Rutgers-focused collective offers deals to football, basketball players

Rutgers-focused NIL collective Knights of The Raritan announced Tuesday that every member of the Scarlet Knight’s football, men’s and women’s basketball teams – walk-ons included – will receive an NIL deal in 2023.

News of the NIL offerings was first reported by Brian Fonseca of NJ.com.

Knights of The Raritan is operated by the agency Student Athlete NIL (SANIL). The news at Rutgers is similar to what was announced recently by another SANIL-powered collective at Oklahoma.

Crimson and Cream revealed last week it was signing or offering an NIL deal to all 115 members of the Sooners’ football program. Since the offer was disclosed, around 50 Sooner football players have shared that they’ve signed agreements.

The announcement at Rutgers is a sign the Scarlet Knights are becoming major players in the NIL ecosystem after fans have seen how deals have impacted roster management and player retention with top programs across the country.

“This announcement puts RU at the forefront of this landscape and provides partnership opportunities for the athletes involved with the Rutgers football, men’s basketball, and women’s basketball teams,” Knights of The Raritan president Jon Newman told NJ.com.

Like the deals at Oklahoma, the contracts with Rutgers’ players are retainers and a marketing guarantee in which the student-athlete will promote businesses brought into the collective. The student-athletes will make a baseline minimum through the agreement. However, the exact terms of the deals weren’t released. Newman told NJ.com the collective will fund every deal made with both basketball teams and many of the deals for the football program, but details are still being ironed out.

Since it launched last year, the collective said it’s completed around 60 deals with student-athletes across 15 of Rutgers’ sports. The collective also recently said it raised nearly $650,000 in a fundraising campaign.

Rutgers’ teamwide NIL deals a sign of the times

Team-wide NIL opportunities are becoming more and more common.

For example, The Matador Club at Texas Tech turned heads with its roster deal for $25,000 annually. SMU’s Boulevard Collective announced partnerships on both the football and basketball side for $36,000 a year for NIL activity. Plus, Startup Waco recently announced a teamwide NIL opportunity for the Baylor football team. Additionally, Boilermaker Alliance offered NIL opportunities to all 385 scholarship student-athletes at Purdue. The deals will be available in every sport and for both men and women.

But the move by Knights of The Raritan – especially one that includes walk-ons – is something that will surely help coaches sell to prospects that there’s a unique NIL opportunity at Rutgers.

“Focusing on the entire current roster has a couple of benefits,” Mit Winter, a sports attorney and NIL expert at Kennyhertz Perry LLC, recently told On3. “One, it keeps all of the players happy. If you have a situation where only new players are signing deals, that can quickly lead to issues with team dynamics. Two, it’s extremely helpful for coaches when they’re recruiting. As we all know, coaches and collectives aren’t supposed to promise specific deals to induce a player to commit.

“When the entire roster has deals with a collective, coaches don’t need to promise deals. It allows them to talk about the deals that current players have and to talk about the opportunities that might await once a recruit steps foot on campus.”

More deals like this on the way?

Sports and entertainment attorney David McGriff recently told On3 this type of teamwide deal could signal another shift in the development of NIL.

“I love the move because not only is it uniform, it alleviates some of the uncertainty for those student-athletes as to how they are going to find their own opportunities,” McGriff said. “It’s fair to say that many student-athletes are unsure of how to get started in this space. Deals like this take away some of the guesswork.”

Winter agrees.

“Assuming they have the resources, I think we’ll see more collectives follow this model,” Winter said. “And not just with football. It works with any sport.”