How UNC laid foundation to prepare for NIL, set pace in changing college sports landscape
Wesley Haynes’ frustration with the NCAA had reached its peak. The president and founder of the marketing and licensing agency The BrandR Group (TBG) pitched on multiple occasions to the NCAA in 2020 the idea of bringing group licensing to college athletes in a similar way that he worked with the NFL and NBA players associations.
It was a seamless way, Haynes believed, that the NCAA could usher into a new era where current college athletes could make money off their name, image and likeness (NIL). The NCAA, of course, wasn’t buying it at the time, instead putting its hopes in litigating its way to preserve the amateur model that it long championed.
Haynes later happened upon an article that quoted North Carolina athletic director Bubba Cunningham. His words read like Cunningham had seen Haynes’ notes and sat in on those meetings with the NCAA.
“He said everything that I thought,” Haynes said. “Which was, what a missed opportunity this group price program would be and he had felt that this would be a good good way to get started with it in the NIL space.”
So Haynes reached out to Cunningham through a mutual friend, and it led to a groundbreaking deal.
Creating a template
Carolina partnered with TBG, signing a multi-year agreement announced in April 2021 to create a group licensing deal with alumni of its men’s basketball and women’s soccer teams. It was the first deal of its kind nationally and explains why more fans were spotted wearing jerseys of Tyler Hansbrough, Vince Carter and the like at the Dean E. Smith Center this season during basketball games.
It ultimately was praised by other NCAA schools for providing a template for how NIL could work once it was approved for current collegiate athletes.
“Frankly, it took an athletic director like Bubba to kind of imagine what the future could hold,” Haynes said. “He was just kind of reading the tea leaves and imagining how this could unfold in the future. And so, it really showed a lot of foresight.”
It’s one of the reasons why UNC has been viewed as the prototype in how it has prepared for NIL, which has arguably become the biggest challenge for athletic departments this century.
The one-year anniversary of the NCAA approving NIL is coming up on July 1. But not every school is on equal footing in being equipped to handle everything it entails. Some smaller schools just don’t have the resources to devote to it. Even some schools in the Power Five conferences are behind because they didn’t prioritize it based on how slowly the NCAA moved to approve legislation.
Cunningham didn’t want that to happen at Carolina.
“We knew it was coming,” Cunningham said. “There was a constant drumbeat that students needed the same opportunities that a lot of their classmates had. So you knew it was coming. Again, I felt from the very beginning we should start with group licensing, and then provide resources on it on a more controlled basis. But we jumped right into the deep end right away.”
Turns out, UNC was prepared for that too.
Navigating NIL
The NCAA first released its ‘concepts’ for NIL in October 2020, which provided schools an outline of what legislation might look like. Shortly thereafter, Cunningham began meeting daily with several compliance administrators for an hour to 90 minutes to strictly discuss NIL and how it would take shape.
Those initial guidelines included a lot of red tape that has come to define NCAA legislation. They were going to require athletes and institutions to submit all NIL deals to a third party administrator to compile a database. It would make for quick receipts if there were any discrepancies the NCAA needed to investigate.
When the NCAA presented its NIL policy in July, it scaled back a lot of those initial concepts — including that third party admin — and essentially left it up to individual states to decide legislation.
“They did away with their proposed rule leaving us kind of without a lot of meat to really grasp to, to formulate a policy on,” said Nate Wood, an associate athletic director of NCAA compliance for UNC. “But because we had done all of our leg work beforehand and were well prepared going into July 1, I feel like we did hit the ground running pretty successfully.”
UNC men’s basketball forward Armando Bacot may be the poster child for that success. Bacot wasn’t sure of how much of an impact NIL would really have a year ago, but he now said the ability to make money from it factored into his decision to return for his senior year.
Bacot has endorsement deals with Jimmy’s Famous Seafood, will make an appearance on several episodes of the Netflix show “Outer Banks,” and just scooped up a partnership with Town & Country Farms in Lexington, Ky., which breeds thoroughbred horses.
“Definitely now I’m starting to see the benefits of doing the things I do and being a part of the Carolina brand,” Bacot said. “It’s been bringing a lot of different opportunities. I’ve just been embracing it and rolling with it.”
There are basically three ways athletes can take advantage of NIL. Collectives like Heels4Life designed to pool money and resources together to present deals for UNC football players. Athletes can now have agents represent them individually to solicit endorsement opportunities. And athletes can opt into group licensing deals like the one UNC has with the TBG.
Arguably the best move UNC made early on was in setting up a framework for its athletes to easily navigate. They even included a class on how to use the editing tool Photoshop to scrub off UNC trademark logos if they were going to use an image in an ad without the need for approval.
It’s paid off for players, particularly men’s basketball being positioned to benefit during its Final Four run.
“The BrandR Group made sure that there were T-shirts with guys names on it and in stores here in Chapel Hill to capitalize on that, which is awesome,” Wood said. “Had we not gone through The BrandR Group and had kind of the leverage of all those major brands and distribution channels and all of that, potentially that wouldn’t have gotten done.”
N&O reporter Andrew Carter contributed to this story.
This story was originally published May 15, 2022 at 5:32 AM with the headline "How UNC laid foundation to prepare for NIL, set pace in changing college sports landscape."