Kamron Cox, director of the INFLUENCE Program at the University of Illinois Athletics, joins Cheddar News to talk about the school's 'NIL Impact' campaign. 

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University of Illinois Introduces New NIL Campaign

and with the college football season officially underway, the sport continues to grapple with its new normal last year for the first time ever, student athletes could be compensated for their name, image and likeness or N. I. L. Now that ruling changed the landscape of college sports and many universities made it a mission now to support their student athletes. And now the university of Illinois annoyed is joining that list, but creating a new N. I. L. Impact campaign. So here discusses Cameron cox director of influence program over at the University of Illinois Athletics. Cameron, thank you so much for joining us. So talk to us about this campaign. How is it going to help your student athletes? I know this is a new change, not just for the athletes, but for you guys as well from the administrative aspect here. Absolutely. And thanks for having me. I'll say that everything we do is to support our student athletes. And so what we saw was there was a real need for universities to get more involved in the name image and likeness space. I think those who were kind of in the market for student athletes celebrity on one hand, they wanted to see the university to get more involved in student athletes. So much of their experiences tied to the university naturally. Um, and so we tried to do what we can and we thought, hey, let's launch a new campaign and really show everybody how behind this, we really want to be okay. So how is this sort of fitting within the general landscape of what other universities are doing right now to sort of support their student athletes during this time, what we're doing, we think of as being really groundbreaking, I think a lot of universities are kind of trying to figure out, hey, you know, do I want to support this? How do I support it? Um what kinds of ramifications or problems might it cause? And it's not that we aren't thinking through those problems, but it's just that we're not willing to let those things hold us back as we try to continue our mission to support student athletes, I'll say that there's been a lot of different um kind of NHL sizzle out here, We think of this is a little bit of sizzle, but really as a lot of steak, we want to make sure that people know not only how to act, but why it's so important. Well, why does it benefit a university, you know, and why is it important to sort of, you know, back your athletes in something like this? Because, look, the university, are you guys making any of the money off of this? So why was it important to sort of back the athletes here? It's a great question. So, we actually don't make money from this, but we see it as what's going to be a really important part of the student athlete experience? We offer an elite education, We've got an excellent staff of coaches and support, we've got some of the best facilities in the country, and before n. I. L went into effect, that was kind of all you needed now, you really need, N. I L. Is that other part of the student athlete experience? And so for us, we're thinking that's going to show a tremendous amount of benefit to us in the long run, in the sense that our student athletes are going to have a better experience, that means that they're probably gonna play better, and it means we're gonna have the ability to kind of a track a more talented slate of student athletes, because they're gonna say, hey, if I go to University of Illinois, there's really good stuff that's gonna happen for me in all four of those key areas. Yeah, so let's kind of, like, look at this from a larger perspective, how do you sort of see this evolve over time, because, look, this is great because we'll see athletes get maybe sponsorship deals with local car dealers or something that's sort of local, but how do you sort of see this growing, because this is still such a new area, not just for the athletes, but for the universities as well to get into. It's absolutely brand new, and I think that's that's what we're trying to figure out is, how is it going to grow? We don't know entirely, I think that it's changed so much, even in its first year since NHL's inception, so we're trying to kind of say, okay, how do we remain nimble and how do we put the right structure in place to support its growth? One thing that has been clear is that people really want to get involved, I think at first there was a sense that everything we should do should be about kind of emp powering student athletes and making sure that they have education and we've done that and will continue to do that. But we realized there was really an appetite to grab the outside marketplace on this really fans and businesses. And so we think that businesses are going to continue to want to dive into N. I. L. And we think that fans understand the importance of supporting. I mean, that's one of the things that makes college athletes really athletics really unique with respect to the professional ranks is that there's a space of kind of fans and donors and general supporters to get more involved. We thought this was another frontier for that. And so one of the things we're talking about an N. I. L. Impact is how do fans get more involved. And so we kind of gave those three points that you guys put on the screen a second ago. Yeah. Which I think is amazing. And by the way, these athletes deserve to be recognized and make money off of their name and their likeness here, but larger picture here, I mean, could these athletes be millionaires down the road? I mean, we're talking maybe like who, if somebody's gonna be a Heisman trophy candidate, could they potentially make a million dollars while they're in college? Well there's some rumors and speculation out there that that's already happened for some of the biggest players out here in the country that they've been able to, to hit that seven figure mark in terms of name, image and likeness and if that's true, good on that's awesome. I mean, I think it's all about empowering student athletes and kind of giving them that platform to really make a little bit of money. I mean, these student athletes work really, really hard for everything that they're able to earn And of course they've already got the academic side of it and in that scholarship and conversation there. But to add something else to it and say, Hey, why don't you go out there and really leverage the celebrity you've worked so hard to build to me. That's awesome. I'm for making as much as they can. They're so true. Me to Cameron. Thank you so much camera for joining us. Cameron cox, the director of influence program over at the University of Illinois Athletics