Podcast: D’Eriq King signs momentous NIL deal and college football is changed forever
The clock struck midnight, and D’Eriq King helped usher in a new age for college football.
The quarterback inked a number of sponsorship deals — with College Hunks Hauling Junk and Murphy Automotive Group — and launched his own company almost as soon as July began. The new name, image and likeness laws are in effect, and the Miami Hurricanes are one of the first teams to have a star capitalize.
There are a lot of angles to hit on this, so the Eye on the U podcast spends the bulk of this new episode recapping the first day of the new NIL era, all the ventures Miami players are diving into and what the long-term repercussions might be. David Wilson and Susan Miller Degnan, the Hurricanes beat writer for the Miami Herald, talk through everything we learned from Day 1 of this new era.
The biggest takeaways: There’s still no life-changing money out there, but creativity will be rewarded.
King is the perfect example. The redshirt senior’s sponsorship deals with College Hunks and Murphy Auto Group, for example, are worth a little more than $20,000, but he will have a chance to make even more through Dreamfield, the NIL-based platform he helped co-found with Florida State Seminoles quarterback McKenzie Milton on Thursday. The platform will primarily help college athletes book live events like autograph signings, meet-and-greets and speaking engagements, letting them leverage their celebrity in ways other than simple sponsorship agreements.
Cornerback Al Blades Jr. is doing the same thing, selling T-shirts and working to make money off his sizable social media followings. Even lesser-known players such as offensive lineman Michael McLaughlin and linebacker Tirek Austin-Cave made sponsored posts on Twitter on Thursday after new laws went into effect.
Before we finish up, we also hit on Paradise Camp, the status of the Hurricanes’ Class of 2022 and Miami’s massive underdog status against the Alabama Crimson Tide for the season-opener in September.
As always, continue to rate, review and subscribe while we bring you new episodes all throughout college football’s busier-than-ever offseason.
