Kentucky Booster details NIL disconnect behind-the-scenes of basketball program

Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) is now the name of the game in college sports. As we wait to hear the verdict on John Calipari’s future with Kentucky Basketball, we received some troubling behind-the-scenes information about how the program is handling NIL, specifically, how one of the team’s stars never received word about a very lucrative offer at a critical juncture of his career.

Nate Burns, who owns a collectibles store in Middle Tennessee, called Kentucky Sports Radio this morning to share his dealings with the university and the players. Burns’ first major NIL deal was with Will Levis, a six-figure partnership to advertise his store, Grand Slam Collectibles. Burns has had deals with several other football players ranging from $5,000 to five figures. After Kentucky lost to Kansas State in the second round of the 2023 NCAA Tournament, he put together a pitch for Antonio Reeves, who was in the process of deciding whether to return to Kentucky, transfer to another school, or explore his professional options.

“He had scrubbed his Twitter of Kentucky, the way I remember it,” Burns said. “I wanted to get a six-figure offer for an NIL deal, a simple NIL deal. It was going to be 5,000 signatures for $100,000. Antonio would make $20 an autograph, signing whenever he wanted. And hopefully, that would help.”

“And what I learned throughout the process was basketball is entirely different than football. I had a couple of NIL agents that I reached out to explain that, ‘Hey, everything has to go through Cal,’ and I’m thinking, ‘What?'”

Burns finally did get in touch with an assistant on Kentucky’s staff and made the offer.

“He tells me, ‘You know, this sounds like something Cal would go for. It makes sense. It’s a true name, image, likeness agreement. We’ll let you know.’ And of course, we never hear back from him. No phone call, no text, no nothing back.”

A few days later, on June 21, Reeves announced he was returning to Kentucky for a final season. Because Burns never heard back from the assistant, he figured Reeves had rejected the offer. Until…

“Fast forward six, seven months, it’s actually during the season, this year. I got a call from one of those NIL agents and he says, ‘Hey, I have Antonio and his father sitting in my office looking for small NIL deals. Do you have anything?'”

Burns confirmed with Reeves’ NIL agent that the $100,000 offer was never presented to him or his family, and if it had been, they certainly would have taken him up on it.

“It just made my blood boil,” Burns said.

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Million-dollar offer on the table for current Kentucky player

The story doesn’t end there. Burns told Matt Jones that he has reached out with a seven-figure NIL offer for a current Kentucky player and has not heard back, although he prefaced that by saying that these conversations typically happen in the offseason.

“I don’t want to go into too much detail because it’s not really fair because the time hasn’t really come for them to be reaching back out, but there’s a seven-figure offer for a player from our business. We’ve gotten no response. We have no idea if this person or his family have been relayed the million-dollar offer.”

Before the SEC Tournament, John Calipari launched “La Familia,” a new public NIL initiative through which fans can donate to the players. It is an expansion of “The La Familia Club,” which was started last for boosters and former players. So far, the collective has raised over $49,000, which Calipari claims will go directly to the players. Ahead of a critical offseason, Burns is still waiting to hear back about a deal much, much, much larger than that.

“I think at the very least, Cal has some people under him that aren’t doing their job anywhere near the ‘gold standard,'” he said when asked why he’s sharing his story. “And I mean, we could point out 20 different things but this is just something that is actually the facts from my point of view, trying to sign deals with these players that are pretty easy obligations. And somewhere along the way, the players aren’t even getting the message.”

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