Valiant Management's Champions Circle collective expands to Michigan men's, women's basketball
Michigan Wolverines basketball head coach Juwan Howard has voiced his frustration with Michigan’s progress, or lack thereof, in NIL. Just ahead of the season, though, the Maize and Blue have made some big headway, thanks to Valiant Management and a group of donors.
“NIL is one of these things where it has helped some programs, what they’ve done in the transfer portal,” Howard said in August. “For us, NIL hasn’t hurt the team when it comes to recruiting or the transfer portal. Have the conversations of NIL been brought up in recruiting [though]? Yes, they have. Would I like to see more done for the program in the sense of some of the things that happened with other basketball programs? Yes.
“I know it’s going to be a storyline, and that’s okay,” Howard said. “Do we have a collective here? No. Do other programs have collectives? Yes. Could we be more proactive with NIL and be more forward thinking? Yes.”
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Now, we can report that Michigan basketball — men’s and women’s — does have a collective. When Valiant’s Champions Circle launched, it stated its intentions to expand to sports beyond football. That’s now official, with the recent signing event at Crisler Center following ‘Michigan Madness’ serving as the official launch.
“When you’re looking around the country, there’s obviously two sides to NIL: sports marketing and the collective,” Valiant founder Jared Wangler told TheWolverine.com when Champions Circle was formed. “I feel like we’ve been very competitive on the sports marketing side of it given the amount of brand deals our student-athletes are getting and group licensing deals that are set up through our official retailing partner.
“I feel like we’ve really maximized that category, and we will continue to maximize it. But then with the collective side of it, we just weren’t there yet. Now that we’re there, we believe that we’ll be able to maximize the entire picture for our student-athletes.”
Valiant told The Wolverine that Champions Circle will work with Michigan basketball players in the same manner that it conducts business with football student athletes. A slew of donors has partnered with Valiant to help student-athletes receive compensation for their name, image and likeness.
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Michigan still has work to do on the NIL front, but the basketball programs have a collective, and that’s progress.
“Yes, I have seen some progress with the athletic department,” Howard said at Big Ten Media Days, before Champions Circle officially launched. “It’s still growing, but I love the direction of where we are.”
Hunter Dickinson believes Michigan is growing with NIL
In August 2021, Michigan Wolverines basketball junior center Hunter Dickinson appeared on Field of 68’s Go Blue With Stu podcast with former U-M guard Stuart Douglass and called the Wolverines’ NIL policies “restrictive.” He referenced the inability to use the school’s trademarks and logos as a source of frustration. Since then, U-M has allowed athletes to do so through a group licensing agreement with The Brandr Group.
Speaking at Big Ten Media Days in Minneapolis, Dickinson provided his updated thoughts on Michigan and NIL.
“I’d say we’ve grown a lot from the University of Michigan with NIL,” Dickinson said. “At first, they weren’t trying to embrace it. Now that we’re a year into it, I think Michigan now knows that they have to embrace it more, because it’s what college basketball and college athletics is at this point. So I think we’re doing a better job of adapting. I think there’s still a lot of room to grow.”
Dickinson appears to be one of Michigan’s top earners through NIL. He has public deals with Outback Steakhouse among other companies and made enough money to purchase a Ford Bronco, which he calls his favorite new item.
