Marquette Basketball Stars Chipped in to Give NIL Money to Walk-On Players

The Marquette Golden Eagles provided a feel-good NIL story right before Christmas.

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The era of Name, Image, and Likeness in college sports has provided financial opportunities to athletes that have never before been seen at this level, and the numbers are only going up.

Conversations surrounding NIL are often focused understandably on the star players and how much money they are getting in whatever their latest deal is. But often forgotten in those stories and discussions are the players on teams who are not as high-profile, but still put in all the same work that the household-name stars do.

Nobody encapsulates that reality more so than walk-ons, who grind through practice day after day in the hopes that one day they will be able to step on the field or on the court. Being a walk-on player for a high profile collegiate athletic program is often a thankless job but right before Christmas, one group of walk-ons got a huge thank you from their teammates.

The Marquette Golden Eagles men's basketball team is among the best in the entire country, currently ranked No. 8 in the AP Poll and sitting stop the Big East standings with a record of 11-2. As is the case with just about every team in the country however, their walk-ons do not get the same level of shine - and in turn, financial reward - as their star player teammates. Because of that reality, some of the star players on the team decided to give some of their NIL to the team walk-ons.

According to a story from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, star senior guard Stevie Mitchell grabbed the mic at the end of the team's Christmas banquet and made the announcement to the team that the six walk-ons on the team were going to be gifted a little over $1,000 each taken from a pool made by the scholarship players on the team.

"I’m just grateful to have teammates that really care about you," Brown said. "They understand that they get all this money and you don’t receive NIL money from a collective or anything like that. And they are willing to sacrifice money that they’re getting to pour back into us. It just shows how much they care about us."

Jonah Lucas, a fellow walk-on, revealed to the Journal Sentinel that as walk-on players, their benefit from the NIL collectives is mostly minimal, with jersey sales being the only real source of revenue which of course do not add up to anything significant given their lack of playing time.

"We don’t have the luxury of playing or seeing success on the court. So it’s like they recognize that our work trying to get people ready and just being there," Lucas said. "Doing the same off-the-court stuff and practice scenarios, time scheduling, coming in early to learn opposing teams’ plays. Seeing them really see that and kind of display a token of appreciation more than what they already do, which is a lot. That just means a ton to us. We’re still paying for school, paying for rent and all the things in between."

By the sounds of it, it's clearly a very tight-knit group at Marquette, and the team displayed that fact with this selfless act for the holidays.