Penn State Begins Shift Toward to the Future of NIL

Penn State has introduce new initiatives, including a Brand Academy, to address NIL's changing landscape.

Penn State football coach James Franklin answers a question during a press conference in Holuba Hall. / Dan Rainville/USA Today Network - PA / USA TODAY NETWORK

Editor's note: This is Part 2 of a two-part story detailing Penn State's progress in NIL funding and operations. A version of this story first appeared in the Town & Gown Penn State 2024 Football Annual. Read Part 1 here.

Omar Easy, who played running back for Penn State, the Kansas City Chiefs and the Oakland Raiders, has studied the NCAA for more than a decade. In 2012 he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation at Penn State about the “myth” of the amateur student-athlete.

“The more officials think of student-athletes as inferior individuals with no power, the higher the
likelihood is that the NCAA will continue believing that it is okay to operate a revenue-generating business on free labor,” Easy wrote.

Easy returned to Penn State to empower those athletes. Easy is director of The Penn State Brand Academy, an initiative created in 2023 through a $5 million endowment fund that includes an anonymous $2.5 million donation in honor of Penn State legend Wally Triplett. The Brand Academy seeks to offer a transformational companion to the financial transactions players conduct by teaching athletes how to navigate NIL properly.

Easy wants to help athletes build personal brands, identify and sign deals that fit them, understand contracts, pay taxes and invest their money. The Brand Academy also has entered the recruiting world, producing one-pagers for high school athletes and their parents about what they can expect regarding NIL at Penn State.

Easy isn’t naïve to how some players perceive NIL — primarily as a paycheck and negotiating tool. He might have done the same in the late 1990s, when Penn State football generated tens of millions in revenue dollars, but Easy couldn’t afford a bus ticket home to Massachusetts. Now, he wants players to have the knowledge to maximize their NIL opportunities.

“Yes, some of them may listen, some may not,” Easy said. “But if I get one of them to listen, and tweet about it or post about it or talk about it in the locker room, then I'm reaching someone. Because that will filter to the next person.”

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The Brand Academy seems antithetical to college football’s transactional present. But it ties well with Franklin’s transformational approach to NIL, Easy said. Soon, athletic departments will share revenue with players and make those payments. Yet NIL collectives, even if they move under the athletics umbrella, will continue to make marketing deals for players. Those who understand the process will better equip themselves to build savings while in college and continue to monetize their brands after their college careers end.

“That’s how we approach this; building that personal brand, because that's something you can take with you,” Easy said. “You can’t take that Penn State brand with you. Yeah, you'll be a part of it. But it's not yours. Your brand is your brand. That’s the message."

Easy said that the NCAA could have avoided this crescendo of change simply by agreeing decades ago to allow players to monetize NIL. But by being unprepared for this moment, the NCAA lost control of it. Now, programs like The Brand Academy can help prepare athletes to take control for themselves, Easy said.

“We have some work to do from our standpoint, and I think it's difficult when you recruit athletes on Penn State's brand while other universities are recruiting athletes on their bank accounts,” Easy said. “So it's a challenge, but I enjoy what we aspire to do.”

RELATED: How the House vs. NCAA settlement will impact Penn State sports

The players' perspective

Landon Tengwall arrived at Penn State with the 2021 freshman class, just in time to capitalize on NIL’s introduction. Which he did. Tengwall co-wrote a children’s book, “The Men Up Front,” about his life as an offensive lineman. He was eager to pursue more NIL opportunities, as well as a college and NFL career, but injuries forced him to retire from football in 2023. Tengwall remains involved with the program and game as a content creator. He has a podcast and YouTube channel that offer Penn State fans a unique voice and perspective from both inside and outside the program.

From Tengwall’s point of view, Penn State’s NIL performance remains mixed. As he said, “it’s just the truth of the matter that we are struggling in NIL” strictly regarding dollars raised. But Tengwall also praised Franklin for assuring that every player earns an NIL share and said that Penn State outperforms other programs in equipping players to manage their NIL opportunities effectively.

“There has always been a focus at Penn State to be great outside of your sport, be great outside of football, build something for your life,” Tengwall said. “And I think at a lot of places, they're not worried about that right now. They are just funneling money in, trying to get as much money to get the best players possible. And I want to give a shoutout to Penn State football and James Franklin, because they have not fallen victim to that. They are staying true to the core values of Penn State.”

Tengwall, still a student at Penn State, said NIL education has changed significantly since his first year. Freshmen football players sit through a torrent of meetings during their first few months on campus. During his freshman year, Tengwall said, few of them had anything to do with NIL, which still was new. But now, “half of those meetings are about NIL” in some way, Tengwall said.

“I think here at Penn State, more so than at other places, coach Franklin and the staff do a great job of setting the bar for the athletes and making them understand what is acceptable and what is not acceptable in this new NIL world,” Tengwall said. “I think there are some college coaches that are just letting it go haywire. … It’s all about the foundation that you set for these players.”

What’s Next for Penn State's NIL program?

Two coming changes to college football might benefit Penn State as much as any program in the country. The first is the College Football Playoff’s expansion from four teams to 12. Had the 12-team playoff been in place in 2016, Penn State would have qualified six times over the past eight seasons. In the expanded playoff, a 10-win Penn State becomes an annual contender.

The second is revenue sharing, which could arrive as soon as 2025 if the NCAA lawsuit settlements are approved. Tengwall drew a parallel between playoff expansion and revenue sharing.

“I think Penn State will be one of the programs that benefits the most in all of college football from revenue sharing,” he said. “You don't have to rely on your fan base or on a town that is filled with small family businesses. That would resolve a lot of the issues of having to depend on a fan base to fund this.”

Patrick Kraft, Penn State's athletics director, said that NIL "becomes much better from my perspective" with the prospect of revenue sharing. Penn State will fund its revenue-sharing program to the maximum of the settlement's proposed cap. "We'll be all-in," Kraft said.

Even when athletic departments begin sharing revenue, NIL will carry significant financial impact. Opendorse projects the total NIL market to surpass $2.5 billion in 2025, concluding in its annual report that collectives will evolve but "will remain a vital cog to athlete compensation."

Penn State has launched an NIL initiative with Playfly, its new multimedia rights partner, and plans an as-yet-unannounced in-house marketing platform to advance its NIL efforts. Yet when athletic departments take control of collectives — which Franklin wants to happen “yesterday” — those collectives will retain a role, Ferrang said. Programs will use NIL as a recruiting differentiator but also as a marketing tool that generates more opportunities for players. "We're basically building a marketing agency for all of our athletes," Kraft said.

“I think for us to really function on all cylinders, a portion of that money that is directed to NIL should come from in-house,” Ferrang added. “I think that will be really good for a place like Penn State in particular.”

Franklin would agree. However, he wants Penn State to continue building its NIL platform upon the transformational core concept.

“What you'd like to say [to players] is, ‘Listen, you should be choosing a college for the same reason that student-athletes have been choosing colleges forever: Where am I going to get the best education? Where am I going to be able to play my sport at the very highest level? And now there is another component in terms of NIL, and we're not going to necessarily ask you to walk away from money that you're being offered at other places. But we don't want you to choose Penn State because of the money.’

“We don't want it to be a bidding war. We want to be able to offer X [amount of money] as well. So now the kid can go back to saying, ‘You know, I'm choosing Penn State because of the same reasons that student-athletes have always been choosing.’ And right now, under the current model, you're not able to do that.”

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Penn State on SI is the place for Penn State news, opinion and perspective on the SI.com network. Publisher Mark Wogenrich has covered Penn State for more than 20 years, tracking three coaching staffs, three Big Ten titles and a catalog of great stories. Follow him on X (or Twitter) @MarkWogenrich.