Rutgers ‘now has plan’ for NIL. Will it work?

The logo was plastered on t-shirts given out to Rutgers students outside of the College Avenue gym and magnets placed on the back of cars in parking lots across Busch and Livingston campus.

When Scarlet Knight supporters arrive at SHI Stadium on Saturday for their team’s Homecoming meeting with No. 8 Oregon, they will be met with the new design on the boardwalk during pregame festivities and all over the video boards.

Rutgers fans will see the words ‘R NIL’ so often, it will be engrained in their brain for days on end.

That is what Keli Zinn and her growing staff are hoping for, at least.

The Rutgers athletic director’s push to improve the department’s lagging name, image and likeness (NIL) efforts took another step forward on Monday, when the school launched the initiative that essentially brings its NIL infrastructure in house and replaces sunsetting collective The Knights of the Raritan.

The ‘R NIL’ push comes a week after it launched the “Athletic Excellence Fund,“ where fans can direct donations toward revenue-sharing with athletes through the Rutgers Foundation.

Both are the result of “work and effort behind the scenes” during Zinn’s first two months in charge that has brought Rutgers to a point where it “now has a robust NIL infrastructure,“ she said.

“I think this is absolutely a turning point in what will now be everything that we need here in order to compete at the highest level,” Zinn said. “It feels good to now be in a place where we have the infrastructure to support (NIL) and move it forward in a way that I know is going to be really successful.”

The emphasis on NIL will continue in the coming weeks, when Zinn is expected to add at least four more members to a staff already featuring Chief Operating and Revenue Officer Todd Knisley. Their sole mission will be to “support NIL” from different angles, including the “day-to-day operations” to “sellers” within the Scarlet Knights Asset Management Company (SAMCO) to “content and external digital, videography, graphics, you name it.”

The hope, Zinn said, is to “alleviate” the “incredible amount of pressure on our coaches to support NIL efforts specifically to their sports” in the past, when former athletic director Pat Hobbs actively held the department back from making any effort in the space.

No person in Piscataway is more relieved to receive the help than head football coach Greg Schiano, who admitted Monday that the athletic department had “not tried” anything in the NIL space prior to this push.

“There have been no efforts of the level it takes to play in the Big Ten,” Schiano said. “You can’t even say it is miniscully close.

“With all due respect to everybody who has put forth effort, we have not tried it. … Forget at a Big Ten level. We have not done it at a Division 1 (level). Let’s be clear on that. The only people who have done it is the guy you’re looking at. You can’t do it that way at this level. Now we have a plan.”

Will it work?

That depends on what defines success.

In comparison to what was one in the past, the bar is on the floor. While NIL numbers are opaque, the Scarlet Knights’ struggles in the space have been well documented, so anything is better than nothing.

In comparison to its Big Ten peers, from blue bloods like Ohio State and Oregon to new-kid-on-the-block Indiana and its billionaire backer to the middle-of-the-pack Rutgers is trying to break into?

The first real measure of that will come in January, when football’s one transfer portal window of the offseason officially opens.

Zinn did not share how wide the gap is between Rutgers and its Big Ten peers, nor the amount Rutgers will look to raise for Schiano and company between now and January to bridge that gap, but she believes that her department will reach their target.

She is “really optimistic” about potential interest in businesses wanting to work with her athletes, saying that “not one person has told me no” in the two months she has been working in that space. There are “a couple of folks that have significant commitments at this point,” and provided that Rutgers gets those “across the finish line and buttoned up in a way that they materialize specifically for NIL,” she believes the Scarlet Knights are “well on our way to get into a situation to be aggressive in the upcoming transfer portal.”

The Scarlet Knights will look to retain “some really good talent” on the roster while “packaging around them some really good talent coming from other areas in order to put together a product on the field for next season.”

Time will tell if Rutgers can raise the money and meet those goals, but there is no doubt that this is the first time it is truly trying in an area that is essential to winning in modern-day college sports.

“NIL doesn’t equate exactly to winning,” Zinn said. “But what it does do is certainly positions you for a greater likelihood of success.”