Bryce Young’s dad: One of the most important things with NIL ‘is to manage expectations’

The father of the most prominently marketed college football player of the nascent NIL era has some advice for how families should weigh NIL deals when a son or daughter is deciding where to sign:

Don’t.

“People are looking for the best NIL opportunities, which is short-term thinking,” said Craig Young, the father of Alabama star Bryce Young. “They should be focusing on what is the best academic institution for you? What is the best culture? What is the best coaching? Coaching staff?

“If there are NIL opportunities, then so be it. The best NIL opportunity is to go someplace and play well and build a name for yourself and build a brand for yourself through your play and your character and build a product that brands will want to align with.”

That’s easy for him to say. Depending on your perspective, Bryce Young is either a quarterback or a unicorn. If you watched more than a quarter of a college football game this past season, then you know that the Tide junior appeared in multiple ads for Dr Pepper and for Nissan. No college athlete in any sport has been as ubiquitous in American living rooms over the past five months as Young, who parlayed his 2021 Heisman Trophy into a healthy seven-figure income (sources say close to $4 million). And Young made that money with only minimal participation in the Alabama collective. He hired CAA to represent him.

“One of the most important things as a family and with your student-athlete is to manage expectations,” Craig Young said. “Our NIL story is amazing, for the most part pretty successful. It is not the norm.”

He knows that his advice to back-burner NIL is hard to follow. The Youngs didn’t have to ignore NIL. Way back in the prehistoric era, when Bryce Young signed with Alabama in December 2019, NIL didn’t exist. He is a member of the last class to make its recruiting decision without factoring NIL into the equation.

Craig Young is thrilled that NIL didn’t exist to turn the head of his son. That doesn’t make his advice any less valid. It may make it more valid. Here we are, not yet two years into the NIL era, and the one thing desperately needed by university administrators, college athletes and their parents is expertise. The NCAA built a road to riches, then erected 6-inch-high guardrails and refused to put so much as one radar gun on it. The governing organization has stood by and watched as schools brazenly step around its rule forbidding schools from tying NIL collectives to recruiting.

The NCAA is looking to Congress for help. The states are moving in both directions. Some states are enacting laws to govern NIL in colleges; some are enacting laws to grant NIL rights to high school players.

“You have a bevy of, quote unquote, ‘marketing agents’ that are now targeting kids and families at a younger age,” Craig Young said, “and I think that’s stunting emotional development, social development and sometimes even your athletic development. Kids are thinking just about NIL a little too soon.”

Most marketing agents work on commission. They need to make the deal. Craig Young stressed it’s important to remember that motive when considering terms.

“Making sure that whoever you entrust to be that marketing agent is a partnership, not only with the student-athlete but with your family,” Craig Young said. “Every marketing meeting, every decision, whatever brand you decide to align yourself with, whatever NIL deals you’ve taken – that should be a family discussion because that brand, that product, you just want to make sure that it’s aligned with your family values. As a parent, there should be someone there who’s the sounding board and kind of a watchdog whose only motive is protecting their son or daughter. That should be the parent along with compliance (officials) from the university.”

Until the NCAA finds a legal remedy – you should live so long – Craig Young said there still are measures that can be taken.

“It’s the responsibility of coaches and schools and even some of the brands to provide more education to the families,” Craig Young said. “I’m talking about financial literacy. I’m talking about programs that help (families) identify who’s a reputable marketing agent and who’s not, what are the questions to be asking, and there aren’t a lot of NCAA or nationally sanctioned programs that are providing that education.”

TeamAltemus has led financial literacy seminars for more than 40 athletic departments, including Georgia, Michigan State, Notre Dame, Ohio State and USC. Schools have a competitive incentive to create collectives. That incentive is recruiting. The need to teach athletes how to handle their newly found income is as critical to an athlete’s well-being as it is sudden.

“It’s practical education. It’s not classroom education,” CEO Courtney Altemus said. “More and more schools realize they’ve got too many kids distracted, they don’t know what they’re doing and they are not paying taxes (on NIL income).”

Craig Young’s advice for recruits and their parents to prioritize academics and football development over NIL deals is both commonsensical and blind to the now-now-now of how we live. Does anyone think long-term anymore? That kind of thinking worked well for Bryce Young. When it comes to maximizing academics, football and NIL, it would be nice to think he will become the rule rather than the exception.