#ChargeOn Today: The #UCFuture is here 🚀 — Wimbush's new venture 💸
A belated Happy Father’s Day weekend to all the dads out there! I had the pleasure of spending the weekend with mine and I’m so incredibly blessed! To all the dads, soon-to-be dads or those who have lost their fathers - I’m thinking of you!
Today’s newsletter focuses on the future of UCF Football, especially coming off Monday’s Supreme Court decision backing education-related payments to student athletes. Let’s jump in, shall we? ✍🏼
Today’s read is 5.5 minutes ⏲️
Trending in the Kingdom: Embracing the #UCFuture 🚀
UCF is leading the way, welcoming the new NIL rules, which become a law on July 1 (Photo: @UCF_Football0
Come July 1, everything in college football will change, and UCF is embracing the future instead of resisting it. We’ve arrived at the player-empowerment era in college sports - and all sports, really - with this university leaning into the changes unlike any across the country.
In case you forgot: Florida is one of 19 states that have passed NIL (name, image and likeness) legislation allowing college athletes to profit off their own brand. Seven of those 19 take effect next month: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, New Mexico and Texas start July 1, while Arizona begins July 23. The other 12 will go into effect over the next four years.
All of this started when California passed the then-named “Fair Pay to Play” act in September of 2019, which granted college athletes the ability to cash in off their likeness beginning Jan. 1, 2023. That changed the game, essentially pressuring the NCAA to act and set off a chain reaction of other states introducing NIL laws.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis endorsed the idea of a NIL bill last October, it passed the Florida Senate in March, hit a roadblock in May where some tried to push the date back to 2022, but the original date was held up and the bill was signed into law in June. Florida became the first state in the nation to begin allowing athletes to profit off their image in 2021.
BREAKING: Florida @GovRonDeSantis is signing the college athlete name, image & likeness bill.
Effective July 1, 2021, college athletes in Florida can sign paid endorsement deals. FL jumps CA as 1st state to give athletes these rights. Honored to have been part of this effort.
Instead of shunning the new wave of players profiting off their own image, UCF is using it as a recruiting tool.
Here’s the scoop: It all started this spring, when head coach Gus Malzahn allowed players to wear their social media handles on the back of their jerseys, amplifying their personal brands. The names were also displayed on the stadium big screen.
Now, to be fair, former UCF assistant and Temple coach Geoff Collins was the vanguard here when he allowed Temple players to wear their Twitter usernames across their backs in 2018, but this year’s spring reveal, and the timing of it by Malzahn, went viral - and helped establish UCF as a school that will help enhance a player’s personal brand, not quell it. That should lead to a boom (or should I say ‘BOOM!’?) in recruiting.
“This is the new age of personal branding, and we’re going to embrace it within the NCAA rules,” Malzahn said after the spring game in April. “That’s who we are, and that’s who we’re going to be.”
It’s not just talk, either. UCF unveiled a 10-point explainer on Friday, listing how they plan to help current and potential student athletes profit off their individual brands. They even guaranteed a job or grad school placement for student-athletes after leaving, which as my friend Alex Lewis pointed out is pretty unique.
Guaranteed job or grad school placement after you graduate is an amazing promise to make to all student athletes.
Proud of my alma mater for going above and beyond. https://t.co/EvkO67WdXc
UCF says it’ll be a department-wide effort to assist student-athletes with a successful name, image and likeness launch, including partnerships with Opendorse and COMPASS, two companies specializing in licensing and branding.
Here’s the full 10-point pitch, branded as the ‘Go for LAUNCH’ campaign.
100% guaranteed job or grad school placement after graduation, saying UCF is the only school in the nation to make that guarantee.
Access to the UCF Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship, which can help with education, startup resources, access to mentors, and unique convening opportunities for individual branding.
Free access to legal services through the office of Student Legal Services, which includes counseling and court representation.
A marketplace to help connect UCF student-athletes with the right brand companies for endorsement and commercial opportunities, while staying within the NCAA rules.
Personal brand logo creation, which actually got started in 2019 with the football’s signing class personal brand crests were introduced. This fall, each student-athlete will have a sport-specific crest that will be created and used on graphics across all social media platforms.
Help with personal brand education through COMPASS, which will also use a mobile app to monitors all NIL-related activities.
Custom video content creation in partnership with the university and Opendorse. UCF was the first school to send video content to a student-athlete and “has had student-athletes and alumni rack up over 74 million impressions and nearly 11 million video views on content distributed through the platform,” according to the university.
The best FBS account for social engagement, which has had the most total interactions on Instagram and Facebook of any Top 25 program since August 1, 2017.
A large and passionate alumni base that’s active on social media, with nearly half of the 322,000-plus alumni living in Orlando and the Central Florida area.
Orlando’s marketplace as one of the best cities in the world to build your brand, with Disney and ESPN Wide World of Sports and Universal right in your backyard.
I do want to give a special nod to UCF’s social media team, led by the Assistant AD of Content, Eric DeSalvo, who has excelled at leading UCF’s branding on social media. There have been features on his work done in Front Office Sports and OpenDorse, among others, and his impact can’t be undersold.
There’s a reason UCF has been a social savant since 2017, and it’s because DeSalvo’s eye for engagement is unlike any other in the country.
So, how can athletes make money within the rules? Overall, once July 1 hits, college athletes in the state will be able to profit in a number of different ways, including:
Social media (sponsored posts or advertisements)
YouTube channels and Twitter videos
Private training lessons
Autograph sales
Merchandise
Endorsement deals
Also, shout out to companies like Dreamfield, which is spearheaded by a UCF alum named Luis, that’s trying to get out in front of the NIL boom and work with athletes to make money off their brand, which leads me to my next point…
Wimbush's window of opportunity 💸
Brandon Wimbush transferred from Notre Dame to UCF in 2019. (Photo: USA Today)
While his career at UCF didn’t pan out, former Knights quarterback - and famed Notre Dame transfer - Brandon Wimbush is positioning himself to have a greater impact post his playing career.
My colleague, Josh Sidorowicz, at 10 Tampa Bay spoke with Wimbush about his new venture, a company he and friend Ayden Syal started called MOGL (pronounced like mogul), an online social agency designed to help athletes connect with local businesses to capitalize on their fame.
“When you walk into the school library, the bookstore and you see your jersey being sold and you’re not reaping a dollar’s worth of benefit from it, that’s when it kicks into reality for you,” Wimbush told Sidorowicz. “…the typical argument is that a scholarship is worth more than compensation. The argument we make is if you’re a musician or an educator and you wanted to go out and receive compensation for your tutoring or providing music lessons or doing something within the community, you’re able to be compensated.”
According to the website, MOGL’s platform helps athletes “easily connect with businesses, foundations, and individuals about compensation opportunities.” The site says athletes will be able to name their price for speaking engagements, similar to how the Cameo app allow stars to set their own price point for personalized videos.
Syal, Wimbush’s business partner, says they want to empower all athletes in this new era, “not just the Trevor Lawrences of the world.”
Like I mentioned in the previous section, these new rules are a huge recruiting tool and UCF has a leg up on other schools with the law taking effect next week.
“If schools really take full advantage of it, lay out a program for these athletes and really push for them to do this thing correctly, then they can use it to their advantage and they can use it as a recruiting tool,” Wimbush said to NDInsider. “I think you’re going to see athletes starting to go to schools that have clear markets — to my point of being in South Bend. The Notre Dame quarterback could have done really well there.”
Did you know 💭: Wimbush is also working with ex-UCF star Brandon Marshall’s House of Athlete, a wellness and lifestyle brand, in Weston, Fla.
Knights of the Roundup 🏈🏃♀️🏟
Greg McCrae is headed north of the border to continue his playing career (Photo: @TorontoArgos)
🏈 Former UCF football running back Greg McCrae just signed with the CFL’s Toronto Argonauts.
🏈 Gus Malzahn landed two more commitments on Friday for the 2022 class, Georgia athlete Tyler Griffin and South Florida defensive lineman Jamaal Johnson. The addition of the pair moves UCF up to No. 2 in the AAC recruiting rankings and 54th overall.
🏃♀️ So proud of freshman track star Rayniah Jones for representing UCF on the national stage, but she fell just short of qualifying for the U.S. Olympic team in this weekend’s Tokyo trials.
🏟️ UCF is almost at a complete sellout for the 2021 football season.
If you haven’t hopped on the season ticket bandwagon yet, what are you waiting for? See you in the Cabana on Sept. 2 ✌️ - Ryan
By Ryan Bass
The #ChargeOn Today Newsletter is dedicated to covering trending UCF Athletics news and topics. Have some feedback? Shoot me a message: chargeontoday@gmail.com
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