Michigan DB Quinten Johnson teams up with BlockPack NFT program
Michigan defensive back Quinten Johnson is teaming up with BlockPack, “an NFT platform designed for teams and organizations to engage with dynamic, real-world communities.” BlockPack allows student-athletes to promote exclusive team-based collections to alumni, fans and supporters.
An NFT, or non-fungible token, is a piece of digital content that is stored on a blockchain and cannot be copied. In short, athletes send images to BlockPack for them to create the digital token, present it to a marketplace of college sports fans and ultimately hold an auction. The program is expected to feature roughly 30 Michigan football players — with a link to preregister specifically for U-M NFTs already available on the website.
BlockPack CEO Richard Oh told Yahoo! Sports he believes potentially thousands of Michigan faithful will express interest in buying a token and supporting this NIL effort.
“We start with basically a collective,” Oh explained. “So it’s a function of boosters and large-dollar people who say, ‘I want to buy, I want to support the team, I don’t care about how many NFTs I get, I want to contribute X.’”
“Our plan is to do 500 [NFTs] per student-athlete, but it could potentially go up depending on interest. The goal in this initial team program is not to create exclusive NFTs that trade at some exorbitant value, but to create the strongest dynamic community of supporters. We won’t know the final NFT count for the collection until we close the period for student-athlete sign-up.”
If you happen to fall outside of the ‘large-dollar’ category, individual NFTs or blind packs will be the route to go. Blind packs follow the same concept as traditional trading card packs, outside of obviously being digital assets. Players will be given 80 percent of the proceeds, as BlockPack draws the other 20 percent. Owners can trade their tokens for profit on the marketplace as well.
Johnson on partnering with BlockPack (via The Chicago Journal): “I am incredibly excited to be part of a cutting-edge program that is on the brink of changing the playing field for college sports.”
Junior Recap: Michigan DB Quinten Johnson
Johnson played in all 14 games on special teams, logging three tackles for the Wolverines during his junior campaign. He was named scout team defensive player of the week in preparation for Washington and contributed on special teams against Georgia in the College Football Playoff semifinal. The Silver Spring, Md. native is also a two-time letterman and a two-time Academic All-Big Ten honoree.
