How Gophers athletes get NIL deals

The NIL Revolution | A Star Tribune series examining how the name, image and likeness era is transforming college sports: startribune.com/nil.

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A McDonald’s bag stuffed with cash. Players arriving at their first practice in a brand-new Dodge Challenger. These are the images, real or imagined, of college athletes getting paid in the pre-NIL era. Whatever illegal cash-under-the-table actions went down then, they were at least easy to understand: pay to play. Today, with college athletes regularly being paid — legally — in the three-year-old name, image and likeness (NIL) era, the process of money moving from donor or business to athlete is much more complicated.

With so many options for athletes to make money off of endorsements and sponsorships, and so much regulation and legal jargon, NIL can be a difficult space for athletes to navigate as they try to balance school, athletics and life as a young adult. Here are the three most common ways NIL deals go down:

Athletes most often turn to a middleman — collectives, in NIL-speak — to receive endorsement deals. Dinkytown Athletes (DTA) is the official collective of Gophers Athletics; it’s a separate entity working with the University of Minnesota, student-athletes, donors and businesses.

An app called Basepath connects DTA and Gophers players. Athletes pop open their phones and see in the app a list of potential deals and packages that DTA has identified, along with the details of each: how much money they’ll make, what type of effort is involved and a due date.

DTA deals usually consist of either a live appearance, such as an autograph signing or meet-and-greet, or a social media post promoting a company. Package deals could mean several instances together, such as “four live appearances in March” or “two Instagram posts showcasing you using our product in April,” for a larger sum.

“The nice thing about that is if it doesn’t work in your schedule, they’ll go and find you a different thing to do,” volleyball player Mckenna Wucherer said. “I feel like they’re connected with so many companies, too, that they reach out to us and want to combine. I know Lauren [Crowl] just did a photo shoot for one of the Minnesota companies and that was super cool. A lot of us were promoting a bacon brand [in January]. Some people this month, they’re going to work a little kids’ volleyball camp, so I feel like just the wide array of options they have to offer.”

Once a deal is completed, the athlete submits proof through Basepath, and the money is wired directly to their bank account.

While DTA does streamline the process and often removes a lot of the legal jargon, several student-athletes such as Wucherer also enjoy striking NIL deals on their own.

Any Gophers athlete is free to seek deals. Wucherer has contracts with sparkling drink company Bubbl’r, media company Xfinity, social media platform Snapchat and Kwik Trip convenience stores. Each of those was found on her own, without representation from a collective or agent.

“I really enjoy it because I like talking to people and making a connection with them,” Wucherer said. “I feel like when you’re part of an agency, a lot of people do it for you. ... I think we’re getting a lot more educated on the topic. I have a lot more references that I can focus on when I need help, but so far, I’ve never had any problems doing it by myself.”

There are networking and business lessons to be learned in this space, Wucherer said, ones she’ll put to use after graduation. The legal language can be complex, but it’s a worthwhile challenge that is expanding her brand and knowledge. It’s also a chance for her to put herself out there and “go for it.”

“I just feel like if you don’t take the risk, you never know, and I feel like that’s what I taught myself,” Wucherer said. “You might not think that you’re as prominent of an athlete as you are. But if you’re playing at this level, if you’re playing in the Big Ten, you’re a pretty big athlete. That’s why you should take the risk.”

Similar to Basepath with DTA, athletes can also use the app Influencer to find deals. Before the Influencer deal, Minnesota was partnered with the app Opendorse, which is where athletes such as Mara Braun of Gophers basketball found her deal with JBL.

Agents and advisers can steer athletes toward endorsements and have secured some large deals, in Minnesota and nationwide. Some agencies jumped in early on in the NIL era, establishing a network before collectives took hold.

“A couple of our guys have agents and have opportunities outside of Dinkytown Athletes to make some money, and that’s something that really took flight early in the NIL era before Dinkytown Athletes came,” said Parker Fox, a senior on the men’s basketball team whose playing career began before NIL started. He now works with both DTA and the agency SIG Sports. “Now that Dinkytown Athletes has come around, it’s been easier just to funnel everything through them and it makes it easy.”

The athlete-agent relationship in college sports works as it does in the pros: Agents help land the deals, take a cut and look for win-wins.

Gophers linebacker Cody Lindenberg is signed with an agency in addition to being a part of DTA. When he first became a part of Team IFA, he sat down and discussed with the group what was important to him, including causes such as St. Jude’s and other ways he could impact the community. The agency then reached out to its connections and now sets him up with opportunities that align with his values. In December, he and Gophers cornerback Justin Walley partnered with the Twin Cities Toy Drive to donate new toys to children during the holiday season, made possible by IFA.

A recent court ruling opened the door for NIL incentives to be used in recruiting, so get ready for even more NIL avenues in the near future. There are opt-in deals, too, where a company or donor will sponsor an entire program at a university and all the student-athletes on that team have to do is say “in.” This option could become more popular if “Netflix membership”-like donations — small amounts donated by many — increase in Minnesota and elsewhere. It’s also most known for being used by the upcoming video game, “EA College Football 25,” where players just have to press a button on their phone to opt in and in return get to be featured in the game while receiving $600 and a copy of the game. As of March 4, over 10,000 players have opted into the game, including Gophers such as wide receiver Daniel Jackson.

Whatever new NIL routes emerge, they’ll surely be better than those McDonald’s bags of cash.

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The NIL Revolution | Please read previous installments of this series at startribune.com/nil.