How Student-Athletes Can Build—and Protect—an NIL Brand
NIL Is More Than a Sponsorship: Your Identity Is the Product
How Student-Athletes Can Build—and Protect—an NIL Brand
Name, image, and likeness opportunities allow student-athletes to earn compensation from sponsorships, appearances, social-media posts, merchandise, camps, autographs, and other commercial uses of their identities.
But NIL is not simply free products and promotional videos.
A student-athlete accepting a deal may suddenly be expected to act as a creator, spokesperson, business owner, contract partner, public figure, and representative of a team or university—all while continuing to train, study, compete, and develop as a person.
In this episode of Network Issues, media scholar Jamie Cohen and marketing strategist Destinee Day explain how athletes can build recognizable personal brands without losing control of their identities.
Important note: NIL rules differ by athletic division, state, school, conference, and contract. Athletes should consult their school’s compliance staff and qualified legal or financial professionals before signing an agreement.
What Does NIL Mean?
NIL stands for:
Name: The athlete’s personal or professional name
Image: Photographs, video, illustrations, avatars, or visual representations
Likeness: Recognizable traits such as voice, appearance, signature, gestures, catchphrases, or public persona
An NIL deal generally involves an athlete receiving compensation in exchange for the commercial use of one or more of these identity elements.
Examples include:
Sponsored social posts
Personal appearances
Autograph sessions
Product endorsements
Camps or clinics
Branded merchandise
Video-game appearances
Licensing
Affiliate marketing
Content creation
NIL is not limited to nationally famous football or basketball players.
A local athlete with a trusted regional audience may be valuable to a hometown dealership, restaurant, clothing store, fitness center, or professional-service company.
Is a Student-Athlete an Employee of the University?
Not automatically.
The transcript describes athletes as working for universities and becoming part of their corporate brands. That is useful as a branding analogy, but it should not be presented as a universal legal employment classification.
College athletes may represent their institution publicly, wear school marks, and participate in athletic programs with substantial commercial value. Their exact legal status depends on applicable rules, agreements, and ongoing legal developments.
The safer point is:
A student-athlete’s public behavior can affect the reputation of the athlete, team, university, sponsor, and wider athletic program.
Why Is Personal Branding Important for NIL?
Brands need a reason to select one athlete instead of another.
Athletic performance matters, but it is only one element.
Sponsors may also evaluate:
Audience trust
Personality
Local relevance
Visual identity
Communication skills
Community involvement
Reliability
Content quality
Brand compatibility
Reputation
Audience demographics
A personal brand helps people understand what the athlete represents beyond a statistic or uniform.
It answers questions such as:
What makes this athlete recognizable?
What do they care about?
Who follows them?
What kind of story can they tell?
Which products fit naturally into their life?
Can the sponsor trust them to complete the work?
What Makes a Personal Brand Recognizable?
Strong brands use repeated, recognizable signals.
For a company, that might include a logo, color, package, slogan, or product design.
For an athlete, it may include:
A playing style
Signature celebration
Distinctive appearance
Personal story
Community connection
Consistent tone
Fashion
Hobby
Cause
Catchphrase
Content format
The goal is not to manufacture a fake personality.
It is to identify authentic characteristics that can be communicated consistently.
What Can Athletes Learn From Jared McCain?
Jared McCain became known not only for basketball but also for wearing nail polish.
During his time at Duke, he partnered with Sally Hansen in a deal that matched something already visible in his personal identity. He later expanded that relationship into a five-shade collection after entering the NBA. (Complex)
That is a strong brand partnership because the product does not appear to have been randomly attached to the athlete.
The endorsement connects:
His existing behavior
His visual identity
A recognizable product category
A conversation about masculinity
A brand seeking cultural relevance
The lesson is not that every athlete needs an unusual visual trademark.
It is that the strongest deals feel connected to who the athlete already is.
What Can Athletes Learn From Harper Murray?
Nebraska volleyball player Harper Murray has developed a significant public profile through athletic performance, social content, personal storytelling, and brand partnerships. In 2025, she signed an NIL agreement with adidas, Nebraska’s longtime apparel partner. (https://www.1011now.com)
Her example demonstrates that athletes can shape their public identities through repetition and communication rather than allowing one incident, headline, or outside narrator to define them permanently.
A strong personal brand does not require pretending that mistakes never happened.
It requires demonstrating growth, consistency, responsibility, and a clearer story over time.
What Content Should Student-Athletes Create?
The easiest content usually starts with activities the athlete already performs.
Useful formats include:
Day in the Life
Show training, classes, meals, travel, recovery, and team routines.
Get Ready With Me
Use preparation for practice, games, appearances, classes, or events as the structure.
Process Videos
Show how something develops from beginning to end:
Practice preparation
Recovery
Meal planning
Equipment setup
Hair or makeup
Film study
Travel packing
Educational Content
Explain terminology, training methods, game strategy, or the realities of being a student-athlete.
Community Content
Feature teammates, local organizations, youth programs, hometown businesses, or causes.
The goal is not to copy every influencer trend.
It is to turn real experiences into repeatable formats an audience can understand.
What Is the Difference Between Identity and Performance?
Every public appearance involves some degree of performance.
A person chooses:
What to show
What to omit
How to speak
How to dress
Which story to tell
Which angle to emphasize
That does not automatically make the identity fake.
The athlete’s public persona is a selected and maintained version of the self.
Problems emerge when the gap between the persona and reality becomes unsustainable—or when a sponsor expects an athlete to become someone they are not.
A durable personal brand should be recognizable without requiring constant pretending.
What Is Media Training?
Media training prepares people to communicate effectively during interviews, press conferences, appearances, podcasts, livestreams, and unexpected public interactions.
Basic skills include:
Sitting or standing with intention
Listening to the full question
Pausing before answering
Speaking in complete thoughts
Avoiding speculation
Correcting false premises
Returning to the central message
Understanding when a microphone is live
Knowing that “off the record” requires agreement
Preparing for difficult questions
Media training is not about making athletes sound robotic.
It gives them greater control over how their words are interpreted and reused.
Why Is Spatial Awareness Part of NIL?
Public figures can be recorded outside formal interviews.
An athlete may appear:
In another person’s video
In a teammate’s livestream
Behind a fan’s photograph
At a restaurant
In an airport
At a party
During an emotional moment
Near someone behaving irresponsibly
The athlete does not control every camera.
They can still develop awareness of public settings, teammates, alcohol, clothing, conversation, and behavior.
This should not mean living in constant fear.
It means recognizing that public visibility has expanded beyond scheduled media appearances.
What Is Clip Farming?
Clip farming is the deliberate creation or extraction of short moments designed to spread beyond their original context.
A creator may say something provocative because they know the statement will be clipped, reposted, debated, and distributed.
Athletes may also be clipped without intending to participate.
A partial sentence, frustrated reaction, joke, or private-looking moment can become a separate piece of media with a new meaning.
Before speaking publicly, consider:
Could this sentence stand alone?
What happens when the question is removed?
Could a joke be interpreted literally?
Does the clip represent what I mean?
Am I creating a moment only because outrage will increase reach?
Should Athletes Delete Old Social Posts?
Athletes should review their archives, but the goal should not be to erase every sign that they were once teenagers.
A digital audit can identify:
Personal information
Old phone numbers
Location details
Posts using slurs
Harassment
Illegal behavior
Misleading claims
Content that violates team or sponsor rules
Images that could create safety concerns
Accounts impersonating the athlete
Deleting content is not guaranteed to remove it from the internet. Screenshots and archives may remain.
The better long-term strategy is early education about digital identity before a young person receives public attention.
What Should an Athlete Check Before Signing an NIL Deal?
Review:
Deliverables
How many posts, videos, appearances, or events are required?
Payment
Is compensation money, free merchandise, commission, or a combination?
Usage Rights
Can the sponsor reuse the athlete’s image? Where, for how long, and in which media?
Exclusivity
Does the contract prevent work with competitors?
Approval
Can the brand edit or approve content before publication?
Morality Clauses
What behavior allows the sponsor to terminate the deal?
Cancellation
What happens if the athlete is injured, transfers, becomes ineligible, or cannot perform?
Intellectual Property
Who owns the finished photos, videos, slogans, and designs?
Term
When does the agreement begin and end?
Disclosure
How must the commercial relationship be communicated to the audience?
NCAA resources emphasize keeping complete records and reporting relevant NIL activity. Athletes should also review school, conference, state, and division-specific requirements. (NCAA.org)
Do Athletes Have to Disclose Sponsored Posts?
Yes, when a material relationship exists.
The Federal Trade Commission requires endorsements to be honest and not misleading. Athletes and other influencers should clearly disclose payments, free products, discounts, or other relationships that could affect how an audience evaluates the recommendation.
The FTC advises influencers not to rely solely on a brand, agency, or platform to handle disclosure. The person making the endorsement has an independent responsibility to understand and follow the rules. (Federal Trade Commission)
Useful disclosures include:
#ad
Sponsored by [brand]
Paid partnership with [brand]
Thanks to [brand] for providing this product
The disclosure should be easy to see, understand, and connect to the endorsement.
What Responsibilities Do Brands Have?
Brands should not treat young athletes as disposable advertising inventory.
Responsible sponsors should:
Use clear contracts
Explain deliverables
Avoid misleading claims
Provide disclosure instructions
Respect school and sport requirements
Avoid unreasonable exclusivity
Define content-usage rights
Offer an approval contact
Pay on time
Plan for injury, transfer, or schedule changes
Avoid exploiting athletes’ inexperience
A company should also evaluate whether the partnership makes sense.
A local business may benefit from an athlete’s regional credibility even when that athlete does not have a national following.
The best deal aligns the athlete’s real audience with the company’s actual customers.
What Happens When an Athlete Transfers?
An NIL contract does not automatically disappear or transfer with the athlete.
The answer depends on the agreement.
A contract may:
Continue unchanged
End when the athlete leaves the school
Require renegotiation
Restrict the use of university marks
Include repayment provisions
Depend on geographic availability
Conflict with a new sponsor or school policy
Athletes should not assume that entering the transfer portal automatically cancels every obligation.
Transfer-related consequences should be addressed before signing.
Why Do Young Women Face Additional NIL Risks?
Women athletes may receive valuable visibility through social media, but attention can become sexualized or detached from athletic performance.
Risks may include:
Appearance-based harassment
Stolen photographs
Impersonation
Nonconsensual sexualized edits
AI-generated intimate images
Comments unrelated to sport
Aggregator accounts republishing images
Pressure to create increasingly revealing content
The athlete should not be blamed for misuse of her image.
Schools, teammates, platforms, brands, and representatives should help identify impersonation, abuse, or unauthorized commercial use.
Young men should also understand that protecting teammates’ identities is a team responsibility—not a “women’s issue.”
Can AI Misuse an Athlete’s Likeness?
Yes.
Generative systems can imitate or alter:
Faces
Voices
Bodies
Interviews
Endorsements
Photographs
Video
Private-looking content
Athletes should document official accounts, monitor impersonation, and establish clear methods for verifying authentic communication.
Contracts should also address whether a sponsor may create, alter, train on, or synthetically reproduce the athlete’s likeness.
Consent to use one photograph should not be treated automatically as consent to create an unlimited digital replica.
How Can Athletes Monitor Their Digital Identities?
Useful practices include:
Search your name regularly.
Set alerts for your name and common misspellings.
Review tagged posts.
Document official accounts.
Reverse-image-search important photographs.
Save contracts and payment records.
Report impersonation.
Remove personal contact and location information.
Use strong passwords and multifactor authentication.
Ask trusted people to flag suspicious content.
Keep personal and professional communications organized.
Monitoring is labor.
It should be treated as part of managing a public-facing business.
NIL Brand-Building Checklist
Before pursuing a sponsorship, ask:
What do I want to be known for?
What interests do I have beyond my sport?
Which audience already trusts me?
Which brands fit my real habits and values?
Can I complete the required work?
Who owns the resulting content?
How long can the brand use my likeness?
What happens if I transfer or become injured?
How will I disclose the relationship?
Who can review the contract before I sign?
Key Takeaways
NIL means name, image, and likeness.
Athletes can earn compensation through endorsements, appearances, content, licensing, camps, and merchandise.
A student-athlete is not automatically a university employee merely because they pursue NIL opportunities.
Strong personal brands are recognizable, authentic, and repeatable.
The best sponsorships connect naturally with the athlete’s existing identity.
Media training helps athletes retain control over interviews and clips.
Public visibility extends beyond content posted on an athlete’s own account.
NIL contracts should define payment, deliverables, usage rights, exclusivity, termination, and transfer consequences.
Sponsored content must be clearly disclosed.
Young women face disproportionate risks involving sexualization, impersonation, and synthetic media.
Brands share responsibility for transparent, fair, and developmentally appropriate partnerships.
Digital-identity education should begin before an athlete becomes famous.
Questions Answered in This Episode
What does NIL stand for?
NIL stands for name, image, and likeness—the recognizable elements of an athlete’s identity that may have commercial value.
What counts as an NIL deal?
Examples include paid posts, appearances, endorsements, camps, autograph sessions, merchandise, affiliate marketing, and licensing.
How can an athlete get an NIL sponsorship?
Build a clear identity, understand the audience, create consistent content, document engagement, approach suitable brands, and use school or professional resources to review opportunities.
Do athletes have to disclose free products?
Generally, yes. A free product can create a material relationship that should be disclosed when the athlete endorses it.
Can an old post damage an NIL deal?
Yes. Brands may review public content, although athletes should be evaluated fairly and in context rather than expected to have had perfect judgment since childhood.
Does an NIL deal end when an athlete transfers?
Not necessarily. The contract’s language determines whether it continues, ends, or requires renegotiation.
Who should review an NIL contract?
A school compliance office can explain applicable athletic rules, but legal and financial terms may require review by a qualified attorney, agent, accountant, or other professional.
About the Hosts
Jamie Cohen
Jamie Cohen is a media scholar, professor, writer, and expert on internet culture, online extremism, memes, media literacy, and the manosphere.
Website: jamesncohen.com
Substack: New Media Homework
Destinee Day
Destinee Day is a marketing strategist and founder of Rudy & Company. Her work focuses on branding, digital strategy, communications, online influence, and responsible marketing.
Website: rudyandcompany.com
Continue the Conversation
When does healthy self-improvement become compulsive optimization? Should brands and journalists use terms such as looksmaxxing casually—or does that help fringe ideologies enter mainstream culture?
Follow Network Issues for more conversations about internet culture, the manosphere, media literacy, social platforms, masculinity, advertising, and the systems shaping how people see themselves.
-
Destinee Day (00:01.941)
So Jamie, I know that you do a lot of talks about NIL, especially to student athletes. So I'd love to explore that topic a little bit more with you today.
Jamie (00:12.792)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I've been asked the last several years to do several branding talks and NIL talks, name image likeness, to student athletes who are basically in a role now where the CAA kind of paid, well, they're paid. They're now part of the organization itself. And they are what I would consider like corporate brand representatives of the university. And so I think a lot of young people, as you know, I mean, you and I both know this,
When they come to college, they have to break old habits. And the old habits today are things that like being born into TikTok, being born into influencer lifestyles, like watching how people are like doing influencer content and then getting to college and being like, that's not by accident. That's a lot of skills. That's a lot of work to actually make that happen. Sure. There's like the whole architecture of like yapping content where people are just like start mid sentence and start talking to the camera. But when it comes to like,
official branding, like when you're a CAA athlete or somebody who's like representing a school, it's not as cavalier as that. Like, you really got to like care, you know, so it's, it is nice for people to ask me not an athlete to, to come in and discuss this with them. Because I come from it from a more intellectual or like business angle to it or like a social media culture perspective.
rather than somebody who's like aware of how sports work. So it is kind of helpful. It is nice to most student athletes are fairly curious. Some do the fact that their athletes are very aware of their talents. They don't really feel like they need to do this. But the CAA kind of does demand some image and likeness and stuff. And so recently I gave a pretty good talk of NIL basics and my most important
parts of my talk weren't just about how to operate a brand, but the pitfalls that are part of being a brand. And I think when I got my talk, I made sure as an academic and a professor, I made sure that I was like, well, I will do the talk, but I've got to make sure I add some criticality into it. It's not worth it for me. So yeah, I'd love to share it with you. I'd to talk about like what that means and what that actually means to the public too, not just student athletes, but like anybody who's interested in like using their name, their image.
Jamie (02:33.866)
and their likeness, meaning our voice, our words as branding material is something that's shareable. So yeah, thank you. Thank you for having given me the opportunity to talk about it.
Destinee Day (02:43.445)
Well, I know it's something that is talked a lot about, especially in recent years with all of the sweeping regulations and the changes, but also, you know, my husband is a coach, you know, his aunt is a coach. I have tons of friends that are in love with sports. I have tons of friends that are in marketing. Like all of these are very, you know, my God, Destiny.
These are aspects that are really involved in NIL Like you have to know about it because I don't think it just applies to athletes, but athletes are the big deal right now.
Jamie (03:23.862)
It doesn't apply just to athletes, see, okay, so let's start at the beginning. The idea of a brand, okay, so brands are a fairly new concept. And when I say fairly new, I mean like industrial revolution to present. So the way I think of time is way different than the way other people do. The late 1800s was a period of time in which companies decided to...
basically branch out into products and product lines that had branding. They had their own unique labeling, their own unique logos, their own unique slogans and trademarks. And the United States didn't have any regulations on this. It was just sort of like, could just name something and go with it. Early forms of advertising, like the very first forms of advertising in the late 1800s, didn't even know if they worked. Like how would you even know if you advertise something and somebody was seeing the ad?
So the earliest forms of branding were coupons. People would put an ad out with a coupon in it because you could actually see the ad working. People would show up with it and people would have brand recognition. This coupon means this. It has like a transactional relationship to the brand. And so very early on, people knew that in order to get recognized, you had to have some sort of way of transacting that brand with your wallet. So if you're going to spend money, you got to remember it.
And so then it comes down to consumer choice because as with anything with capitalism, it's going to create duplicates. It's going to create competition and everything. I hate to say this, but not to downplay anything about student athletes or any of us, but there's a lot of us. Okay. There's a lot of choices. And so when you're a consumer and you're making choices between which influence you like or which cracker you're going to eat, you're going to have a lot of the same thing. So then it becomes, okay.
So corporations had to figure out what was the identity that would make that type of thing work. And so I start my talks usually with like Nabisco, which had like literally talking about crackers. Like Nabisco was originally called You Need a Biscuit. That was its original name. It wasn't called Nabisco, which is the national biscuit company. That's why it's called Nabisco. And so You Need a Biscuit was kind of its first trademark. And so I bet you if I were to ask,
Jamie (05:41.839)
anybody listening to this, what Nabisco looks like, they would know it's a red triangle in the corner of a box, you know? And that means that that branding has stuck with your brain. Now that brand, the triangle in the upper corner of the box is fairly new. It's from the 1950s to the present, which is like, what, 75 years? I it's a pretty old company, but Nabisco itself is from the 1800s. So it's really an old brand. And then I also talk about brands like...
Like, let's think about like Stanley. So I asked the students, I always ask them like, what is what is Stanley known for? Everybody's like, cups. I think that's cute. That's a really cute response. But I was like, no, Stanley is a hardware company. Stanley is Stanley. It was like, for people who contractors like in the late 1800s, they figured out how to use tools, tools needed brands, because everybody's making tools. And Stanley was one of the earliest companies to come up with the idea of like, well, it isn't just a tool to Stanley tool.
And it wasn't until I think 1918 or like the early 1900s when they're like, cups. And it wasn't it wasn't even the cups, the tumbler we have today. It was for workers. was Stanley thermoses, you know, their competition was thermos, you know, so they had to figure out how Stanley would be separate. But that means that identity, the identity of Stanley is changed by its consumer aspects. So when people go running into a target to go scoop up like
this very specific limited edition Valentine's Day Stanley Tumbler Hydro 2.0, they're buying a very modern version of the brand. know, the company is old, the brand can be new, it could reform itself over and over again. And Stanley.
Destinee Day (07:13.813)
So bye.
Destinee Day (07:22.045)
I I think about like Tiffany Blue Box, right? I worked at Tiffany's on Fifth Avenue. People came in because they wanted the Tiffany Blue Box. They wanted something in the Tiffany Blue Box. I got tired of showing tourists, you know, all of those things. I started pointing out interesting things. It's a very historic store.
things like the Tiffany diamond. I would just stand by the Tiffany diamond. I'd memorize the spiel and I would tell them about the spiel and they were like, okay, cool. And then no one seemed to know that Tiffany's did housewares, but that's how Tiffany's started was housewares. It wasn't jewelry. It wasn't diamonds. It wasn't the sterling silver bracelet.
and I always just laugh like they don't they they feel an identity to this thing but they no one understands the history and how it was built.
Jamie (08:18.338)
Yeah, I guess unless you go to the Met and see like the Tiffany lamps, you really don't even know that Tiffany isn't jewelry, you know, is now obviously, but it's like that. But you I think in the Tiffany store in fifth, don't they still have the houseware stuff somewhere? Is that still in there? it?
Destinee Day (08:32.393)
They do, they do. was my bet. was fourth floor. They also now converted the fourth floor in, I think it was fourth or fifth. Housewares is shared with the Tiffany's restaurant. And then I believe they serve you on some Tiffany's China and stuff, which like, yeah, but like, I remember when no one ever wanted to go up there, but that was where the best discount was for the employees. So I've got a ton of Tiffany's.
Jamie (08:59.906)
Nice. Man, that's too stressful for me to eat off of Tiffany's plate. No way. No, I can't. Yeah. But that's exactly what it is. It's an identity. So that helps frame the discussion of what we are as people in terms of a company's brand. If Tiffany, as a corporation, has these brands underneath it, and Tiffany is a brand, the blue box, the Hermes orange, the Tiffany's turquoise, these colors, and the Nabisco red, Coca-Cola red.
Destinee Day (09:04.394)
We need to get to it.
Jamie (09:29.698)
these specific colors are like mental for us. So like Nike is an example of a good brand because you don't need to ever say Nike, you could just refer to its logo or its slogan and it's always the company. So the branding, the identity is really representative of the corporation. So then when it comes to sports, I was like thinking like, so if you had like the Patriots and the Seahawks and the Superbowl, they're still representing the NFL.
which is the corporation that overrides the brand. So you have these tiers of brands. And then under that, you have the sports figures themselves. You know, like these people who are like representing that brand. And so when it comes to like student athletes, they work, this is gonna sound super neoliberal, but they do work for a corporation. They work for their university. They work for the brand. That's it. Their uniforms hold the identity. They have a logo on them. When they're out in the field, it's them, but it's also
They have to remember that when they're in public, they're still the brand. We talked about on a previous episode, which is like, you have to remember wherever you go, you're representing that brand. And so that becomes part of your identity. You absorb it and you wear it. It becomes the uniform of yourself. And that identity exposure, I think young people or sports players, because they're so invested in their sports, the branding part becomes secondary to that. But then I ask questions about like, all right, who's a, what?
parts of a brand are recognizable. So I would show Lionel Messi's leg, know, like just the tattoo and he's recognizable for that. Or I showed a young woman with her back turned to the camera and just the letters G-O-A-T showed up on the back. And I was like, who is that? And they were like, that's Simone Biles. I was like, how would you know that? How do you know that's her? And like, because that's her Atleta brand, you know, so she is tied to something else. Lionel Messi, of course, is a Stanley partner.
so he is a person who works directly with Stanley. So now we're talking about something that's like 140 year old company working with this, this soccer player. I'm gonna say soccer was in in the U S, the soccer player that's, that is extremely famous. And the two of them are two specific identities that are collaborating and they're doing it because they're so aware of their brand identity, their name, their image, and their likeness that they're not afraid of doing that type of sponsorship deal. Now the goal.
Destinee Day (11:33.951)
Yes.
Jamie (11:53.391)
of any young person or CAA athlete or aspiring influencer is brand endorsements. You want, you want a brand to see you as another brand to make sure that your partnership is lucrative for both sides. You know, so that's, it's a risk. It's a huge risk for a major brand because their identity is 140 years old and you're dealing with somebody who's 40 years old, you know, so you're like having to deal with like this. And then when you're dealing with a student athlete who may not be a legal drinking age yet, you're talking about somebody who
may not even have a sense of the idea of the brand's history. It's a heavyweight, know, there's a lot to take in with this. And so that's one of the things that I focused on two specific athletes that I felt were really good storytellers for this. And one was Harper Murray, the volleyball player at Nebraska. And the other one was Jared, what's Jared's last name?
Jamie (12:54.122)
Jared McCain. Okay. So let me rephrase that bite. Okay. So I gave two examples of like college sports players that represented strong brands. And one was Harper Murray, the Nebraska volleyball player, and Jared McCain, who's now a sixer, but he was at Duke as a basketball player. And both of them have very unique ways of telling their brand story and like how they did it. And so they are a name image likeness that travels. And so I really felt like this was, this would be like,
very good for them to see. Harper Murray, her story is pretty fascinating because when she was a younger student, she got in a little bit of trouble. I'm not gonna go into it here because I don't wanna talk about her. She got in trouble with the law, some problems with drinking, and she needed to re, as a sports player, as a very talented sports player, she had to make sure she contained that brand so it was a safer brand identity. And she worked really, really hard to do so. But the way she did it is launder herself through social media. She became an identity as a projection.
Jaren McCain.
Jared McCain, right? I keep saying Jared, but I want to make sure I'm what? J-Mac yet. He's Jared, right?
Destinee Day (14:01.639)
JMAG? JMAG? Right?
Jamie (14:10.274)
I knew these names like last week and I completely forget them.
Jared McCain, think it's Jared. Yes, Jared McCain. Jesus, my brain is like, I think I'm problems, man. My brain is just full, okay? It's really full right now. Jared McCain as a brand is so unique because he's very confident and he does very unique brand endorsement deals. But I think it would be like, it was like somewhat helpful for me to explain like how to get into
brand identity and brand laundering. And I think a lot of, if I were from the critical space, I would immediately like be critical of what I'm saying because laundering your identity through social media is, sounds like you're a grifter, but it really is about uplift. It's really about making sure your identity is on sort of like what I'm doing here with you or the way we're working. It's like building platforms. So people recognize you outside of the space of whatever you've cloistered yourself in. So sports players cloistered into their sport.
If they're a volleyball player, they're seen as volleyball, not as anything but. If they are a writer, they're seen as a writer and not anything but. So it's hard to transform that brand into something that's recognizable offline or in a different space. But that comes with such amounts of effort that influencers make look so easy and it is so difficult to do. And so I wanted to like basically go over a few steps and especially the pitfalls.
that come with name image likeness work because while a brand like Stanley at 140 years old doesn't really have to worry, you can't forget about like a brand like Bud Light that's older than that that has pitfalls when they work with influencers or a brand like American Eagle that's almost 100 years old that has pitfalls. So you have to understand that brands do have these issues because their agencies themselves either forget or misunderstand the cultural moment. And that is like,
Jamie (16:10.412)
Something that like, I think when universities or organizations starts talking to their employees or their athletes and saying, it's time to do NIL work, we wanna see you as a brand, they have to make sure that they're talking about these things. That's not just my opinion, but I think it's a responsibility. I think it's a disservice to young people and students especially to not tell them about these more important aspects of branding.
Destinee Day (16:36.073)
Yeah, yeah, I agree because all those things, if you misunderstand it, translate over into my side of the field too. You know, like if you don't understand this, if you don't understand the cultural moment, if you don't understand the pitfalls, the whole thing falls apart.
Jamie (16:58.606)
Sorry for the pace. hang on. Yep. Yeah, you're absolutely right. The idea of maintenance. Identity is maintenance. so I tried to be, I started with that, which is like, how do you express your identity? We've had our lives and trials and tribulations and your identity is forged over time. Sometimes it's forged through failure. Sometimes it's forged through wins. And sometimes it's just forged through trouble, you know? But in many cases, the less strife you go through, the less hardened your identity is.
So identity is a process, but when you're like 20 and you're coming right out of high school and expected to like kind of know what to do with the rest of your life, to, let me turn off my notifications. Why are my notifications fucking on? What the fuck is going on here? Usually when you put something on my calendar, it just blocks them, but like for some reason, my thing decided to go through with it. I don't know where I was with that because I just got a notification. It really threw me off.
Destinee Day (17:42.344)
Thank
Destinee Day (17:56.871)
identity forged through failure for success.
Jamie (17:59.416)
yeah, okay. I did, I was getting lost in that track anyway, so I want to like, clip that up, you know, let's make that tighter.
Jamie (18:11.928)
Okay, identity is a learning process and is really something that happens over the course of time. But when you're a young person and you're in your early twenties, especially coming out of high school, expected to make a decision for something that you're doing for the rest of your life, it's a lot of weight for them. So it really is one of those. You it's a lot to expect of somebody without giving them the rules of what goes on. So the first thing I started with for them and for most of my talks is like entry points. What can you do that's easy?
to forge an identity. And the easiest thing, you know, Destinee, I mean, this is your work is, is find your passion. What you're passionate about usually translates directly to something you could talk about extemporaneously. You could talk about it in different ways. So I gave them like a couple of models of content, the easiest entry points, the ones that are most profitable, our day in the life, get ready with me. Anything that's a process video, because that's the native language of the internet. So people like seeing things happen.
It's also good for retention because people, when they tune into a video, there's nothing that wants to keep them going to the very end. But if you showed them a process, they want to know how the process gets completed. And so Get Readies with Me are easy process videos because the process is you're not ready, you will be ready. know, so when you have the process, people will keep watching until you're finished. The same thing goes for makeup artistry. And that goes with day in the life. How does the day go by?
So I was trying to explain that very easy ways of maintaining an identity is just simply talking about your identity, doing expression work, talking about what you do in your everyday life is compelling to a viewer, especially somebody like me who is not an athlete. I'm constantly curious about how athletes do their thing. What's their day in their life like? Hell, I'm curious about what you do in your daily life. Like, how do you start your day? What do you think about? How does it go through? Anybody who is not in a specific field,
has this open idea of what curiosity is towards it. So those are easy ways of doing it. Wait.
Jamie (20:19.118)
Where'd Destiny go? Is it still recording? no. Jesus. Where is she?
my god.
I lost the host of the show. Where is the host? Hello? Is there a host? Oh my God, you could see this thing. I don't want this on here. This is Henry's nebulizer thing. This is for when he had like a cough. shouldn't see this. Oh my gosh, and my lens is blocking my on air light, but I don't even think you could read my on air light. So don't think it even matters in that way. So, but I do like how you can see the camera. The camera here, that's kind of nice.
Now my notifications off and now I can't see you. Are you coming back into this room?
Jamie (21:12.834)
What else is there that shouldn't be in the screen? no, it's okay. Look, those are, you can't really tell, but those are my books. Can't really see it in this angle. these are textbooks. Who really cares? there's no reflection. I can see the ring light. That's the ring light right there, but it's way up here. See it in my eyes. You can see it in my reflection. See it. That's the ring light. There's also a tiny light right down here.
That's color temperature set. So it lights up this side of my face. this is a picture. You can't really tell. you're back. I was given a tour of the room. That's okay. Wait, do see that footage? I didn't realize that this was in the shot. So I moved it. That's Henry's, nebulizer because he, sort of weird asthma thing, but
Destinee Day (21:55.493)
Sorry.
I'm
Destinee Day (22:08.462)
Jamie (22:10.35)
I don't think you're using the wide shots that often, so that's okay. Okay. Well, I ended that byte, which is good. So now we're at, where am I at? Okay. How'd I get there? Oh yeah, okay. Go ahead.
Destinee Day (22:13.475)
No, not very.
Destinee Day (22:25.539)
which I'm gonna put this on camera so that we can just refer back to it later. You gave me an idea with all of the get ready with me things. I think I'm gonna do a series on my Rudy and company Instagram where I just like think of a business and then I think of all the content ideas that I would do for whatever that business is every single day as I'm getting ready with me. And we're just gonna hijack it. We're gonna see what happens.
Jamie (22:49.166)
Well, that's that's. Do you want to talk about that with that content? I'll go hijacking is. OK, OK, all right. Yeah, no, that's that's I'll go hijacking and you that is a huge tactic.
Destinee Day (22:54.785)
No, no, I'm telling that to you. Like as you were saying that to me, I was like,
Destinee Day (23:10.819)
I wanna do it and then I wanna have a conversation about it. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Jamie (23:13.706)
Yeah, okay. Good idea. Because so there was I had a long meeting yesterday with we'll talk about this offline. But I a big meeting with people who are looking for social media advice. And I was talking about like dentists are a good example, because nobody wants to go to the dentist. So dentists, if you watch any dentist Instagram channel, they're never showing dental work. They're always like making coffee and explaining dentist work. Because no one you can't advertise a dentist like that. So it's like that is
Yeah, so you're right. Algo hijacking is like really important. So let's not talk about that now because that's not part of this product. But that, yeah, that's it. That's it. That's you should do that. Yes, 100%. OK, so maybe ask me about Jarrett McCain and Harper Murray's content. This way could like entry this way that pivots to the pitfalls part.
Destinee Day (24:01.571)
Yeah. Okay. So I mean, I've obviously watched, you know, Jared McCain and Harper Murray's content, but you know what stands out to me about Jared McCain's content, right? Jared, not Jason, Jared, is the nail polish thing and his brand deal with Sally's, I use that nail polish, right? And I'm literally looking at the video and I'm like, well, what colors? Like, I'm about to go to Walmart right now.
Jamie (24:13.4)
Jared.
Jamie (24:24.336)
no kidding, yeah.
Destinee Day (24:31.445)
and buy that color because it looks really cool. So what's your perspective on brand deals from your side of the POV?
Jamie (24:40.462)
So I love, so it's good for students to get brand deals because it teaches them responsibility. It sounds like really fatherly, I guess, but it's like, if you're gonna hold onto something, you don't wanna break it. And like a brand deal is very fragile and they do want you to sell their product. In the end, you're just selling things, soft selling. But when they send you a package full of stuff, they're going to want you to endorse it in a way that makes it seem natural and authentic, not like forced or like, isn't mine. Jared McCain's...
Deal is very fascinating to me because Jared is very open about the idea that nail polish for him isn't part of a beauty standard. It's more of like a preservation of his fingernails. Like me, he bites his nails and he realized if he painted his nails, he's less likely to bite them. Then he just liked the way they looked. And so it became part of his identity. And that was what I wanted to promote to the students was like, McCain as a basketball player uses his hands all the time, but now he has an identity that's recognizable from a distance. He's the guy with nail polish.
Then brands, what's the brand you said that he works with?
Destinee Day (25:41.221)
think it's Sally's nail polish. It comes in a very unique shape. saw the bottle shape and I knew who it was.
Jamie (25:44.556)
Yeah, Sally.
Jamie (25:51.245)
you knew from the bottle, no kidding. So you might wanna throw the video on this thing, because he actually does the brand endorsement with Sally's nail polish. And what's nice is he becomes an expert. So he becomes an expert in that company. And so he starts doing his nails and now it becomes part of who he is. When he gets drafted to the Sixers after doing his Duke career, he continues that brand endorsement. And now he's that guy on the Sixers that is the guy who paints his nails.
And what's really interesting is he gets to play with that identity without falling into any political traps. He's basically now a makeup, he's in them now in a new genre, makeup artistry, because he's doing his makeup or cosmetics and the cosmetics become part of who he is. And that I think is really like endearing to be honest, like it's nice. In contrast or maybe comparable to Harper Murray's work, she'll be sent similar things for cosmetics and hers is like,
pretty off the cuff as well. makes her look pretty natural about it because they send her products that she already is using. And then she just gets to talk about them in the way that she wants to. Her get-readies with me are actually like fairly easy. She doesn't really put a lot of work into them, but that's okay. And that's what it's important about like managing an identity. Identity management just means repetition until you feel comfortable with it. And it's a lot of experimentation. And I think a lot of the students feel like there's this
Destinee Day (27:04.463)
Mm-hmm.
Jamie (27:13.454)
entry point problem. Like how do get into it? How do you actually do it? How do you start? And I think starting is easy because you're already doing it. It really I was trying to explain like get ready with me. So the easiest you just need the cell phone and a tripod and sometimes you don't even need that. think one of Jared McCain's videos he just leans the camera. Oh, what that thing's awesome. Yeah, just stick it to the wall. Yeah.
Destinee Day (27:17.412)
Yeah.
Destinee Day (27:32.92)
is that a brand sent this to me the suction cup sticky and it i use this thing every single day shout out club car wash it was for my dog but it works for me like it's awesome
Jamie (27:43.534)
Nice.
Jamie (27:47.567)
I love that. But that makes it easy, right? So now you don't have to think about it. Now it just works. And now you have camera that wherever you want to be, that's where your camera is. But it would be OK. then OK, let's do that. And then the pitfalls. OK.
Jamie (28:07.202)
About
Jamie (28:12.514)
Wow, half a century ago, a guy named Ervin Goffman wrote a book about the presentation of self in everyday life. And what he was basically saying is that when you present yourself to cameras, to people, to everyone around you, you're doing a performance of yourself. What I loved about sports players is that they are performing. They're just not performing like an actor is. They're performing to be an athlete. And what's great about athletes is that they already know what audience behavior is like. They're in front of tons of people all the time where your average influencer
rarely sees humans. Like they are like what we're doing here is the empty room. It's by myself, there's a green light and you're my company in another state far away. And so we're basically having a FaceTime, you know, since like, this conversation is a lot more casual and a little bit more like easy. But like athletes kind of put the idea of an audience behind them. But the difference here is like, there's also potentially millions of unseen spectators that are out there. And sports players get it because the cameras are around them. But your average person
can't really be cognizant of the idea like stadiums. And like when I gave my talk, I walked in and I was like, hey, where am I giving this talk by the way? And the coach was just like, the arena. And I was like, because I didn't mentally prepare for an arena talk. Like doing an arena talk is a whole thing, you know? So it's like, I'm used to like standing in front of like 20, 30 students in front of a room. And now I've got to talk to an entire space. Fortunately, it was only about 300 athletes, which to be honest, is like a lecture hall in a college. So it was kind of like, all right.
Destinee Day (29:36.591)
family.
Jamie (29:39.789)
It's not too bad. It's still intimidating because I'm in an arena, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been. Like I've been in worse situations where I've been like super stressed. This was like, whatever. I was okay with it. But it was important for me to explain two things that I think are really important for the takeaways for this piece in particular, which are the pitfalls and the things you could be in control of. And I think that is why I was brought in to do this talk. So the things
There are things that in any NIL space, so when you're dealing with your name, that's your brand, how you keep it. And like as I've changed, I don't use my official name, which is James, I use Jamie, know, so that's my brand. It causes legal issues every so often because like it doesn't line up to my ID, only in bureaucracy settings. My image is kind of like a dopey professor image, but it's like, this is like, I do, I actually need new headshots, but like your headshot is kind of like your image and your likeness are the bites.
You know, like that is like what people pick out and like tech carry for you. And so you can become known for something. And we talked about this in previous ones, but like my SEO digital culture expert is kind of my likeness, you know? So it's like these parts, these are what we would in academic, these are the constitutive elements of my NIL. But there are things under my control. I don't wear logos.
Destinee Day (30:57.989)
my god.
Jamie (31:04.91)
Sports players wear logos. I don't wear a brand identity. So I don't have to worry about being in public and being identified as my corporation, you know?
Destinee Day (31:11.351)
Okay, caveat, you do wear a logo. It's on your wrist. It's just not technically a logo. That says a lot about you.
Jamie (31:18.998)
interesting. Okay. That's fair. Interesting. Yeah, you're right. okay. That's fair. Yes. As a as me as talking about myself and like what I represent having an Apple Watch, especially like my an ultra does talk about like, what I am and be like behind it. That's a good point. Thank you, Destinee Yeah, it's it does say a lot about something without saying it. You're right. Huh? Okay. So say again.
Destinee Day (31:44.025)
I also love clothes. I also love clothes. So because you don't wear logos, all of that, I think that makes your choices even more intentional. So when you do recognize something on you, that sends more of a statement than if you were covered in logos.
Jamie (31:48.759)
Yes.
Jamie (32:05.122)
That is a good point. That's similar to like Steve Jobs would only have that one outfit because he only wanted to, he didn't want people to think about his clothes. Same thing with Elizabeth Holmes who was trying to copy that. So sometimes you choose to be a minimalist and sometimes you choose to be maximalist. Like I have like three fits that I use only when I do talks, you know? So it's like, so it's like, I space them out. I don't do enough talks and worry about that, but like those are my dress clothes, you know? Like those are my things that like, when I feel like I want to like, what do they call it? Drip?
That's that's three, three, a whole total of three, but that those are intentional choices. You're absolutely right. And it does tell the audience a lot about what they can glean from that. When it comes to like my my bite or whatever it is, it's a very specific angle and my specific angles, criticality. So people know that when they're calling me in particular for a bite opposed to anybody else, they're asking for a very specific angle. So I'm in control of that. And again,
Destinee Day (32:40.047)
Hahaha
Jamie (33:02.19)
When we're talking about young people, 20 something, they haven't yet developed that specific likeness work yet. Now, a couple of them do get the benefit of having a trick shot or having a very unique type of like a field goal dance or something. Like they have a very specific trademark that they're starting to reuse constantly. Maybe a slogan that they dip into like, like, ka-chow, you know, like, if you're like Lightning McQueen, you know. So it's like, you have like these ideas of how to get like these little trademarks in there.
But you can be in control of those. That's something that an NIL person can be in control of. The other thing they could be in control of is being aware of their personality in public spaces. Spatial awareness. What are you doing when you're talking to people? Like who's looking at you? If you become famous enough, you become recognizable. And that means you're now aware of people becoming proximate to you. And that proximity setting changes the way that people want to be near you. The other thing that I think people misunderstand
And something that I think we, you and I are really good at understanding is media training. I think young people need media training. think now we're watching the Olympics and seeing who has media training and who doesn't. And I love seeing that. Like, because I even said to the students something very simple to do for media training. Pretend the chair doesn't have a back. Easy. Just that's simple. Just sit upright. You know? Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. You're, you're not leaning against the chair.
Very simple model of media training is just sitting upright, pulling your shoulders back and talking to the person.
Destinee Day (34:34.935)
And not everyone, what was the name of that foo- Marshawn Lynch? Not everyone's Marshawn Lynch. Not everyone can be. But that's also not what you aim for.
Jamie (34:38.37)
Yep.
Jamie (34:45.486)
That's right. But that was like, love watching these, these Olympians who spent their entire lives so dedicated to the sport that they don't really have time for media training when they win an award. Now they have to like talk to the press. And it's like kind of funny because some of them are slouching and some of them are like sitting back and some are like leaning back. It's like, obviously you never had the training. So that takes only a little bit of practice to become media trained. But it is one of those things where
As you and I both know, like that is one of the most underrated, most important parts of control over your NIL. Then there's also self-control, of course, you know, because if you are a representative of your company, you can't really, there's, you're now your own content moderator. You know, you now have, you now have to keep the borderlands so that you don't get quoted in a certain way or representative of that brand in negative manner. That's self-control. And that isn't the same thing as self-censorship.
because self-censorship is a completely different field. This is more along the lines of just being aware that you are representing more than just your body. So that's tough, but that is under your control. Now, here is where it gets a little bit more difficult for NIL, which is when we're talking about like, we were talking about the idea of clip farming, which is...
Destinee Day (35:44.122)
you
Jamie (36:08.27)
This new term that comes from these online communities where you basically are looking for the bites that are going to be pulled out of context. It's the goal is to be pulled out of context and to go viral. It is to increase your viewership or your hits or your views view count in a very rapid way because your return on investment might increase your follow ship or at least your views to inspire somebody to endorse you more. So clip farming is really part of what
you're not in control of anymore because you don't know what can be pulled out of context. The other thing is like, sousveillance, panoptic content, you never know who's capturing you or watching you or what you're in the background of. So that's really difficult. And the one thing I brought up, I think we've talked about in previous episodes, but like, I reminded the students about couch guy. And everybody seems to know couch guy, do know couch guy?
Destinee Day (36:57.731)
You asked me this last time and I didn't remember him and that's how you explained panoptic content to me.
Jamie (37:02.7)
Yeah, yeah, so couch guy, so again, like the idea of couch guy is like, he was a bystander in someone else's video, his girlfriends, of course, but the fact he became an enemy online was out of his control because he was somebody else's piece of content. That could happen to you, literally, you could be standing on a corner of a street in New York City and somebody could be recording their trip and just you doing something weird for that moment could be a viral moment. So we are so out of control of what the Panoptic content is at this point.
that we have to just know that that's there, not to be afraid of it, but to be aware of that. Now where it gets a little disturbing, those alerts come through regardless of the thing, because that's my alarm system that might give the camera at the front door, it pushes through it no matter what. that whoever is dropping off a package, hopefully they go away. In particular, when it comes to NIL, I think young women have a harder time than men.
Destinee Day (37:43.749)
Jamie (38:00.407)
And that is because young women, especially sports figures, men are primarily their audience. And that means a lot of their identity is being dictated by an audience who isn't really in it for the sport. They're in it to admire or ogle the character. Now that becomes problematic for young women because the audience will sometimes go through their archive. So we are in control of our archive.
We should go back through our Instagram, go back through our thing and find any piece of content that might be questionable, that could be taken out of context, that could be used against us anyway. And that is a sort of form of source self-censorship, but it's also NIL control. You are no longer, once you've decided to move forward with NIL, you are moving forward with a public persona and therefore you should clean up your archive. You should do this though, because aggregators are taking those things. And so...
Destinee Day (38:46.298)
Yes.
Jamie (38:52.428)
We talked about this last time, but you don't want to be in a situation where somebody screen grabs you and puts you on their site. And that's something that's out of our control, but it is in our control because it is your NIL, not their NIL. Don't let someone rebrand you. What I recommend is having good friends, people who look out for you, people who are willing to search for you, keep an eye open. But what one of the most easy ways to make sure you do this, and it takes a little bit of work, and I recommend anybody who does an NIL work spend
A few hours before they start up to do this, basically go through your more provocative images on your Instagram or your past and do a reverse Google search on them. See if they're anywhere else on the internet. Just see. And this way you can kind of see if your images have already been taken or like repurposed in any way. And now you have a big environmental control over NIL. So you can see what it's doing. What are other people talking about? Are people talking about you in different ways? I would also go through and clean up your comments.
Destinee Day (39:31.513)
Mm-hmm.
Jamie (39:49.847)
If people are commenting specifically about your looks and not moving forward with a conversation, there's no reason to keep them. So those NIL traits are really like, that's work, it's labor. But if you're going to do public persona work, it is labor. That is part of what you're actually going to be doing.
Lastly, and the scariest is AI, especially for young women. And it is important for young women to understand that when they are doing this, that these apps, these Nudify apps and these Grok and all these generators are out of your control and audiences are kind of dirty. And so you really have to be very aware of it. It was kind of funny and very gendered when I gave my talk, because when I started going to this part of the NIL talk, the men literally tuned out.
They just did not, this was not in their interest area where young women kind of leaned in and were like very curious about croc and AI manipulation. What?
Destinee Day (40:42.361)
But how disappointing that is that the men tuned out. like, ugh.
Jamie (40:46.978)
Yeah, exactly. It is disappointing. It was also disappointing because the way I've reframed it was like, men, these are your classmates and your teammates, regardless of whether or not you're doing it, you're all part of the same organization, which is the the league leagues underneath the brand of the university, you should look out for each other regardless. And that's the biggest thing about NiL is that you aren't competing against each other, you're competing as each other to uplift each other.
And NIL is often looked at as a competitive branding place, similar to way Stanley works against Thermos. It's not the same. It's about uplift. It's about the idea of aspiration and making sure that how you go from your speaking version of yourself to your aspirational self that somebody recognizes from a distance. And that should be something that we do together as a collective experiment rather than something that we do as a solo effort. And that's like, yeah, it was disappointing, I'll be honest.
And it was because probably because men feel like they're less vulnerable to that type of manipulation, which they statistically are, but no one is technically immune from that type of manipulation. that, that NIL is fragile. Identity formation is fragile. Becoming brand friendly is fragile and those things take experience. They take work. And when you get good at it, you should feel proud about it because in the end, what you're really doing is building community.
You're actually developing a group of people around you who not only recognize you for like your value, but also want to work with you in a way that makes them feel better about themselves.
Destinee Day (42:24.847)
Yeah. Yeah.
Man, I have a lot of thoughts about all of that on the brand side.
Jamie (42:32.31)
Yeah, let's talk a little bit. If you have questions, let's talk, give 10 minutes more of you asking me stuff from that because that's my basic gist. So everything else can be response.
Destinee Day (42:43.905)
Right? Okay, let's I'm a brand. I want to sponsor an athlete. There's a few reasons why I would want to do that. One, if I came from a small town and I went to a big state university, I was not an athlete. But let's say that I was. If I'm the local car dealership in my small town,
I would want to do an NIL deal with the big state athlete because I live close to a metropolitan area. It's outside, but it's not far away. I could attract customers from the big metropolitan area simply by having that athlete to ask for me as part of an NIL deal. Right? That's awesome.
When you're looking at big state athletes though, the concern on my side is, man, I hope they don't get into any drinking scenarios and mess this up. And so I'm sure I have never seen an NIL contract. I can just tell you what has been in contracts that I've gotten for my dog is that,
I have to steer clear of political comments while under contract. I cannot be seen doing anything that is against the values of the brand and that is vague, but I'm sure if he was a person that would include drinking and driving, right? there's a lot of benefits and pitfalls on the brand side too. It's not just...
with the athlete, which I would think as a brand taking a risk on a college athlete, you know, is the pitfall. You hope that they don't get arrested or, you know. Yeah, right. Like they're not like concert, like, you know, you want to avoid those things, but that's not always in your control to the goal play point. Right. So,
Jamie (44:29.294)
create a viral moment. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Jamie (44:43.007)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Destinee Day (44:45.613)
I mean, I just think a lot about it from that side because like, right, the advice I would give any small town, one kid from my hometown ended up playing for the Tennessee Titans, right? If NIL would have been a thing back then, I guarantee you the big brands in my small town would have jumped on that. What an investment, what an investment if that, when that pays off and he goes to the Titans?
Jamie (45:04.103)
yeah, because then they get them first. that's... 100%.
Jamie (45:15.074)
This is a great point. If you are a brand or a company, NIL or CIA students are perfect opportunities to advertise your product with a local star, you know, like you get a local influencer who already has a pre-built in audience. They're not building themselves up. They're not working into influencing. They're not trying to get new followers. They already have something. They're just now proposing themselves into a digital space. And that's a really great point. But of course you're a hundred percent right. I'm sure
Destinee Day (45:15.107)
Wow.
Jamie (45:44.973)
your dog is not cracking one open and like getting in the car at 3am and like hitting telephone poles. But it's like that, that type of thing is always a risk with any young influencer or young person in general, because again, they're forging their identity mistakes happen. That's how identities are forged. If you're a brand, you do not want to be associated with that. This is also why NIL is important aspect to learn, regardless, because it does add a weight of responsibility. And
Destinee Day (46:11.662)
Mm-hmm.
Jamie (46:13.238)
I think that what's really cool about having this conversation right now is that we're in that transition period where NIL's of being blended into CAA and being blended into professional spaces. And I think we're at the forefront of helping people understand it. And that type of thing is something that hopefully inspires people to be responsible. And I don't mean responsible of like, again, this again is not like.
Oh, I can't have fun anymore. I can't do things. It's just when you are on duty with a brand, you're on duty. If you're being sponsored that for that time period, you are you are part of somebody else's brand, you are a collaborator, you are a partner. And that is, you know, something we didn't talk about here. And I'm not into the legal space. But these are FTC regulated. This is the federal government regulates this space. So you really do have a responsibility, not just to the brand and your endorsements and making sales, but you have endorsement to like the
the way that regulations of branding work. And that's a bit heavy for young people, you're right.
Destinee Day (47:14.019)
I mean, I have to follow FTC guidelines for my dog. But I also think, I mean, to all of your point, this is something we were talking about just before, but there are schools that are helping these athletes understand all of these things. So my alma mater, Mizzou, has an organization that does this.
Jamie (47:17.058)
Mm-hmm.
Destinee Day (47:41.879)
And what I loved about it when I heard about it was that they help the athletes understand all of these aspects. They help them understand.
Okay, here's the contract. Here's what this means. Here's the guidelines. Here's the type of content. Here's how it affects your other content. They also give them like financial guidance and help them understand all of those aspects. They also help them understand because these are athletes. What happens if you enter the transfer portal? How does all of that affect your NIL deals? Do those carry over? Probably not. And they help them guide them through that, which I thought was
amazing because I can see a lot of these kids getting money if you would have given me money like that in college do you know what I would have gone and spent it on like all of the subway sandwiches right like but you know what I mean like
Jamie (48:41.858)
Yeah, I do. I wouldn't have gotten those deals, is, know, but yes, I do. would have, I probably would have spent it on stuff that was probably inappropriate. But you're right. Like getting, if I had known, I think it just changes the way that we understand it. And that's why I think working with the CAA is a little easier than just your average influencer. I think you know the statistics, but 33 to 56%, it's depending on your poll, of young people, Gen Z and now Gen Alpha, they aspire to be creators.
So you're at that almost half of young people are basically desiring to be the space of like making sure that their brand, their image and their identity is part of something public, per public persona. Which if that's true, if that's the case, then this conversation should be happening younger. It shouldn't be instituted at a college level.
Destinee Day (49:30.437)
Absolutely, honestly, it's gonna get it's probably gonna get me in trouble for saying it but like We need to be having these conversations at junior high when we have all the other Okay, you're getting close to being an adult conversations like it should be part of it because You know, I mean, I know we want to talk about other things like
the impact that social media is having on their mental health, the impact that it's having on what colleges they can attend because of the things that they've posted, the type of jobs they can get because of what they've posted. All of that is impacted by it. And if you don't understand all of that at an early age now, that's not going to help.
Jamie (50:12.76)
percent right. And I think it's a disservice to not inform students of that because this is the world. The Internet is not going away. This is the world they're entering. And you're right that the Internet has accumulated a fair amount of disadvantages and problems. But our ability to have agency in those spaces and being able to make our own choices only makes us better people in the end. know, so it is a net benefit in the end. And you know me, I'm an optimist about this. So I do feel like
that type of education, you're right. I think the opportunity is at the moment when we're doing the, here's what to expect when you're going to the next stage of your life. This is also part of that. So I agree with you. so I would, anybody listening and wants to institute that, we're willing to have that conversation with you too.
Destinee Day (51:00.941)
Right? mean, I'm going to take a hard stance and be like, I don't think kids under 16 should have social media. And I know that's rough, but man, did we have it easy. I didn't have social media until I was like 18.
Jamie (51:11.778)
We did.
I am not an abstinence person. So I think if they have social media, they should just have a way of talking about it and making it part of their life because it is really hard to regulate an abstinence plan. it's also like we've talked about this before and this is off the topic of this, like we've been talking this entire time about very like privileged people who are sports athletes. These are like an upper tier of people, but like the internet does exist as a very.
important space or people who are at a disadvantage, people who come from marginalized groups or queer spaces, that the internet is the only place of expression they have, they don't have that otherwise. So the internet having it banned is like, could be an issue towards their identity formation. But that said, you're right, like young people's brains are developing. And in that developmental stage, if they don't have these ways of being educated about it, it is
it could become very problematic. mean, we've obviously seen the outcome of that. We live in that world now. So we now as adults have control over the way that the future unfolds in that. And NIL is a good conversation space because brands exist. They've existed for almost 200 years. It's time to talk about it a professional way.
Destinee Day (52:19.14)
Mm-hmm.
Destinee Day (52:24.377)
Well, especially now because we're in the environment where if you post something crazy when you're 14, 15 years old, because you're just being a teenager, that is going to impact your NIL deals in the future that you aren't even thinking about.
Jamie (52:33.994)
A kid. Yeah.
Jamie (52:39.79)
Mm-hmm. And that's too heavy, way too heavy to expect kids to accept at a teenage age. They should be out having fun. They shouldn't have to think about that. So you're 100 % right with that too. This is a lot of balance and nuance. It's a lot of work, but most of it comes from conversation. A lot of it comes from the ability to understand how it develops. And this is an ongoing conversation. So yeah, well, I was glad to talk about it with them. I'm glad to talk about it with you. And I appreciate the idea that this is a conversation.
Destinee Day (53:08.869)
Is there anything that I haven't asked you that you want me to ask?
Jamie (53:12.118)
No, you got it. That was good. I like the end part.
Destinee Day (53:14.659)
Yeah. Okay, so then I'm gonna, I'm gonna tease out our next conversation, which I'm hoping is, do you want to cover the social media case? Okay. Okay.
Jamie (53:24.076)
Yes, yeah, that's wild. Yeah.
Destinee Day (53:29.145)
So next time we're gonna talk about speaking of social media and its impact on teenage mental health. We're going to have a conversation about this lawsuit that is in progress right now with Metta specifically, but will impact every social media platform depending on the outcome. So stay tuned.