All-America team showed how NIL shaped college basketball this season – and will continue to do so

Big men who play for big-brand schools have been some of the biggest earners in men’s basketball through name, image and likeness opportunities. The dynamic has changed, and in some cases made easier, the stay-or-go decision for elite college players who face an uncertain pro future. This month has highlighted the potential benefits for the players and their teams.

Seven of the 15 players the Associated Press named as first-, second- or third-team All-Americans on Tuesday are forwards or centers who have spent at least four years in college. Senior big men Drew Timme, Trayce Jackson-Davis and Oscar Tshiebwe are the leading scorers for No. 3 seed Gonzaga, No. 4 seed Indiana and No. 6 seed Kentucky, respectively.

In addition, redshirt junior forward Jalen Wilson for No. 1 seed Kansas, senior guard/forward Jaime Jaquez Jr. for No. 2 seed UCLA and fifth-year senior forward Keyontae Johnson for No. 3 seed Kansas State, whose styles of play are more perimeter-oriented, also earned All-America honors for tournament-bound teams.

Their teams have the advent of the NCAA’s NIL era to thank for their respective tournament seeding and potential. Before July 2021, any of these players may have bypassed remaining collegiate eligibility to start their professional careers, either in the United States or overseas.

Tshiebwe headlined a wave of elite big men who decided to return to school. He became the first reigning Naismith Men’s College Player of the Year to play another season in college since North Carolina’s Tyler Hansbrough elected to do so after the 2008 season.

North Carolina forward Armando Bacot also returned for his senior year; he helped lead the Tar Heels to the national championship game in 2022, when No. 8-seeded North Carolina fell to top-seeded Kansas. He was named a third-team All-American this season, though the Heels didn’t make the NCAA tournament.

“I can tell you, Armando’s made more in NIL than he would’ve on a two-way contract in the G League,” Daniel Hennes, the CEO of the online event booking platform Engage and an advisor to Bacot, said in a Zoom interview last month.

Every NBA franchise is allowed two-way contracts, which allow players who have three or fewer years of NBA “service” to be active for up to 50 regular-season NBA games while also competing in the G League. They’re currently valued at $508,891 for the season, which is half of the rookie minimum. NBA franchises are allowed to have 15 active players on their roster, but two-way contracts expanded each team’s potential pool of players to 17.

‘The best of both worlds’

Last April, Bacot became the first NCAA Division I men’s basketball player to record six double-doubles in a single NCAA tournament. Bacot had an 11-point, 21-rebound performance in a national-semifinal win over Duke, helping the Tar Heels advance to the national championship, where they lost to Kansas.

“After they beat Duke in the Final Four, he texted me like, ‘I think brands are going to want to work with me now,’ ” Hennes said. “He realized that when you have those moments – look, we did some NIL stuff last season. It’s not like he had nothing. He made a good amount of money but it just wasn’t the same national level, it wasn’t the same size of deal, it wasn’t the same caliber, and then you go out and perform the way he did, and now he’s on the top of the list for every single brand that wants to do anything in college basketball.”

Another benefit: Bacot enjoys his time in college. “I think for him it was about he loves Carolina,” Hennes said. “He really, really loves that school. … It just so happened that he also was going to have a lot of NIL opportunities where it probably made more financial sense for him to come back than for him to try to go to the NBA at that point. It was just kind of this perfect storm of events.”

Hennes started working with Michigan center Hunter Dickinson after Dickinson announced his return to school last year. In an interview in June, Dickinson told On3 he had talked to Bacot, Jackson-Davis and Timme about their respective decision-making processes. Dickinson, a junior, helped the Wolverines reach the Sweet 16 a year ago; like UNC, Michigan didn’t make the NCAA tournament this season.

“I think NIL played a factor with all of us,” Dickinson said. “Being able to not have to worry about, you know, like, money but also being able to play college basketball – I think was the best of both worlds for a lot of us.”

NIL vs. NBA

A current high-major college assistant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, speculated that it would take the opportunity to earn NIL income in the low six figures to potentially interest an all-conference player who’s a fringe NBA draft prospect in a return to school. He also wondered if players might view a professional future through the best-case scenario of the potential millions of dollars the NBA can offer.

“It depends,” said Jack Lieb, the founder and president of Fraction, a Chicago-based NIL, marketing and player representation agency. “If you’re (going to be) a super-senior and you’re not an NBA player but you think you have a shot at going two-way, making G League Elite Camp, potentially Portsmouth (Invitational Tournament, a scouting event) and then you’ve got a first-division, second-division evaluation overseas in Europe, or you’re getting valued at six-figure-plus to come back to school, then, obviously, you know the math and you can make the decision there.”

Fraction has signed more than 20 athletes as clients, and Lieb said he hopes the agency soon will have a roster of roughly 50 athletes. Texas forward Dylan Disu, recently named the Big 12 Tournament MVP, is one of them.

“Especially the trajectory that Dylan Disu’s on right now, (if) he’s going to come back to school [he has one season of eligibility left], it’s obviously going to be for a very high price,” Lieb said. “With that said, I think he’s got (a) trajectory to put himself in the NBA. If he wants to come back to school, he’ll have some very good options there as well, obviously first and foremost with Texas.”

Speaking in general about the role Fraction can play for the clients on its roster, Lieb said the agency wants to negotiate with affiliated NIL collectives on behalf of athletes after they commit and enroll at a school.

Hennes said it requires making an educated guess when a player weighs the verifiable and sometimes guaranteed money in the pro ranks compared to the sometimes-nebulous NIL landscape. The equation can include a player’s personality, social media reach and recent on-court success, plus a given school’s fan base and alumni network. The process also requires some level of projection as to the level of future spending in the NIL market, given its relative newness in college athletics’ current era.

2 tiers of NIL, on numerous levels

It might not be a coincidence that this group of senior big men returned to the schools they did.

Indiana, Kentucky and North Carolina are basketball blue bloods. Gonzaga and Michigan have each appeared in two national championship games in the past nine NCAA tournaments.

“I think even within that fringe segment (of NBA prospects), there’s guys that are going to have – depending on their university and their marketability – they’re going to have big NIL opportunities that are going to be hard to ignore the significance,” said the high-major assistant. “Then there’s going to be sort of high mid-major, low-major-type kids that are going from just making the all-conference team to maybe being player of the year or getting to the NCAA tournament. But the NIL number there that that place is going to be able to generate won’t be off the charts that would override other decision criteria.”

There are two types of so-called “NIL” markets, which can be obscured, blended and similarly packaged as NIL deals. One type is for athletes’ publicity rights – their names, images and likenesses. The other is for their athletic talent, often intended as a de facto salary.

Even within what administrators or coaches sometimes describe as “true” or “real” NIL opportunities, there are different levels based upon a player’s following and marketability, and whether it reaches local, regional or national audiences.

“You have two tiers of NIL,” Hennes said. “You got schools that have a powerful local presence, and that’s great for guys and they can do some NIL (deals). Then you have schools that have that national brand and that national appeal, and that means it’s not just the local presence. It’s any brand that sponsors or is involved in college basketball; it’s going to know who the stars are on that team, and it’s going to have them top of mind when it comes time to work with them.”

Beyond the current class of senior All-Americans, how many players nationally may have returned to school last offseason because they can now profit from their NIL rights?

“Oh, dozens,” Hennes said. “Dozens, for sure. Dozens. Absolutely, and that’s a great thing because those players coming back to school, they’re coming back first and foremost to get better at their game.

“The thing is they used to have no choice because there may be financial hardships or financial situations where they would have to go to the league when they weren’t ready. Now, if you’re a good player, you don’t have to do that. You can come back, get better at your game, get an education and put some money in your pocket to provide for yourself and your family. That’s what’s so great about NIL – you’ve got guys who are staying in school longer and they’re going to be better players and better people and more well-rounded if the sport doesn’t work.”

Bacot’s deals include equity in a company

Bacot had two partnerships that stand out. One is a deal with the sports nutrition company BOA Nutrition in which he received equity in the company. The second was a cameo on the TV show “Outer Banks.” Hennes, who said he wasn’t involved in negotiating Bacot’s appearance on the show, said Bacot received a direct message from one of the show’s directors, a North Carolina fan.

There were no short-term money grabs, Hennes said, who added that Bacot regularly asked to arrange calls with executives to thank them for their partnership and to learn more about a company’s goals.

Jim Kitchen, a professor of the practice of strategy and entrepreneurship in the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, taught Bacot in class. Kitchen invested in and joined the board of BOA Nutrition, which sought to partner with college athletes. Kitchen suggested Bacot as a potential partner for the company, given the combination of Bacot’s individual and team success, plus his interest in business.

BOA Nutrition President and CEO Jon Pritchett described the company in a phone interview as “an early-stage startup company without tons of cash that we wanted to spend.” Pritchett said the company’s leaders were unsure how many direct sales the partnership would lead to but thought Bacot represented an important pairing for the company’s brand and exposure.

The parties’ agreement included “a little bit of cash but also had a pretty significant equity component,” as well as a commission from sales Bacot drove, Pritchett said. For the equity component, Bacot received stock options for BOA Nutrition.

“It was actually one of my favorite deals we worked on,” Hennes said. “BOA made us an initial offer and I got to sit down with Armando, show him the cap table, show him share prices, show him values and it was a two-way discussion between Armando and me. … My favorite thing was I was talking to Armando about all of this and Armando’s like, ‘You know, I understand all of this.’ Because of his business education, he’s like, ‘I can follow all of this’ and it was a two-way conversation as we figured out, ‘OK, how many shares do we want to ask for? How do we structure cash and stock? How long do we want the stock option term to be?’ It was really just a fun, rewarding process.”

Players like Bacot, Jackson-Davis, Timme and Tshiebwe all have another year of eligibility – the so-called “COVID year” provided by the NCAA. Each theoretically could decide to return again.

However, Jackson-Davis told Stadium’s Jeff Goodman in February, “I feel like four years is enough for me.” A representative of Jackson-Davis declined an interview request.

“Certainly being a national star,” Pritchett said, “allows you in this day and age of NIL – at least for now, while there’s still kind of not much of a regulatory rope around it from the NCAA perspective – I think it allows you, a guy like Armando, to have lots of options and make maybe similar kind of money staying in college rather than going into the NBA.

“Most people will say it’s a lot more fun to be in college. It used to be while it was fun that was all you were trading it for, like Hansbrough. Now, maybe you can trade it for also having a similar kind of payday. But I do think those kinds of athletes are few and far between at the college level.”