Here’s what Miami Hurricanes’ NIL savior plans to do next season for UM football players
When Dan Lambert — the Miami Hurricanes booster and founder of a mixed martial arts team and gym — decided this past summer to offer every Miami Hurricanes football player on scholarship a $500 monthly payment to promote his business under new NCAA rules, he hoped to entice other companies to follow suit.
Alas, they didn’t, as the Canes stumbled to a 2-4 start en route to a 7-5 finish.
But Lambert — who gave $540,000 to Hurricanes players this year — said he intends to continue offering $500 monthly payments to all Canes scholarship football players next season, with the hope that other local businesses will help push that monthly number close to $1,000 per player.
“I think I’m probably going to have to do the $500 a month myself next year because I don’t think I’m going to get a ton of support unless something happens between now and then to change the narrative,” he said of the football program’s struggles. “And it will change.
“If nothing happens and the environment stays the same, I’ll probably do 500 grand myself next year and hope it changes and I can then build on it. It’s more than I wanted to do out of my own pocket, but the next 35 years I’ve got left as a Hurricane fan on this planet, if I had to do two years at 500 grand and the rest will fund itself, it’s not that much money per year spread out.
“When the winds change and we start to get some [wind] behind our sails, I’m going to go out and try to raise the [expletive] money and give them a monthly stipend as high as I can get for these kids.”
Is the goal still getting each Hurricanes football player $1,000 per month?
“I would love to do $1,000,” Lambert said. “If you can get some winning, it would be more than that, and the individual kids that rise to the top will get way more than that in individual deals. I look at $1,000 a month as a minimum we should be getting these kids.
“Kids want to win, want to get developed for the pros, want to go to bowl games, want to play in front of their hometown fans if they can. But that last choice [playing at home] is behind those other things, and we haven’t been doing those other things. If we can do those things and get some good NIL deals for those kids, the kids will [expletive] come.”
Lambert was just getting started.
“The geographic endowment Miami has with regard to recruiting grounds they’re situated in, we should be a top-20 team every year if we had an average athletic department and staff,” he said. “If we do a good job in those capacities, we should be in the top 10 every year. If we do a really good job, we should be a playoff team every year. That’s just the way it should be.”
Lambert — who founded American Top Team, a Coconut Creek-based mixed martial arts team and gym with more than 40 affiliates worldwide — said nobody in the administration has reached out to him in recent months.
“I almost think the people in those positions think it’s a conflict of interest to talk to the people on the NIL side, which is kind of ridiculous to me,” he said. “I couldn’t see how our interest could be any more aligned.
“I see BYU effectuating NIL deals for people. I see what they’re doing at Oregon with their big boosters. You don’t think they’ve got the Board of Trustees on their side and people making decisions helping them out? I think there should be more involvement, and there are certain rules in NIL legislation in Florida, things they can and can’t do. I hope it gets a little better going forward working together, because helping these kids out is the best thing you can do now. It just is.”
Lambert — whose offer to pay Alonzo Highsmith’s salary if UM had hired him after the 2019 season was rejected by UM — said: “I will always support the athletic department. I love my box at the games and give when I think is appropriate to give.
“I’m going to focus on NIL deals. That’s money that goes directly to the players and can have an immediate effect on the quality of the team, the quality of the recruits and can make peoples’ lives here better when they’re here. And if you do that, it can level the playing field a little bit [amid] some of the things these bigger schools have gotten away with for years, which has made for not-a-level playing field.
“I would have hoped to have done a lot more this [past year] than giving $540,000 to the kids. I was hoping to do a lot of fundraising, a lot of networking over the year. The time wasn’t right for it. Who wanted to get pitched on doing NIL deals this year?”
Regarding UM’s search for an athletic director, Lambert said he hasn’t made any suggestions.
“What the [expletive] do I know? I’m looking through the lens of someone who runs an MMA team and a cruise line at one point. I don’t know [expletive] about that. I’m just a fan. Get people that have been successful with less. Get somebody who has done more with less.
“We have 60 people on the Board of Trustees. How many of them can name the starting lineup on our offense? There are 40 that don’t care about football. Why not have a small group on the board that has an interest in football and a good working knowledge of football and have the AD report to them on football as opposed to everybody? It doesn’t seem like to me the way you’d run a business.”
This story was originally published December 1, 2021 at 1:29 PM.
