Colin Rajala
Trove correspondent
Trove: When we last spoke at the start of the year the school had launched its NIL marketplace and hosted some events like a meet and greet with the men’s basketball team and a youth basketball camp. Where does the NIL situation stand currently and what has changed in regard to what we are doing now as opposed to last year?
Felt: I think the funny thing with NIL and its landscape is it evolves on a pretty routine basis. I mean, the most important thing for us has been to adapt to it and just kind of staying current with it, which has probably been the most crucial part. We have a ton of purpose behind all the programs we've been implementing and I'm really excited about how some of them continue to grow. At the end of the day, our NIL is going to be successful because when it comes down to looking at the support, we're going to get it. I say this all the time and it's tough, NIL is a challenge for the industry, a challenge for schools. We've had our own challenges with it, there's no question. I don't know anyone that hasn't. The one’s who have to pay the price almost literally is the supporters right? The alum, the fan, at the end of the day a lot of this falls on them. You need that support and there are certainly other ways to bring in the dollar for NIL, trust me, we're exploring all those avenues, but you really heavily rely on the individual and I know that's a lot to ask of our supporters and I've had some real lengthy conversations with a lot of great supporters about those challenges. They want to continue to support the institution and we need to continue to support the institution, but we also need to be really competitive in NIL, so there's a balance, and I think that's probably been the biggest growth for us is trying to just continue to educate others, continue to educate ourselves and how we balance all of that that.
Since we last spoke there’s been a bunch of changes. We're very happy to have brought in Michael McBride, who I know you spoke with for a previous article, and Michael's been great. I've known Michael a long time since his Under Armour days and he really was kind of the first person that came to mind when I was able to create this opportunity for our department. Talking about balance, which I think is going to be a theme of our conversation, we eliminated a position in the Pirate Blue office to be able to create this [McBride’s] position because we identified the need as NIL has become that important to the athletic department’s success. We still have a tremendous Pirate Blue office with Josh Azer and Niko Morisi, but we had to take some funding from that office position for me to create this role for Mike. Mike's got a large breadth to his job and he’s been very helpful in his role examining what is in place and coming up with new ideas or ways to improve what we have. He’s been great overseeing the landscape and coordinating all of our efforts, which as you know, a lot of our efforts have to be external. We've been incredibly fortunate to have individuals be really supportive of what we're trying to do and to help lead the charge. At the end of the day, we needed some people to step up to kind of do that because technically while we can promote and encourage people to donate money and ask people to give towards it, we can’t actually take it. Financials can't be on our end, it all has to be done by someone else, but I think the teams and people that we are getting in place will help us be successful in our NIL efforts.
