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REACTION: South Carolina Takes The Next Step In NIL Space With New Partnership

The University of South Carolina announced on Thursday that they were partnering with Garnet Trust, which will help the school tremendously in the future.
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In this new era of college football, Name, Image, and Likeness will come up in conversations regarding where some of the best high school players in the country are going and also the opportunities the biggest stars of the sport have at particular schools. While South Carolina has shown an ability to be creative and unique in their NIL strategy to make up for the gap in a booster based compared to other schools in the SEC, the Gamecocks have been viewed both nationally and recently internally, as being behind the proverbial eight-ball in the NIL space.

The announcement from earlier today, however, offers hope that South Carolina can make up ground in this new era of football, as the University of South Carolina, in conjunction with their athletic department, announced that they had partnered with the Garnet Trust NIL Collective. Garnet Trust has been around since November of 2021 and has signed multiple athletes like star quarterback Spencer Rattler, amongst many others.

The question some fans might be asking is, why is this announcement important? Well, there are multiple things to consider with this move. Firstly, multiple NIL Collectives have existed over the past couple of years: Garnet Trust and Carolina Rise. There's also been an NIL subsidiary group in Park Avenue that's helped Gamecock student-athletes broker NIL deals with local, regional, and national businesses.

This conglomerate of NIL-related groups has led to a segment of South Carolina's fanbase being confused and understandably reserved about contributing money to the NIL collectives specifically, not fully understanding where the money is going or what purpose it serves. In essence, the athletic department needed to partner with one of these groups to help effectively streamline information for the fans of their respective teams, and that should help the Gamecocks see a boost in NIL funds in the short term.

In the long-term, the Garnet Trust NIL collective will likely now have more resources available than they did before this partnership, more resources for marketing, a greater ability to hold promotional events and fundraisers, and a much broader reach than before. This move isn't causing a seismic shift in the NIL space, but this was one that South Carolina needed to make to keep up with the Joneses, so to speak, and will help them communicate more effectively with the Gamecock faithful.

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