During the hockey season, Providence College player Brett Berard was a busy man.
Not only did he power through a grueling 36-game Division I schedule, but there were also countless team meetings, daily practices and endless bus travel to game sites. And, of course, there was the primary reason why he was at PC: the full course load required to earn his business management degree.
A part-time job just to make a little spending cash was out of the question.
“There was really no time to have a job and work,” Berard said. “It’s like that for every student-athlete I know.”
So this past hockey season, Berard started to capitalize on his status as one of the Friars’ leading scorers while he was still – at least nominally – an amateur athlete.
A landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2021 opened the door for student-athletes to make money from their name, image and likeness, and hundreds of local college athletes are trying to make a few bucks – in some cases, much more – by leveraging their positions in college athletics.
In addition, Rhode Island is one of 21 states that also allow high school athletes to monetize their name, image or likeness, as long as there’s no connection with the team they’re on, the school they attend or the Rhode Island Interscholastic League. It’s not clear if any local high schoolers are doing that yet.
For Berard, he was fetching between $20 and $40 for a social media “shoutout” or an endorsement in an Instagram post.
“I don’t have to do much more than read a short script and post it on the social platforms,” he said before the season ended in March. “I also do autograph sessions, personal appearances, and skate with a youth team. Those are fun. I did a skate in East Greenwich – that’s where I’m from – and it felt like I was giving back.”
At the same time, the so-called NIL – name, image, likeness – ruling has given college administrators new layers of rules and regulations to sort through and navigate.
“We’ve needed to add a whole new skill set,” said Thorr Bjorn, athletic director at the University of Rhode Island. “We now have to educate donors and athletes on financial security and financial planning. Right now it feels very up in the air and ultimately confusing. The big question is what does NIL become in the future? What are the long-term effects?”
As the rules stand, student-athletes are not allowed to use school trademarks in their endorsements unless they work through a recognized “collective,” an organized group of boosters who have clear permission from the academic institution to broker deals.
Local NCAA Division I colleges PC, URI and Bryant University each have active collectives. Brown University, which has been slower to adopt NIL guidelines, does not. The Friar Family works with PC, Rhode to Excellence with URI, and Tupper’s Kennel with Bryant.
The schools themselves can’t be directly involved with NIL agreements. And NCAA guidelines forbid schools from dangling the promise of NIL endorsements to entice athletes to play for them.
“You can’t recruit kids based on the promise of NIL,” Bjorn said. “But once they’re part of the program, the collectives can put deals together for them.”
For PC Vice President and Director of Athletics Steven Napolillo, NIL upended the playing field.
“It’s a whole other level and now it’s a huge part of what we do,” Napolillo said. “Everything changed in 2021 with all the new rules and regulations. You got to adapt. It’s like the wild wild west. It’ll take some years to see how it all shakes out.”
As of now, nearly 400 Friar athletes – women and men in sports ranging from track and field to soccer and lacrosse – are available through the platform Opendorse.com to trade their star power for fees.
The size of the asking price can vary widely depending on the visibility of the sport and the visibility of the athletes themselves.
On the platform, Shaliyah Rhoden, an outside hitter on the women’s volleyball team, offers to provide video shoutouts starting at $11, autographs for $50 and appearances for youth teams and events starting at $72.
In contrast, a video shoutout from Devin Carter, a starting guard on the nationally ranked Friars basketball team, starts at $577, autographs at $546 and an appearance at $1,734.
[caption id="attachment_434949" align="alignright" width="353"]
PAID APPEARANCE: Last August, Jared Bynum, who was a starting guard for Providence College last basketball season, inked an endorsement deal with 110 Grill, a restaurant chain with a location near the Friars’ home court in downtown Providence.
Bynum has decided to transfer to another school.
COURTESY 110 GRILL[/caption]
Last August, another Friar basketball player, Jared Bynum, agreed to an NIL deal with 110 Grill, a restaurant near the Amica Mutual Pavilion, where PC plays home games. Several times this past season, 110 Grill invited fans to stop by after games to meet Bynum. On3.com, an NIL industry website, estimated Bynum’s annual NIL value at $12,600. (Bynum has since decided to transfer to another school after head coach Ed Cooley accepted a job at Georgetown University.)
The company Student Athlete NIL serves as a platform for 25 schools across the nation, including Bryant. Instead of focusing on individual athletes, company spokesperson Alexis Henderson Barlow said Student Athlete NIL prefers to work with entire teams.
“We try to make sure no one feels left out,” Henderson Barlow said. “However, the deals are not created equally. Those with larger social media followings, and the better athletes, are getting well paid. The starters are collecting more than the walk-ons.”
Indeed, the stars in high-profile sports in big markets with rabid fans can reap significantly more with autograph signings and personal appearances. University of Alabama quarterback Bryce Young will take at least $3.5 million in endorsement deals this year, according to On3.
The mega deals, however, are the outliers.
On the Opendorse platform used by the Friars, most athletes are asking for as little as $11 to provide social media shoutouts.
“We don’t see $1 million deals in the Providence area,” said William Smith, vice president of athletics and recreation at Bryant. “But with NIL, some of our athletes may now be able to afford a pizza at the end of the week.”
So far, resentment about higher paydays in the locker room has been minimal.
“We haven’t seen the full impact,” Napolillo said. “But you could see players shooting more or just not passing on the basketball court. And in the case of the big powerhouse schools – where a quarterback could be making up to $15 million – you could have a $10,000 [lineman] holding back and thinking: ‘Without me blocking, he’s not going to make that throw.’ ”
NIL has brought other unanticipated effects to sports programs.
One upside: since NIL provides athletes with a stream of income, they’re less likely to leave school before graduating to join the pros, said URI’s Bjorn.
One downside: the threat of poaching players now looms larger.
“It’s a serious problem,” Napolillo said. “If a student athlete can gross tens of thousands of dollars more in endorsements in a larger media market, the temptation to leave may be difficult to resist.”
Holding onto star players hasn’t yet been an issue for URI and PC.
“NIL is still so new here,” Bjorn said. “There is still the transfer portal that opens up with basketball. You hope that the NIL packages are in place so they don’t even think of leaving, that they’ll be thinking ‘I want to stick with URI because it has a history of going to the NCAA tournament and I’ll still get some NIL money.’ ”
Financial considerations were on the mind of Berard, the PC hockey player. He had been drafted by the New York Rangers in 2020, so the promise of a big payday loomed for him during his college years.
In the meantime, the junior had made some money endorsing several Providence-area businesses, an orthopedist’s practice and a local real estate agency franchise of Keller Williams Realty Inc.
“NIL has been a big step for college athletics, that’s for sure,” Berard said before the end of the season. “I can get paid money here at school. It’s not as ridiculously lucrative for me as it’s been for some football stars at really big schools. But it helps.”
In the end, it wasn’t enough money for Berard to stay for this senior year. After the season ended in mid-March, he signed a three-year entry-level contract with the Rangers and left school mid-semester. The financial details of the deal were not disclosed.
