How one Miami booster is hoping to ‘Bring Back The U’ with some creative NIL dealmaking

Dan Lambert has spent decades rooting for the Miami Hurricanes. The founder of American Top Team cheered for Miami through the highs of the 1980s and early 2000s, and has waited for 20 often-frustrating years for his Hurricanes to recapture their past glory. The Miami alumnus has donated money to the university, goes to home games every Saturday and even sent two of his kids to school there.

Still, Lambert always felt like his Hurricanes couldn’t quite compete with the powerhouses from giant state schools dotting the Southeastern and Midwestern United States, with their massive alumni bases and seemingly never-ending stream of donations. He feels — and Manny Diaz feels similarly — that perhaps the new name, image and likeness guidelines can “level the playing field.” Miami, after all, is a much bigger city than the college towns where most of the Hurricanes’ peers reside and there should be bountiful opportunities for sponsorships, endorsements and paid appearances across South Florida. If it can’t compete with facilities or fan support, Miami can still excel because of its media market.

“Miami’s been at a big disadvantage of that,” Lambert said. “When the NIL came out, I thought that there was an opportunity to do something that could directly impact, A, the lives of these kids that work so hard on the field and put so much into what they do, and, B, help companies because I think there’s a unique opportunity to support these kids and get some positive results from the advertising.”

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This is the theory Lambert is putting forward with his new Hurricanes-specific marketing company and he’s the initial client. Bring Back The U, the new company founded by Lambert, is designed with name, image and likeness (NIL) as the sole focus. His goal is to connect local business with Miami players so those athletes can take advantage of new NIL rules, and make money off their talent and celebrity status. The first deal being brokered by Bring Back The U: a series of contracts, potentially worth upward of more than $500,000, to sign every scholarship Hurricanes football player to a sponsorship agreement with American Top Team, Lambert’s Coconut Creek-based mixed martial arts team and gym with more than 40 affiliates worldwide.

The proposed contracts would be worth $500 per month and could amount to a $540,000 deal if every player signs. It is the first agreement of its kind — a standing contract available to every player of a major college football team — and could wind up being the biggest NIL endorsement so far.

While he was formulating the idea, Lambert hired attorney Darren Heitner, an NIL advocate, to make sure such a deal would be allowable under the NCAA’s new guidelines. Heitner checked in with Miami’s compliance department, Lambert said, and got the OK.

Lambert is now retaining Heitner full-time, he said, and he has also hired former Hurricanes defensive lineman Kendrick Norton, who briefly played for the Miami Dolphins before losing his arm in a 2019 car accident, as Bring Back the U’s vice president of community outreach. Jorge Masvidal, a superstar fighter for American Top Team and outspoken Hurricanes fan, is an ambassador for the new company.

Although Lambert is a Miami booster, Florida’s NIL law don’t prohibit Bring Back The U from facilitating endorsements because it’s a new business that has never donated to the university.

“The last thing in the world I’m going to do is something that’s going get my football team in trouble or me kicked out of going to games,” Lambert said. “I’d have to kill myself.”

The emphasis, Lambert said, will be local. He’s not an agent to represent high-profile college stars who are trying to team up with Adidas or any other big national brand. His goal is to serve as a liaison for smaller companies to link up with Miami players.

“They’ve all got shoes to fill and they’ve all got bills to pay, and whether it’s a family that can benefit from them getting 500 extra bucks a month or 1,000 extra bucks a month, or maybe it just allows them to go buy a pizza and sweet talk someone on a date” Lambert said. “These kids generates billions of dollars, they bust their [expletive] doing what they do on top of having to maintain their school work and they deserve a little piece of it.”

Lambert said it’s already paying off from a marketing standpoint, too: There was a noticeable uptick in membership inquiries for his gyms Tuesday. Ideally, these agreements will benefit the businesses, players and program.

“Everything you can do helps. This is going to help them directly,” Lambert said. “This will help the on-the-field product and I want it to.”

Lambert also envisions fundraisers for Bring Back The U, letting fans donate money, which can then be used by companies to pay for the sponsorships they may not be able to otherwise afford.

It’s a bold gambit sure to be replicated elsewhere, but, for the moment, the Hurricanes have something no one else does. It’s the sort of NIL perk Miami has been dreaming about.

“They don’t put professional franchises in small towns,” Diaz said last month. “If you want to maximize your brand, you generally want to go where the people are. That can be a great advantage for our guys. I’m excited for our guys. This is one of the great advantages we can use with our community, our city.”