Inside the launch of Yea Alabama, the school’s official NIL ‘entity’

Nine days after Yea Alabama launched as Alabama’s official name, image and likeness “entity” – an intentional attempt to brand the organization as something other than an NIL collective – it helped parry an attempted zinger from an Auburn student’s College GameDay sign. Instead, the organization parlayed it into a fundraising opportunity.

The Auburn fan’s sign, which ESPN cameras captured on TV before the rivals faced off in men’s basketball, stated in all caps, “WHERE LEGENDS ARE PAID.” The “A” in paid was written like Alabama’s script “A” logo.

The dig didn’t land the same way in the NIL era as it might have previously.

Jay McPhillips, the executive director of Yea Alabama, tuned into GameDay on February 11, but he had stepped away when the sign was on TV.

“Obviously, my phone started blowing up with some of the allusions that people were making to the student’s sign,” McPhillips told On3 via phone. “Not sure what he was thinking now that NIL is legal and students can – through name, image and likeness – legally get paid.”

A bit later, Yea Alabama’s Twitter account quote-tweeted a picture of the sign with a link to its website and a winking emoji. “And here’s where you can support our efforts … ,” McPhillips wrote in a tweet.

McPhillips described the tweet as “semi-viral.” He said the tongue-in-cheek discussions about turning the phrase into T-shirts started around 11 a.m. Central, when the pregame show was ending.

“But with all things like that, you need to make sure that you’re winning the game that day before you can really do something like what the shirts ended up being for us,” McPhillips said.

Alabama’s 77-69 victory gave Yea Alabama the green light it needed.

At 6:39 p.m., Yea Alabama began to officially promote on Twitter a line of shirts that turned the Auburn student’s sign into merchandise. There was no script “A,” but they did feature the Yea Alabama logo. “Their words, not ours,” stated part of the tweet, which received more than 262,000 impressions. And Alabama fans purchased roughly 250 shirts, McPhillips said.

Yea Alabama intentionally described as an ‘NIL entity’

The university news release that announced the launch of Yea Alabama described the organization as an entity rather than a collective. Some other third-party organizations have taken a similar approach.

The Seton Hall-focused Hall Hands on Deck, which publicly launched four days after Yea Alabama, described itself as an “NIL collaborative” in a news release. Division Street, which Nike co-founder Phil Knight and other Oregon alums launched in September 2021, described itself as a “sport venture,” well before the term collective became commonplace in the NIL landscape.

There’s no agreed-upon definition of collective, which can apply to independent organizations that range from limited liability companies to 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations.

“I think the primary reason was just because some of the negative connotation … with ‘collective’ being a potential four-letter word,” said McPhillips, who previously was the director of development for the university’s College of Arts and Sciences. “In fact, I believe athletic director Greg Byrne used that same analogy during an interview when speaking about NIL at some point in the past.

“There’s certain connotation that comes with the word ‘collective,’ and while we have operations that seem very similar to other collectives and how they operate, because of ours being multifaceted – it’s not just a collective of funds. It is a much more diverse, full entity that helps our student-athletes in multiple capacities.”

Yea Alabama has replaced the now-defunct High Tide Traditions collective in the Alabama ecosystem. The latter’s website and social media accounts no longer are active.

A recently announced men’s basketball trading card series will lead to the production of 10,000 packs that feature Alabama players. ONIT Marketing has worked with Yea Alabama on the card set after initially pairing with High Tide Traditions. “We were pretty far along with Cole (Price) and High Tide (Traditions) before the merger of their collective or whatever happened over there,” ONIT Marketing CEO Chad McCloud told On3.

“High Tide Traditions was the sole collective here at the university for, you know, roughly the first year and a half of NIL’s existence in the college space, and they were great,” McPhillips said. “They were a fabulous partner. They helped our student-athletes a lot in that amount of time. But as with all things, the evolution of NIL, we were seeking to create as turnkey of an experience (as we could), not only for our student-athletes but for external businesses, potential sponsors, for fans.”

The Alabama Secretary of State website lists Yea Alabama, Inc., as a domestic non-profit corporation.

McPhillips declined to share any of the entity’s fundraising goals, membership or the number of athletes with whom the organization will partner.

Yea Alabama hires longtime Alabama beat writer

As the combination of the compensation model and transfer portal has changed college athletics, there has been a steady trickle of new hires with new job titles to keep up with the evolving landscape. Athletic department staff directories reflect some of the organizational changes, but NIL-related, third-party organizations have adapted, too.

Yea Alabama hired longtime Alabama beat writer Aaron Suttles, who most recently covered the Tide for The Athletic, to be the organization’s director of content.

At the root of many NIL collectives, clubs, entities or collaboratives is the allure of new, if not exclusive, access to athletes. As these organizations pursue sustainable fundraising and operational models, neither wooing six- or seven-figure donors nor selling the hope of championships is likely to be an effective long-term strategy by itself. What’s the benefit for fans or businesses if a team isn’t winning at the level it’s expected to?

As McPhillips explained, Suttles’ role is to provide deep dives into Alabama’s biggest stars and lesser-known athletes who have captivating stories to tell.

“NIL as a proposition for our student-athletes – they’re only going to be able to increase their brand, their name, image and likeness through engaging storytelling,” McPhillips said. “And we kind of felt like there was nobody who was better-suited for that than someone like Aaron, who has the experience that he does. … That was part of the entire design process when we were launching Yea Alabama: ‘What is going to set us apart in the NIL landscape from any other NIL group that’s doing this?’ And that was one of the competitive advantages that we felt like we would offer.”

The NIL landscape in the SEC has changed this academic year, particularly since the start of the new year.

The 12th Man Foundation, which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that is Texas A&M’s athletic department’s independent fundraising arm, recently launched the 12th Man+ Fund, which will facilitate NIL deals. At the end of January, LSU announced Bayou Traditions as its official collective.

“From the formulation of Yea Alabama, we didn’t construct anything in comparison to any of our peers,” McPhillips said. “Naturally, there’s going to be some comparison that will be done not only by media entities, by student-athletes. It’s only going to be natural for us to look to see what some of our peers are doing. It would be dumb for us not to.

“However, the foundation and the time that I have spent launching Yea Alabama – we’ve been kind of laser-focused on what we want to do with the brand, what we want to do from a content delivery standpoint, how we want to structure our monthly subscriptions and what we want to offer our fan base.”