Notre Dame-focused NIL collective Irish United launches

The NIL collective Irish United officially launched Thursday in an effort to support Notre Dame athletes’ NIL opportunities, starting with a focus on the university’s basketball players. Irish United is powered by the agency Student Athlete NIL (SANIL), which also runs collectives that support athletes at Oklahoma, Penn State and Rutgers, among other schools.

Every men’s basketball player has signed with the collective, according to SANIL CEO and co-founder Jason Belzer, who said Irish United will integrate women’s basketball players in the near future.

“Our focus has been on basketball,” Belzer said in a phone interview in October. “It’s a two-pronged approach. There is a 501(c)(3) component to ours but our focus is also mostly on the commercial side, similar to what we’ve done at Penn State and Rutgers and Oklahoma, which we launched last week. Our job is to figure out how we can drive as much revenue to the student-athletes at the university as possible.

“Notre Dame is obviously an amazing brand. There are a lot of fans of the program, a very unique program, and so we feel like there’s incredible opportunity for Notre Dame to get out ahead of NIL and so we want to do what we can to facilitate that.”

Irish United’s Board of Directors includes former Notre Dame men’s basketball players Jordan Cornette, Colin Falls, David Graves, Liam Nelligan and John Paxson.

SANIL sees an opportunity supporting basketball players

There are two other NIL collectives or NIL clubs that support Notre Dame athletes. Friends of the University of Notre Dame, Inc. (FUND), is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization whose board members include former quarterback and current FOX analyst Brady Quinn.

Irish Players Club is one of the many NIL clubs featuring football teammates that are supported by YOKE, a platform that offers athletes business and technological tools to establish paywalled communities.

Speaking roughly a month before the first college basketball games of the 2022-23 season, Belzer said there are significant NIL opportunities for basketball players at many institutions. Given the difference in the roster sizes of football and basketball teams, the latter group could operate more nimbly.

“Everybody talks about NIL in football, right? Football, football, football,” Belzer said. “But basketball is just as important to many of these institutions and there’s incredible tradition at schools like Notre Dame… So basketball is an interesting entree and it’s a little bit easier to manage than 85 football players when you have a roster of basically 13, 14 guys. It’s a little bit easier to go out and approach businesses and say, ‘Hey, let’s do a team-wide deal,’ because the investment is usually smaller and the activations are a little bit easier and flexible from that perspective.”

Mike Brey ‘has been very supportive’ of NIL

At the ACC spring meetings in May, Notre Dame men’s basketball coach Mike Brey made headlines for his blunt, pro-player commentary regarding athletes’ newfound rights in terms of NIL and the one-time transfer exception.

“I told a lot of young coaches when we were on the road in April, I said, ‘We got to stop complaining,’” Brey said. “Like, this is the world we’re in. Last time I checked, [we] make pretty good money. So everybody should shut up and adjust. You know, that’s just the world we’re in now.”

Coaches typically have an arm’s-length relationship with collectives that support their players but Belzer said Brey and his staff have been supportive of their players’ NIL opportunities.

“I can say that he has been very supportive,” Belzer said. “From day one, he has wanted student-athletes to be able to make money from their name, image and likeness and we do not ever start a collective unless we have the blessings of the right people at the university and the coaches who we’re going to work with. We want to have a good relationship with those individuals.

“We obviously need their cooperation because if they are not making their players available for NIL opportunities — I don’t want to say that as in they’re, you know, assisting us. More so as there are some coaches at some schools that are very sort of anti-NIL and they don’t really open up their kids for opportunities in terms of timing to be able to go do those types of things.

“And that’s not the case with Coach Brey. He has been door-open, allowing his kids to do whatever they would like from an NIL perspective, within reason. Obviously, again, Notre Dame is protective of their brand.”

Pursuit of ‘values and cultural expectation’ through NIL

Given Notre Dame’s status as a private, Catholic institution, the university, its athletes and alumni might approach NIL differently, especially regarding the university’s brand.

Belzer cited the example of Heart Of A Lope, a collective that SANIL powers to support athletes at Grand Canyon, a private, Christian institution. Bible studies are among the benefits that Heart Of A Lope offers subscribers, Belzer said.

“Notre Dame is not necessarily as outwardly religious but obviously there’s the Catholic affiliation,” Belzer said. “I think Notre Dame individuals, fans, donors, they want to have things done at a higher standard, if that makes sense. Probably the type of opportunities that the student-athletes will participate in will be of potentially a higher quality and they may pass up on things that other institutions may be OK with their student-athletes doing. And I think that’s a good thing.

“I think, you know, some coaches have gone out and [they] say, ‘Go get every dollar you can get,’ and other coaches have told their student-athletes, like, ‘You shouldn’t just take every deal. You should be careful. You should think about how you can really build a brand and make sure that who you’re aligning with makes sense.'”

Notre Dame athletes might be less likely to partner with companies that could be perceived as controversial, such as Barstool Sports or a brewery, Belzer said.

Irish United’s mission?

“How do we,” Belzer said, “bring the type of values and cultural expectation in line with what the university and the university’s alumni base expects of their student-athletes?”