Baylor Bears Announce New NIL Advisory Council
The Baylor Bears Athletic Department announced a new NIL Advisory Council Monday to help guide the programs through student-athlete promotions and initiatives.
The new advisory board's six members, Mark McCollum, Kevin Cherry, Jeremy Fudge, Cary Gray, Larry Heard and Dan Hord, are all Baylor graduates hailing from different business backgrounds. The board joins in the partnership with Startup Waco CEO Jon Passavant and former Bear quarterback Cody Carlson.
All the board member have also contributed towards the Baylor community after graduating. Fudge served as a representative for the university's "Give Light" campaign and he also donated the gift responsible for the Fudge Football Development Center, which opens in 2024.
Startup Waco joined together with GXG, now the company's athletics arm, in 2018 and create name, image and likeness opportunities for athletes which have become such a part of the college athletics landscape. With new NIL initiatives, Baylor can become a more attractive destination not just for high school recruits, but for players in the transfer portal as well.
The NIL world has gone wild in its first year, with college football players like Bryce Young and Bijan Robinson estimated to be multi-millionaires all while still in college. Even former Baylor commit Austin Novosad was rumored to be lured away by the promise of major NIL money from the Oregon Ducks, who landed his signature just hours before he was set to sign with the Bears without so much as a campus visit to Eugene.
Bears fans can even get involved by donating to the BIL fund through GXG.
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Covering Baylor for Inside The Bears and the Locked on Baylor podcast. You can follow me for more Baylor content at @realcamstuart on Twitter. Originally from Rockland, Massachusetts and a Baylor alum, so I might mix the occasional bias and/or Boston sports tweet in there every once in a while.