doing. The kickoff, Bill, I got to say, you
(58:46):
are money like I thought you were, and even better
than what I would have even imagined in terms of
what the show would would come across as, because you
just come across as who you are, as you were
in the conversations that we've had leading up to this.
So shouts out to you. Great first show. It seems
(59:06):
like you've done shows before. So maybe I'll let you
run the show from here on out, man, and I'll
just you know.
Speaker 3 (59:13):
It's easy to do. It's easy to deal with the
pro let Me tell you that it's easy to do
with LaVar Arrington. I'll tell you that much.
Speaker 2 (59:19):
Well. I appreciate that. Everybody. Make sure you go subscribe.
Check out the podcast. You can find it by searching
wherever it is. You get your podcast up on Game.
That's up on Game, and you'll be able to see
the show the NIL Playbook with the Professor and the Coach.
Until next time, guys, we'll check you out, all right,
talk to you soon, Nil name, image and likeness all right,
(59:44):
Till next time, y'all,
Colleges, parents, and the world have been trying to figure
out NIL. We now have the show. It will educate
you in a simple way. This is the NIL Playbook
with the coach, LaVar Arrington and the Professor Bill Carter.
We're going to educate the world on NIL. And it
all starts.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Now, what's up? Everybody's Arrington here, and that, my friends,
is your new friend, Bill Carter. That's right, he's the professor.
I'm the coach. We're bringing you a new NIL educational
podcast show. It's called NIL Playbook with the Professor and
the coach. As you can tell, I'm probably the coach
(00:40):
and Bill is probably the professor. But maybe our roles
could enterchange Bill and it could be I'm the professor
and you're the coach. This is the type of show
that this is going to be. It's much needed. You
want to check us out, go on Twitter, you could
go to at LeVar Arrington, or you could go at
NIL Playbook with the Professor and Coach. All right, you
(01:02):
can hit Fox Sports Radio and you can listen in
by searching up on game wherever it is you get
your podcast from. So, without further ado, this is the
new show. It has been long overdue, it has been
much needed. NIL is a space that has a lot
(01:22):
more gray area than it does defined area. And who
better than to bring the experts of the expert of
experts into the podcast world to talk about what's going
on in NIL, the details of it, the ins and outs,
(01:43):
the dudes that don't the common sense approaches, the wrong approaches.
It's Bill Carter. So let's get some introductions going. Bill,
tell the people who you are, my guy, LaVar.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Thanks so much for the great introduction of your great idea.
And I want to say that first and foremost, you
came up with this idea, and I totally agree it's
long overdue, and I'll only praise you like this, maybe
this one time. There's nobody better to have developed this
(02:18):
idea than you. And I'm so thankful that you believe
in NIL the way you do, and I love even
more the way you think about NIL, that you can
be an advocate for it, but you can still pick
it apart a little bit where it's needed and talk
(02:38):
about what could be better, what could be improved, where
we might be three five years from now. And so
I'm really excited to be doing this with you I
really appreciate it. My name is Bill Carter. I am
a part time professor at the University of Vermont. I
live in Burlington, Vermont. I basically see the campus from
(03:03):
from where I am today, and my full time gig
is NIL. I do a lot of education for universities, brands,
professional service providers like agents and advisors, attorneys, financial advisors,
(03:25):
tax attorneys, all of whom want to participate in a
new and exciting and important industry and landscape. And I
think for the most part, people want to do it
in a way that's really supportive of student athletes. And
so I'm excited to be doing that and I'm excited
(03:46):
to be teaching an NIL class at the University of Vermont.
I also write a monthly column on NIL for Sports
Business Journal, usually comes out the last Tuesday of every month.
And now I get to do this podcast with you.
So this is awesome.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
I love it. I did a lot of research. I
sought you out, I sought the Master of Masters. I
didn't know if it would be doable to get a
hold of you and us to make this a reality,
but as fate would have it, we were able to
connect and after many many many amazing conversations. We came
(04:27):
to the conclusion that there are synergies here and that
what I come to the table with as someone who
has exercised and learned in IL from not only the
athletes perspective, but I have also learned it as a
parent and also someone who has wanted to support mentorship
and as it applies to families and people that are
(04:50):
involved as well as to the benefit of the schools
and the institutions. That matters so much to me. So
people you know who I am, I would hope so,
and I would assume a point if you're seeing this.
I am LeVar Arrington. I did play at Penn State.
I was a number two overall pick for the Washington
now known as Commanders. I've done plenty of things where
(05:13):
I would say I'm proud of the fact that I
understood an I L name, image likeness before it became
a thing where it is now monetizable at the college level.
So let's let's jump into this, all right, we are
in the show. This is a n I L playbook
(05:34):
with the professor and the coach that's Bill Carter. I
am LeVar Arrington. And the topic that we want to
jump right into out of the gate and you'll be
able to see this and be able to read along
with us. Is what's an N I L deal? We're
going to start with what's an NIL deal? You're you're
(05:55):
looking at it right now as we speak. Bill to me, Man,
let's get this thing going. What is an NIL deal?
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Well, so, LeVar, because because we're committed to making this
partly education, a lot of education, and we hope that
people are entertained as well. But we want to be
the ones that are that are pointing out the data
and the facts and and and some of the stuff
that is false out there. I want to start with
(06:28):
what nil is not? Right?
Speaker 2 (06:30):
All right, wonderful, Let's let's do that. Let's do that.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
There's a term that a lot of us, you and
I included, often use out in the sports industry. We
like to call everything an endorsement, right, and that was
a term that you know you heard almost exclusively as
a pro athlete. That's when when people talked about your
and your work colleagues off field endeavors, they were talking
(06:57):
about endorsements. I don't like that word in NIL, and
I'll tell you why, because it's not descriptive, right, So,
and your background, my background, and a lot of athlete
marketing on the pro side, And when somebody says endorsements,
we don't really know what the relationship is between that
(07:20):
pro athlete and a brand or a small business or
a nonprofit, no matter what it is, because endorsements not descriptive.
You could be doing something on social media, you could
be doing something in a retail store, you could be
shooting a thirty second television ad. We don't know. All
of that is sort of endorsement, right. I don't like
(07:41):
to apply that term to nil because it doesn't really
give the full picture. And by the way, ninety nine
percent of the time, the relationship between say a brand
and a college athlete is not that vast.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Right.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
So, if a brand came to you when you were
a pro, they might use you in a retail store,
do a thirty second television ad with you, bring you
to a live event. All of that we call athlete activation, right,
They would use you, they'd activate you across all these
different platforms. That doesn't really happen in college. What happens
(08:22):
in college, for the most part, is that an nil deal.
And now it's not the first time. I'm going to
be long winded, but I'm finally gonna answer your question.
Is master get nil nil deal between a brand or
a nonprofit or even a collective. I know we'll talk
(08:43):
about that collectors on other shows that we do, but
any of those deals will be very specific, right the
brand hires a student athlete to post on social media,
or hires the student athlete to make an appearance a
retail store, or to sign autographs, or to be part
(09:06):
of some instruction a camp, a clinic or doing private instruction,
or a trading card deal or an NFT deal. But
it's almost always LVAR, almost always one thing. There's a
million reasons for that that we're going to get to,
but nil deals right out of the gate. I'd love
(09:26):
for the audience to know, don't use that term endorsement.
You're not wrong, but you're also not right because endorsement
doesn't cover it. It's not specific enough.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
I think that's interesting because when you talk about endorsements,
that's where the Michael Jordans came from endorsing Nike. That's
where so many different athletes have built a lot of
wealth is through endorsing the different brands that are connected
to them. I would ask you this and looking at
(10:02):
the specifics of what an NIL deal would represent, what
is what is the way in your estimation, how do
these how do these companies or advertisers look at who
it is that they want to work with or or
(10:22):
potentially perspective will want to have the name and the
image and the likeness of these college athletes doing this
one specific thing for their company that they would be
able to leverage because obviously it's all about taking that content.
It's really about taking the content of what it is.
NIL is really about taking the content of what people
(10:44):
are doing, what the athlete is doing, and leveraging that
content for their gain. How do you suspect that they
go about figuring that out?
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Yeah, well so in some ways, Again, it's similar to
you know what you're playing career in that a brand
who might be interested in a professional athlete, they look
at a number of different factors. Probably the highest on
the list is does this person fit with my brand?
(11:16):
Is their personal brand aligned with my corporate brand? And
then is this person gonna give my brand visibility to
the point where they might even bring in an additional audience.
So not only am I not only do I have
the advantage that our brands are alive, but they might
introduce me to an audience that I might not even
(11:36):
have right as a brand. Now, is that the case
for college athletes and these NIL deals somewhat? But I
think there's more because they're usually they being student athletes,
are usually being hired to do one thing at a
time on a short term basis. But I got to
(11:56):
say something. You bring up Michael Jordan and Nike and
sort of you know how the term endorsement became part
of our language. It's a great example. Can you imagine
if NIL have been introduced when Jordan was at North
Carolina Nike. Probably Nike wouldn't have come to him and said, hey,
we want to do this long term deal with you,
(12:18):
because it was what wouldn't be allowed. They would have said,
let's pretend social media was around in the eighties. They
would have said, Michael, we want you to promote a
basketball shoe, but just for six months preseason and then
through March Madness, and we want you to do it
a couple of times a month on social media. That
(12:41):
would have probably been how somebody like Jordan would have
started a relationship with a brand like Nike, it wouldn't
have been all the things we think about with Nike
and Jordan today, and certainly not his own signature shoe, right,
it would have been really tactical and specific. But levardy
(13:01):
your question, how are they getting chosen? Well, a lot
of the same pieces are in place. A brand goes
to an athlete because that college athlete represents in their
personal brand something the brand, really corporate brand really appreciates.
They think that the student athlete can give them visibility,
(13:22):
particularly on social media. Right, So, I mean I'll use
and I probably I'll try not to use this example
every week because you know, everybody gets sick of uh,
you know, examples with Livvy Dunn, Jymnast at LSU. But
Livvy Dunn has created her nil empire mainly because she's
got such a tremendous social following in the you know,
(13:45):
millions and millions on Instagram and TikTok, and so what
she delivers for every brand that she works with is
immediately she can post one thing on Instagram or TikTok,
wore a million people see it. Most of them are
between the ages I would say of sixteen and twenty eight.
(14:07):
And if you're a brand and that's your target, she
is a vehicle and unbelievable vehicle to deliver that audience.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
And that becomes monetizable, those those clicks, those those impressions,
that becomes monetizable for these agencies to say, look, we
hit our mark, We put our money into this athlete.
This athlete got so many impressions, got so many clicks.
So you got the value of introducing your product that
(14:35):
was connected to this athlete successfully to a certain demograph.
You have to assume a certain demographic that is connected
to that athlete in particular. That's beauty one hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
And there's so many things about I mean, and again
you know from your experience, your special unique experience at
Penn State, you know there are college athletes that have
a national following right they become they're the one of
the ten best maybe in their sport, and there's a
national audience that pays attention to them. But there's also
(15:12):
this hyper local, unbelievable like energy associated with the college
town and their following of that athlete. And so when
a brand taps in and utilizes an athlete, say again
for social media, they're getting a big national audience in
a lot of cases, but they're also getting a really
(15:35):
energized fan base that's in that college town. And again,
I promise I won't use that every week as an example,
but Penn State is a perfect example of this. Penn
State's got alumni all over the country, all over the
world really, but all over the country. There are Penn
State fans. It's a national university. So when a brand
(15:57):
creates a partnership with a Penn State athlete and that
person is recognizable not just in state college, but all
over the country, they're reaching you know, Penn State and
other fans of that sport. It's really a great investment.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Indeed, that's Bill Carter right there. I'm LeVar Arrington. This
is nil playbook with the professor and the coach. You
can make sure that you go on to up on
game and check out search out this very show to
be able to hear and listen. There also will be
programming opportunities based off of the things that we're talking about,
(16:35):
so you can continue to educate yourself on an even
deeper level of the things that you hear us discuss
on this show. Let's keep it moving, determining your NIL goals.
This is a big one. I love this topic because
goals are important. I'm all about purpose and purpose driven.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
Backing.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
I'm all about purpose driven marketing and branding. I think
when you build and we'll get to your personal brand.
My personal brand, as you can see on my hat,
I love the military. I'm a military kid. I come
from three generations of military men that have served our country.
(17:22):
Anything that has to do with our veterans, anything that
has to do with our active military, our first responders,
that's me. I'm all about it. So for me, understanding
that purpose of being able to help bring awareness to
veterans needing services that can help them from taking their
(17:44):
own lives. I mean, suicides of military vets is such
a high rate on a daily basis. So for me,
that's what my brand aligns with. There are a lot
of great companies out there and agencies that want to
align themselves with these types of storylines. So in talking
(18:06):
with you, my goal when I go out after my name,
image and likeness deals are to align my brand, my
name and my image and my likeness to those types
of companies that align with what I'm doing. Because I
found an NIL the best way for an athlete to
represent that agency or that company that's advertising with you
(18:29):
is to have the passion behind what it is that
you're talking about. So while I might not be the
most passionate about that product in particular, my passion will
still come through and it will shine through because we
align on what our purposes are and what really matters
most in the scenario of what that deal would look like.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
Yeah, I know we're going to talk a lot about
the importance of personal branding when it comes to NIL,
and I say to student athletes all the time that
it's going to be almost impossible to have NIL success
without first taking a step back and determining a couple
(19:18):
of things about your personal brand. The first being to
accept the fact that you already have a personal brand.
You know, whether you dedicated any time to it or not,
you have one. And we know that because I can
go into a room, you can point to a room
and say, hey, you know, if I have five friends
or five people that know me in that room, I
(19:41):
can walk in that room without you, and I can say,
what do you think about this person? Or when I
say this person's name, what's the first word that comes
to your mind, that is your brand, right. Jeff Bezos
of Amazon is sort of famous for saying this exact thing,
which is that your personal brand is what other people
(20:02):
say about you when you're not in the room, right.
And that's a great, I think description, I think, particularly
for a student athlete, to recognize you have even from
high school on, from high school and college, now you're visible.
You may not be famous yet, but you're visible. People
(20:23):
know who you are, and they've read about you. They've
seen an interview, they've watched you on the sideline, they've
seen you in class, they may have interacted with you.
All of that contributes to what your brand is and
it's I think important for student athletes to accept that,
take a step back and then and then decide LeVar
(20:46):
the way you did. And you it probably came very
very naturally to you because of your upbringing and your
military background with your family, that felt probably so natural
for you to grab it tap towards that you know.
But for some student athletes, I say the second step
(21:07):
is really to decide what your purpose is and la are.
One of the things I say to sort of simplify
it for student athletes is because they don't like to
hear words like mission and purpose as much. Right it doesn't.
It's hard for this.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Too old, it's too old, too old, and.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
It's not specific enough. Right Sure, But if I say,
if I say to them, I'll get to your purpose
right now with this question, what could you stand up
and talk about right now with no notes for the
next thirty minutes. What could you talk about stanton think
(21:49):
about that or what could you promise to post about
on social media once a week for the next year
right now? That would feel good to you. And with
those questions you can very quickly get to a student
athlete's purpose because they'll tell you I care about mental health,
(22:13):
I care about physical fitness, I care about nutrition, I
care about leadership, whatever that thing is. And to your point,
then I'll stop talking of oar. But like to your point,
when you find that purpose, even when you're nineteen twenty
years old, that thing you want to talk about, stand
(22:35):
up in front of a room and talk about or
post on social media, it makes it much easier for
you to identify the companies, like you said, that you
want to work with, because they're companies that are going
to step forward and say that thing that you always
post about let's say it's mental health. My brand is
about that too, and so that's why we're going to
(22:57):
be a great partner here.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
So how does that specifically play into determining the goal
the goals of getting involved in the nils, whether it
be from the deals, whatever it may be. How does
that brand development because that was actually a topic that
we were going to touch on after program or NIL,
(23:23):
what are your goals? But they do? All this all
fits together. It's like tetris, right, it all fits together,
and it just I'm curious, how does how much of
a role does building your personal brand and what that
represents to you? Like you just explained, how much does
that play again into the goals or how much should
(23:43):
it play into the goals that you're setting for NIL?
Speaker 3 (23:49):
Well, well, i'll see, I'll mention one or two things,
but I'm going to I'm going to pitch it back
to you because I'm really interested in terms of how
you approach some of these things throughout your career as
a very young person in college, as a pro and
then career wise after that. But like I think we
(24:10):
get so, I mean, we're so quick, not you and
I because we're going to break this. But people are
so quick to talk about compensation associated with ni l's
to see the big picture, right, and so like, if
if all you talk about is money in terms of NIL,
(24:32):
then you're going to miss out on career development or
opportunity to align with a nonprofit uh social mission that
you that you want to get behind, or maybe you
look at it as a professional development opportunity where there's
(24:52):
an ni L opportunity. Maybe it's going to pay you
a little bit of money, uh maybe you know, uh,
maybe it's not as much as you would want, but
maybe it's a in a career, in a in a
in an industry that you're trying to learn about because
you could see yourself in that career later in your life.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Right.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
So there's the goals are so important and and and
and and here's where I'm gonna stop talking because I
want I want to hear your view on this. But
as we get older of our how many times do
you ever make a decision that's completely about money?
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Never?
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Never?
Speaker 2 (25:31):
Never? Because here's the thing, right, I I am a
goal chaser. I am a goals chaser. So it's so
interesting that we would say what determines your NI l goals.
I set goals based upon how I want to be
remembered in my life, how I want to feel about myself.
(25:51):
So when I I look at the things that I
want to accomplish, do I want money? Hell? Yes, I
want money. But what I also understand is that the
goals that you set are generally the products that money
is chasing. Did y'all hear what I just y'all went?
(26:13):
Generally speaking, when you're a goals oriented person, the money
is chasing the outcomes of what your goals are that
product that I work to be great. And when I
work to be great, I set my sights. You want
to know how did I approach my goals when I
(26:33):
was younger in terms of how that was represented, because
there was no money really represented in my time. My
goals were still to build a strong bond with my community.
That was my goal, and that was probably because I
come from a military family and I come from a
Christian family. So I grew up in the church, and
(26:55):
I understood what the reverend and the deacons and the
mothers of the church and the first Lady, and I
understood the structure of what that represented to those specific communities,
what I will say is that I think is super
important and vital and interesting now that we're in the
NIL era is I was open to a lot of
(27:17):
different things Bill right, So I was okay with going
to and I still am okay with supporting other things
that I'm passionate about, but it's just not That's not
my main driving home passion. I was always in children's hospital.
I was always a part of Make a Wish and
(27:39):
granting final wishes of kids I've lost, kids that I've
been with through Make a Wish and Ronald McDonald House
and all those different organizations and entities that took care
of children pediatric cancer thown at Penn State always been
a major part and contributor of it because it was
(28:00):
something that was near and dear to me. But what
I've learned in the NIL space and in this era
and time and thinking about my goals is that you
need to be specific to what you're connected to so
that you can narrow the scope of what it is
that you're you're sending out there and capture that community
(28:23):
and let that community know that I'm your beacon. Like
some people can pull it off where they do it
across different categories. But I found in looking at it,
I think that to be specific and to be laser
start focused. What they say the business term is, you
want you want wide, you know. You don't want wide
(28:43):
and shallow, you want narrow and deep, you know, and
and so that the opportunities are plentiful. And what it
is that your narrow scope of focus is. So for
me when I was growing up, before I realized that
I needed to dial in what my focus was in
terms of purpose, I still realized that my purpose was
(29:05):
to leave my fans, my community with an experience, and
so that ultimately connected me to these different categories. This
person over here is into the other things. You know,
we talked about the different topics of conversation, right that
you had purposes for. This is a cancer over here.
They're probably a passionate person about that. This person is
(29:29):
passionate about batter women, this person is passionate about homeless people.
No matter what their passion was, Bill, they were a
Penn State fan, and that connected us. And so for me,
I never wanted to leave a Penn State fan and
someone who believed them bought into me. Their passion was me.
(29:51):
I always wanted them to leave with the most amazing
experience in that moment of time, a moment enough time
that maybe they don't remember every single detail, but the
detail that they did remember is that that LeVar Arrington
is a good dude. He's a solid dude, Like he's
(30:12):
a genuine dude, Like I love my time with him.
That was my that was my goal. That was my goal.
And the interesting thing about that is there was no
money connected to that goal. Bill, There's no money connected
to that, right. That is purely an investment of people equity,
time equity, right. And so for me, I ultimately feel
(30:36):
like when building your goals in this nil space, if
you can understand that even if you're a natural introvert
and you don't want to be around and you don't
want to open your mouth and you don't want to
deal with people, ultimately your brand is going to be
contingent upon how your community believes, subscribes, loves, supports who
(31:03):
you are. And the only way you can get to
that place is by being able to communicate properly with
the people that you're building your community with. So now
in my older age, I focus in on who I
specifically appeal and I apply to from age, demographic to
(31:23):
what they do, to where they live, you name it.
I am very very specific in the community that I built,
and I build my community out one person at a time,
and it's because it matters and it's genuine, and so
that's how I align my goals with how I connect
with brands that I am going to represent and connect
(31:47):
my name and my image and my likeness to.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
So I got to tell you this, Lara's quick story.
Do you know you don't even know how effective you've
probably been with that goal. I mean, hopefully we all
are in somewhat, we're all a little bit in the dark.
In other words, it mattered. You know, you had a
(32:12):
goal in the way you were treating people interactions, the
way you know, you left those situations you wanted them
to you know, remember the positive nature of that interaction.
And it's so funny. I got to tell you this
quick story. You know that after you and I spoke
the first time several months ago, and you and I
(32:32):
had never met before, and I was on the phone
with somebody, uh you know, a few hours later, and
I mentioned to him, who's in the sports industry, and
I mentioned to him that I had been speaking with you,
and you know what he said to me. He said,
my dad met LeVar at Washington Football Club function and
(32:56):
he came home telling me about that interaction. That's awesome.
And this was obviously, you know, I don't know the year,
but obviously it's many many years ago, you know what
I mean. And so that's probably not the first time
you've heard something like that. But it's the world.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
That's what that's you asked me, is it about the
The compensation to me is what you just gave me.
That's my compensation knowing that whether I hear it or not,
whether I get that or not, I know, for me,
I gave my best, my best me to the person
that I met every single time. I don't care what
(33:36):
type of day I'm having, Bill, I could be having
the worst day ever. But if somebody from my community
approaches me, they see me, they want to talk to me.
I immediately put any and everything that is impacting me,
maybe not even most positive way, and it does not matter,
because that investment in that moment of time is really
(33:59):
about the importance of what that person that thought enough
of me to recognize me and talk to me, to
leave them with that experience that that gives you hope
for humanity that actually people are okay, they're good people.
There there are some people that have done some really
cool things in life, but yet there's still people. So
(34:22):
that's that to me, that's always been my compensation.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
Well, you know, you know, when you put it in
the context of NIL goals again for a second, I
think you know a lot of times and again you
know this from your pro experience. You know, even before
even before NIL, there were ten thousand professional athletes in
(34:50):
this country. So all the major leagues and if you
include you know, all of the individual sports, you know,
pros and skiing and surfing and snowball and bike and
you know, bike racing, you had them all up. You
had ten thousand professional athletes in this country. And so
I'd like to, you know, joke to people. You know,
(35:11):
back before NIL, there was never a brand whoever said, gosh,
I'd really love to get into athlete marketing, but I
just don't. I can't find any athletes. Okay, there were
always a lot of athletes to choose from, and the
difference between oftentimes between one athlete getting a deal of
some kind and another athlete not getting a deal was
(35:37):
how committed that athlete was in showing the brand that
it wasn't just about the the monetary compensation, that they
were going to go the extra mile, and that they
cared about the brand or the brand's mission. They were aligned,
and I remember this. I'll tell you one other quick,
quick story, LeVar. Like you know, for many many years
(36:01):
that the sports marketing agency I owned, which is still
in existence but I sold a few years ago, we
did a ton of PEPSI work. I was around a
lot of professional athletes in different sports. I'm gonna leave
the names out of this, but I'll tell you this.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
There were.
Speaker 3 (36:17):
There were race car drivers and there's only been a
few in the Pepsi family, so people can probably figure
out who this is. But there were race car drivers
making five to seven million dollars a year at PEPSI,
and you know what it wasn't and they knew. They
(36:38):
knew it was a lot of money, and they would
always come to PEPSI and they could work the room
like you've never seen. They would stop at every single
desk and say hello. They would meet everybody in the building.
They were not in a rush to get in and out,
and they knew what the relationship needed to be, like,
(37:02):
you know, and there's an NIL version of that. Going
back to to the goals conversation, there's an NIL version
of that, which is when a student athlete says to me,
and they don't usually say it this directly, it's more indirect,
but I can tell that they're only doing stuff, they're
only doing nil deals for the money. I say, that
(37:24):
is absolutely your right. And by the way, congratulations for
putting yourself in a position where you even have that option.
You've obviously worked very hard and so you deserve whatever
you choice you make. I'm okay with right. It's your choice.
But NIL can be much more than that. It can
(37:44):
be about professional development, career development, social impact, and.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
It's impactful. That's the way. That's the framework right there.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
Yeah, I agree. And by the way, for a lot
of student athletes, it's you know, we talk about compensation.
For a lot of student athletes, the compensation is not
going to be an.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Overwhelming life shop there stop anyway, Stop there, Bill, Stop there.
That's Bill Carter right there. That's the professor and he's
teaching y'all right now, man, that is the man. That's
Bill Carter. I'm LeVar Arrington. This is the NIL Playbook
with the professor and the coach. Make sure you check
us out up on game wherever it is that you
(38:30):
subscribe to get your podcast from, make sure you check
us out. This is the show that you need. If
it's all about NIL, you need to learn about NIL,
you need to understand nil. This is the show for you.
It's about time we knew. It's been long overdue. That's
Bill Carter. Let's wrap this thing up with compensation. You
(38:53):
got the compensation. You touched on compensation. Compensation has been
a part of the entire conversation. And for what it's worth, Bill,
let's be real here, most people in the NIL situation
will not be people that are wealthy. There will not
be a tremendously large amount and percentage of families and
(39:15):
athletes and people. For what it's worth, these are young
men and women, so most of them don't have jobs
or have had jobs, or if they do, they're very
simplistic jobs, entry level jobs in terms of what it
is that they're doing. But most families of athletes aren't
going to be super super super affluent families where they're
(39:37):
looking at it from the standpoint of money and compensation
doesn't really matter. In fact, when you think about it,
a lot of the stories that I hear are very
sad stories. Right, you got these families of these athletes.
They're able to go to school and get an education
and play, but they don't have enough money, enough resources
to actually even be of very, very involved or present
(40:04):
presence and influence on their kids just for the simple
fact that they can't afford to do it. Can't afford
to drive into a college town and be there for
the time that that kid, their kid is performing and
having a game because they can't afford a hotel room.
(40:24):
So you hear stories about parents staying in the kids
dorm room. They'll stay in the kids dorm room because
they can't afford a place to stay in order to
be able to go see their kid play. There's so
many different stories that have surfaced, and you start to
hear about, oh, maybe that's the reason why that kid
left early. Now it makes sense why the kid didn't
(40:46):
stay to get their degree or whatever it may be.
They left for the pros to go get the money
and go get it earlier. Now that you have nil,
there's not necessarily the rush to leave to go at
that check. But understanding that compensation is certainly a very
very important part of In fact, it's probably in a
(41:11):
lot of ways, if we're being honest, it's all about
the bottom line in life. People will monetize things differently,
but no matter whether it's love, whether it's hate, whether
it's helping, whether it's being selfish, it's always about the
bottom line of what it is that you're going for
(41:31):
and that compensation. How do we approach the conversation of compensation.
Speaker 3 (41:38):
Well, there's a lot here, LaVar, I'll tell you. I'll
start it this way, and these are really it's a
great kickoff show because we're going to talk about all
these things over the next many weeks, like individually, get
into the detail and a lot of these things. But
I'll start this part of the conversation about compensation this way.
(41:59):
The the listeners should know that compensation really starts it
really it really stems from three places. Right now, there's
three revenue streams in NIL. The first is mainly through
NIL marketplaces, and think of these as like the dating
apps of NIL. So a brand goes on to the
(42:22):
marketplace and creates a profile and says you know, I'm
a footwear company and I'm looking for people to post
about my brand on social media and I'm going to
pay everybody X number of dollars who wants to do
this for the next six months. That's a marketplace. And
student athletes go in the marketplace as well, and they
create profiles and that's how they find each other.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Right.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
The second place of revenue are collectives. And again we're
going to probably spend a lot of time on another
podcast talking about collectives, but collectives, for those who may
not be totally aware of, maybe listening for the first time,
collectives are mainly alumni donor led organizations. They're independent of
(43:05):
the athletic department, but a group of donors has come
together independent of the school right to support that specific school.
And then the third revenue source is just pure entrepreneurship.
It's a student athlete who says, I'm going to create
(43:26):
my own merchandise, whether it's a peril or something else.
I'm going to create my own camp, a clinic, or
start a private instruction business of some kind, something to
that effect. Right, there's a swimmer, just a quick example,
and I wasn't planning on talking about this I'm blanking
(43:46):
on her name right now, but there's a swimmer at
the University of Illinois who you know, she sees nils
an entrepreneurial endeavor. She just built her own marketplace to
to match up people that can teach swimming, probably other
student athletes at Illinois with kids in the market who
(44:09):
want to learn to swim. Like, that's a great example
of nil entrepreneurism. And there's a lot of.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
Going to extra mau right. That's going to extra mau
right there. Bill, Not only are you building a marketplace
for yourself and for others to benefit from, but now
you're showing those brands out there that will directly connect
to your community that you're investible because you're building something
that is sustainable to build that type of a platform
(44:37):
to be able to create those opportunities, says to those advertisers,
this represents the American dream. You took something from nothing,
You took something that you do and you created it
and you turned it into a revenue generating space, which
is awesome.
Speaker 3 (44:55):
Yeah, And you know what I think about when I
see these stories about businesses is that student athletes are developing.
I always, you know, like, look at it through the
lens of an entrepreneur and think to myself, you know what,
it doesn't matter if this thing makes a dime. It
really doesn't matter. I mean, I hope it does. I
hope that the student athlete has that success. But what
(45:18):
it's really showing that student athlete is how to build
a business, how to put things together, how to fundraise,
how to scale, and and if the thing blows up
and becomes an enormous success, that's awesome. And if it doesn't,
that kid probably gets the next interview at Google because
she built this thing right. And so it's an unbelievable
(45:41):
opportunity anyway you look at it. But so back to
compensation for a second. So those are the main sources
of compensation. The compensation itself is not just cash. It
can be free product, discount, entertainment, you know, tickets to things.
(46:01):
There's all sorts of uh, loaner compensation, you know, beyond just.
Speaker 2 (46:08):
Payment, right, loaner TV, exact loaner, loaner furniture you know, Hell,
if you get good enough at it, get a loaner home,
you know what I mean. Like, Hey, there's there's a
lot of compensation out there that doesn't have to be
necessarily cash cash driven. So you're you're correct there.
Speaker 3 (46:26):
Well, and so my final two things var again. I
know we're going to talk about this stuff a lot
in the future, is you know, but I'll start with this.
There's always a lot of discussion about specific numbers. You know,
how much is a Power five quarterback making, how much
is uh, you know, another student athlete maybe on an
(46:49):
Olympic team sport making if anything. And one of the
problems we have in NIL right now is that there's
no central day database of shared compensation information, right and
so you and I can make educated guesses of what,
(47:11):
say a Bryce Young might have made as a senior
at Alabama, but we don't really know. And there's a
lot of I think, speculation, and there's a lot of
modeling out there for some that makes very interesting reading,
and I really support it. I want to make that clear.
(47:31):
You know, for instance, the valuations that are done by
on three dot com. I really appreciate what they're trying
to do, but that's not an indication of what those
athletes are actually making. It's a it's a valuation, it's
speculation as to what their value might be in the
(47:52):
open marketplace. So that's one of the things we're probably
going to talk about a lot is let me.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
Let me add a little bit of insight to that
as well, because the interesting thing is is that it's
such a turbulent space right now and it's not defined.
So you don't have you know, you don't have unions,
you don't you don't have players, associations, you don't you're
you're basically introducing a professional model into college and what
(48:22):
has been relatively known as amateur athletics. And so now
when you talk about what you just spoke on the
market is being really defined by the agencies, the agencies
being the agencies of like agents or the agencies collectives,
(48:43):
and and those are contracts that are being done that
say you will make X amount of dollars for for
these months, over the course of a year, or whatever
it may be, and here are your commitments. So you're
not even necessarily repri ending a brand and a specific
(49:03):
brand deal. You're supporting the wishes of what you're being
paid for by that agency. So if the agent can
bring back a deal that says, oh, yeah, I get
my client this deal, this, that and the other. Okay,
but I'm paying you to have your services. So I'm
going to pay you up front, and this is what
I'm going to pay you monthly, so that I can
(49:26):
have you do x amount of social media posts, I
can have you do x amount of appearances, I can
have you do x amount of signings. And that's a
lot of the way of how these these values are
beginning to be kind of defined, if that information is
even able to be accurately captured by what's going on
(49:48):
through certain agencies or agencies collectives.
Speaker 3 (49:55):
And you know what, Laura, one of the things is,
as much as I guess as a human being, I
would always err on the side of privacy, right, I mean,
everybody deserves absolute privacy.
Speaker 2 (50:12):
Which protes do not. Pro Coaches do not get that
type of benefit. Everybody wants to know and everybody gets
to know what it is that pros are making, which
is I've always felt was like the most asked backwards
way of doing something. But I find it to be interesting.
Speaker 3 (50:31):
Right right, and and unfair in a lot of ways
that people get to know a professional athlete's playing contract,
you know, like Nope, it's really one of the only
industries in the world in which you can do that
right with that information is public and there's a and
then so you and I could probably you know, argue
(50:52):
there's a lack of fairness to that. And but I'll
say this about nil. If we were able to find
a way to share anonymous data. In other words, if
I'm a quarterback at Tennessee and you're a linebacker, and
I've just got to say Penn State, because if I
(51:13):
said another school, you get mad at me, and you're
a linebacker at Penn State, it would be good to know,
but neither one of us was named by name. It
might be good to be able to share that information
for one reason and one reason only, I think, which
is to establish fair market value. Right, because if my
(51:36):
buddy who's a linebacker at Tennessee is making one tenth
what you're making earning, I shouldn't say making what you're
earning at Penn State through a collective or through deals
that you're finding in state college. I think my guy
ought to know that so that he can try to
(52:00):
write the ship his own ship, you know, and figure
out if if he's not if he's being underpaid. Right,
And to establish fair market.
Speaker 2 (52:09):
That works transversely as well, right, the trans side of
it is a is you get there, they might go
ahead of you. So now you know what they're getting
and they went ahead of you, So now you're able
to perpetuate or propel yourself to a different space as well.
I mean you're talking about the pro model. I mean
that's that's that's a pro model. Is what what being
(52:31):
explained right now? Salary aabs you know, and what I'd say.
Speaker 3 (52:36):
The difference is you know if possible, and I don't
know if it's possible. I mean, you know, I think again,
I think we're going to talk a lot about it
and maybe we'll come up with some solutions. I do
think there's a way, though, to do it where you
can do it anonymously. In other words, we can see
data for howide athletes, right.
Speaker 2 (52:58):
Yeah, because you'll be able you'll be able able to say,
all right, any linebacker that I look at that's starting
out of power five. I know I could look at Bill,
this is what you're making, Bill, and it's anonymous, right,
But I know that you're somewhere in that price range
because that's been established. But it is an interesting conversation
(53:19):
that I'm sure we will continue to delve into because
that whole process of defining the marketplace in the nil
space of college is going. That's when I liking where
we're at right now. Live bullets are flying in college sports. Now,
(53:41):
when we start to get to the place of what
we're talking about right now, where you're starting to establish
market places for or excuse me, market value for the
different positions of these different athletes that are going into school,
that is that is going that. That's not just live
(54:04):
live bullets. That's like that. Those are bombs, those are
missiles that are coming. You're you're now not dealing with
foot soldier issues here, You're dealing with tanks. You're dealing
with jets, like fighter jets. Because now you're talking about
you can't duck. You can't say, oh, I got a value.
(54:27):
I got Bill Carter for just a regular entry level
contract to come to our school. And you know why,
You're not gonna be able to do it because of
the transfer portal. Oh oh you thought you got me,
you snuck me. Huh, you thought you got me. Okay, well,
I'm going over here or you're either gonna pay me
my value, my market value, or I'm going over here
(54:48):
and I'm gonna leave here. Through the transfer portal. So
it's not any real way that you're able to kind
of prevent yourself from not having to be a part
of being competitive, which it's already competitive now to be
able to get the top guys. But imagine that's going
to turn into any guy that comes to your school
(55:09):
by position. You're going to have to know what it
costs to get a player by position. As this thing
continues to unfold and develop.
Speaker 3 (55:19):
So and one of the things that I mean, it's
one of the reasons what you're describing is one of
the reasons that I'm so fascinated by anil. It's why
it's so easy for me to get up every morning
and work on it all day long. Is you know
what you just described is I one hundred percent agree
with that that is what the future could look like.
(55:42):
But what you just described is, and you even use
the word top a top player, you're describing that one
set of things that will occur at the top of
the market power five football and high level athletes. By
the way, maybe not even high level athletes, right, maybe
the backup kicker because somebody needs that guy. He may
(56:05):
be a backup with you, but he could be he
could be a starter somewhere else. So everybody's going to
be really critical. But one thing Levar's it's a reason
that I actually, even though I'm not in favor necessarily
of federal legislation, one of the things I one of
the things I do advocate for is some sort of
(56:26):
shared system around compensation that we can understand it better
because actually, a lot of times I'm not thinking about
the top of the marketplace, but think about what could
be going on and what I think is going on
at the I'll call it the bottom of the marketplace.
There's a field hockey player at the University of Vermont.
(56:49):
She gets contacted by a local business and that local
business wants to pay her one hundred dollars for every
social media post, and she's sort of thinking, well, was
that right? I mean, it seems low, but I don't
have any information, so I guess I'll just do it.
And we want to empower that young woman too, to
(57:09):
say no, no, no, I did my homework and for
a mid major in my sport, at my level, I'm
the leading scorer, I'm the captain of the team. My
rate it really ought to be four hundred dollars a
post and so I think that's why this stuff is
so fascinating because these two athletes, they have nothing in
(57:32):
common really day to day, but they can both be
helped by things like what we're talking about.
Speaker 2 (57:40):
Yeah, well, it's a whole lot to get to and
as you guys can see, there is so so much
to discuss. We will be taking you on this journey
of educating you all on what the NIL is, what
it represents. We're the playbook and this is the NIL
playbook with the professor and the coach. I am here
(58:01):
with my guy Bill Carter, and I am LeVar Arrington.
We will, as I mentioned, be educating you on what
NIL represents and all of the different facets, all of
the different topics that are connected to the NIL. So
get ready, buckle up. Is going to be a wild ride.
There will be programs, there is this show. There's going
(58:24):
to be in person events. There are going to be
so many things connected to this much needed resource and
guide for all of you people who are getting involved
or are already involved with the NIL. So until next time,
we hope you enjoyed this first inaugural initial show that
we're doing. The kickoff, Bill, I got to say, you
(58:46):
are money like I thought you were, and even better
than what I would have even imagined in terms of
what the show would would come across as, because you
just come across as who you are, as you were
in the conversations that we've had leading up to this.
So shouts out to you. Great first show. It seems
(59:06):
like you've done shows before. So maybe I'll let you
run the show from here on out, man, and I'll
just you know.
Speaker 3 (59:13):
It's easy to do. It's easy to deal with the
pro let Me tell you that it's easy to do
with LaVar Arrington. I'll tell you that much.
Speaker 2 (59:19):
Well. I appreciate that. Everybody. Make sure you go subscribe.
Check out the podcast. You can find it by searching
wherever it is. You get your podcast up on Game.
That's up on Game, and you'll be able to see
the show the NIL Playbook with the Professor and the Coach.
Until next time, guys, we'll check you out, all right,
talk to you soon, Nil name, image and likeness all right,
(59:44):
Till next time, y'all,
Hosts And Creators
LaVar Arrington
TJ Houshmandzadeh
Plaxico Burress
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