Davion Mintz, Keion Brooks Jr. talk with KSR about Kentucky's NIL approach

The 2021-22 Kentucky Wildcats Men’s Basketball team is going to be full of firsts.

They’ll be the first to play after a truncated COVID-19 infected season. The first to play after the program’s first single-digit win season in nearly 100 years. The first to learn and utilize everything that comes with the new name, image, and likeness rules.

Despite the roster being loaded with veterans and upperclassmen, there are going to be a lot of firsts for most of these ‘Cats.

But nothing will be more challenging, and at the same time opportunistic, than navigating through NIL legislation that went into effect earlier this summer. Student-athletes can now make money off of their brand through marketing and whatever avenues they can legally find. It’s going to change everything that the world has come to know about collegiate athletics–hopefully for the better.

For a school as popular and recognized as the University of Kentucky, especially when it comes to the game of basketball, the money-making possibilities are virtually endless.

Back in July, the entire Kentucky Men’s Basketball roster signed a deal with ProCampsU to help create and manage future camps and events that relate to NIL. Other smaller, individual deals have come through as well, such as Dontaie Allen signing with Bojangles. Then, last week, KSR announced a partnership with ProCampsU to help provide behind-the-scenes coverage for fans along with creating fan-friendly environments.

The inaugural event was the Players First Fantasy Experience, which was held last weekend. Next up will be the debut of the “Fans First” Fan Fest on Sept. 18 at Transylvania University that will include a dunk contest, three-point shootout, and much more. These will be the first two of many events to come.

In recent one-on-one interviews with KSR, current Kentucky Men’s Basketball players Davion Mintz and Keion Brooks Jr. gave their thoughts on how they’ve been adapting to NIL rules early on, some of the strangest NIL requests they’ve received thus far, and why they decided to embrace these new opportunities as a collective team.

Team-first approach to NIL with charity in mind

“With some deals, it’s important for us that we reach out and try to get our own individual deals,” Davion Mintz told KSR. “But as much as we can, try to do it collectively and get the team going. It just makes it fun and engaging, not only for us but for the community and the people of Kentucky and outside of that. Anytime we can do that and have opportunities to donate to charities, that’s a decision we came up with collectively as a team. It’s just great.”

After an entire season of being separated from their teammates for lengthy and unusual amounts of time, working as a unified group is extra important for the success of the upcoming year.

But not only that. These players want to get back out in the public and interact with fans, sign autographs, and help others in their communities as many of them have been doing for years. That was a big reason why the team decided that they would be donating 10 percent of the money they earn from these events to charities. Right now, this is about giving back more than anything.

Playing on the biggest stage presents the biggest opportunities and NIL is no different.

Going forward, we are asking that any business opportunity presented to our team include a plan for a 10% donation to charity. We want to leave an impact with BBN that extends off the court.

— Keion Brooks Jr. (@KeionB_12) August 27, 2021

Kentucky freshman TyTy Washington hinted on Twitter that Brooks Jr. was the one who came up with the idea to donate a portion of the proceeds to charity, but Brooks Jr. doesn’t see it as “his idea”. One of the main purposes behind partnering with ProCampsU as a team was to help bring them closer together.

“It was more of a collective thing. I’m not going to say I came up with it but we came together as a team and decided this would be something that is good to do,” Keion Brooks Jr. told KSR about the idea behind donating 10 percent of NIL team earnings to charity. “Especially with us making some money, it’s always good to give back. We’ve been put in a position where we’re blessed. We’ve got some good opportunities and some great things around us so it’s been good to give back to some people that may be less fortunate than us.”

“It was more kinda like a team approach,” Mintz said about partnering with ProCampsU. “They, I don’t want to say attacked us, but reached out to us, individually, but more of like okay guys, this is going to be more of a team thing. We would need to get your support from the city of Lexington and the fanbase. We kinda knew this wouldn’t be an individual deal but more of a team thing. It was really good, it made it really simple. We knew that coming out, ProCamps would handle a lot of the things on the backend to make it simple for us to just come out, show up, and they already proved to be an organized group so the decision collectively became pretty easy for us.”

Trusted NIL partners in ProCamps, KSR

Kentucky has been partnered with ProCamps for several years now, so the connection was already there and made for a smooth selection process by the players. But what about unknown entities? People looking to take advantage of college students trying to make some extra cash?

For Brooks Jr., he’s already someone who takes a careful approach in life. That certainly won’t change when it comes to talking with strangers or businesses about NIL opportunities.

“Me personally I take everything very cautiously,” Brooks Jr. added. “Because like you said this is new to everyone and you have to navigate to try to find out who’s legit, who just wants to take advantage of you, but then on the flip side, who really wants to help you, who really wants to be able to put your brand out there and market you. So you have to find the defined balance of who to talk to, who to sign with.”

The UK Athletics department has already attempted to ensure the players don’t run into any shady dealers. T.J. Beisner, a former KSR website editor, was hired specifically to help navigate through any issues or questions that might arise. The players are being drilled with information on what they can and can’t do when it comes to potential NIL deals.

“We just hired, I don’t want to butcher his name, his nickname is T.J. (Beisner). They just hired him as part of the staff to try and help control,” Mintz said. “Then we have our great compliance office who is always giving us those tough meetings, about an hour-and-a-half long meetings. But it’s definitely necessary because it helps us be proactive and also be smart about what we’re doing, and also bringing in advisors and people to help and I think that’s very important because before, a lot of us, they come here and start our professional career. It’s important that you learn how to manage and understand the process of just life. So Kentucky is doing a great job with that for us.”

John Calipari, NIL advocate

For anyone familiar with Kentucky head coach John Calipari, they would quickly tell you that he’s just as excited about the money his players can make than the actual players are themselves. He lives to market his athletes and now he can do it with far fewer hoops to try and jump through.

Calipari used to make life-changing money for players once they left Kentucky for the professionals, but now he can do it while they’re staying right here in Lexington.

“It’s good to see how his mind is always turning and churning to make opportunities for us,” Brooks Jr. said about Calipari. “I think he’s done a great job at being at the forefront of NIL and making opportunities for players to put some money in their pockets. He’s been finding ways to do that for years with camps and other stuff that we do so that he can find a way to pay us that’s legal. Now that NIL is a thing he’s been on top of that, trying to push us out there, help with our branding, helping us create an image where people would be willing to put money in our pockets because they see the type of kids that we are, the type of men that we are going to become. So I think he’s done a good job of marketing us in that type of way.”

Arguably the biggest concern from critics of NIL would be a potential clash of egos. Players who get jealous of others making more money or receiving more publicity than them. In reality, that is bound to happen at some point, which is why it’s even more important to get ahead of the issue and squash any friction early.

The Kentucky players signed a team-wide NIL deal with this in mind–if they’re all doing this together, everyone will be treated equally financially. The bond that these Wildcats have created over the summer–a real summer–has clearly boosted chemistry, and earning some money while having fun and interacting with fans they haven’t seen in over a year isn’t going to change that.

“Doing something with your teammates is always a good thing, it’s always fun, especially when you have a group of teammates that really like each other,” Brooks Jr. said. “We bond all the time. If you see one of us walking somewhere, the next 14 are not too far behind. So I think it was just a good idea for us to do this together.

“As far as creating friction or anything like that, I can’t speak to that really because I don’t really know what that would be like because, like I said, the teammates that I have, we’re all rooting for each other to do whatever we can to make some money or market yourself. I want to see all those guys do the best that they can with this opportunity because I don’t want to hate on another man’s blessings. That’s just how it is.”

“Crazy” Cameo Requests

Kentucky players don’t forsee NIL being a locker room distraction. They simply want to have fun with the fans and make some money while they do it–something they should have been able to do from the very beginning of amateur athletics. So far, they’re enjoying themselves, even if they’ve had to deal with some unusual NIL offers.

Cameo is a new app designed to connect celebrities and popular personalities with their fans through personalized messages. Plenty of Kentucky athletes–beyond just men’s basketball–and athletes around the country have jumped on Cameo to make some side money.

Mintz and Brooks Jr. both use the app, charging $25 and $45, respectively, for a customized video message. Mintz admittedly uses Cameo more than Brooks Jr., but they both have received some odd requests, including parents hoping that a Kentucky basketball player will prevent their child from getting into trouble.

“I’ve had a lot of weird Cameo requests. But I don’t turn any down,” Mintz said. “I like to have fun with it so I like when crazy stuff comes through.

“Off the top of my head, I know one lady was asking me to threaten her child that he couldn’t come to the games anymore and she gave me permission to whoop him if he wasn’t doing his homework and stuff like that. Or if he didn’t behave. I get a lot of birthday shoutouts besides that man. It’s a lot of fun for sure.”

The NIL opportunities around the country are going to be endless, particularly for Kentucky Men’s Basketball. UK athletic director Mitch Barnhart said on Thursday that approximately 120 NIL deals have already been signed between the men’s basketball and football teams.

This group of Wildcats will be the first to experience a significant change in college athletics, and they’re ready to embrace everything that will come with it as a team.