Has NIL Become a Trustee Issue at Penn State?
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For Penn State Trustee Brandon Short, Micah Shrewsberry's decision to leave State College for Notre Dame was "heartbreaking." Short also said Shrewsberry's decision represented a "wakeup call."
"NIL played a big role in Micah Shrewsberry leaving," Short said in a recent interview. "He said it publicly. From my perspective, it’s challenging for [the Penn State NIL collective] Success With Honor to be as successful as they can be with people who openly have negative intent toward our program. I’m hoping now that people can open their eyes to this, that we can mute those voices, and that Success With Honor can move on and be successful and the university can move forward."
Short, a former Penn State All-American linebacker and second-term trustee, has spoken publicly about what he called efforts of a small group of alumni-elected trustees to "undermine" Nittany Lions sports. One way those trustees are doing so, Short said, is through the NIL collective Success With Honor.
According to Short, some alumni-elected trustees are attempting to influence Penn State athletics by exerting influence on the collective. Success With Honor, founded in 2022, describes itself as a collective that supports the athletic department's 31 varsity sports programs "the Penn State Way." Short said he doesn't believe that's possible under the circumstances he sees.
"For years that small group of alumni-elected trustees has been working to undermine the athletic department, openly voting against necessary spending and then undermining or pushing back on any initiatives that would move the athletic department forward," Short said in the interview. "Now, we have some of those same alumni-elected trustees who have injected themselves into Success With Honor, and Penn State needs Success With Honor to be successful for the school and the athletic department to prosper. But I don’t see how that’s possible when you have the same trustees who have been openly against athletics for years inject themselves into that process."
Jay Paterno, a fellow Penn State trustee who has spoken publicly about Success With Honor, disagreed with Short's characterization. He said no trustees are involved with the collective's operations. He also said that the collective has signed contracts with athletes on every Penn State team and has "delivered on and exceeded" NIL requests of the football and basketball programs.
"NIL is not a trustee issue," Paterno said. "Trying to make it one is misguided."
Penn State Trustees and NIL
Penn State alumni are voting to elect three new alumni trustees, and athletics have become a discussion point of the election. Short and Paterno have conducted interviews on topics such as projects funding, athletics donors and whether trustees avoided football coach James Franklin at their February board meeting. NIL represents another significant topic.
Shrewsberry in December said on the Blue-White Illustrated podcast that Penn State ranked "13th or 14th" in the Big Ten in NIL funding for men's basketball. Franklin said that situation "obviously" influenced what he called decisions made in the basketball program. The coach added that Penn State still has a "ton of work to do" regarding NIL.
Penn State has several NIL collectives surrounding its athletics programs, notably Success With Honor and Lions Legacy Club, the football-only collective that recently announced a major sponsorship deal. In March, Success With Honor became an independently operated collective that says it's training its focus on football and men's basketball.
Though Short didn't name the alumni-elected trustees he said were involved with Success With Honor, two helped the collective initially form in 2022: Paterno and Anthony Lubrano. According to Paterno, he does not serve on the collective's board and is not involved in its daily operations.
"I am not getting a single dime from Success With Honor, nor will I ever," Paterno said. "I’ve put some of my own money in to start. We are not making money from Success With Honor."
Lubrano and Penn State's seven other alumni-elected trustees did not respond to a request for comment regarding Short's interview. Paterno did agree to speak on the record and has written about the subject on his website. Here are Short and Paterno on the record regarding Penn State NIL.
Brandon Short: Some Trustees 'Injected Themselves' Into NIL Collective
"The people who founded Success With Honor are tremendous stewards of our university," Short said. "They’ve been generous and they have the best intentions. I’ve spoken to a lot of them in the past and I don’t want to share specifics of the conversation, but these views that I hold, they’re well aware of them. ... I'm hoping that once those voices are muted, Success With Honor can grow into being the great collective that it can be."
Short said that the "small group of alumni-elected trustees" have "injected themselves into NIL without ever meeting with the [football] coach." Asked why he believes this occurred, Short said, "These trustees don't have the votes to undermine athletics on the board, so they've inserted themselves into Success With Honor." Short added that the trustees are "using [Success With Honor] as a campaign slogan to run for Penn State's Board of Trustees."
"As James Franklin mentioned in his interview, we were two years behind in NIL," Short said. "And other universities had that two-year head start. Now this past year we made tremendous strides, but James is not afraid to talk about the things the university needs, and we’ve been talking about us needing NIL support for two years. And we’ve had alumni-elected trustees who injected themselves into the process who have slowed that process down for two years."
Short said that he's concerned Franklin could choose the same path as Shrewsberry and leave Penn State if the NIL situation does not continue to advance. Short proposed that sport-specific collectives could fund football (which Lions Legacy Club does) and basketball while Success With Honor supports athletes in the remaining sports.
"Success With Honor needs to be successful because we have 29 other sports with amazing athletes that deserve our attention," Short said. "But football and basketball are the only truly profitable sports, which fund and support 850 other student-athletes. So, in other words, if the football program declines, we wouldn’t have other sports to support, which is why football and basketball deserve support, so that we can support all of our athletes."
Jay Paterno: 'NIL Is Not a Trustee Issue'
Paterno said he has been a NIL consultant for more than three years. In February 2021, when he voted against a $48.3 million plan to upgrade the Lasch Football Building, Paterno said he asked administrators about a NIL plan at Penn State. "There wasn't any," he said. Pennsylvania's NIL legislation took effect July 1, 2021.
"Let’s be clear, NIL is not a Trustee issue," Paterno wrote in a post on his website. "But people who’ve neither written checks nor signed meaningful contracts and were nowhere to be found 15 months ago find it easy to cast stones at the efforts of others. I’m not speaking for Success With Honor, but there are some facts that should be stated. They’ve delivered on and exceeded the requests made by both football and basketball. And they’ve signed contracts with members of all women’s and men’s teams at Penn State, making them a national leader. Industry people around the country are amazed by that."
Regarding Shrewsberry's departure for Notre Dame, Paterno said the decision had more to do with the coach being from Indiana. Penn State hired Mike Rhoades, the former VCU coach, who said at his introductory press conference that NIL is "so important." "Some people will tell you it’s everything to build a program," the coach added.
On his website, Paterno wrote that Penn State can support 31 sports in NIL and that "anyone suggesting otherwise vastly underestimates Penn State and our people."
"Saying only football and men’s basketball matter is not only an insult to all women’s teams but also an affront to men’s student-athletes in sports like wrestling, ice hockey and lacrosse," Paterno wrote. "And anyone insinuating that a football-only focus would somehow be in alignment with what their old college coach at Penn State would want, ignores that coach’s history advancing women’s and men’s sport as Penn State’s athletic director in the 1980s."
Further, regarding Shrewsberry's departure, Paterno said that Rhoades deserves the focus now.
"It’s time for us to stop talking about the basketball coach who left and start talking about Mike Rhoades, who’s here," Paterno said. "It’s time to start helping him build the way forward. That to me is the most important thing as it relates to basketball."
The Last Word
"I love Joe Paterno," Brandon Short said. "I think the university should honor Joe Paterno. But I’m not willing to burn the university down to do it. Joe would want the university and the football program to do well."
"It's a campaign," Jay Paterno said. "As my dad used to say, Jesus Christ had 12 apostles and he couldn’t keep all of them onboard. That’s reality. And lest anybody think I’m comparing myself to Jesus Christ, the point of that story is that if Jesus Christ had only a 92 percent approval rating, what hope is there for the rest of us?"
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