April 28, 2025
"Vickie Segar was there, with the blessing of the university’s athletic department, to pitch them on turning their TikTok and Instagram accounts into cash cows...."
"'Does anybody follow Alix Earle?' The students said yes, amid several chuckles, because asking a college student that question in 2025 is like asking if a millennial has ever heard of Beyoncé. How much money, she continued, did they think that Ms. Earle, a TikTok megastar who rose to fame with confessional-style videos about beauty and college life, makes for promoting a brand across several posts on Instagram Stories? '$100,000?' one student guessed. '$70,000,' another tossed out. Ms. Segar, whose firm has worked with Ms. Earle on brand deals, paused. She drew out her response: '$450,000 per Instagram Story.' For a moment, there was just the hum of the pool and a single exclamation from one student: 'Oh. My. God.' Ms. Segar smiled and explained, 'Our job is to help you guys bring in some of that money.'"
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26 comments:
I follow a couple of, well, now-former athletes on Instagram, and I suppose they're on TT as well (Ian Gunther, for example, former Stanford gymnast). I prefer they pursue this themselves rather than having the University back them somehow, because I know the Universities will put limits on athletes and try to censor them. It's great that they show them the possibilities, but that's where the effort should end IMO.
This appears to be probing the boundaries of the new NCAA rules allowing student athletes to earn income on their likeness and licensing deals. Whether they can earn half-a-million per promotion like the example of Ms. Earle is quite a stretch. It's an interesting proposition.
But that phrase "Varsity Influencer Team" does provoke a giggle every time I read it. Is there a JV team? Frosh influencers?
When they say with the "blessing of" the athletic department, I suspect they mean "paid for by" the school. Colleges now recruit athletes with NIL money. If you're not elite enough to get a cut of the school's budget, at least they train you how to work social media on your own.
And some people wonder why society is in the shape it is in. More evidence here.
"Varsity Influencer team." So they influence the influencers. Still, if everyone becomes an influencer, who's left to be influencee?
Get a real job.
Is the school helping these students maximize their social media income or is the school trying to insert itself to take a cut of it?
Who needs to re-shore manufacturing? We can all get rich as TikTok influencers!
I'm kind of idly flipping the pages of this post - am I to understand that this Varsity Influence Team is speaking specifically to student athletes? Not to anyone else in the student body?
I remember when my oldest, a high school sophomore at the time, wanted to try to get "Internet famous." He was being ironical, but there was, behind the irony, a tiny candle-flame of hope. This would've been, oh, 2012? Naturally the only people he ever influenced were a couple of his friends.
But if the kids being targeted here are already on sports scholarships and expecting to make money as athletes in college and then have a much-better-than-average chance of making money in professional sports, then their perception of the odds of becoming Internet influencers has already been skewed by their beating the odds as athletes.
Do you see what I mean? Statistically, no high school kid should aim for sports (or music, or acting) as their "ticket out." These kids have already beaten those odds. Of course they think they'll also beat the odds as influencers. (Or, more correctly, they don't understand statistics at all, nor the fact that they're unicorns - they may believe they're awesome, but they don't understand, really, how rare it is to be awesome AND monetize your awesomeness.)
Influencers shape elections. Blogs podcasts ticktock Instagram friendface etc. MAGA currently winning that space.
New Order. The glam-haves and the have-nots.
More super rich and super poor.
Meanwhile - your volleyball smile will not fix by broken sewer line.
'Our job is to help you guys bring in some of that money.'
This is something I, as a student, would want to hear from my university. As a professional, I hope they also explain the risks involved.
UNC's new football coach is Bill Belichick. He wore a Navy sweatshirt while promoting his new book on CBS. His new girlfriend is much younger than his kids and older than that sweatshirt. She's 24; 48 years difference.
Sorry, but I can't help but imagine "Big Moose" from the "Archie" comics trying to put together a readable tweet. Then again, many showbiz celebs are as clueless about everything as "Big Moose" was, and they are as influential as hell.
UNC is 60% female. College is for girls
It seems like a majority of states are now allowing high school student athletes to pursue NIL compensations as well.
They can't all be Shady Sanders, with his multiple cameramen at every appearance, but they'll try. Hopefully avoidable for most of us.
Well, at least they are teaching a few students a skill they can use to make money, although not in any very productive fashion. The universities are naked greed machines. They need to start paying taxes. Hefty ones!
Those airwaves will get cluttered and saturated sooner than later, the hopes of internet stardom suddenly thwarted by a thousand other clones.
Begley--I'm sure Belichick was appalled when he found out little his players are making compared to Michigan, OSU, etc., and greenlighted this. I believe his girlfriend is some sort of influencer herself (and her influencing is not limited to old men with lots of money!)
Since the lure of Crypto has faded, this is the new get rich quick scheme. And like most get rich quick schemes, very few people make the big money.
I enjoy watching college sports, but the fact of the matter is that the universities are making big dollars off of a very small group of highly talented young athletes, who are prevented from earning what they would otherwise earn as professionals by collusive agreements between the universities and the pro sports leagues barring them from playing pro before age 19 (basketball) and 21 (football). (I'm not talking about the large majority of collegiate players who will never become successful pro athletes; those players participate in sports for other reasons).
I think the NIL thing may result in two very distinct forms of "collegiate" sports: Pro or semi-pro athletes playing for corporate teams affiliated with their respective universities, and "pure" amateur athletes playing actual intercollegiate sports. (We sort of have that now in the "big-time" athletic conferences).
Yeah, I had to look up this Alix Earle person. Helps to be a young, attractive female with lots of money.
I'm philosophically against NIL $, but I can't see any way around it when universities are making tons of money off of these guys and the athletes haven't been able to capitalize. That and the transfer portal (in college football) is ruining it for me, such that since both of those have been implemented my interest level has waned considerably.
Wouldn't mind seeing Olivia Dunne's W2's for the last few years. Wait, it would be pretty depressing so scratch that. I don't need or want to know. Good luck to whomever is the most glamorous and the most funny and the most charismatic. The rest of us, especially me, has to dig ditches for the rest of our lives.
UNC-Cheat has already narrowly survived one academic scandal which proved they were cheating their athletes via fake classes and that some UNC "grads" could not even read.
Now here they go again exploiting their students. Maybe they should teach them how to read and how to go to (real) classes instead of those fake online ones where everyone got a wink and a nod and an "A" to keep them eligible.
They should be ashamed of themselves. Don't they know their corrupt UNC Brand is shot in the public eye? But it is UNC so we know they are beyond being embarrassed.
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