Daily Digest: Penn State & Vodka

Happy Valley Collective introduces limited edition vodka, Swimming lessons brings in cash for athletes, Vanderbilt leans in on NIL

Author

Jack M
November 08, 2023

Here’s what we have today:

Penn State & Vodka

  • Penn State’s Happy Valley Collective has partnered with a distillery to create Happy Valley Vodka and will give some profits to the Happy Valley Collective. Other schools have done similar partnerships with alcohol companies.

  • Noah Henderson breaks it down - NIL Alcohol Loophole

Swimming Lessons & NIL

  • University of Illinois swimmer Cara Bognar created Top Tier Lessons, a business for college athletes to offer private lessons.

  • The company handles the venue, marketing, scheduling, payment, and safety of each lesson to enable student-athletes to make money with private coaching

  • Riley Overend has more details at SwimSwam

Vanderbilt Football leans in to NIL

  • Vanderbilt football added only two transfer players in 2023 and will be more aggressive in using NIL and the transfer portal, but still wants to primarily recruit and develop players

  • Coach Clark Lea sees more NIL in helping improve the program going forward

  • Vanderbilt’s NIL Collective, Anchor Impact, lists 17 players related to Football

Unionization Effort led by Dartmouth Basketball

  • Dartmouth basketball players seek to unionize, joining the national debate about changing college athletics

  • Their focus is on the Ivy League rule that limits players' financial compensation and they have made it clear that unionization will not affect their performance on the court