Name, image, and likeness is what NIL stands for. Tim Cartwright, Chair of FGCU’s Southwest Florida Flight Crew, recently talked with me about the development of this NIL collective.
"The college sports landscape changed forever on July 3rd. 2021, when the NCAA permitted student athletes to earn compensation for their name, image, and likeness. As part of this new landscape, a concept referred to as "collectives" has been introduced," said Cartwright.
"These "collectives" are organizations that are formed to allow community businesses, fans, and alumni to provide sponsorship and /or endorsement deals that are paid through the collective and then distributed to the student athletes for their services.
The money is provided to these student athletes in support of their efforts to to capitalize on their name, image, and likeness rights as they endorse products, sign autographs, or earn appearance fees."
Cartwright shared how the Southwest Florida Flight Crew began at Florida Gulf Coast University.
"Former FGCU President Mike Martin asked me to lead a task force to study the athletic department," Cartwright said. "Here's the question that he asked this task force... . As a mid -major university without college football, how can FGCU create a financially stable athletic department while remaining nationally competitive, maintain and improve excellent student-athlete academic performance, and continue to win conference championships in the era of NIL?"
Nine months later, the task force shared their plan with President Martin.
"Part of our recommendations was we really needed to respond to this name, image and likeness trend that was out in the college landscape," he said. "Most of the major Power 5 conferences, conference schools, had name, image, and likeness collectives, and it was starting to trickle down. And if we didn't take action, FGCU would not have a name, image, and likeness collective and not keep pace with its peer institutions. So we felt that it was time to respond and put a name, image, and likeness collective together for FGCU."
Cartwright described the business model for the Southwest Florida Flight Crew.
"We're registered with the state as a B corporation," he started. "That's different than a C corporation. A Beneficial corporation, which is what the B Corp stands for, is a for-profit company. However, it's allowed us to put purpose before profit."
He said that with a C-corporation, the business is beholden to the shareholders to drive and maximize profit on their behalf.
As a B-Corp, he said the purpose of Southwest Florida Flight Crew is to maximize the N-I-L opportunities for the FGCU student athlete.
"We connect them with local businesses, local corporations and ask them if they've got marketing or advertising ideas that could be enhanced by having a student athlete show up at their business, speak to their management team, attend a ribbon cutting, an anniversary celebration.
"Whatever we earn we pass through right through to the student athletes minus some some small and minimal corporate expenses that we have," said Cartwright. "The goal is to get 95% or more of that money to the athlete."
Cartwright said the purpose of the SWFL Flight Crew is to help keep the FGCU athletics program strong, which in turns helps the university remain strong. To demonstrate how athletics programs fit into the structure of a 4-year university, Cartwright shared this analogy.
"To build a great university, you think about building a great house. And you've got many different rooms in that house, representing the different aspects of the university environment: the academics, the students, clubs, and athletics.
Athletics aren't the most important aspect of a university, certainly the academics and degrees are, but there's no denying that it's an important part of the house and we think of it as the front porch of the house."
He used "Dunk City," coined when FGCU’s men’s basketball team made it to the NCAA “Sweet Sixteen” tournament in 2013, as an example of the impact of athletics to a university.
"It really does drive enrollment. Think of "Dunk City" at FGCU. Prior to "Dunk City," enrollment was hovering between 3,000 to 5,000 a year. Once "Dunk City" happened and the awareness of Florida Gulf Coast University was national because of the Sweet 16 Run, enrollment started to jump up to the 10,000 to 12,000 level.
FGCU enrolment stands at 15,892 as of the Fall 2023 semester.
Karen Moore is publisher of Southwest Florida Business Today and special to WGCU.
