Mike Gundy Used 'GoFundMe' As An Example During QR Pitch To Oklahoma State
The Oklahoma State Cowboys are getting creative in an attempt to grow their NIL fund to compete at the highest level of college football.
Mike Gundy is headed into his 20th season as the head coach of Oklahoma State, and he's adapting to the current age of the sport after two decades of consistency. Name, Image and Likeness is taking over as amatuer collegiate athletes are getting paid to play their respective sports.
To make sure the program is keeping up with current times, Oklahoma State has QR codes being put on the back of players' helmets to make it easy and quick for fans to donate to the program's NIL fund.
A day after the announcement, Gundy appeared on the Pat McAfee Show, where he had the opportunity to comment on the change made to the helmet.
“We were sitting around in my office with my assistant Danielle and our Director of Business Finance, Kenyatta Wright. Used to play in the NFL and now we hired to be our Director of Business and Finance. I said, ‘How can we get people across the country to be able to give NIL money for our players and set up them being able to orchestrate things to make the NIL money if I’m in Los Angeles, or London, or Tokyo, or New York City?'” Gundy asked.
Now, plenty of programs have a chance to pioneer new ideas as NIL is a fairly new concept in terms of college football programs essentially getting into bidding wards for recruits. Adding QR codes, in particular, is an interesting attempt at boosting the NIL fund.
“I kind of thought about a GoFundMe, you see people that are in need and they set up a GoFundMe and the people in this country come together and they help them,” Gundy continued. “And all of a sudden if they’ve had a terrible incident, they have an opportunity to get out of it. So I thought, why don’t we set this up for NIL and give the Oklahoma State people a chance that when they’re sitting there and they see a player make a great play, they’re going to pull that up on social media and bang that money.”
It's yet to be seen whether the Cowboys' attempt to bring in more NIL money will work, but it should be comforting for fans to see their favorite program making changes to adapt to the new-look landscape of college football.
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Kade has been covering a wide variety of teams ranging from the NFL to the NBA and college athletics since joining Sports Illustrated's On SI in 2022