Selected Clips
Source: Louisville Courier Journal / Cameron Teague Robinson
'Ahead of the game': Why "Opendorse" gives Louisville student-athletes an edge with NIL bill
Cameron Teague Robinson
Louisville Courier Journal
For Reid Detmers and Bobby Miller, pitching in the College World Series was one of the highlights of their careers. But nothing compared to June 10 when the Louisville starters were both drafted in the first round of the MLB Draft.
Detmers was selected No. 10 to the Los Angeles Angels and Miller was No. 29 to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Before the night was over, there was a video of them receiving their draft call in their inbox ready to post on social media.
That’s often content you see on the team pages, but in this instance, Louisville wanted Detmers and Miller to have it ready to post and the result was impressive. Miller’s video had 225,000 views as of Nov. 20 and Detmers video had 200,000 views.
The expanded partnership, which was announced on Sept. 17, includes a program Louisville is calling Elevate. The program is designed to help student-athletes build their individual brands through social media in their own way.
"Our team is at the core, just being the education provider and technology tool that they can use to scale a lot of the content to those athletes and better prepare them for next year and all the things that are going to happen," said Adi Kunalic, the co-founder of Opendorse.
Louisville has been partnered with Opendorse for a few years as they’ve done work with the basketball and football program. But this next step, dealing directly with the athletes, is new and a way for the university to get ahead of the name, image and likeness bills that are sure to impact college athletics sooner rather than later.
Whether Louisville, or any other program in the country, agrees with the NIL changes doesn’t matter. Universities are now being forced to adapt to these changes and for Louisville, which was one of the first five programs in the country to join Opendorse’s new partnership, its a chance to take advantage of its options.
How does it work?
When Tyra was playing college baseball for the University of Kentucky, he would’ve killed for a chance to build his own brand in the way athletes can now.
The son of Charlie Tyra, who is one of four basketball players with his jersey number retired at Louisville, it’s unknown just how much he could’ve built or made off of his own image.
For Louisville, the athlete with the biggest social media reach is women’s basketball freshman Hailey Van Lith, who has a total audience of 652,000 on Twitter and Instagram. Van Lith also leads Louisville with 2.1 million total engagements in the last year, according to Opendorse. The Louisville football player with the most reach is freshman wide receiver Jordan Watkins with an audience over 30,000 and the men’s basketball player with the most is Aidan Igiehon with over 93,000.
So there's a competition aspect of the assessment as well, but it is really there to help athletes understand the best ways to capitalize on their following.
Louisville is still in the beginning stages of its Elevate partnership, but once the athletes are signed up on the app, they can receive pictures or videos to post on their social media pages.
Detmers and Miller may have been one of the first ways Louisville tested this, but it wasn't the last. When baseball players Luke Smith and Adam Elliott announced their return to the program, Louisville utilized Opendorse by sending them an announcement video. Smith's video got over 72,000 views.
Why did Louisville decide this was the route to go? Well, Louisville has had success with its social media accounts for years now. In the 2019 season, the Louisville football Facebook account saw a 417% interaction increase from the year before. The Twitter account saw a 395% increase, and the Instagram account increased interactions by 283%, according to the university.
But the marketing team quickly learned that when a post comes from an athlete, coach or even Tyra, it is a little more personal to the fans.
"We can post something from the team account, people might connect with it, but we post it from Vince’s (Tyra) account or the coach’s account and it has a personal touch to it," Schmid said. "It feels like you are connecting with this person."
Helping in recruiting
Tyra’s job as athletic director entails a lot at Louisville, but one thing that goes under the radar is his interaction on recruiting Zoom calls for potential athletes.
During the COVID-19 shutdown, he was on a few recruiting calls with the coaches and parents and one thing that came up was the NIL changes. How did Louisville plan to help their child prepare for those changes?
One of the perks of partnering with Opendorse from the beginning is Louisville has a concrete plan it can give recruits on how Louisville can help their brand. The response has been positive from the calls he’s been on.
"They say we are ahead of the game for sure," Tyra said.
Florida may be the first state to incorporate NIL in all of its colleges statewide. In June, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a name, image and likeness bill that will go into effect on July 1, 2021.
With so many connections to Florida, that has become a hot bed for the football team in recruiting. Some of its best athletes are from there: Teddy Bridgewater, Lamar Jackson and Tutu Atwell to name a few.
Nationally
Since Scott Satterfield arrived at Louisville, he’s recruited seven players from Florida with four others verbally committed in the 2021 class. Georgia has also been a big home for Louisville recruiting.
Tyra believes they won’t lose ground there, or anywhere else, despite the NIL bill being signed because of the Opendorse partnership.
"They can see we are cognizant of it, but they can also see what we can do, " Tyra said.
Just how does the app, or partnership, work for recruits? It’s very similar to how it works for current athletes. Once a recruit signs their national letter of intent and puts their commitment on paper, Louisville can start sending them content to post.
There are still concerns
The concerns surrounding all NIL bills are major talking points for athletic programs across the country.
In May, Satterfield expressed his concerns that things could get out of hand if not regulated.
"I don’t know we fully know what that means and what it’s going to look like and the tentacles that will come off of it,” Satterfield said in May. “Unless we have parameters, I don’t think it’s going to be a good thing.
“... If you couple the name, image and likeness to a (proposed) one-time transfer, what’s to say that the University of Alabama likes my player and they come to him and approach him on a side deal? ‘Listen, come here, we’ve got this car dealer that’s going to pay you $50,000 a year to advertise for them and you’ve got an opportunity to win a national championship and you can play right now.’ That’s more like the wild, wild west in my opinion.”
Tyra has similar concerns. He’s less worried about helping Louisville's athletes build their brands to profit off their image than he is about bad agents trying to profit off athletes.
A proposal he had is creating a list of designated agents or professionals to help the athletes like college basketball has. For college basketball players that want to test the NBA draft waters, but still want to keep their eligibility, the NCAA ruled in 2019 they can do so when working with an agent on their designated list.
Recently:
"Outside influence does and making sure that our student-athletes are aligned with proper people and organizations," Tyra said. "I’m hopeful there will be some vetting process either one individual third party, clearinghouse or anything that they may want to contract with and even the way we look at agents with college basketball is to try and go through some type of approval process. Leaving it wide open and not having any certification for those that would represent themselves as agents, that is the danger if there isn’t a process around that environment."
One way or another, university compliances offices will be paying close attention to what athletes sign and the ads they do. There’s no way to stop the changes coming in athletics. It’s a forgone conclusion that the name, image and likeness will impact college athletics no later than 2022.
In the meantime, Louisville’s partnership with Opendorse is lightyears ahead of the curve, and it has proven to be highly beneficial for the Power 5 program.
Unmute
Source: Louisville Courier Journal / Cameron Teague Robinson
'Ahead of the game': Why "Opendorse" gives Louisville student-athletes an edge with NIL bill
Cameron Teague Robinson
Louisville Courier Journal
For Reid Detmers and Bobby Miller, pitching in the College World Series was one of the highlights of their careers. But nothing compared to June 10 when the Louisville starters were both drafted in the first round of the MLB Draft.
Detmers was selected No. 10 to the Los Angeles Angels and Miller was No. 29 to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Before the night was over, there was a video of them receiving their draft call in their inbox ready to post on social media.
That’s often content you see on the team pages, but in this instance, Louisville wanted Detmers and Miller to have it ready to post and the result was impressive. Miller’s video had 225,000 views as of Nov. 20 and Detmers video had 200,000 views.
The expanded partnership, which was announced on Sept. 17, includes a program Louisville is calling Elevate. The program is designed to help student-athletes build their individual brands through social media in their own way.
"Our team is at the core, just being the education provider and technology tool that they can use to scale a lot of the content to those athletes and better prepare them for next year and all the things that are going to happen," said Adi Kunalic, the co-founder of Opendorse.
Louisville has been partnered with Opendorse for a few years as they’ve done work with the basketball and football program. But this next step, dealing directly with the athletes, is new and a way for the university to get ahead of the name, image and likeness bills that are sure to impact college athletics sooner rather than later.
Whether Louisville, or any other program in the country, agrees with the NIL changes doesn’t matter. Universities are now being forced to adapt to these changes and for Louisville, which was one of the first five programs in the country to join Opendorse’s new partnership, its a chance to take advantage of its options.
How does it work?
When Tyra was playing college baseball for the University of Kentucky, he would’ve killed for a chance to build his own brand in the way athletes can now.
The son of Charlie Tyra, who is one of four basketball players with his jersey number retired at Louisville, it’s unknown just how much he could’ve built or made off of his own image.
For Louisville, the athlete with the biggest social media reach is women’s basketball freshman Hailey Van Lith, who has a total audience of 652,000 on Twitter and Instagram. Van Lith also leads Louisville with 2.1 million total engagements in the last year, according to Opendorse. The Louisville football player with the most reach is freshman wide receiver Jordan Watkins with an audience over 30,000 and the men’s basketball player with the most is Aidan Igiehon with over 93,000.
So there's a competition aspect of the assessment as well, but it is really there to help athletes understand the best ways to capitalize on their following.
Louisville is still in the beginning stages of its Elevate partnership, but once the athletes are signed up on the app, they can receive pictures or videos to post on their social media pages.
Detmers and Miller may have been one of the first ways Louisville tested this, but it wasn't the last. When baseball players Luke Smith and Adam Elliott announced their return to the program, Louisville utilized Opendorse by sending them an announcement video. Smith's video got over 72,000 views.
Why did Louisville decide this was the route to go? Well, Louisville has had success with its social media accounts for years now. In the 2019 season, the Louisville football Facebook account saw a 417% interaction increase from the year before. The Twitter account saw a 395% increase, and the Instagram account increased interactions by 283%, according to the university.
But the marketing team quickly learned that when a post comes from an athlete, coach or even Tyra, it is a little more personal to the fans.
"We can post something from the team account, people might connect with it, but we post it from Vince’s (Tyra) account or the coach’s account and it has a personal touch to it," Schmid said. "It feels like you are connecting with this person."
Helping in recruiting
Tyra’s job as athletic director entails a lot at Louisville, but one thing that goes under the radar is his interaction on recruiting Zoom calls for potential athletes.
During the COVID-19 shutdown, he was on a few recruiting calls with the coaches and parents and one thing that came up was the NIL changes. How did Louisville plan to help their child prepare for those changes?
One of the perks of partnering with Opendorse from the beginning is Louisville has a concrete plan it can give recruits on how Louisville can help their brand. The response has been positive from the calls he’s been on.
"They say we are ahead of the game for sure," Tyra said.
Florida may be the first state to incorporate NIL in all of its colleges statewide. In June, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a name, image and likeness bill that will go into effect on July 1, 2021.
With so many connections to Florida, that has become a hot bed for the football team in recruiting. Some of its best athletes are from there: Teddy Bridgewater, Lamar Jackson and Tutu Atwell to name a few.
Nationally
Since Scott Satterfield arrived at Louisville, he’s recruited seven players from Florida with four others verbally committed in the 2021 class. Georgia has also been a big home for Louisville recruiting.
Tyra believes they won’t lose ground there, or anywhere else, despite the NIL bill being signed because of the Opendorse partnership.
"They can see we are cognizant of it, but they can also see what we can do, " Tyra said.
Just how does the app, or partnership, work for recruits? It’s very similar to how it works for current athletes. Once a recruit signs their national letter of intent and puts their commitment on paper, Louisville can start sending them content to post.
There are still concerns
The concerns surrounding all NIL bills are major talking points for athletic programs across the country.
In May, Satterfield expressed his concerns that things could get out of hand if not regulated.
"I don’t know we fully know what that means and what it’s going to look like and the tentacles that will come off of it,” Satterfield said in May. “Unless we have parameters, I don’t think it’s going to be a good thing.
“... If you couple the name, image and likeness to a (proposed) one-time transfer, what’s to say that the University of Alabama likes my player and they come to him and approach him on a side deal? ‘Listen, come here, we’ve got this car dealer that’s going to pay you $50,000 a year to advertise for them and you’ve got an opportunity to win a national championship and you can play right now.’ That’s more like the wild, wild west in my opinion.”
Tyra has similar concerns. He’s less worried about helping Louisville's athletes build their brands to profit off their image than he is about bad agents trying to profit off athletes.
A proposal he had is creating a list of designated agents or professionals to help the athletes like college basketball has. For college basketball players that want to test the NBA draft waters, but still want to keep their eligibility, the NCAA ruled in 2019 they can do so when working with an agent on their designated list.
Recently:
"Outside influence does and making sure that our student-athletes are aligned with proper people and organizations," Tyra said. "I’m hopeful there will be some vetting process either one individual third party, clearinghouse or anything that they may want to contract with and even the way we look at agents with college basketball is to try and go through some type of approval process. Leaving it wide open and not having any certification for those that would represent themselves as agents, that is the danger if there isn’t a process around that environment."
One way or another, university compliances offices will be paying close attention to what athletes sign and the ads they do. There’s no way to stop the changes coming in athletics. It’s a forgone conclusion that the name, image and likeness will impact college athletics no later than 2022.
In the meantime, Louisville’s partnership with Opendorse is lightyears ahead of the curve, and it has proven to be highly beneficial for the Power 5 program.
Unmute
