The 8 million dollar CFB recruit
Until Saturday: A show about college football
The Athletic
4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 15 March 2022
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Opendorse co-founder Blake Lawrence joins Andy to discuss the rapidly changing world of name, image and likeness deals for college athletes. Blake talks about the deal a class of 2023 football player just signed that could pay up to $8 million over four years and the "collectives" springing up to fund such deals. Is that a wise investment? Should the player have sold all of his NIL rights?
Blake also explains how a player in this week's NCAA Tournament could cash in on instant fame. Blake also explains that depending on what state the player's school is in, that cashing in may have to wait a few days -- which could be a recruiting advantage for other schools.
Blake founded his company after graduating from Nebraska, where he played linebacker on some very good teams. What defensive tackle played in front of him? Ndamukong Suh. Blake explains how a great defensive tackle like Suh is a linebacker's best friend, and Andy suggests those NIL collectives throw their money at the larger humans.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Andy Staples show. |
| 0:20.2 | We're talking NIL today, and I know sometimes that makes people's eyes glaze over, |
| 0:24.9 | but since Stuart Mandel put this story out last Friday about a class of 20, 23, five-star |
| 0:30.5 | player, getting a deal that could guarantee up to $8 million over the next three-ish, four-ish |
| 0:37.4 | years, it's suddenly gotten a lot more |
| 0:40.6 | interesting. Plus, the NCAA tournament's coming up. Some player that you probably have |
| 0:46.1 | never heard of is going to be the most famous person in sports for 12 to 48 hours at some |
| 0:51.3 | point over the next couple weeks. And now they can actually cash in. I'm |
| 0:56.1 | curious to see how that goes. So I call up Blake Lawrence, who's the CEO of Open Doors, also |
| 1:00.5 | former Nebraska linebacker. And he came on and we talked all about what is happening in IL |
| 1:08.0 | from the deals with these collectives like Stuart wrote about, how the state laws are |
| 1:14.5 | changing and how a lot of states want to change their laws now, and just about what the future |
| 1:20.0 | might look like. And it's crazy because Blake actually kind of predicted the future during |
| 1:26.3 | our interview. We recorded the interview early |
| 1:29.4 | Monday morning and in the afternoon on Monday I get a text from Blake. He said, hey, I think I spoke |
| 1:35.6 | something into existence. And what we've been talking about was the Cavender Twins at Fresno State, |
| 1:41.6 | they're basketball players. Haley is the leading scorer in the Mountain West this past year. |
| 1:46.8 | Hannah also scores a bunch of points. |
| 1:49.6 | Haley average 19.8. |
| 1:50.9 | Hannah averaged 17 points a game. |
| 1:52.6 | So two really good sisters playing basketball. |
| 1:55.1 | They played three years at Fresno State. |
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