As the opportunity for college athletes to profit off their name, image and likeness fast approaches, football programs have been working diligently to partner with creative agencies and implement strategies that will help them stand out among recruits within the space.
We’ve seen arms races with facilities, weight rooms, jerseys, photo edits and shoes to see who can persuade recruits to pick their school. The next competition will almost assuredly be with name, image and likeness, as schools are actively pitching what separates the opportunities at their school from others.
“In college, the marketing piece has always been extremely important,” USC personnel director Spencer Harris said. “It doesn’t matter if I evaluated the right players if we can’t get them. The recruiting process is, ‘How do you get the player to choose you,’ so we’ve made such a big investment in this space to support our players at the highest level and build their brands, and it’s a huge recruiting tool.”
