The Knights of the Raritan will announce on Tuesday that every member of the Rutgers football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball programs — including walk-ons — will receive a Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) deal in the 2023 calendar year “as a result of the collective’s funding, and complementary efforts of supporters, donors and the corporate community,” its President Jon Newman told NJ Advance Media.
In the constantly-evolving NIL space that is dominating modern college athletics, it is believed to be one of the few full-team funding campaigns.
Oklahoma-focused NIL collective Crimson and Cream announced last week it was signing or offering an NIL deal to all 115 members of the Sooners’ football program, and it announced a similar deal with the school’s men’s basketball program in November. NIL collectives supporting programs at Texas Tech, SMU and Baylor announced similar deals with their school’s football programs in the past six months.
“This announcement puts RU at the forefront of this landscape, and provides partnership opportunities for the athletes involved with the Rutgers football, men’s basketball, and women’s basketball teams,” Newman said.
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Newman declined to discuss how much the deals will be worth, how long each will run for and whether they will be one-time or recurring, saying it will vary on a case-by-case basis by the sport and athlete. The Knights of the Raritan will fund every deal made with both basketball teams and many of the deals for the football program, but details are still being ironed out.
The collective is in the final days of the Million Dollar Match campaign it launched last month, where it looked to earn $500,000 in donations that would be matched dollar-for-dollar by a group of six anonymous donors. As of the 30th day of the drive, it announced it had received pledges of $324,842 via 224 monthly subscribers and 351 one-time contributions — including two separate $25,000 matches for men’s basketball from donor Dave Anderson — totaling $649,684 when accounting for the match. The drive will run through the end of the month.
Since it launched last May, the collective says it has completed more than 60 deals with Rutgers student-athletes across 15 of the school’s 24 varsity sports. Many of them have been in the past month, with dozens of Rutgers athletes — from men’s basketball stars Caleb McConnell and Paul Mulcahy to football stars like Deion Jennings, Johnny Langan, Max Melton and Tyreem Powell — promoting the Million Dollar Match campaign on social media. It is aiming to execute deals with athletes from every varsity sport by the end of the 2023 calendar year.
“This is as a result of the whole Rutgers community coming together,” Newman told NJ Advance Media. “When we started the Million Dollar Match, we had no idea how successful it would be. There’s no way we could do this without the support of everybody in the Rutgers community. The feedback we’re getting from the team representatives is excitement and appreciation. In some ways, this is only the beginning. This is really the first cycle they are dealing with all of this and it’s going to continue for the foreseeable future.”
In the past two months, the Knights of the Raritan has received recurring public endorsement from the main players of the Rutgers athletic department, including Athletic Director Pat Hobbs, head football coach Greg Schiano and head men’s basketball coach Steve Pikiell.
“The Knights of the Raritan have been awesome,” Pikiell told NJ Advance Media this week. “Any time they can support our student athletes, it’s just awesome. I’m very thankful for the work they are doing. It is greatly appreciated.”
“The Knights of The Raritan have been unbelievable,” Schiano said in a press conference last week. “The amount of work that gets done, and this is a labor of love for a lot of many people that are behind that. A lot of the Rutgers faithful have stepped up in a big way, and we’re grateful.”
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Brian Fonseca may be reached at bfonseca@njadvancemedia.com.