Champions Circle Spearheading NIL Effort At Michigan

It would be cliche to suggest the introduction of NIL has pushed college athletics into a new, more fluid landscape, but it would also be true. The utilization of NIL has given players an extra reason to stick around school (if a degree was not enough), but it also creates a sense of free agency each offseason with players transferring off promised deals.

Michigan Athletic Director Warde Manuel has been widely criticized for his role— or lack thereof— in ensuring U-M offers a robust, competitive NIL program, and Wolverine Digest recently touched on whether those critiques are valid. But regardless of whether Manuel has been involved to a satisfactory level so far, it is indisputable that other schools are making strong NIL pushes that are attractive to current and prospective college athletes alike.

So, what is Michigan actually doing to keep up with the NIL Joneses?

Last August, the university announced a new NIL-focused collective called the Champions Circle, and this organization has worked to provide Michigan student athletes with lucrative financial agreements over the past year.

“The University of Michigan Athletic Department is proud to announce Champions Circle™ as the first name, image and likeness (NIL) collective to become an official partner of Michigan Athletics,” the school stated. “A collective is an independently owned and operated group of passionate supporters that have joined together to provide NIL opportunities to student-athletes.”

In theory, these deals should keep various players in Ann Arbor for another year when professional sports could have been an alternative path. Names like Junior Colson immediately spring to mind in that regard, though the Champions Circle was not able to lure the reliable linebacker back for his senior season.

Without Colson, other veteran Wolverines like cornerback Will Johnson will be looked upon to step up, and from an NIL-perspective, Johnson had positive early reports about the Champions Circle’s impact during a recent media availability.

“I think the collective has done a great job at putting their all into making it what it is now, and I think they've done a great job so far,” Johnson said. “We needed to keep that core group together. A lot of the guys that had experience on this team last year, especially in the secondary.”

Overall, the Champions Circle and others of its kind could function as pivotal tools if used correctly. However, these rules changes may come across as fast and loose to college athletics purists, and it’s clear that schools across the country are eager to use the newfound NIL rules to their advantage. According to Yahoo Finances’s Josh Schafer, college athletes made over 900 million dollars in the first year of the new NIL rules. However it’s split, that’s a collective ton of money.

But up to this point, Michigan has taken a rather measured approach to NIL. Rather than diving headfirst into a complicated financial situation, U-M Athletic Director Warde Manuel has ushered the school using a more pragmatic approach. And as a result, Manuel’s received backlash for acting too slow and not capitalizing on the massive endowment that the University of Michigan possesses.

That statement may contain shades of truth, but Michigan is remaining active on the NIL front, the most recent action coming from the basketball program. After Michigan hired Dusty May as head coach, the Champions Circle quickly announced the “March with May” initiative as a show of support for the new face of U-M basketball. So far, the fundraising effort is 59 dollars short of reaching $25,000 in just one week.

READ MORE: Dusty May Is Ready To Build Up Michigan Basketball

So, it seems clear that the new Michigan basketball regime is prepared to operate with a strengthened financial backing from its NIL programs. New head coach Dusty May learned to work with and not against NIL over the last several years, and he talked about its prominent role during his opening press conference.

“Probably over the last year our roles and responsibilities as coaches changed and evolved,” May said. “I probably spend about 25 to 30 percent of my time on NIL— recruiting donors, giving access to our program, doing anything we could to provide opportunities for our players. It is what it is. I've learned to enjoy it, and it's not going away. I'd love for our players to be taken care of as much as possible and rewarded for the work that they put in.”

That is the purpose behind NIL programs in the first place, after all. So, look for Michigan to continue expanding its NIL-related resources with the Champions Circle as its paramount school-partnered collective.

What do you want to see from Michigan’s NIL operation going forward? Let us know and follow @EricJRutter on Twitter for more Wolverine Digest updates.