How South Carolina athletes are capitalizing on NIL opportunities 1 year into new era

South Carolina receiver Dakereon Joyner clasped a microphone in his right hand on May 14 as more than 70 middle school-age campers turned to watch him from the bleacher seats below.

Joyner had been preparing since roughly December for the first DK Joyner Football Camp at Fort Dorchester High School, the place where he starred as a quarterback under the Friday night lights.

Securing such things as field time, insurance permits and a videographer, he learned, takes that kind of time.

“I‘ve been preparing (this camp) for five months,” Joyner said. “And I’m still preparing to the last minute.”

In past years, camps like this organized by or featuring an active college player were outlawed under previous rules. But the NCAA’s name, image and likeness policies it adopted last summer allowed Joyner and other South Carolina athletes to put on events and partake in business deals that were previously taboo.

The NIL space in the Palmetto State is expected to continue evolving as soon as this week. The state Legislature voted in March to suspend South Carolina’s current NIL law that limited schools like USC, Clemson and other in-state institutions from being directly involved in the business dealings of their athletes. The change begins Friday.

Ahead of those anticipated changes, The State looked at the last year of NIL and how it has affected athletes at South Carolina.

“Our senior class, they heard about (NIL) when we were recruiting them and they wanted me to field questions about what that’d look like,” USC women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley told The State. “I didn’t know what it looked like back then. I don’t know what it looks like now. And I don’t know where it’s going. But they were ready for it, and I just think our players are capitalizing on it.”

An overview of South Carolina athletes and NIL

The impact of NIL deals on college athletics nationwide has varied widely by school and sport.

According to Opendorse, a sports marketing company considered a leader in the NIL space, through May 31:

• The average NIL compensation for a Division I athlete was $3,711.
  
  

• Football deals make up 49.9% of NIL “total compensation,” followed by men’s basketball (17%), women’s basketball (15.7%), women’s volleyball (2.3%), softball (2.1%), women’s swimming and diving (1.8%), and baseball (1.7%), among others.
  
  

• The distribution of total NIL activities by sport is a little more even, with football No. 1 at 29.3%, baseball at 8% and men’s basketball at 7.6%.
  
  

• “Posting content” to social media ranks as the No. 1 kind of NIL activity for compensation (34.2%) with such things as autographs (15.1%) and appearances (4.8%) also on the list. Not factoring in money earned, posting content makes up 67.6% of all NIL activities.

NIL deals between South Carolina athletes have largely been negotiated either on their own or through an agency. Some basic rules dictate those business transactions must be managed on their own time — NIL can’t cut into their practice time or other obligations to USC — and there are a handful of limits on how they can use such things as school logos.

As many as six USC athletes spread between the football and women’s basketball teams have accrued in the neighborhood of $100,000 or more through NIL deals over the past year, an athletic department source told The State.

Women’s basketball players Aliyah Boston and Zia Cooke are believed to be among the highest earners of any Gamecock athletes since the NIL market began last summer.

Boston, fresh off winning just about every major women’s college basketball award, has signed deals with Under Armor, Bose and Bojangles, among others, though actual figures for those contracts haven’t been made public.

Cooke, too, has reportedly made as much money as any player on campus. One of her biggest sponsorships was through an H&R Block program for women’s sports.

Bloomberg reported that Cooke’s agent estimated her deals as of mid-March were valued in the “mid six-figures.” The outlet also ranked Cooke as the third-most marketable player in the Women’s Final Four behind UConn star Paige Bueckers and Louisville’s Haley Van Lith, based on a formula that included social media presence. (Cooke has more than 229,000 followers on Instagram.)

“I really don’t even want to know how much money I have,” Cooke told CBS News at the time. “I haven’t looked at the account since I’ve started. Now I’m just trying to stay focused on my best work.”

Joyner isn’t necessarily the big-money poster child Boston or Cooke have evolved into, but he’s a prime example of the more localized reach of the changing college athletics landscape.

His surprise start at quarterback and perfect 9-for-9 passing day led South Carolina to a 38-21 throttling of North Carolina in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl served as an anchor for landing deals in and around the Carolinas.

Joyner was given a $5,000 deal with Duke’s Mayo to work as an ambassador after earning MVP honors during the Gamecocks’ win. He’s also launched a personalized clothing line — Can’t Stop Cinco — and signed a handful of other deals with businesses such as the Carolina Home Buying Group and Summit Insurance.

South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer estimated while speaking at a booster event in Rock Hill that Joyner had made “over six figures” since the bowl game alone.

“All business ain’t good business,” Joyner told The State. “Just ‘cause someone is offering something doesn’t mean it’s good business. You learn to market and brand yourself well. Don’t take every deal.”

Granted, not all NIL deals have taken on the size and scope of Boston, Cooke or Joyner.

South Carolina linebacker Mo Kaba joked in a tweet on May 17 that “these NIL deals ain’t hitting yet so in the meanwhile hmu if you need your yard cut,” offering lawn care services near his home in North Carolina.

That led to brokering a deal with Columbia retailer Catoe’s Power Equipment, a partnership that was announced on June 16 that made Kaba a “product ambassador” for the company.

“Our brand is incredibly excited to have Mo represent our brands and the business our family has built,” Ben Catoe, the company’s vice president, said in a news release. “We believe his character and toughness are a perfect representation of the quality tools and service we provide at Catoe’s Power Equipment.”

The impact of NIL on Gamecocks football, recruiting

That NIL has lent itself to friendly lawn mowing deals or local camps hasn’t quelled the questions and increasingly toxic role the issue has seemingly begun to play in college athletics. A prevailing thought in college football circles is the avenue to paying players has begun to seep into the recruiting process, creating pay-for-play deals between schools and elite high school prospects.

Fiery jargon from Texas A&M’s Jimbo Fisher and Alabama’s Nick Saban poured gasoline on that already flammable topic earlier in May, prompting a reprimand of the coaches from the Southeastern Conference.

Reports of an “$8 million quarterback” recruit largely believed to be Tennessee commit Nico Iamaleava exacerbated concerns. As has the recent pledge of four-star signal-caller Jaden Rashada, who’s set to receive $9.5 million in NIL money as part of his commitment to Miami, per a report from On3.com.

Beamer has been an advocate of players’ utilizing their brand names and capitalizing on their likenesses — pointing to Joyner’s recent success at booster events this summer as proof of concept — but cautioned against the pay-for-play model..

“If you had any foresight at all, you would see that coming, that when NIL went into effect that (pay-for-play) was going to be an end result of it,” he said. “I don’t know if everybody felt that way. But certainly those people that I talked to, myself included, kind of saw it going in that direction when it was instituted.”

The reason coaches like Beamer have expressed concern resides largely in “collectives” — third-party organizations often operated by boosters who, in some instances, allegedly funnel money to recruits under the guise of NIL deals to secure their commitments.

Texas A&M’s use of collectives and allegations of “buying” its record-breaking 2022 recruiting class was at the crux of Saban’s comments earlier this summer.

Florida’s iteration, Gator Collective, drew ire from NIL lawyer Michael Caspino — who is representing Rashada — for what he described as disorganization. Caspino went as far to say that lack of organization played a major role in why Rashada chose the rival Hurricanes.

South Carolina, too, has involved itself in the collective game via Garnet Trust and Carolina Rise — though neither has publicly been tied to any kind of seedy underbelly in the recruiting world.

“We want to be helpful, and I think that’s the key component,” South Carolina athletic director Ray Tanner told The State of why bringing some of the logistics in negotiating NIL deals in-house is important moving forward. “But when you see those big numbers — OK, I can live with the big numbers. Let’s just make sure it’s all done for the right reasons, in the right way.”

Beamer has said on multiple occasions he’s received more questions surrounding NIL from recruits, parents and others.

Just last month he was pressed at SEC spring meetings as to how much NIL factored into the recruitment of former Oklahoma quarterback Spencer Rattler — who On3.com gives a $2 million valuation, the fourth-most of any college football player, according to its in-house NIL valuation algorithm. (Rattler has 384,000 Instagram followers and another 88,000 on Twitter.)

Since arriving in Columbia, Rattler has announced NIL deals that include apparel with his custom logo, a partnership with a local car dealership and USC-branded bobbleheads.

Beamer, though, said NIL had nothing to do with Rattler’s pledge to South Carolina and later told The State that USC hadn’t incorporated NIL presentations into its recruiting programming to that point.

“We sell our people, the facilities, the academics, things like that,” he said. “Now, I’m not naive and I don’t want to say name, image and likeness isn’t a factor — because it is for a lot of kids. But it’s nothing that we’re sitting here talking about.”

The future of NIL at South Carolina

Joyner bounced from station to station at his camp as kids ranging from 11 to 17 years old ran through drills supervised by a handful of his college and ex-high school teammates.

To the side of the chain-link fence separating parents and fans from the playing surface, Joyner’s pair of American bully puppies raced around near the concessions stands. Even they have ties to their owner’s NIL dealings.

Their names? Duke and Mayo.

“It’s definitely been a networking opportunity,” Joyner said of being able to negotiate with businesses. “Getting out and meeting new people, networking — that’s the big thing.”

It’s been almost one year to the day since the NCAA first opened the NIL floodgates.

Unintended consequences like collectives with potentially ill intentions — and platforms yet to be conceived — will continue to pop up in the coming years as college athletics grapples with its new reality.

Those within the South Carolina athletic department are already angling for the next step in NIL’s evolution, with plans to move at least some of those dealings in-house when July 1 hits on Friday and the current restrictions of the state law are largely eradicated.

USC, for example, announced on Tuesday it will launch Gamecock Exchange, a platform designed to connect athletes and interested parties for business deals. It will also continue to provide funding to its players of up to $5,980 per year in the form of academic achievement awards following the Supreme Court’s ruling in the NCAA vs. Alston case earlier this year.

What comes after that will be a roller-coaster ride with tracks still to be laid.