CHAMPAIGN — The one-year anniversary of name, image and likeness taking college athletics by storm hits next week.
It took nearly that entire calendar year for Illinois football players Chase Brown and Sydney Brown to take advantage of those new NIL opportunities.
The Brown twins, who hail from Windsor, Ontario in Canada, are part of the roughly 12 percent of college athletes from outside of the United States. The way NIL deals could complicate F-1 student visas meant those international athletes had their opportunities curtailed.
Heading back to Canada this month, though, opened the door for the Browns to finally take advantage. They partnered with Australian athletic leisure ware brand LSKD and with some law firms in Canada.
“We had people that were interested in my brother and I enough to invest money and use us as ways to endorse their company,” Chase Brown said. “We’ve been excited to work with them and partner with them and look forward to future opportunities.”
Sydney Brown is putting NIL on the back burner for the moment.
The Illinois football team has reconvened for the summer and workouts, including, for the first time, the opportunity to work with the coaching staff, is his focus.
“It was fun, but it’s distracting,” Sydney Brown said about exploring NIL opportunities while at home in Canada. “I’m looking forward to stepping away from it for a little bit. As beneficial as it is, it’s distracting at the same time. It takes you away. It’s a whole other side of life. It’s just different. There’s football, and then there’s NIL.”
Even getting the chance, though, was what the Browns wanted. It’s what the collective whole of college athletes wanted. Just a piece of the billions of dollars that flow through college sports.
“It’s what we’ve been begging for,” Sydney Brown said. “We’re blessed to have the opportunity to go home and get that done. Yeah, it was a month, but we made the most of what we could do.”
“I think just having the opportunity and the option to make money aside of the stipend we get each month has been life changing for a lot of college athletes,” Chase Brown added. “It allows us to be more comfortable with the way we are financially.”
Illinois offensive lineman Alex Palczewski is open to any NIL opportunities that might come his way entering his sixth season with the Illini.
The veteran player on Bret Bielema’s latest roster hasn’t made it his focus, but he wouldn’t turn them down. Something like the deal Gonzaga All-American Drew Timme signed with …….
