Willamette’s Department of Athletics announced in August that every Bearcat athlete with a name now has the chance to make a buck off university merchandise that features their Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL). A full sporting season has passed since the beginning of Willamette’s NIL program, and athletes now have a feel for the process.
A number of companies offer NIL merchandise. Willamette’s comes from a partnership with Influxer, a vendor whose website boasts merch for student-athletes from over 400 universities.
Ryan Doyle ('27), a goalkeeper for the men’s soccer team, said agreeing to capitalize off his name was a quick and easy process. “In DIII it’s a bit different than DI. … I signed up through a link and I put in my name, graduation year and sport, and they just created it for me.”
Doyle was quick to emphasize the differences between divisions — some students in DI are making millions of dollars off their names, while he says the market for DIII merch consists almost entirely of athletes’ families.
“You can make a bit of pocket money. $75-100 here or there, if some of your family buys some. But it’s not gonna be a job in Division III,” Doyle said.
Like other students, DIII players turn to jobs both on and off campus. But the “work-practice” balance, as Doyle put it, is hard for many student-athletes. Busy practice schedules mean that those with jobs might not be able to work as many hours as they’d like, and those without jobs might be hard-pressed to find them.
The Department of Athletics wrote in August that as part of their agreement “Influxer will also provide education and training on marketing, entrepreneurship, and personal branding” to student-athletes. For Bearcats, this really just looks like doing the advertising alone. “Basically … you just send the link out to your friends and family who want to buy it,” according to Doyle.
“I sent [the Influxer link] to my mom,” he recalled. “She went, ‘That shit’s overpriced.’” A t-shirt bearing a Bearcat’s name runs the buyer $40 plus shipping.
Regardless, Doyle was excited by the opportunity. “Every kid wants to see their last name on the back of a shirt or a jersey or something.”
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