28 September 2023
Gophers football radio productions on KFAN this fall have included a fair amount of free air time for Dinkytown Athletes. Sometimes, it’s as if the flagship station has cut to commercial.
The U’s official name, image and likeness collective — which assists Minnesota student-athletes with opportunities to earn money during their collegiate careers — has often been mentioned by Athletics Director Mark Coyle during halftime shows this season. In those segments, Coyle will repeat Dinkytown Athletes’ website address a few times — as if he’s reading a cue card.
A robust NIL collective, which came out of a U.S. Supreme Court decision and NCAA rule changes in July 2021, has become the most important arms race in major college sports.
Dinkytown Athletes seeks individuals who will become paying members in a fan club-like set up. The NIL collective wants businesses to enter partnerships and endorsement deals with players and for boosters to provide donations. Plus, they are adding passive income streams with proceeds from specific goods going back to the collective’s coffers; this includes Parlour burgers sold at Huntington Bank Stadium and a newly released specialty beer and fan packs of seltzers from Grey Duck Spirits.
On the NIL issue, Gophers head coach P.J. Fleck went from plug to plea — or at least what he sees as cold, hard facts — during Tuesday’s episode of Gopher Football Weekly. The hour-long coach’s show was delving into the breakout play of running back Darius Taylor, who is now second in the nation at 133 yards per game and has received three straight Big Ten freshman of the week honors.
Fleck steered the on-the-field conversation to what happens off it — if the pockets of the Gophers’ NIL collective aren’t considered deep enough.
“We also had players that were here that are now gone, playing at another school (and he) should be playing here right now,” Fleck said on the radio. “Because NIL — we didn’t pay him. We didn’t pay him enough. That is the fact of life.”
That player is Mar’Keise “Bucky” Irving, who had a nice true freshman season for the Gophers in 2021 before transferring to Oregon — NIL compensation was a factor in his decision to leave the U. Now with the Ducks, the Illinois native had 1,357 scrimmage yards and eight total touchdowns last year and has 419 total yards and 3 TDs so far this season.
Oregon boasts billionaire Nike co-founder Phil Knight as its biggest booster; the Gophers have no one close to that. Very few schools do. The Ducks collective, Division Street, was categorized this summer by newer recruiting site On3 as having one of the 10 most-ambitious NIL collectives; Dinkytown Athletes wasn’t on that list.
“If we want to keep players, the NIL, all these guys we have, they won’t be here next year,” Fleck said. “Just making sure everybody understands, our fans, they won’t be here. We will be a Triple-A ball club for somebody else. That is the reality and truth of the situation, so please contact Dinkytown Athletes, or whatever, your local NIL store.”
Dinkytown Athletes co-founder Derek Burns received “lots” of emails and calls relating to Fleck’s comments this week. “People are upset,” Burns said Wednesday. “The team lost (to Northwestern) on Saturday. They’re mad at P.J. They think the timing was poor. They didn’t want to hear it. And I understand a lot of that.”
Before a tasting event for the new Duck Duck Beer at Stub & Herbs on Wednesday, Burns sat down with the Pioneer Press to chat about the state of Dinkytown Athletes a year after its full launch.
“Is (Fleck) right? Is this panic mode? No,” Burns said. “But I think what he sees is that you have to support. Athletes transfer; it’s a factor. And when you have a lot of young players that are playing really well, you want to support them and keep them around.”
Taylor burgeoning phenom status has led to concern that he might depart like Irving did after his freshman season.
“The fear is that if you don’t do that, they’re gonna leave,” Burns said. “If they don’t feel like they’re supported competitively. So I think that’s where that comes from. I don’t — I truly don’t, in my opinion, I feel like the (NIL) cupboard is bare” at Minnesota.
Burns shared that Dinkytown Athletes has received recent NIL support directed specifically for Taylor.
“I think it’s a good thing,” Burns said. “… That’s the way we’re approaching this is to support the athletes we have.”
But Dinkytown Athletes does not share personalized information, specific financial information nor membership numbers due to competitive reasons with other schools’ collectives, Burns said. They have shared such things as players receive roughly 10 percent of proceeds from their custom merchandise and 20 percent of Gray Duck sales will go to the collective.
On3 says it has come up with an algorithm to determine annual NIL valuations for players, and using that calculation, Taylor has climbed to be the top-ranked Gopher at a purported $659,000 per year. The site says his value has recently grown an estimated $325,000.
Is that a fair ballpark for Taylor?
“Nobody knows,” Burns replied. “Is that based in reality, or is that possible? I don’t know.”
Burns said Dinkytown Athletes has worked to back-channel other NIL deals at other programs through agents, other collectives and software companies that work in NIL.
“You can lose your mind (while) tracking,” he said. “Frankly, we spent less and less time (on it). … Many times, it’s just so far from reality.”
Burns said it can come down to money used as an inducement to bring a player to campus while sharing the promise for more. There are examples of that not living up to the hype. Is the number floated to a player a one-year figure or four-year sum? Sometimes the value attributed to, say, a car isn’t actualized because the vehicle was leased.
Dinkytown Athletes has explored trends in why a player might transfer out. Burns said it’s two-fold: an upperclassman without many NFL prospects who wants to get the most money they can in their final year of eligibility. Or a player leaving one school for another to get substantially more NIL support.
“What we’re not seeing as a trend is the game of, ‘I’m being supported well here, but boy, across the state or across the country, I could get, you know, 10 percent more money or 20 percent,’ ” Burns said.
Burns also pushed back on the belief that it’s all about being among the richest NIL collectives, sharing a handful of programs with the highest-funded collectives that missed out on bowl games last year.
“I think it’s about supporting the guys you have in a competitive way,” Burns said.
Dinkytown Athletes just reached a one-year anniversary of offering fan memberships. Before that began last September, “we had no money,” Burns acknowledged.
“You look at a year ago to now, and the glass half full is like: We’ve done a lot, we’ve had a lot of the fan memberships, a lot of donations have had good successes,” said Burns, who led St. Paul-based tech company Tierney for more than 20 years until a merger in 2021. “When you consider starting a company and getting to where we are, that’s good.”
Burns reiterated the fans expecting large companies to contribute NIL money is not the golden ticket to success. This has often been used as an example in the Twin Cities because of the abundance of Fortune 500 companies.
“Really large companies are not supporting college athletes anywhere; this isn’t just a Minnesota thing,” Burns said.
Dinkytown Athletes’ effort for fans to buy Parlour burgers or drink Duck Duck Beer is a smaller piece of their business plan, but they are currently working on adding more revenue streams like it, including bottled water and coffee.
That’s even if Fleck says things on the radio such as: “We need somebody to order two million Parlour burgers.” Or fans post on social media saying they will buy Duck Duck beverages and cheers to Taylor come Saturday’s homecoming game vs. Louisiana.
“In our market analysis, the membership piece is how we’re going to do it,” Burns said.
Burns said he feels good about the amount of fan memberships so far because they’ve captured the support from diehard Gophers fans. They now seek more-casual fans to become active with Dinkytown Athletes.
This is when Burns began to echo the plugs and pleas coming from Coyle and Fleck on the radio this season. “The other side of the coin is, it’s so competitive,” Burns said. “We need more.”
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