By Hunt Palmer
LSU blitzed social media on Thursday morning with Nike news.
Ten Tigers have joined Team Nike as the apparel mega-brand extended its expiring deal with LSU through 2036 and made the school its first partner in the Blue Ribbon Elite NIL program.
What does it mean?
This is just another way for LSU to create financial opportunity for student-athletes without asking donors for checks. Revenue sharing is the first and most obvious. Everything in the NIL space must be approved by the clearinghouse. Deals like this one make that much, much easier.
Nike is perhaps the biggest brand in sports. LSU is one of the premier brands in collegiate athletics. Combined, adequate exposure for significant athlete compensation exists.
For decades, Nike has featured athletes in commercials, on shoes and at events. That type of promotion trumps the LSU booster with a local business who may be willing to stroke a big check to a player but may have difficulty justifying it with the clearinghouse.
Nike’s Instagram page has 298 million followers. Problem solved.
Now, LSU doesn’t have an exclusive deal with Nike. Far from it. Dozens of schools around the country will be involved in this over time. However, it’s beyond debate that LSU has cultivated some of the biggest stars of the decade.
Joe Burrow, Ja’Marr Chase and Justin Jefferson are faces of the NFL. Jayden Daniels was right there with them last year.
Paul Skenes is the biggest American phenomenal in baseball. Livvy Dunne is the poster child for NIL.
Angel Reese and Flau’jae Johnson are two of the biggest brands in women’s basketball over the last five years.
All of them launched their stars in Baton Rouge, and the clearinghouse knows it.
In the wild, wild west days of NIL, it was easy to question how LSU would keep up with universities whose endowments tripled LSU’s or more. That’s still fair to an extent, but revenue sharing is capped, and partnerships like this make real money possible at LSU on a level few, if any, schools have matched in the era.
Lane Kiffin was asked about the NIL plan laid out for him when he took the job.
“There’s a great plan here,” he said. “There’s a great plan of how we can come together with what we bring and what players around the country want to play for us and play in our systems and then have that support to be able to do that so that they want to play for us and they get taken care of financially.”
This fall, four schools spoke with Kiffin about their NIL plans moving forward. We know Ole Miss, Florida and LSU were involved. The fourth was presumably Auburn, UCLA, Penn State or Arkansas.
No matter who it was, it’s a power conference brand with national exposure. Kiffin’s agent Jimmy Sexton said all four offered comparable compensation packages for him. Kiffin just wanted to know about the NIL possibilities.
“In the process of figuring out the NIL package, those were not similar,” Kiffin said. “Those were not the same. That’s a big part of it.”
LSU’s best opportunity to keep up with wealthier schools is to continue to promote the brand to allow for the brightest lights to shine on Baton Rouge.
They don’t shine any brighter than Nike or Amazon, and that’s where the Swoosh came first.
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