Penn State football launches NIL-driven 'Win Shirt'
From the onset of his Penn State tenure, new athletic director Pat Kraft acknowledged name, image, and likeness challenges. Echoing a sentiment of football head coach James Franklin, the charge was clear.
Penn State needed to take steps to improve its NIL infrastructure. And, more importantly, they needed to happen quickly.
“Here’s my assessment: I think we’re behind, just candidly,” Kraft said this summer. “But I will tell you this, we’ll have it fixed in three to four weeks.”
Monday, the Penn State football program took another step toward doing so.
Announced via social media, the Nittany Lions are now selling a “Limited-Edition 1-0 Shirt.” All proceeds from the sales will directly benefit Penn State’s football players.
The shirts come in three versions and are priced at $25 apiece. There is a unisex short sleeve, a women’s relaxed short sleeve, and a youth short sleeve.
According to the site selling the shirts, launched Monday concurrent to the announcement, “all proceeds will benefit student-athletes through Name, Image, and Likeness. (NIL)”
Other NIL initiatives
The t-shirt comes on the heels of Penn State NIL news announced on Aug. 31 in which the preferred NIL collective, Success With Honor, folded in the Happy Valley Talent collective to its operations.
All of it serves as much-sought progress at Penn State in the NIL space given the national conversation and trends that have dominated the sport since its July 1, 2021 arrival.
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Committed to creating an infrastructure and model that can deliver consistent and lucrative NIL opportunities to Penn State football student-athletes, while avoiding some of the line-crossing pay-for-play enticements making waves at other programs, Franklin and Kraft have a shared vision for what the Nittany Lion model might look like moving forward.
“What we’re trying to do is differentiate ourselves to separate ourselves from the group,” Franklin told BWI this summer. “So I’m more concerned about being able to have a really solid, in-depth plan, and an aggressive approach, so that players that are currently in our program, as well as future players in our program, can look (at it.)”
Next steps for Penn State
Working to install a variety of pathways for student-athletes to cash in, the latest t-shirts are another step to that end.
And, if Kraft’s initial message regarding NIL offers any insight into plans, it likely will not be the last.
“Even in this untamed water, there are people who are doing it the wrong way. And we’re not. And we won’t. But that doesn’t mean we can’t do what’s right and provide awesome opportunities for our athletes,” Kraft said. “What we’ve got to do is show them there are many facets to it. Be able to sell their uniforms, be able to, whether it’s NFTs, all that stuff should be up and running already and it’s not.
“So that’s where we have to hit the gas. We gotta go. I look at it as giving the athletes every opportunity to be successful in this space. And if you want to do it, great. If you don’t, some of them just don’t do it… But we gotta do a better job, we really do. We have to define it more clearly for our people.”
