Bryant-focused NIL collective Tupper's Kennel officially launches

Former Saint Peter’s guard Doug Edert was one of the stars of the 2022 NCAA Tournament, when he helped the No. 15-seeded Peacocks reach the Elite Eight, following a first-round upset of Kentucky. Now playing for Bryant after entering the Transfer Portal, Edert and his fellow Bulldogs can now benefit from the NIL opportunities that will be created by the NIL collective Tupper’s Kennel, which officially launched Monday.

The university’s current bulldog mascot is named Tupper II.

The phrase NIL collective is a catch-all term for various organizations, including non-profit organizations and marketing agencies, that typically operate independently of the university whose athletes they support through the facilitation of NIL opportunities.

Tupper’s Kennel is powered by the agency Student Athlete NIL (SANIL), which supports NIL collectives at schools such as Oklahoma, Penn State and Rutgers, among others. With the first games of the 2022-23 college basketball season set to tip off in early November, there has been an uptick in the creation of NIL collectives that are designed to support athletes at institutions that either don’t have an FBS football program or that could be labeled a “basketball school.”

SANIL CEO and co-founder Jason Belzer told On3 the entire Bryant men’s basketball team has signed with Tupper’s Kennel, which will support athletes across all athletic programs at the university.

“A lot of smaller schools are now saying, ‘How do we create opportunities for our student-athletes? How do we start building an infrastructure that allows us to be competitive and to tap into our fan base and the business community?'” Belzer said. “And Bryant wanted to be proactive in that process.”

Supporters can contribute to Tupper’s Kennel starting at an amount of $10 per month, which grants subscribers access to exclusive interviews and content, supporter events, meet-and-greet sessions and raffle entries for autographed memorabilia. There are other subscriptions levels that cost $25, $50, $100, $250 and $500 per month, which offer a tiered benefit structure.

‘Schools that are proactive actually have a chance’

Most NIL collectives operate independently of the universities whose athletes they support through the creation or facilitation of NIL opportunities. However, college athletics stakeholders have said many institutions have a preferred collective or that university leaders offer an unofficial blessing to the collectives they trust.

SANIL works at schools, not with them, Belzer said, distinguishing between the two prepositions.

“When we go to the school and say, ‘Hey, we want to do this but in order for us to be successful, we need you to introduce us to the right people in your community,'” Belzer said. “‘We need you to connect us with your donor base. We need you to be able to at least open up conversations so that we can go out and we can start building this community because essentially we’re doing it from scratch.’ And some schools have embraced that.”

In March, Bryant officially accepted invitations to join the Big South as an affiliate member for football and the America East for the rest of its athletic programs. The university previously competed in the NEC.

Now, Bryant and its athletes could potentially benefit from the university’s fan base and business community being an early adopter of an NIL collective, relative to its peers in its conferences and the region.

“It’s great when there’s a school, a smaller institution, that says, ‘Hey, no. We can do something. We may not have a million-dollar collective but maybe we can have a six-figure collective. Why not?'” Belzer said. “The schools that are proactive actually have a chance to do it. If you’re the last school in a mid-major conference or any conference that’s starting a collective, good luck.”

Tupper’s Kennel could position Bryant well in Northeast

Belzer evaluated the launch of Tupper’s Kennel compared to the NIL infrastructure at other institutions in the state of Rhode Island. Friar Family Collective, a Providence-focused collective, just launched in September. Rhode Island doesn’t have a publicly announced collective.

Belzer is hopeful and aspirational that Tupper’s Kennel will stack up favorably, adding that SANIL provides the same level of back-end support for a collective at a school like Bryant as it does for a collective that supports athletes at a Power 5 institution.

“Bryant actually has a legitimate opportunity to potentially have the biggest collective in the state and get access to the business community faster than anybody else because they’re proactive in the process,” Belzer said.

He affirmed the notion that Bryant could have an advantage relative to its peers.

“Bryant will set themselves up to be successful and put themselves in position as the top mid-major program in the Northeast because of the fact that they’ve gotten out ahead of this,” he said. “And because of the fact that we’re engaged with them and we will help supercharge those efforts. It’s that simple. When we go out and we work for Bryant, I am making phone calls to Northeastern businesses on behalf of Bryant. I’m not doing it on behalf of Albany or Cornell or some other institution.”