Syracuse, N.Y. – Jim Cavale spent the past couple days on the Syracuse University campus talking to Orange athletic administrators, coaches and athletes.
The subject? Name, Image, Likeness.
Cavale’s business, INFLCR (pronounced “influencer”), is helping SU and many other college athletic programs navigate the choppy new NIL waters. He’s a Syracuse native who spent the past few years cultivating a business that initially provided athletes with photos and videos to post on social media and entice people to follow them. Now, he and INFLCR have transitioned into NIL.
Since July 1, when NIL became a reality for Division I athletes, Cavale has traveled to various campuses attempting to remind newly empowered athletes how to build their personal brands and make money off opportunities the NCAA previously forbade. Athletes can now cash in on autograph signings, personalized Cameo videos and online brand endorsements, to name a few possibilities.
The frenzy to the NIL buildup and the breathlessness in which the first few deals were publicized likely led to a misperception among college athletes, Cavale said. Brands, for the most part, are not banging down the doors of college athletes or blitzing them with endless offers of deals.
“Unfortunately, athletes went into this with not just a lack of education but probably expectations that were not realistic,” he said. “The way the media writes about NIL and has been writing about NIL, if you’re a sports fan or an athlete, you think all of a sudden there is going to be a bunch of money on July 1st. And that’s just not reality. Reality is this is just as hard as getting a scholarship to play basketball at Syracuse or getting playing time or getting a 4.0 in school. You get out what you put in.”
Cavale has recited the “you get what you put in” mantra for months. He wants athletes to understand that NIL is another job, another responsibility. To capitalize, they need to dedicate a portion of their days to feeding social media. He wants them to post frequently, to post honestly and to post personally.
“They gotta tell their story more often. They gotta put themselves out there,” he said. “They gotta game this just like things in the weight room and in the field and in the classroom. One out 10 are going to listen to that, but when (the one is) making money, the other nine are gonna be like, ‘Uh-oh, maybe I should be doing that too.’”
Nobody seems to have benefited from NIL at Syracuse more thus far than Buddy Boeheim, who will sign autographs Saturday at Destiny USA for a fee. Boeheim has an endorsement deal with Enduraphin. He’s selling “Buddy Buckets” T-shirts and sandals. He shot a cereal commercial for Three Wishes. He’s personalizing Cameo videos.
Cavale said Boeheim has “done a great job” with NIL because he’s making diverse deals on different platforms. He spent a portion of the offseason putting together links that allow fans to access him and whatever he’s selling. But Cavale thinks Boeheim could further maximize his appeal.
“One thing I’ve pushed Buddy on, and he’s no stranger to me saying it – he’ll laugh – but he’s gotta post more,” Cavale said. “Buddy raised thousands of dollars for the Make-A-Wish Foundation on Cameo in July. He should be telling that story and talking about what is the reason Make-A-Wish is a passion for him and encouraging other athletes or other people in this area to do the same thing. So Buddy, if he puts himself out there more, can be even more successful.”
Boeheim, a senior guard, capitalized on a 2021 postseason that made him a March Madness star and increased his profile. Some of his teammates, namely the four players born outside the United States (Frank Anselem, John Bol Ajak, Jesse Edwards, Bourama Sidibe), are prohibited from making NIL money here because of student visa stipulations. Boeheim, under no such restrictions, has engineered SU’s splashiest NIL deals.
“Buddy’s easy to like, he’s humble, and because of that it’s working,” Cavale said. “So even though he’s the star of NIL so far, I don’t see any resentment or jealousy even though we want the whole team to win. The whole team will win over time because I think there are going to be a lot of things that happen with INFLCR that benefit more than just Buddy or Joe Girard. Cole Swider is another guy who’s making some money and doing some deals. I think you’re going to see it grow.”
Class of 2022 forward Kamari Lands recently decommitted from SU. He wanted to explore, he said, what schools could do for him from an NIL perspective.
But neither schools nor coaches can make NIL deals for their athletes. Both are prohibited from brokering those kinds of financial arrangements.
Cavale met with SU coaches in general Monday and with SU coach Jim Boeheim on Tuesday. The way Syracuse coaches can appeal to recruits, Cavale said, is to point out the deals their athletes are making and, as time progresses, to show how someone like freshman Benny Williams increased his social media following (and thus his marketability) during his Syracuse career.
“That will become a part of recruiting as well,” Cavale said, “but there’s nothing they can do to influence those deals from happening.”
Who gets NIL deals, of course, is subject to the whims of the marketplace. A recent Washington Post story reported on the kind of female athlete brands were collaborating with: those young women were often white, blond and attractive. Their social media feeds featured a lot of glam, a lot of skin.
Cavale contends that’s not the only way to attract followers and strike business deals. He spent an hour last week with Oregon’s Sedona Prince, whose viral video on the inequities of the 2021 NCAA basketball tournaments spurred demands for equality in women’s basketball.
Prince has 246,000 followers on Instagram and 2.6 million followers on TikTok.
“It’s all about initiative. And Sedona, she kills it on TikTok, she kills it on Instagram. She puts in the work,” Cavale said. “She is a great storyteller who is also a really great student-athlete on the court. (She) also represents several progressive movements going on in society and it works for her.”
In Syracuse these past couple of days, Cavale reminded athletes to have clear social media names that are easily searchable, “not some code name.” It helps to declare which teams they play for. They should cite a jersey number and provide a quote that defines them. And Cavale can’t repeat this enough: they should post a lot of content.
Athletes, by and large, have complained about finding time to dedicate to all this social media grunt work. But Cavale responds with results from a recent survey INFLCR did with 100,000 student-athletes:
The average time college student-athletes spend on their phones each day? Seven hours and 42 minutes. Some of that time, Cavale reasoned, could be redirected to building a marketable social media profile.
“Nobody wants to meet with them more than right now. They’re wearing the jersey and they’re playing sports,” Cavale said. “So capitalizing on that by building a following on social, by building relationships offline in rooms they’re brought into, in places that they’re around influential people – that’s where it starts. And of course, the better you perform on the field, the more opportunities you’re going to have with your NIL.”
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