BATON ROUGE (Manship News Service) — Bailey Tillman began her freshman year at McNeese State University in 2021 after new NCAA rules allowed college athletes to start making money. Attending a small school in a lesser-known conference, Tillman, a volleyball player, was not sure if local businesses would want to use her name or image in ads and other promotional activity – and national connections seemed impossible.

But by reaching out to companies on her own, she was able to scrounge up several so-called name, image and likeness, or NIL, deals. She earned $100 writing reviews for Twanie’s Terrific Treats, a cookie store in Lake Charles. And Avoli, a women’s volleyball brand, sends her products in exchange for her posting videos on Instagram of her taking them out of the box.

Now a senior, Tillman is one of 50 student-athletes picked by the NCAA and Meta – the parent company of Facebook and Instagram – for an internship that could help her maximize NIL prospects and build new relationships with social media experts.

“Just go after what you want, and reach for the stars,” Tillman said. “The worst thing people can say is no.”
Before 2021, athletes could not take money or receive special promotions from schools or boosters recruiting them. The name, image and likeness rules were introduced to help student-athletes profit from their hard work on and off the court.
NIL is now a billion-dollar marketplace, and athletes at smaller universities are still figuring out how to get in on the game while LSU and other major sports schools are providing unprecedented financial opportunities for athletes.

Angel Reese, the former LSU basketball player who earned about $1.8 million in NIL money, and Olivia Dunne, an LSU gymnast who earns about $4 million per year, are two of the stars who have made it big in this new world. Reese and Dunne were both featured on the cover of the “Sports Illustrated” magazine and endorse brands like Reebok and Vuori Clothing.

LSU is one of many schools in the major conferences that have created offices to bring in deals and help athletes navigate the new landscape. LSU athletes have gotten more than 1,500 NIL deals worth over $18 million, and Tulane University has stepped up its efforts as well. McNeese recently became the first smaller state university in Louisiana to begin a formal NIL program of its own. Keifer Ackley, McNeese’s assistant athletic director for NIL and student-athlete development, has been on the job for about six months, and he is now helping McNeese athletes forge their own path, albeit on a much smaller scale.

LSU is “at the forefront of the changes, and they embraced it, so they are ahead, which is great for them,” Ackley said. “There’s always going to be an unfair advantage.” But, he added, “It’s the card we’ve been dealt, but we’re going to make the most out of it.”

To help bridge the gap, McNeese held its first NIL Summit in January in its basketball arena. Called “Trailblaze Your Brand: NIL and Life Skills Summit,’’ the summit introduced McNeese athletes to 30 businesses interested in NIL deals and educated the athletes on financial literacy and how to talk to businesses. Northwestern Mutual, a financial planning and life insurance company, offered internships and took 40 names.

On one of the panels, Rylee Eyster, a softball player at McNeese, discussed pursuing her own NIL deals by messaging businesses herself. She said most athletes want to get into the NIL game but are unsure how to. Eyster has three NIL deals. She won a $1,000 deal with a bank at the summit, making her one of the highest NIL earners on the softball team. Her first deal, however, came from reaching out on Instagram to Edible Arrangements, a company that sells fresh fruit gift baskets, and simply asking them to partner with her.

“What I do off the field is much bigger than what I do on the field,” Eyster said. “I think if you want an NIL deal, you have to go out and work for it.”

Jamall Franklin Jr., a McNeese football player, said he has NIL deals with Edible Arrangements and 5 Star Nutrition, which sells muscle-building and weight-loss supplements. Franklin also had to reach out to these businesses – which have stores in Lake Charles - on his own. It took a year before he heard back from Edible Arrangements, which provides the athletes with free food and other items in exchange for social media posts.

“The community loves us so much,” Franklin said of Lake Charles. “No matter if you’re the first-string quarterback or the backup kicker…you play for McNeese, they’re going to treat you like family.”

Braxton Blackwell, a football player at Southern University, also has sourced two NIL deals on his own and has a third in the works.

“I just emailed them and gave them a little background about me,” he said. While most view NIL as a great opportunity, some athletes worry that the chance to make money will erode loyalty to smaller schools and make it harder for them to recruit and keep athletes.

Jett Booker, a wide receiver for Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, has earned a few thousand dollars as an ambassador for Honey Stinger, an athletic energy bar company, and from an office that helps raise awareness for childhood cancer research.

But during his time at Southeastern, Booker watched about two dozen teammates leave the football program in pursuit of higher-paying NIL opportunities at other schools. Booker explained that instead of developing players, many schools are focused on buying the best ones they can afford.

“As it’s playing out more and more, you’re starting to see the ugly sides of people that are just trying to chase the money and not the experience of being on a team,” Booker said. As a quarterback at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Chandler Fields experienced something similar. Fields said 10 of his teammates left for money, some receiving upwards of six figures to take their talents elsewhere. 

“UL is a feeder school to help you get to the next level,” Fields explained. “Some players will have a big game, and then the next week they’ll be like, ‘[University of Miami] is calling me saying they’ll give me $3,000.’” He said that “changes the game a little bit.”

Coaches and administrators are grappling with all the changes. Matt McMahon, the head coach for LSU men’s basketball, said NIL has become another factor in recruiting athletes.

“What’s the campus going to be like, style of play, opportunities to play at the NBA level when you leave… all of those things are still incredibly important,” McMahon said. “But just like anything in life, sometimes money can trump all those other things.”

David Harris, the athletic director at Tulane University, has built the second-biggest NIL program in the state.

“Every head coach and every student-athlete, every sporting program… wants to be able to compete for a championship,” Harris said. “They want to have a chance to be able to play at a high level, and they’re depending on the department to fund the program in such a way that it allows an opportunity to be able to do so.”

In the past, he said, most of the money was invested in coaches’ salaries and facilities. Now the focus is on compensation for athletes, and Tulane recently lost its star quarterback Darian Mensah to Duke University in a big NIL deal. Will Wade, the men’s basketball head coach at McNeese, said relationships and trust remain important aspects of recruiting. He added that money cannot overcome a bad experience or situation.

Wade left LSU in 2022 due to a recruiting scandal involving payments to players before the NIL rules allowed players to make money, and his experiences have taught him to adapt to anything thrown at him, including helping players become knowledgeable about all the dealmaking.

“That’s the way it works in the real world, and I think it’s a positive life lesson in that sense,” Wade said. “But it’s not going away… we have to live in the world how it is, not how we wish it to be.”

More changes are coming. The NCAA has agreed to settle a lawsuit by former athletes that will allow institutions to compensate student-athletes directly through revenue-sharing up to a certain level rather than relying solely on businesses and boosters to do it.

The NCAA also will distribute $2.6 billion in backpay to former student-athletes if a federal judge approves the settlement after a hearing next month. Smaller universities can opt into the settlement or stay out.

Heath Schroyer, the athletic director at McNeese, and his staff want to continue to expand benefits for their athletes. “I think NIL has become something that every school needs to have in order to be competitive in recruiting,” Schroyer said. “In college athletics, you have to learn to adapt, or you die.”