By Colin Rajala
Trove: Mike thank you for taking the time to talk with me and share some insights into the athletic department’s vision in the new NIL landscape. I thought it might be good to start off with getting the fanbase familiar with your main roles/responsibilities in the newly created position.
McBride: As deputy athletics director for revenue generation, NIL and strategic initiatives, my job can be broken down into three categories. The first category is the traditional deputy athletics director role for external. I'm responsible for executing the overall strategy and building a holistic vision and making sure everyone is pulling on a rope together so we're delivering where we need to from an external standpoint . This would include Pirate Blue, marketing, ticketing, communications, licensing, and working with our partners like LEARFIELD and Amplify. So, a third of my responsibilities are focused on that traditional deputy AD role, which is vitally important for the success and operation of the athletic department.
The second component of my responsibility is going to be what Bryan [Felt] calls strategic initiatives. How I like to think of this component is I need to know what's coming around the corner and I have to have a strategy and or plan for the unknown. That could be a myriad of things, mostly unknown to us today. An example could be sports betting. College sports will need a plan of how to address it as it is likely to be part of the daily operations. A perfect example of this is alcohol sales. We can recall in the early 90’s it was extremely rare to have beer sales at a college event. Most interviewees said it would never happen and today it is prevalent, and most schools have even licensed their marks with alcohol manufacturers. There was a deputy AD somewhere in the country 25 years ago creating a plan on when and how they were going to sell beer. Strategic initiatives really is being prepared for the unknown.
The third component of my job is the one that everyone wants to talk about, NIL. Bryan thought it was so important that he put it in the title. I'm okay with everyone wanting to talk about that because it is the topic of the day and it will be into the foreseeable future because until there's some sort of commonality between all universities, it is going to be a topic that continuously comes up in the news cycle. For me, I like to keep things as simple as I possibly can so that I can focus on them and deliver wins on a consistent basis.
Trove: I think that paints a pretty clear picture for the readers on the different hats you’re going to be wearing at Seton Hall. Now that you are settling into the role a bit, what are your short to intermediate term goals?
McBride: With me liking to keep things simple, I look at it as there is an internal component and an external component to my NIL role. My internal component will really focus on two main areas initially - compliance and marketing under compliance. There will be three focal points - governance, education and resources. Governance is exactly what it sounds like, there’s certain procedures and processes that are in place by the governing bodies that we must follow. So, I want to make sure that we're following those. Really that heavy lift internally is done by our compliance office, but I want to make sure that those processes are operationally easy and executable by our student athletes.
Now education is a bit of a broad term, but internally we're going to expand upon our create educational programs, a lot of this is in place already, but we're going to enhance the pieces that are in place and we're going to add components that are missing. But Educational sessions could include financial literacy, contract negotiation strategies, market evaluations, and entrepreneurial preparedness. Guidelines prohibit athletics to help them navigate the actual NIL contract execution, but we will work on providing them the tools. We're going to educate them on how to position themselves from brand growth perspective and leverage analytics as well.
With resources, it’s all about what we as an athletics department can provide our student athletes to better prepare them. There's plenty of those things already in place, so we're going to make sure they're aware of them, make sure they're using them and then we're also going to enhance them.
The second part of the internal plan is marketing. We're going to help our athletes understand how to market themselves, what is their brand, what is their identity, how to position themselves with that which will then create NIL opportunities. We're going to market to the fan base the NIL opportunities to participate, and highlight the successes of our athlete NIL partnerships
Then comes the external side, which is what most people are aware of and what most fan bases are talking about. Externally, a lot of my work is going to be done on our NIL structure s and our partners. As you are aware right now, Seton Hall really has two in play – Hall Hands On Deck and Hall Ball. How that is structured, I'll get to in a second, but those two entities are the two main players in our space right now , with Hall Ball taking the lead in executing NIL opportunities for our athletes . Also on the external side are current partners that we have in place that the public may or may not know about – Opendorse, Brandr, and COMPASS.
All partners will have a very specific role in helping our student athletes gain NIL opportunities.
Trove: Mike thank you for taking the time to talk with me and share some insights into the athletic department’s vision in the new NIL landscape. I thought it might be good to start off with getting the fanbase familiar with your main roles/responsibilities in the newly created position.
McBride: As deputy athletics director for revenue generation, NIL and strategic initiatives, my job can be broken down into three categories. The first category is the traditional deputy athletics director role for external. I'm responsible for executing the overall strategy and building a holistic vision and making sure everyone is pulling on a rope together so we're delivering where we need to from an external standpoint . This would include Pirate Blue, marketing, ticketing, communications, licensing, and working with our partners like LEARFIELD and Amplify. So, a third of my responsibilities are focused on that traditional deputy AD role, which is vitally important for the success and operation of the athletic department.
The second component of my responsibility is going to be what Bryan [Felt] calls strategic initiatives. How I like to think of this component is I need to know what's coming around the corner and I have to have a strategy and or plan for the unknown. That could be a myriad of things, mostly unknown to us today. An example could be sports betting. College sports will need a plan of how to address it as it is likely to be part of the daily operations. A perfect example of this is alcohol sales. We can recall in the early 90’s it was extremely rare to have beer sales at a college event. Most interviewees said it would never happen and today it is prevalent, and most schools have even licensed their marks with alcohol manufacturers. There was a deputy AD somewhere in the country 25 years ago creating a plan on when and how they were going to sell beer. Strategic initiatives really is being prepared for the unknown.
The third component of my job is the one that everyone wants to talk about, NIL. Bryan thought it was so important that he put it in the title. I'm okay with everyone wanting to talk about that because it is the topic of the day and it will be into the foreseeable future because until there's some sort of commonality between all universities, it is going to be a topic that continuously comes up in the news cycle. For me, I like to keep things as simple as I possibly can so that I can focus on them and deliver wins on a consistent basis.
Trove: I think that paints a pretty clear picture for the readers on the different hats you’re going to be wearing at Seton Hall. Now that you are settling into the role a bit, what are your short to intermediate term goals?
McBride: With me liking to keep things simple, I look at it as there is an internal component and an external component to my NIL role. My internal component will really focus on two main areas initially - compliance and marketing under compliance. There will be three focal points - governance, education and resources. Governance is exactly what it sounds like, there’s certain procedures and processes that are in place by the governing bodies that we must follow. So, I want to make sure that we're following those. Really that heavy lift internally is done by our compliance office, but I want to make sure that those processes are operationally easy and executable by our student athletes.
Now education is a bit of a broad term, but internally we're going to expand upon our create educational programs, a lot of this is in place already, but we're going to enhance the pieces that are in place and we're going to add components that are missing. But Educational sessions could include financial literacy, contract negotiation strategies, market evaluations, and entrepreneurial preparedness. Guidelines prohibit athletics to help them navigate the actual NIL contract execution, but we will work on providing them the tools. We're going to educate them on how to position themselves from brand growth perspective and leverage analytics as well.
With resources, it’s all about what we as an athletics department can provide our student athletes to better prepare them. There's plenty of those things already in place, so we're going to make sure they're aware of them, make sure they're using them and then we're also going to enhance them.
The second part of the internal plan is marketing. We're going to help our athletes understand how to market themselves, what is their brand, what is their identity, how to position themselves with that which will then create NIL opportunities. We're going to market to the fan base the NIL opportunities to participate, and highlight the successes of our athlete NIL partnerships
Then comes the external side, which is what most people are aware of and what most fan bases are talking about. Externally, a lot of my work is going to be done on our NIL structure s and our partners. As you are aware right now, Seton Hall really has two in play – Hall Hands On Deck and Hall Ball. How that is structured, I'll get to in a second, but those two entities are the two main players in our space right now , with Hall Ball taking the lead in executing NIL opportunities for our athletes . Also on the external side are current partners that we have in place that the public may or may not know about – Opendorse, Brandr, and COMPASS.
All partners will have a very specific role in helping our student athletes gain NIL opportunities.
