72 Days Until Kansas Football: NIL Update

The Jayhawks have been one of the leading schools in supporting NIL opportunities for their athletes, and they just announced some upcoming changes.

Back on July 30th of 2021, the Kansas Athletic department announced their new initiative Jayhawks Ascend in a series of tweets that were largely overlooked, with the exception of one (now deleted) tweet sharing a graphic that was widely misunderstood.

The graphic shared the highlights of all the things that Kansas offers for students looking for NIL opportunities. Unfortunately, the timing of the announcement of the program coincided with the discussion surrounding conference realignment after the announcement by Texas and Oklahoma that they were leaving in 2025 to join the SEC.

Despite the inauspicious start to the program, the announcement was actually quite impressive:

Through their NIL program, Kansas was one of the first schools to set up a program specifically with the intent of helping students to maximize their NIL potential. The lack of a state law restricting the NIL possibilities was a huge help, yes, but those in the department have shown incredible foresight in setting up opportunities for Kansas athletes to profit off of their name, image and likeness.

Notable Opportunities

The first thing that comes to mind when you think of NIL is Kansas Basketball, at least partially because of the highly successful Barnstorming Tour for the team after winning the national title this season. This was a first of its kind event that was made possible only because of the huge changes to NIL rules this season, but the department deserves credit for recognizing the opportunity and helping to facilitate it.

But the first huge NIL success for the Jayhawks actually happened during the football season, when Jared Casey turned a game-winning catch against Texas into an Applebee's endorsement deal.

This deal was widely heralded as the perfect example of what NIL was intended to do: help players who most likely aren't going to be able to make money professionally after school to capitalize on their fame while they are in school. Jared's story and the follow-up performance was enough to qualify him for some honors at the first NIL Summit earlier this month.

NIL Summit

The Jayhawks were represented by seven different athletes at the NIL Summit in Atlanta last week, from multiple sports across the athletic department.

The summit was billed as "an immersive multi-day professional development experience and gathering place for college sports’ most important stakeholder to share cutting-edge ideas, discover new interests, and learn how to maximize NIL opportunities to build their brands and amplify their voices."

Looking Forward

In addition to supporting their athletes who were attending the NIL Summit, the department was preparing to announce some big changes coming up for the NIL program.

Some of the highlights include a partnership with Altius Sports Partners (ASP) to help expand educational opportunities for staff and athletes, and support services for students to be able to expand NIL opportunities.

The department has started a pilot program for a female-specific NIL push to help prioritize the expansion of those opportunities within the program. There have also been partnerships with Rally House, Rock Chalk NFTs (which I had an opportunity to try out in a partnership with the service), and other local businesses.

And of course the biggest news around the country related to NIL has to be Duke's hiring of a general manager to help identify and expand NIL opportunities, specifically for the basketball program. Early indications seem to be that Kansas is looking for someone to fill a similar role at the department, but it seems more likely this would be a position focusing on the program as a whole instead of just for Kansas Basketball. We'll keep an eye on further developments and share them as we get them.

But the main takeaway is that the Kansas Jayhawks have been at the forefront of NIL nationally, which should help them remain competitive in this environment.

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