Inside Penn State NIL situation with the GM of Success with Honor, Jason Belzer: BWI Daily
In the burgeoning world of name image and likeness, few things are well-known facts for fans. To help fill in some of those gaps, the host of the BWI Daily Edition, Thomas Frank Carr, speaks to Jason Belzer, the founder of Student Athlete NIL, the third-party company that manages Penn State’s largest NIL collective, Success with Honor. In this nearly 30-minute interview, T-Frank and Belzer discuss how the collective currently operates, Belzer’s role within the organization, some up-to-date information about the health of the collective, and more.
Getting the lay of the Penn State NIL World
T-Frank starts with the basics of Penn State’s NIL situation. How do Belzer and his company fit into the picture with Success with Honor? Belzer explains the relationship between the two organizations and describes how he bridges the gap.
“So I’m the CEO of Student Athlete NIL. So in some ways, you can call me the GM of Success with Honor. That being said, Mark Toniatti, who is a donor, a longtime Penn State Alumni supporter, and on a lot of boards at the university, he is the CEO of Success with Honor. But we (Student Athlete NIL) are kind of like the GM. So the relationship that you can kind of think about is that we are almost like a Learfield, similar to what Penn State uses for their MMR (multi-media right) rights, but we’re focused on the NIL side,” he told BWI.
Where Penn State stands in the NIL Race
Belzer paints a positive picture of the tangible work that Success with Honor has done with Penn State student-athletes. He cites that they’ve been busy since the introduction of the collective in February,
“Penn State has more going on from a NIL perspective and a collective perspective, and really 95% of the school’s out there, which is I think, a testament to some of this work we’ve done but also the support of the Penn State community and the money that we’ve been able to raise to work with student-athletes.”
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Still work to do
However, those figures are not indicative of the whole picture. While Success with Honor has been busy connecting players and fans at events, the money generated so far is won’t sustain that momentum.
“We launched a collective with about a half a million in the bank. Since then, we’ve raised an additional million dollars plus, which is pretty, pretty substantial. But over the long run, for Penn State to want to compete at the level that it does, we need to continue to drive money into the collective.”
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Belzer and T-Frank also discussed the current marketplace for NIL and roster management that has been discussed this summer. He gives the minimum dollar figure on what a team like Penn State would need to be competitive and what they would need to be ahead of the competition. Belzer and T-Frank discuss and compare different models of NIL funding that are taking place at different universities as well. In that vein, T-Frank asks Belzer, if the mantra Success with Honor and NIL are compatible. Belzer gives his thoughts on how the future of NIL can be one that Penn State fans are proud of.
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