Name, Image and Likeness, with Josh Berlo and Niko Blankenship

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Transcript:

Joshua Ross: 
My name is Joshua Ross, and welcome to the entrepreneurship at DU podcast. It now pays to play college athletics. According to Yahoo Sports. In 2023, Ronnie James, a freshman on the USC basketball team, made approximately $6 million. Shadur Sanders quarterback for the University of Colorado made over 4.1 million, lived done. A member of the LSU Women’s Gymnastics team made $3.2 million. And Arch Manning nephew of Peyton and Eli Manning, a freshman quarterback, a backup for the University of Texas made 2.9 million. Today with our guest, Josh Burlow, vice Chancellor for Athletics at the University of Denver and Nico Blankenship, director of Athletics Communication. We dive into a topic that has changed the landscape in college sports forever. Name, image, and likeness, commonly known as IL. 

Josh Berlo:
First, I would say that the University of Denver really supports our student athletes opportunity to chase name, image, and likeness partnerships. We believe it’s a great tool for empowerment. 

Joshua Ross:
This was a change that no one saw coming yet many believed it was long overdue. For decades, college sports and the United States operated under a strict doctrine. The sanctity of amateurism, basically this doctrine upheld and enforced by the NCAA was clear student athletes were amateurs and should remain uncompensated beyond their scholarship and basic stipends. Translation, they cannot make money marketing products or services, but has changed forever in the simplest terms, name, image, and likeness describes the means to which college athletes are allowed to receive financial compensation for the use of their name, image, and likeness through marketing and promotion, autograph signings, product endorsements, video games, social media posts are a few of the examples. How a student athlete can receive compensation under IL. It is important to understand what IL does not allow. NCAA rules still prevent schools from paying players directly. This means that college coaches cannot offer money as an incentive for high school athletes to come play at their school, nor can athletes receive compensation directly from their university based upon their athletic achievements. 

So how did we get here? In 2009 when Ed O’Bannon, a former LA basketball star, was the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against the ncaa? This lawsuit questioned why the NCAA could profit from the images of former student athletes in broadcast video games and merchandising without compensating the athlete. Why shouldn’t athletes, the stars of the billion dollar college sports industry benefit from their own name, image and likeness? This seems like a very logical question. A judge ordered the NCAA to pay 44.4 million in attorney fees and another 1.5 million in cost to lawyers for the plaintiff’s in the Ed O’Bannon class action antitrust lawsuit. Eventually the Supreme Court got involved with a landmark Supreme Court ruling in NCAA versus Alston. I quote, where the Supreme Court rejected the NCAA’s amateurism argument as an overly broad and outdated defense for failing to allow its revenue drivers, the student athletes to receive compensation. The court further rejected the NCAA’s appeal that it was not a commercial enterprise, noting the highly profitable and professional nature of certain college sports. Shortly after the court’s decision, the NCAA issued an interim name, image and likeness policy, which permits student athletes to earn compensation for their NIL. On July 1st, 2021, the NIL policies were adopted by the NCAA student. Athletes could now monetize their personal brand, their social media influence, and remain eligible to play collegiate sports. Now that we have established a brief history of NIL, here’s my interview with Josh and Nico. 

Let’s just jump right in. So how would you explain name, image and likeness NIL to someone who knows nothing about it? 

Josh Berlo:
Joshua, I think I’d start with, it’s really about the opportunity to use who you are for business and entrepreneurial purposes. And it’s existed for, I would probably say centuries. I would think that product endorsements or service endorsements have been happening for a very long time, and it’s something that college students, with the exception of student athletes had the opportunity to do for decades upon decades. So really at its core, it’s using your, and social media has been a game changer in this space, but it’s using the notoriety that you have gained through a pursuit, whether that’s athletics, whether that’s making movies, whether that’s being a well-known business leader to put together business partnerships. And often those partnerships generate some sort of income, whether it’s financial or goods in service or otherwise. So it’s interesting at times that this appears to be a novel concept, but I think Peyton Manning’s been doing product endorsements for a really long time. 

Niko Blankenship: 
Yeah, I think that was so much about the rules before NIL that just on paper didn’t seem fair. You had student athletes not even doing something related to athletics, trying to create a YouTube channel on profit off that and stuff like that. And it was so tight that this Elise allows them to be just like any other student and use their name, image, and likeness for their own good. 

Joshua Ross: 
How do you see NIL impacting the competitive landscape of college athletics? So is it different for each sport? Is there classes based on revenue with football and basketball athletes with the most exposure? Do they have the most opportunity? 

Niko Blankenship:
Yeah, I mean, I do think it’s definitely different in each sport. You take football and Penns and women’s basketball and they’re probably in their own tier and then everything else has kind of hit or miss depending on the school’s focus and the program’s success and that kind of stuff. But I think how it’s impacted the landscape and has a big impact on recruiting long-term, the rules could all change tomorrow for all we know. So it’s not something that you can really judge, I don’t think. But I think in the short term it definitely has had a big impact. 

Josh Berlo:
Well, and to build on Nico’s comments, I think first I would say that the University of Denver really supports our student athletes opportunity to chase name, image and likeness partnerships. We believe it’s a great tool for empowerment and life learning, and I know we’re going to talk about some academic integration opportunities with the entrepreneurship program and the law school. And so first of all, we’re very supportive of name, image and likeness and the opportunity our student athletes have to leverage their notoriety and some of ’em come here with some pretty solid social media followings. Now we’ve had some neat partnerships largely with restaurants and hydration products and some leisure clothing lines. And it’s been great to see that because we do want our student athletes to take advantage of those opportunities. And then it’s just such a great chance to learn, frankly, in a pretty safe environment. 

Now, I have seen a couple of borderline predatory name, image and likeness pieces. I was made aware of it, not with one of our student athletes, but someone at our level in the soccer space. So a very strong division one soccer program where a recruit was offered a name, image and likeness opportunity for their 25 years NIL rights for a very modest sum. And whether that contract would’ve held up or not, I don’t know, but that was a very one-sided opportunity. So I think that kind of gets to some of our later questions and we’ll cover that, but there’s quite a bit that needs to be figured out in this space around clarity and protections and some other things. I would say it is different by sport on some level, but even within the sports there are differences. So you look at certain football conferences are in a very different space than other football conferences. 

We’re seeing it here, we’re certainly recruiting against it. And if you look at our programs that are so strong in hockey, gymnastics, the lacrosses, the soccers, we are going up against places that have some NIL opportunities and we’ve been able to hold our own thus far and continue to operate in what I like to call the Denver way. So our student athletes are coming here because they want to be part of University of Denver. They want to have an exceptional academic experience, they want to compete at a national level. And the decisions to come here are not purely driven by NIL opportunities. 

Joshua Ross:
I love that. And I’m a DU alum and I’m also faculty and to look at the success of the programs and all the different athletes, both the women and the men’s, it makes me proud first of all. And I have a lot of these student athletes in my classes and I talk to them a lot of, actually rarely about NIL, but just about life. And they’re so excited to be here. They’re so excited to be a part of the whole University of Denver family. So you all have done a wonderful job with 

Josh Berlo:
That. Well, a lot of people for a long time. And I think we might put that quote in our next recruiting pitch, Joshua. 

Joshua Ross:
I appreciate that. So speaking of recruiting, in your opinion, when you speak to the University of Denver coaches and coaches at other programs, has NIL impacted the recruiting process for student athletes and how? 

Josh Berlo:
Well it absolutely has. And again, I think it gets back to sport by sport. There’s a couple different kinds of NIL. There’s the very authentic side of name, image and likeness where student athletes are partnering with local businesses and there’s a value exchange and there’s promotion that takes place and there’s compensation for that. And then there’s some other pieces of NIL that I think are a bit murkier, and that’s where the collectives come in and that’s where maybe some of the decisions to go to a certain institution or to transfer are driven by some NIL opportunities. So I think you have to parcel it out a bit. Again, it certainly is showing up more and more. I think the University of Denver came out early on three years ago and supported this conceptually and empowered our student athletes, which I think is phenomenal. We now have to find the next iteration of what our NIL framework looks like. 

And one of the reasons I was pleased that Nico could join us today is we’ve got, I don’t call it a task force, that’s a strong terminology, but we’ve got a group that gets together pretty much every month, and it includes myself, multiple administrators, coaches, and we talk about the evolving space of NIL and where we need to be positioned while staying true to our values here at the University of Denver. So it’s a space we are pleased to engage in and support our student athletes and make sure that we’re evolving and we’ll continue to do that. I think what’s around the corner, and this gets back to the question of sport by sport, when we’re recruiting against certain conferences in certain sports, there’s a lot of NIL competition out there, but myself and our coaches firmly believe there are enough talented student athletes who can compete at this level that want to be here for the authentic organic reasons and all the advantages that the University of Denver has to offer. So is it changing? Sure, is it challenging? But I think the one constant in life is change and we need to adapt and make sure that we’re leveraging our competitive advantage and staying aligned with our values. 

Niko Blankenship:
I will say, Josh said something earlier about us doing NIL the Denver Way, and I’ve been here 12 years now. And whether it’s Peg Bradley, dopa before him, Carlton Cree before him, and now Josh, we’ve always done things the Denver way, which prioritizes the integrity and the purpose of the role, like Joshua you and I were talking about earlier is what was the spirit of NIL? And that was like he talked about the cocal businesses and doing commercials and promos and ads and stuff like that. So the questions that come up in the task force or group or whatever you want to call it, is how do we evolve but still stay true to those values that both the athletic department has and the University of Denver as a whole. 

Joshua Ross:
I wanted to provide a little clarity in terms of NIL and how it relates to athletic departments at universities because I don’t think a lot of people understand what universities are allowed to do, what you’re not allowed to do. So what challenges do you face as the University of Denver supporting NIL and what are you actually allowed to do? 

Josh Berlo:
Well, that’s evolving and by the time this airs, it’ll probably change Again, I want to put that out there. First and foremost, we have some guiding principles. Number one is maintaining eligibility for the student athletes. And that’s something I don’t think gets talked about enough, but if student athletes enter into NIL partnerships that compromise their ability to compete, not only are they ineligible, but they also jeopardize those NIL deals. So that’s our bulletproof guiding principle. Secondarily, it’s how do we support our student athletes? How do we keep our finger on the pulse of the evolving landscape? And we did that with a third party partnership, and this is well before I got here. It’s called Influencer. And our student athletes are able to use this online portal and clearinghouse to facilitate some of these partnerships. We post opportunities there and our compliance folks are able to vet them and we can ensure that they’re in line with institutional contracts. 

And that’s kind of the nuts and bolts piece behind the scenes. And the third pillar is really the education piece. And just this summer, Nico led an effort to redo our online presentation for our student athletes. Jason Kester, who oversees our compliance pieces, did an educational session because there are a lot of instances where you can get yourself into some trouble in NIL and international students are highly complicated in this space with visa status. There’s a tax component here that a lot of people don’t think of or don’t talk about. And making sure that you’re looking at those contracts and that those contracts are not as the student athlete giving up some long-term rights or giving up some things that you may not want to. And then there’s some other pieces of the education. Think about the brands you’re associating with. Think about your personal brand. Largely these folks are 18 to 22. Is this a brand that in 20 years you want to have a close relationship with? So it’s really about education and empowering, but also helping them see around the corner in some of the things that as they develop as leaders and hopefully entrepreneurs that they’re aware of and avoid some of those pitfalls. 

Niko Blankenship:
Yeah, I think I couldn’t have said it better. I think so few of the athletes that are entering NIL deals are going to be doing professional sports. So what are you going to be doing in your future, whether it’s job wise, whether it’s relationships, whether it’s other stuff that do you want to be associated with the brand that offered you the most money to play the sport you love or be in a name, image and likeness deal? So I think it’s so flashy to read some of the stories in the media, like every scholarship player at blank school gets blank gift. Well, yeah, but is that again what you want to be associated with long-term? 

Joshua Ross:
So I want to take a macro view on college athletics and the impact of NIO. I’ve read a couple articles over the past couple months, and one area that I’m reading about is donors traditionally giving to the program or certain athletic department, and instead now they’re given straight to these athletes. And so athletic departments are starting to struggle with finances. They’re not getting the same amount of donor gifts. What is that going to do to the competitive landscape from NIL and also to be able to support these different programs? 

Josh Berlo:
Josh, I think that’s a great question. There are a lot of forces right now if you look across the collegiate landscape, conference affiliation, TV contracts. So I think it’s one of and litigation against the ncaa NCAA lobbying for federal intervention on some of the core elements of what it means for them to be the membership association that they are. So I would lump it in really with the external forces that are occurring right now that are creating some fundamental shifting of what intercollegiate athletics looks like. And there’s been a lot of really good stuff that’s gone on there. We’ve seen across the country supporting our student athletes at a higher level. It wasn’t that long ago that we weren’t allowed to provide a bagel with cream cheese to our student athletes. And now we’re able to feed them and their schedules are intense and it’s great. 

Some of the things that I’ve seen in addition to the food around mental health and performance coaching and sports medicine. So there’s a bunch of great stuff that really isn’t getting a lot of attention, but there’s also some concern. I mean, conferences like the PAC 12, a historic conference with more Olympians I believe than any other conference essentially looks as though it may not exist much longer. And as those things happen, I think competitive balance is something that many of us are watching closely. I will say in a lot of ways, because we don’t have football, we are protected, insulated from some of that. And because we are so successful in so many of our programs, but just as you always need to watch out for complacency, now is a particularly important time to avoid complacency. So that’s why we have this standing group around NIL and probably half a dozen more in the athletic department. So I would say NIL is one of many things that is shifting beneath our feet in the future of college athletics and is, again, I’m going to go back to the Denver way as long as we hold on to our values and virtues of how to approach intercollegiate athletics, empower our student athletes, support them at the highest level with high academic achievement and good social citizens, I think DU will continue to thrive. But it is one of the many things that we’re watching closely that 10 years ago we weren’t. 

Niko Blankenship:
Yeah, I think being a great student athlete is what the Denver way I think is kind of all about. And we’re able to do that in a large part, at least in my opinion, because we don’t have football. Josh, you and I were talking before Josh got here, that it allows us to focus on the sports, on all the sports and not just say, okay, well football’s here, they take priority type thing and it allows us to be a more well-rounded athletic department. I think in that way. 

Joshua Ross:
I love the PAC 12 reference. I grew up as a kid. My family went to USC, I watched the PAC 10. I think there’s a stat out there if the PAC 12 was a country, it would be like number five in total Olympic medals. Yeah. Wow. And it’s interesting that it’s probably going away. There’s certain things that need to be worked out. It’ll 

Niko Blankenship:
Look different regardless. 

Joshua Ross:
It will look different, but oh, that’s a very good point. It will look different. But at one point in this football season, there were six pack 12 teams and the top 25, 

Josh Berlo:
And I think it’s just a good analogy and who knows what happens, and there’s no judgment there whatsoever. But I’ve worked football games at the Coliseum, at the Rose Bowl up at Stanford, and I’ve been out there for a lot of different sports and there’s a lot of tradition there. So again, I think it’s a good reminder to those of us that are navigating intercollegiate athletics at the present to really hold on to values and tradition, but be progressive, right? You got to do both. And if you sit back too much and you’re not progressive and you’re not up on the challenges of today and strategies to navigate them while knowing who you are, then I think that there can be some things at risk. 

Joshua Ross:
That is a great point. And that’s probably a very delicate balance to keep the tradition, which is so important. And it seems like it’s going away in college athletics, but also being progressive. So as an outsider looking at NIL over the past two and a half years, it has felt like the wild wild west. It feels like this plane is being built as it’s being flown. So what are some key takeaways or lessons from the first few years of NIL? 

Josh Berlo:
There’s a few. I think the law of unintended consequences is proven strong and true. There’s some things that necessarily weren’t thought of when the implementation happened. I think if you’re too far behind the curve, which there were state laws that existed prior to the NCAA rules and policies and legislation. So now we have this patchwork of 25 to 30 completely incongruent state laws around name, image, and likeness. I think the Colorado law is quite appropriate and reasonable. So that’s a good thing for DU and for Colorado. But just the lack of consistency, the lack of clarity, and the collectives were not imagined at the time that NIL came to be. So we need more clarity. And that’s one of the big pushes that Charlie Baker, the president of the NCAA former Massachusetts governor is asking for some federal help with because we have state laws out there that literally say you don’t have to follow the NCAA rules in certain states. 

So the lack of consistency is a challenge, and I would like to see some more protections for our student athletes and what that looks like. Frankly, I don’t know. I think that some sort of available standard template for an agreement might be a nice thing, but I don’t think it should be a requirement because some are going to be more complex than others. But at least a path for student athletes who have these modest NIL partnerships to make sure that they have some protections. This is the first time in their lives that they’re entering into formal business agreements and they could be literally 18 years old. So I think those are some of the lessons, but I think there’s some real positives about student athletes who’ve done a great job of leveraging their name, image, and likeness and their social media following. And I think of a couple of past examples. 

Jeremy Bloom, who was a football player up in Boulder, but was also a potential Olympic level skier who was not allowed to take skiing endorsements. And that’s where I think some of the policies maybe didn’t keep up with the progress of society. I had a young woman at the University of Minnesota Duluth, she took a year off to be the number one goalie for the US Women’s Ice Hockey team and won a gold medal in pyeongchang in a shootout against Canada and was on the Today Show, Ellen Fallon, you name it, for the week after. And it was literally less than a year before the name, image and likeness rules were changing, and she had massive NIL opportunities. Now, Maddie Rooney’s her name and she’s an incredible human. And frankly, it didn’t bother her that she missed out on those opportunities. She was so proud to represent our country and she was so excited to come back and have another year of college sports. But I think of some of those examples that had we been more progressive and we as all of college athletics in this space, there were a lot of individuals who could have taken advantage of some of those opportunities. 

Niko Blankenship:
I think the cliches love the cat out of the bag. I think it got let way out of the bag in this situation. And I think that we kind of have to reel it back in a little bit and learn from some of the lessons that Josh mentioned that we’ve learned since. I think transparency is really important. I mean, the purpose of NIL wasn’t to make the transfer portal, which you and I talked about, not seem like free agency, which is what it looks like in the professional sports comparison. So I think the more transparency while still protecting the student athletes is probably the most important thing. 

Joshua Ross:
Alright, so you went there. So we now have to tell our audience what the transfer portal is and the link between the two. 

Niko Blankenship:
So the transfer portal is basically there used to be, so if I was player A, especially in Penns and women’s basketball, if I was player or football, if I was player A and I wanted to leave Denver to go to wherever, I would either have to sit out a year or I’d have to get an agreement from the coach to release me from my scholarship and that kind of stuff. And I think now it’s more, it looks like more free agency, but there shouldn’t be the money exchanging hands that is right now in the NIL landscape. 

Joshua Ross:
So there is no penalty from transferring from one school to another school when you go through the transfer portal, 

Niko Blankenship:
There’s no penalty the first time and then the second time you’d have to sit out of a 

Josh Berlo:
Year. And there are some exceptions to the second one as well. 

Joshua Ross:
But these came to be, when you think about NIL and transfer portal around the same time 

Josh Berlo:
Completely, it was the confluence of time and I think the extra covid eligibility for student athletes we’re starting to look around the corner and see what transfer portal looks like and student athlete mobility, which I’m a huge supporter of. But we also, again, need some consistency and some clarity and we haven’t had a ton of that because the transfer portal came about in a new way with less restrictions. Again, completely support student athlete mobility, but it came at a time that everyone got extra eligibility and name, image and likeness could play a role. So we really don’t know what the transfer portal will look in sort of its steady state condition. 

Niko Blankenship:
Yeah, now we’re almost done with the extra year of eligibility. There’s some student athletes that still can take advantage of it for another year. So that’ll be one box checked I guess in that. And the transfer portal will I think start to look like what it was intended to. 

Joshua Ross:
Really interesting, the confluence of time. I’m going to use that. Think about obviously the transfer portal name, image and likeness, but I forgot about that extra year of eligibility due to the pandemic. 

Niko Blankenship:
And for the students weren’t, I don’t want to say ruining your education by transferring because I agree with Josh. I support student athlete movement and there’s a lot of times that it can be a very helpful thing to transfer, but you weren’t altering your undergrad degree because you had an extra year, so you could really open it up. You’re going to a new school anyway to get your master’s or any other post-grad degree. So once I think that kind of expires, it’ll look a lot different. 

Josh Berlo:
We’ve had some great stories around grad transfers here in the last couple of years, particularly in women’s lacrosse, men’s ice hockey. So there’s some real positives and it’s exciting. And I’ve gotten to know those young men and women and seen them be successful. So we need to be careful that everything doesn’t feel like it has this weight, but change often feels heavy, and as we navigate it, then you begin to have some of those really positive life experiences. I’m excited about some of the changes that we’ve seen in the newness, but it’s a lot of evolution in a really short period of time in a space where the NCAA was long criticized for being incredibly slow to change, and here we are seeing rapid change. So it takes a bit of getting used to for some folks that have been doing this for a long time. 

But I, I’m excited and energized by it. And I think we just need to continue to focus on core values positivity and the just exceptional opportunity to be a student athlete, a life-changing experience. And that goes for anybody who’s got a high level co-curricular pursuit on campus music, what you all do in entrepreneurship. I love that stuff. And it’s just exciting to me that we’re seeing a lot of energy and positivity in a new way. We’ve just got to make sure we don’t forget who we are and why we do intercollegiate athletics, and that’s about education and those life lessons success, teamwork, adversity leadership. We’re hosting our leadership institute for our junior student athletes on Sunday. And those things are really good reminders of why we do what we do because as talented as the student athletes are here and the traditions that we have sending them to the professional ranks, it is still a really small percentage of our student athletes that end up playing professionally and in even smaller percentage of them that don’t have a more traditional career when they’re done playing professional sports. 

Niko Blankenship:
Josh mentioned the So Duluth, US national team goalkeeper earlier, I think for the Denver fans and people posting to this, a great example of somebody who could have taken advantage of NI Ls, Trevor Batis who was here before Josh’s time, 2015 through 2018. Great kid did every interview that I ever asked him to do and really grew his social media following. And the day after he graduated, he signed a contract with our equipment sponsor for or who sponsored him since. So watching him take off in the NIL space post-graduation, it kind of makes you wonder what would that have been like during his time here in the present day? 

Joshua Ross:
Well, going back to the comment about Bloom, I mean, he’s a local kid from Colorado, from Loveland, plays football mogul skier and wanted to be sponsored so he could support his training. And the NCAA told him no, same thing’s happening. A little different football players are going off and playing semi-pro baseball and then coming back at 26, 27 and playing college football. And back then that was a very difficult thing to try to reconcile what was happening in college athletics. So question, what advice would you give student athletes who are interested in monetizing their name, image and likeness? 

Josh Berlo:
Yeah, a couple of things we’ve touched on already. First, have a plan, have a business plan, have a proposal. It’s great practice to learn how to do that, get advice and really embrace the opportunity to have real world practical learning about partnerships. Secondarily, think about the taxes. There are tax implications here, and I’m already starting to hear of some tough stories where student athletes aren’t aware about the taxes and then they get themselves into some challenging situations and then make sure that you have an attorney look at your contract. I just think it needs to be a best practice. So those are the nuts and bolts pieces. Beyond that, think about your personal brand and think about the alignment of the companies that you’re working with. Think about the time commitment that you’re putting into this. Student athletes have their academic rigor, the pursuit of their sport. 

They don’t have a lot of free time. Make sure that this opportunity for you is worth the time that you’re putting into it. I’ve seen some student athletes put a lot of time into a handful of free meals, so make sure the time you’re putting into this is really well worth it. But overall, I just continue to go back to it’s a great life skill building chance to try something and in a space where if you make a mistake or you fail, it’s probably not going to alter the trajectory of your life. If you screw up the partnership with the local chicken restaurant franchise, you’re going to be okay going forward. So with all due respect to our friends that sell chicken. So I think there’s a lot of really good opportunities there and a chance to learn some best practices that will serve you well in life. 

Joshua Ross:
That’s wonderful advice. And so I want to pull on that thread a little bit further. How can we at the university help the entrepreneurship program, the business school, different multimedia? What are the different things that we could do to help support these athletes? 

Josh Berlo:
Yeah, we’re looking at reinventing our program here at du. As we’ve learned a lot in the last few years. We’re starting to see the type of partnerships that our student athletes are doing and how can we elevate what we do for them. We’re also beginning, I think, to get a little bit more clarity about what the future of NIL is going to look like, and whether that’s regulated by the NCAA or the federal government, it really doesn’t matter who the regulatory body is. We’ll get some clarity there. So we’re sort of chomping at the bit here to take it to that next iteration of our program. And I think that that does involve some engagement with entrepreneurship with the law school and having a framework and more education and having entrepreneurship folks come over and meet with our coaches and our student athlete leadership groups. Same thing with the law school and having a mutually beneficial relationship that students in entrepreneurship or law students are getting the opportunity to do some real world resume building work, and our student athletes get access to hopefully some discounted or some reasonably priced professional services that’ll behoove them. So I really want to see this be an authentic DU benefit in an academic 360 degree holistic way and excited. Now, whether that’s January or next summer, we’re working through that, but I think that’s the next iteration of what’s coming for us.

Niko Blankenship:
Yeah, it’s going to be taking whatever the new guidelines are and then figuring out what the best way to apply that is. I mean, I think back to my time as a college student, and I don’t know much about the entrepreneurship or law school trajectory, but if I had the opportunity in college, which I did to have hands-on experience about what I wanted my career to be, and I was getting real life lessons and real work while I was still a student and taking a little bit of money on the side, I mean, you can’t ask for a better opportunity as a law school student or as an entrepreneur student to get this hands-on experience that’s going directly on your resume. 

Joshua Ross: 
Yeah, I think there’s so many pathways that we can take with this in terms of we have these businesses that are being spun up out of the university, and athletes could potentially pitch for those and be brand ambassadors or students can start building products and services around NIL or work directly with these athletes to help them create and promote their brand. So I think there’s a lot of really interesting opportunities for that. 

Josh Berlo:
I fully agree, and I think sometimes athletic departments are quick to go get outside help, and there is so much expertise, often world class industry leading expertise on college campuses. So I really want to, rather than write a check to some sort of third party entity, and we do that. Everybody does that and there are external experts that have to help us. But when we’ve got national level expertise and really talented faculty and students blocks away, that’s my go-to, 

Joshua Ross:
I think that’s the right approach. So as NIO continues to evolve, how much collaboration is there with all the stakeholders, the NCAA state governments, private sector? 

Josh Berlo:
Well, I think it gets back to what Nico touched on a minute ago, and we just need to know what the next framework looks like. We’ve been highly engaged with many of these entities, certainly with the NCAA in providing feedback and thoughts, but we’ve reached a point where I think people are buying into it, student athletes are having success with it, but at the end of the day, we need to know what the future’s going to look like, and that’s going to be the key and the impetus and the linchpin, whatever you want to call it, for us to really codify our program, leverage the empowerment, do it the DUA and see what it looks like not for the next 10 months, but the next 10 years. 

Niko Blankenship:
Yeah, I think the short-term, long-term point that I think I made earlier is we could have a whole bunch of strategies as it goes forward for the next two months or three months or however long it is. But is that really going to do us a lot of good spending a lot of time on that if the new legislation and the new framework is coming. 

Joshua Ross:
You’ve been awesome, and you’ve touched on this last question in different ways, but I’m going to frame it a little bit different. As college sports fans, which I know both of you are, what are your personal thoughts and feelings about NIL and the changes brought about with it? 

Niko Blankenship:
I love it. I think it does empower the student athletes. It does give real world experience to both the student athletes and potentially other people on college campuses. I think, like I said earlier, I think it just let the cat too far out of the bag. We are in such a hurry to allow people to do the skiing deal that we talked about earlier, that we didn’t think about the unintended consequences. And there’s so many things that I read about in the media and stuff that I’m just kind of like, guys, that really wasn’t what we meant. So I think being able to reign that in and allow the schools to be involved a little bit so that we can help the student athletes, I think will be good. But again, it’s all about the transparency for me. 

Josh Berlo:
Yeah, I think we would told Nico’s last point, really would like the institutions to be able to be a little more involved, and that’s from both an empowerment and a pitfall educational standpoint. We have a small collective here and we’re excited to work with them, and they focus largely on basketball to this point. And I think there’s a lot of really good stuff here, but the lack of transparency and uniformity has made it a challenge, but I’m excited by it. It’s the same opportunity that other students have had on campuses for decades, and I look forward to seeing where it goes and how we can do it here and help our coaches recruit and top elite level talent and have them be successful and be empowered to achieve all the goals that are out there for them. So I’ve been a big supporter of it for years, well before I remember when the Jeremy Bloom case happened, and I’m just looking forward to how we reach that equilibrium and can balance all of the pieces of this complicated puzzle in a really good way. I think it’s an exciting thing at the end of the day, and thus far, I’ve seen some really, really good stories. I’ve seen some athletes do some great things with it, and it’s helped alter where they were headed in their futures. So I’m really excited about it. 

Niko Blankenship:
We had so many good stories that I remember from my first 5, 6, 7 years here that it’s like we want to tell this story. This is a great story about a student athlete who is applying what they learned in college and taking the next level. We had other lacrosse player that developed head wraps that went on plain white helmets to be able to put on the helmets, but we couldn’t promote it because it was his business. So if we’re promoting his business, it was complicated from a compliance standpoint. But I think there’s so many stories like that out there that we weren’t able to tell before that. Now being able to is a positive difference. 

Josh Berlo:
Yeah. I’d close with an example. The number of times that I’ve been approached in my career by an orthopedic firm that helped a student athlete and rebuilt a knee or a shoulder or an elbow, and that student athlete went on to do great things, and that student athlete couldn’t do any promotion of that orthopedic firm until after they graduated. I couldn’t intuitively personally understand that. Now that can happen. So when one of our kids has an unfortunate injury, as those things happen when they get back and they reach their goals, whether it’s professional sports or the Olympics, they can do that commercial for the orthopedic firm and they can be compensated for, and it’s the ultimate win-win. We’re hoping to find those win-wins and be able to continue to recruit again those top level athletes. We’re happy to engage in the NIL space and look forward to just another piece of the evolution of college athletics. 

Joshua Ross:
Well, Josh and Nico, first, I appreciate your time today. I appreciate your candor and your honesty. But most important, thank you for making us all a little bit smarter today. 

Josh Berlo:
I wouldn’t bank on that part

Joshua Ross:
The entrepreneurship at DU podcast was recorded in Marjorie Reed Hall on the University of Denver campus. You can find us on Instagram at du Entrepreneur on Twitter, X at DU entrepreneur, and on Facebook at entrepreneurship at du. This episode was engineered, edited, and produced by Sophia Holt. Entrepreneurship at DU is part of the Daniels College of Business, which has its own podcast. Check out Voices of Experience wherever you get your podcasts.