Jim Cavale, Brandon Copeland launch Athletes.Org as membership organization for college athletes

In the last two years and change in college sports, athletes have been allowed to profit off their name, image and likeness for the first time in NCAA history. Many have had to file taxes for the first time and deal with questionable actors in the space. The drastic change has come against the backdrop of a television-fueled, ever-evolving conference realignment. Revenue sharing has never seemed so close.

Athletes have yet to truly share their voices on many of these issues.

Jim Cavale has witnessed it all. The founder and former CEO of INFLCR had countless conversations with athletes who are trying to navigate the new world of college athletes. Athletic departments have provided some assistance but many have feared violating NCAA bylaws.

Enter Athletes.Org (AO), the latest venture from Cavale launched Wednesday morning. With former Penn and NFL linebacker Brandon Copeland serving as co-founder and CEO, the non-profit organization provides on-demand support to athletes navigating the college experience while providing a platform to speak on the future of college sports. High school athletes with college commitments, college athletes and current and former professional athletes will have the ability to join the organization, which will feature an app where they can interact with experts.

Through the membership, athletes will have access to ask any question to the app, interact with a Pro bono expert and view a registry of AO-verified agents and collectives. AO is not a union, however, the organization intends to educate athletes on the current issues facing college sports and create chapters based on sports and conferences.

“For a long time, there have been a lot of organizations and associations for everyone else, except for the athletes,” Cavale told On3. “I mean, the NCAA has been the association for college athletics programs for over a century. The AFCA has been the association for head football and assistant football coaches for a long time, and I can keep going right back to ADs, etc. There’s never really been an association for college athletes.

“… It has never been more complex to be a college athlete than it is today. They need an organization that they can go to that they can trust. That’s theirs, that will give them on-demand support when they need it and will help them have more of a voice to speak into the future of college athletics.”

On3 is a media partner with AO. Through the partnership, On3 will promote the free membership with Athletes.Org to On3 Elite Athletes, who will earn a badge when they sign up for AO.

“Athletes need a voice and resources that have the athletes’ best interest at heart,” On3’s founder and CEO Shannon Terry said. “Athletes.org is a first step in giving athletes the roadmap and support to navigate a very complicated and demanding time.”

How AO will provide platform to athletes

Athletes who sign up and become members of AO will be provided assistance with brand building, financial education and NIL contracts. But the membership stretches past that, with chapters and a voting system expected to be put in place.

In recent years, the idea of unionization has become prevalent in college sports. Northwestern football players petitioned the National Labor Relations Board in 2015 with hopes to form a union. The board denied their claim that athletes are university employees.

Jason Stahl and the College Football Players Association tried to unionize the sport, most recently with Penn State quarterback Sean Clifford last summer. The result was Clifford walking back the intention of forming a chapter in Happy Valley. The former Nittany Lion quarterback has publicly backed Athletes.Org.

The National Labor Relations Board Los Angeles Region’s office complaint filed in May against USC, the Pac-12 and the NCAA marked the latest step in athletes being designated as employees of their schools, conferences or the NCAA.

“If you ask a lot of athletes, do you want to be an employee? Probably a lot more would say ‘Yes,’ without learning what that means,” Cavale said. “Once they learn what being an employee means, what they would lose from a benefits standpoint, what they would take on from a tax liability standpoint, a lot of them would change their answer. This isn’t just about them having a voice and that’s it. We’re going to give them a voice. But we want them to learn and listen. To create their position and have that voice on what the future of college sports should be. This is not a union – a union is when you have somebody at the top who solely is advocating for the athletes.”

Viewed as a power broker in college sports, Cavale has deep connections across the landscape. Asked how many administrators have reacted to the news of Athletes.Org, he said many have been open to the idea.

“This is not in an us versus them situation between college athletes and their respective college athletics programs and conferences,” he said. “The goal here is to have everyone win. When the college athletes win, when we do what’s best for them the college athletics programs and their conferences will win, too. That’s literally the structure of our company to accomplish the win-win.

“In a situation like conference realignment, one of our two promises is on-demand support and then a voice. We want to give them more of a voice to speak into what’s happening. Right now, that starts with surveying our member athletes that are in the Pac-12 chapter.”

Athletes.Org to keep agents, collectives in check

More than 200 collectives have populated the college athletics landscape since the inception of NIL in July 2021. They have become necessary to compete in college football and basketball, with wide swaths of donors coming together to pool funds.

Yet, there have been stories of NIL deals gone wrong, none more public than the Jaden Rashada saga at Florida. The highly touted quarterback from Pittsburg, California, was offered $13.85 million to play for the Gators. After a missed payment, the Gator Collective eventually sent a letter terminating the contract. Rashada opted to stay on the path to enrollment in Gainesville, until ultimately requesting a release from his National Letter of Intent. 

While Rasahda’s story went public, similar narratives have emerged. The same goes for NIL agents, who in some situations boost their service fees to cash in. Athletes.Org hopes to keep the actors in the NIL space accountable with AO Verified.

“We will be launching with all of the collectives listed in the registry, whether they’ve been verified by us or not,” Cavale said. “And so athletes can just go look at a whole registry of every collective we know exists, and all of the agencies we know exist. Then for the ones who go through our certification, they will have an AO-verified badge to show that they’ve gone through our certification and they checked the boxes around standardized contracts, tax reporting, distribution, etc.

“All we’re trying to do is give athletes a trusted place to go check out people that they’re about to work with. We just want to give the recruit, who’s now signed to play at X school and knew that if he did that there could be an opportunity with X school’s collective. We’re trying to give him once he signs a way to vet that collective. We also have a background check system.”

Since NCAA president Charlie Baker took over the job this spring, the former Massachusetts governor has made countless trips to Washington, D.C., to lobby Congress for a federal NIL mandate. On his wish list has been a registry of NIL deals, a certification process for agents and a uniform NIL standard.

While AO can’t enforce an NIL standard, a certification process for agents and collectives could assist the governing body. Cavale emphasized the organization can strip a party of their verification.

“AO Verified is really important because whether it’s an agent or a collective, there have been empty promises made to athletes that have inspired athletes to make decisions on transferring and other key decisions that they regretted,” Cavale said. “We want to prevent that from happening. No. 1, because we want athletes to be protected to get the deal they’ve signed. But No. 2, we don’t want rogue businesses or business people being able to take advantage of athletes with no accountability.

“Because the athletes are members of this organization, they can actually go and review any agent or collective they’ve worked with. And those reviews can lead to a review by us to see if they should be verified any longer.”