From the athletic today:
SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Most Saturdays last fall, Brady Quinn toured the college football country with the Fox “Big Noon Kickoff” crew, broadcasting from stops like Columbus, Norman and Ann Arbor. He interviewed coaches on air and off, observing the first college football season of the name, image and likeness era from a distance. Whether the questions about NIL made the show or not, Quinn listened to the answers, the concerns, the ideas.
The player who represented the modern Notre Dame quarterback nearly 20 years ago began to think about how he could help his alma mater navigate the sport’s next frontier. He just wasn’t finding a lot of blueprints that fit Notre Dame.
“Honestly, I saw what not to do,” Quinn said of last fall’s conversations.
When Brian Kelly bolted for LSU less than 48 hours after Notre Dame’s regular season ended and Marcus Freeman officially took over the program a week later with a thunderclap of positivity, the ideas in Quinn’s head about what NIL could be at Notre Dame turned into a plan in motion.
On Jan. 19, an LLC was filed to start FUND (Friends of the University of Notre Dame), a third-party collective designed to push Notre Dame forward in the new NIL landscape. Last week, FUND received 501(c)(3) certification, which allows incoming donations to be tax-deductible. And on Monday morning, FUND’s website launched, accepting donations to help Notre Dame take another step into the NIL world in a way Quinn believes fits the university.
“Notre Dame is very much in this in the NIL space,” Quinn said. “The goal is to provide these student-athletes with the opportunity to be able to take a portion of their time and receive compensation for it, but really falling under the guidelines of God, Country, Notre Dame, causes that are bigger than yourself. And that’s what this is all about.”
FUND anticipates working with more than a half-dozen Notre Dame football players this spring as the program begins to launch in full. FUND’s board includes Tom Mendoza, who endowed the business school at Notre Dame, as well as former Notre Dame football players Pat Eilers and Jason Sapp. Notre Dame graduate Kevin Klau, of the Klau Center for Civil and Human Rights at Notre Dame, also sits on the board. The board interviews players to determine fit and their charitable interests. Then it matches charities with the players themselves.
The players are compensated for appearances and social media posts, while the charity also receives a donation from FUND. Whether it’s the Boys & Girls Club of St. Joseph County or the YMCA of South Bend or the Food Bank of Northern Indiana, the players are expected to engage with the organization, not simply clock in for an hour and then leave.
“I like the mission a lot,” Mendoza said. “I like the fact that these guys get to give back to their communities in a way they feel good about. They get money, the charities get money, hopefully we have a compounding effect on the community. It’s not about a player getting paid to play. It’s about supporting Notre Dame’s mission in the community.
“That hit me right when I heard it.”
FUND expects to scale up to whatever support backs it, meaning the more donations that come in, the more players across football and then men’s and women’s basketball who will be able to participate. If a donor feels strongly about a cause, player or program, Quinn said the organization can adapt to that intention. Considering how much the NIL market has changed in less than a year since its introduction and how much Notre Dame has learned through its GLD (Grow, Lead, Do) Center working with players like Kyle Hamilton, Quinn said FUND has to evolve as the environment demands.
But FUND doesn’t expect to get into a financial arms race with SEC programs or enter into an agreement like the one The Athletic reported could pay a high school quarterback upwards of $8 million during his college career, steering a recruitment toward a particular school because of the associated collective.
Although FUND and the Notre Dame athletic department can’t formally associate with each other, the Irish coaching staff does understand the necessity of NIL options in recruiting and roster retention. Internally, Notre Dame doesn’t believe it needs the most lucrative NIL outlet to hold off some of the early and aggressive adopters. But it does need options to present in the recruiting process. FUND will be another one of those, with the potential to lead players toward more for-profit ventures.
“Think about a guy like Kyle Hamiltondoing this with the way he represented himself. Things will just come to you, they will,” Mendoza said. “People will see kids doing this, and that’s the kind of kids people want to be around. That’s how companies think.”
Notre Dame signed a top-10 class last cycle, and its 2023 class ranks No. 2 nationally on 247Sports, On3 and Rivals. The Irish have one five-star commitment in defensive end Keon Keeley and are in the running for five-star quarterback Dante Moore and five-star athlete Samuel M’Pemba.
“This is a way of doing something that lines up with your core beliefs and allows you to build a brand,” Mendoza said. “I want people like that to represent my product, my company. You get that through this kind of exposure. And nobody is more exposed than the quarterback at Notre Dame. When you have a quarterback here playing at a Heisman level, it’s a whole different ballgame.”
As nascent as FUND is, there’s reason to believe Quinn can navigate it for reasons beyond his playing career or time in the media. Eleven years ago Quinn founded 3rd & Goal to back his passion for helping veterans. What began as an outfit helping dozens of wounded former military members renovate homes, further their education or get support around the holidays now serves 2,500 veterans annually. The organization helped put active Navy SEAL Brian Duffy on scholarship at Notre Dame two years ago, which almost included Duffy walking on to the Notre Dame football team.
Quinn’s leadership team at 3rd & Goal will help FUND in much the same way, including COO Megan Whitt, who spent more than four years working in the Ohio State football recruiting office and a season doing the same thing at Notre Dame before moving into the non-profit sector. After three-and-a-half years working for Mike Vrabel’s foundation, she joined Quinn’s foundation in 2018.
“I know both sides of the spectrum, working in a football office and working on a charity, too,” Whitt said. “Brady is extremely passionate about his alma mater. We all know the NIL game is important. Notre Dame needs to be competitive in that market.”
Brian Veith, a graduate of the Mendoza College of Business, serves as CFO.
Notre Dame has already come into contact with some NIL-related ventures, including MOGL, the NIL marketplace that former Irish quarterback Brandon Wimbush helped start. The Irish Players Club, run by former Irish running back Mick Assaf, started in video games with YOKE last summer and pivoted to NFT sales earlier this year. The venture generated a few thousand dollars for the players who participated.
FUND will be different in terms of its structure and charitable mission, even if the core goal of finding compensation for Notre Dame athletes is the same. Quinn knows where he wants FUND to start. The foundation will be open to where its next phase leads; it can’t not be. But it was important to Quinn to create a collective specific to Notre Dame, where he was a double major and holds almost every school passing record.
This week, Quinn will be back at Notre Dame to receive the Foster Award, which goes to an alumnus in athletics recognizing their service or civic work. Justin Tuck, Chris Zorich, Aaron Taylor and Bryant Young are previous winners. Although he’ll have to depart before the Blue-Gold Game — Quinn is working on his MBA in the offseason — he hopes to organize more events around FUND this summer.
“There’s a lot of motivation around what’s happening at Notre Dame and helping student-athletes,” Quinn said. “Anyone out there that thinks the student athletes or Marcus Freeman don’t have the resources to win a national championship is dead wrong.”
(Photo: Dan Sanger / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Most Saturdays last fall, Brady Quinn toured the college football country with the Fox “Big Noon Kickoff” crew, broadcasting from stops like Columbus, Norman and Ann Arbor. He interviewed coaches on air and off, observing the first college football season of the name, image and likeness era from a distance. Whether the questions about NIL made the show or not, Quinn listened to the answers, the concerns, the ideas.
The player who represented the modern Notre Dame quarterback nearly 20 years ago began to think about how he could help his alma mater navigate the sport’s next frontier. He just wasn’t finding a lot of blueprints that fit Notre Dame.
“Honestly, I saw what not to do,” Quinn said of last fall’s conversations.
When Brian Kelly bolted for LSU less than 48 hours after Notre Dame’s regular season ended and Marcus Freeman officially took over the program a week later with a thunderclap of positivity, the ideas in Quinn’s head about what NIL could be at Notre Dame turned into a plan in motion.
On Jan. 19, an LLC was filed to start FUND (Friends of the University of Notre Dame), a third-party collective designed to push Notre Dame forward in the new NIL landscape. Last week, FUND received 501(c)(3) certification, which allows incoming donations to be tax-deductible. And on Monday morning, FUND’s website launched, accepting donations to help Notre Dame take another step into the NIL world in a way Quinn believes fits the university.
“Notre Dame is very much in this in the NIL space,” Quinn said. “The goal is to provide these student-athletes with the opportunity to be able to take a portion of their time and receive compensation for it, but really falling under the guidelines of God, Country, Notre Dame, causes that are bigger than yourself. And that’s what this is all about.”
FUND anticipates working with more than a half-dozen Notre Dame football players this spring as the program begins to launch in full. FUND’s board includes Tom Mendoza, who endowed the business school at Notre Dame, as well as former Notre Dame football players Pat Eilers and Jason Sapp. Notre Dame graduate Kevin Klau, of the Klau Center for Civil and Human Rights at Notre Dame, also sits on the board. The board interviews players to determine fit and their charitable interests. Then it matches charities with the players themselves.
The players are compensated for appearances and social media posts, while the charity also receives a donation from FUND. Whether it’s the Boys & Girls Club of St. Joseph County or the YMCA of South Bend or the Food Bank of Northern Indiana, the players are expected to engage with the organization, not simply clock in for an hour and then leave.
“I like the mission a lot,” Mendoza said. “I like the fact that these guys get to give back to their communities in a way they feel good about. They get money, the charities get money, hopefully we have a compounding effect on the community. It’s not about a player getting paid to play. It’s about supporting Notre Dame’s mission in the community.
“That hit me right when I heard it.”
FUND expects to scale up to whatever support backs it, meaning the more donations that come in, the more players across football and then men’s and women’s basketball who will be able to participate. If a donor feels strongly about a cause, player or program, Quinn said the organization can adapt to that intention. Considering how much the NIL market has changed in less than a year since its introduction and how much Notre Dame has learned through its GLD (Grow, Lead, Do) Center working with players like Kyle Hamilton, Quinn said FUND has to evolve as the environment demands.
But FUND doesn’t expect to get into a financial arms race with SEC programs or enter into an agreement like the one The Athletic reported could pay a high school quarterback upwards of $8 million during his college career, steering a recruitment toward a particular school because of the associated collective.
Although FUND and the Notre Dame athletic department can’t formally associate with each other, the Irish coaching staff does understand the necessity of NIL options in recruiting and roster retention. Internally, Notre Dame doesn’t believe it needs the most lucrative NIL outlet to hold off some of the early and aggressive adopters. But it does need options to present in the recruiting process. FUND will be another one of those, with the potential to lead players toward more for-profit ventures.
“Think about a guy like Kyle Hamiltondoing this with the way he represented himself. Things will just come to you, they will,” Mendoza said. “People will see kids doing this, and that’s the kind of kids people want to be around. That’s how companies think.”
Notre Dame signed a top-10 class last cycle, and its 2023 class ranks No. 2 nationally on 247Sports, On3 and Rivals. The Irish have one five-star commitment in defensive end Keon Keeley and are in the running for five-star quarterback Dante Moore and five-star athlete Samuel M’Pemba.
“This is a way of doing something that lines up with your core beliefs and allows you to build a brand,” Mendoza said. “I want people like that to represent my product, my company. You get that through this kind of exposure. And nobody is more exposed than the quarterback at Notre Dame. When you have a quarterback here playing at a Heisman level, it’s a whole different ballgame.”
As nascent as FUND is, there’s reason to believe Quinn can navigate it for reasons beyond his playing career or time in the media. Eleven years ago Quinn founded 3rd & Goal to back his passion for helping veterans. What began as an outfit helping dozens of wounded former military members renovate homes, further their education or get support around the holidays now serves 2,500 veterans annually. The organization helped put active Navy SEAL Brian Duffy on scholarship at Notre Dame two years ago, which almost included Duffy walking on to the Notre Dame football team.
Quinn’s leadership team at 3rd & Goal will help FUND in much the same way, including COO Megan Whitt, who spent more than four years working in the Ohio State football recruiting office and a season doing the same thing at Notre Dame before moving into the non-profit sector. After three-and-a-half years working for Mike Vrabel’s foundation, she joined Quinn’s foundation in 2018.
“I know both sides of the spectrum, working in a football office and working on a charity, too,” Whitt said. “Brady is extremely passionate about his alma mater. We all know the NIL game is important. Notre Dame needs to be competitive in that market.”
Brian Veith, a graduate of the Mendoza College of Business, serves as CFO.
Notre Dame has already come into contact with some NIL-related ventures, including MOGL, the NIL marketplace that former Irish quarterback Brandon Wimbush helped start. The Irish Players Club, run by former Irish running back Mick Assaf, started in video games with YOKE last summer and pivoted to NFT sales earlier this year. The venture generated a few thousand dollars for the players who participated.
FUND will be different in terms of its structure and charitable mission, even if the core goal of finding compensation for Notre Dame athletes is the same. Quinn knows where he wants FUND to start. The foundation will be open to where its next phase leads; it can’t not be. But it was important to Quinn to create a collective specific to Notre Dame, where he was a double major and holds almost every school passing record.
This week, Quinn will be back at Notre Dame to receive the Foster Award, which goes to an alumnus in athletics recognizing their service or civic work. Justin Tuck, Chris Zorich, Aaron Taylor and Bryant Young are previous winners. Although he’ll have to depart before the Blue-Gold Game — Quinn is working on his MBA in the offseason — he hopes to organize more events around FUND this summer.
“There’s a lot of motivation around what’s happening at Notre Dame and helping student-athletes,” Quinn said. “Anyone out there that thinks the student athletes or Marcus Freeman don’t have the resources to win a national championship is dead wrong.”
(Photo: Dan Sanger / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
