Athletes like CJ Stroud, Caleb Williams share NIL success with teams

Maybe someday there will be a story about a college locker room that was torn apart because players allegedly prioritized NIL deals over the team’s on-field success. However, for now, that concern appears to be something of a straw-man argument, sprinkled with a dash of fear-mongering.

Ohio State quarterback CJ Stroud gifted each of his teammates with a $500 gift card to Express before the Buckeyes’ Week 1 matchup with Notre Dame so that each player could buy a new game day suit.

Whether Stroud or Express covered the cost, you can do the math of that bill — $500 multiplied by a roster that’s in excess of 100 players.

Players on both sides of the rivalry known as “The Game” have shown generosity through NIL. Michigan quarterback Cade McNamara gifted his offensive linemen fitted PING golf clubs and Ohio State running back TreVeyon Henderson‘s NIL deal with Chipotle featured the linemen who block for him.

USC quarterback Caleb Williams signed an NIL deal with the popular headphone company Beats by Dre.

“I mean you see Caleb Williams, he got all of us Beats,” USC wide receiver Brenden Rice recently told On3. “It was really cool, just as a team, because he had that huge Beats sponsorship and that deal, and for him to give back in our situation, give back to his teammates, it feels as though it’s a type of brotherhood just to be able to do that.”

There’s now two seasons’ worth of evidence of college athletes — star quarterbacks in particular — giving back to their teammates, in addition to charitable causes. Former Pitt quarterback Kenny Pickett treated his offensive linemen last season to weekly dinners at The Oaklander Hotel’s Spirits & Tales restaurant thanks to an NIL deal.

Caleb Williams gives Beats to teammates, staffers

Williams, who’s arguably the highest-profile college football player who transferred in the offseason, joined a USC program full of transfers. There were 19 transfers listed on USC’s two-deep depth chart prior to Week 1.

Giving each of his teammates two pairs of Beats headphones, which can run anywhere from roughly $100 to $350 depending on the model, is a quick way to establish goodwill within a locker room.

Thank you @CALEBcsw 🎧#FightOn✌️ pic.twitter.com/aF9v2i7Ysy

— USC Football ✌️ (@USC_FB) April 23, 2022

“Caleb is a very humble person,” Rice said. “We’re all thankful for him. He’s a great leader and a better teammate. Just the fact that with the whole Beats situation, it was amazing just to see, ‘OK, you have a guy coming in here from a totally different school. He just got paid [through] a big deal for Beats.’

“And then trying to figure him out, trying to learn more about him and you see him and you see how he carries himself and for him to give back to our own teammates.”

However, Williams’ generosity didn’t stop there.

Not only did he also give the USC men’s and women’s basketball teams Beats headphones, but as Rice tells it, anyone who works in or around the USC football program might have had a chance of receiving a free pair of headphones from the Trojans’ new signal-caller.

“It’s not only the teammates but as well as the staff,” Rice said. “That was the big part of it. I saw him give back to the staff. I saw him go ahead and give a pair of Beats to custodians and saying, ‘Thank you for your work. Thank you for your service,’ and stuff like that.

“That takes a big perspective towards me and showing me that, like, ‘OK, this guy is a dude that I would fight alongside when we’re on that football field.'”

‘We all try to help each other out’ with NIL

Stroud and Williams are two of the most marketable college athletes. They rank in the top six of the On3 NIL 100, which is the first of its kind and the defacto NIL ranking of the top 100 high school and college athletes ranked by market valuation.

However, their approach of sharing the fruits of their NIL deals is not unique.

Michigan defensive back DJ Turner II, whose On3 NIL Valuation of $464,000 ranks No. 56 among college football players as of Sept. 9, told On3 over the summer, “There’ll be certain deals that I might get and then I’ll say, ‘Can I bring two of my teammates?’ And they’ll be like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s perfect.’… We’ve got a good environment going on.

“It’s not about, ‘How much money did you make?’ No. We all try to help each other out.”

Last season, Michigan running back Blake Corum and wide receiver AJ Henning took their teammates to Outback Steakhouse after they signed an NIL deal with the restaurant.

Even if an athlete isn’t part of a specific deal, Turner said, he can still get a free meal through a teammate. Or who knows, maybe a new suit or $500 worth of new headphones.

“I don’t think they view it as this truly capitalistic, competitive marketplace,” Horizon League Commissioner Julie Roe Lach previously told On3, referring to college athletes in the NIL landscape and the league’s creation of the first conference-wide NIL marketplace. “I think they see that all ships rise with the rising tide. I think that, to me, is pretty special about what we can do here.”

Recruits share importance of NIL

You’ll hear common refrains about how athletes, especially high school and college football players, approach NIL and the hierarchy of their priorities, with sayings such as “It’s a 40-year decision, not four years,” “NFL over NIL,” or “keep the main thing, the main thing.”

When On3 surveyed 85 recruits who were ranked in the top 200 of the On3 Consensus for the 2023 recruiting class, a school’s coaching staff and ability to develop players for the NFL was the most popular response when the recruits were asked to rank factors in their recruitment in order of importance.

When On3 asked the recruits to rank where NIL factors in when making their college decision on a scale from one to 10, with 10 being the highest, 22.9% of the prospects said NIL ranks at a level of five.

Wherever NIL falls on the order of importance for an individual athlete, there’s an increasing number of examples of highly marketable athletes using their NIL deals to unite their locker room, not divide it.