Business is booming: USC quarterback Caleb Williams makes the most of name, image, likeness deals
By: Josh Peter - USA Today/Yahoo! SportsLOS ANGELES — At a downtown skyscraper, the doors of a 10th-floor suite opened and in walked Caleb Williams, a 20-year-old quarterback redefining college athletics.
He settled into a chair and wore an easy smile that belied his circumstances.
More than a week after leaving the University of Oklahoma and reuniting with head coach Lincoln Riley at Southern California, Williams was living in a hotel, looking for an apartment, waiting on his clothes and car, participating in daily workouts and trying to catch up on schoolwork.
“It’s stacked up,’’ he said. “It’s been a whirlwind.’’
Among his classes are art history and dance history, said Williams, who also is trying to make history by navigating the changing landscape of college sports in unprecedented fashion.
Thus, his trip to the skyscraper. The suite belongs to Smith & Company, a communications and strategic advisers firm that has worked with the likes of Shaquille O’Neal and Rob Gronkowski.
The same firm has been assisting Williams since he was in high school and is helping maximize new power available to college athletes. Especially athletes as gifted as Williams, who won the starting job at Oklahoma as a freshman midway through last season and emerged as a potential star and Heisman Trophy candidate.
In a pinned tweet on his Twitter account, Williams borrows a lyric from Jay-Z that helps explain the situation: “I’m Not a Businessman; I’m a Business, Man!”
Before he took his first official snap at Oklahoma, Williams filed four trademark applications with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The filings were for his name, a “superman logo’’ featuring his initials, another logo using his initials and his silhouette.
And business is booming.
Five companies, including Beats by Dre, have announced deals with Williams that will allow him to make money off his name, image and likeness (NIL).
The terms of the deals were not disclosed. But Blake Lawrence, who tracks NIL activity as co-founder of the marketing firm Opendorse, said he thinks Williams' overall earning potential could be $1 million a year in Los Angeles.
Ramogi Huma, executive director of the National College Players Association – an advocacy group for college athletes – said this is part of what he envisioned when he pushed for NIL opportunities.
“You know, LeBron James is in L.A. right now, and I’m sure his (representatives) thought about the L.A. media market when he chose the Lakers,’’ Huma said. “So how or why should it be different for college athletes?’’
The scenario was once unthinkable.
Before last year, NCAA rules prohibited athletes from making money on their name, image and likeness.
Also, except for graduate transfers, NCAA rules forced athletes who transferred to sit out one year before they were eligible to play again.
Huma, who has fought for player compensation, said the more restrictive NCAA rules had a disproportionate impact on Black athletes like Williams for two reasons: Black athletes represent most players on football and basketball teams at Division I schools and are more likely to come from underprivileged backgrounds.
Of the NCAA rule changes, Huma said, “This is an example of something that can benefit an athlete in a racially exploitive industry.”
Louis Moore, a history professor at Grand Valley State University in Michigan who co-hosts a podcast called “The Black Athlete,” said Williams has demonstrated college athletes have gained two basic rights – the right to mobility and the right to make money.
“That’s what the NCAA restricted, and now all of the sudden they (college athletes) have that,” Moore said. “So there’s power in that.”
It was not always clear Williams would enjoy such power.
'The magic man!'
He flicks and fires passes.Darts and dashes out of the backfield.
And revs up play-by-play announcers.
“The magic man! Pulls out the magic wand! Touchdown, Sooners!’’
So wailed ESPN’s Mark Jones after Williams eluded three players on his way to a 40-yard touchdown run against Kansas last season.
By the end of the year, Williams had thrown for 1,912 yards, 21 touchdowns and just four interceptions. He also had rushed for 442 yards and six touchdowns in 11 games, which included seven starts.
The production came as little surprise to Richmond Flowers III, founder of QB Collective, a pro-style quarterback camp that has tapped into his relationships with NFL coaches.
USC quarterback Caleb Williams often paints his fingernails. In this case, he painted the phone number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
Those coaches include Mike Shanahan, a three-time Super Bowl champion with the Denver Broncos who at the time the camp began was head coach of Washington; and three men who at the time were assistants under Shanahan but now are more visible in their current positions: Los Angeles Rams head coach Sean McVay; Green Bay Packers head coach Matt LeFleur; and San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan.
Richmond, who also was an assistant on Mike Shanahan’s staff in Washington, said the coaches saw college football offenses were falling further behind schematically and wanted to expose talented quarterbacks to NFL ideas.
Flowers scoured the country for the top young quarterbacks, and at the inaugural camp in 2015 arrived a skinny seventh-grader.
There was nothing remarkable about Williams back then, recalled Flowers, who said he was struck more by Williams’ father, Carl.
“This was about a dad who wanted to give the power to his son to accomplish all of his goals,’’ Flowers said. “It was always about development and education (as a quarterback). Knowing that this stuff can change your life, that’s why we started this.’’
With father and son building relationships with NFL coaches, Williams soaked up the material they would provide.
“Almost a storybook tale,’’ Flowers said.
The skinny seventh-grader grew to be a 6-2, 220-pound high school quarterback and soared onto the national recruiting scene: as a senior, he was ranked seventh overall and the second among quarterbacks and ranked 16th overall and second among quarterbacks by ESPN.
Those rankings are now obsolete.
Williams, who will enter his sophomore season as a Heisman Trophy candidate, has emerged as potentially the most impactful player in college sports on and off the field. And he understands how much things have changed.
Then and now
On his Instagram page, Williams posted a photo of himself and Reggie Bush, the former USC star, taken in a club-level suite at SoFi Stadium during Super Bowl 56. He is well-aware Bush won the Heisman Trophy in 2005 but gave it back after an NCAA investigation found Bush violated eligibility rules by accepting money from an agent.The NCAA said its investigation found Bush had accepted nearly $300,000 in cash and other impermissible benefits from sports marketers during his three seasons. Williams is expected to make far more than that in one season.
“Some older guys think it’s a little wacky and a little crazy right now, especially with it being so new, which I would expect,’’ Williams said. “But a bunch of the old guys are on the other side. Like Reggie, he wouldn’t have to give back his Heisman. They wouldn’t have taken his Heisman down and he would’ve been able to get paid and all that.
“I would say we (college athletes) work longer days, physically and mentally, than a lot of people because we have to do school, too. Plus, all the team activities that you have to do. To not be able to get paid for something like that, I say it’s kind of crazy.”
Of transferring schools, Williams said, “I think it is a little weak-minded” when players are running from competition. But there are situations beyond a player's control. For example, it was Riley who recruited Williams to Oklahoma.
“When coaches leave and when coaches get fired, it kind of uproots’’ the environment for players.
Since enrolling at USC, Williams has secured an NIL deal with Hawkins Way Capital, a Beverly Hills-based real estate private equity fund, according to the Los Angeles Times.
He previously signed deals with Beats by Dre; Fanatics, the largest international retailer of officially licensed sports merchandise; Faculty, a men’s grooming brand (Williams has a mustache and beard); and Action water, branded as AC+ION, which will launch nationally next month, said Phil Crimaldi, a managing director with Smith & Company, the firm advising Williams.
AC+ION has welcomed Williams’ move to the Los Angeles media market, said K.C. Blinn, vice president of Blue Triton Brands, the parent company of the bottled water brand.
“We’re really excited how it all panned out, the fact that he moved out of Oklahoma to Los Angeles, into a bigger market,’’ Blinn said. “Obviously SC is pretty known as kind of the shiny element of college sports, and we’re excited that he’s out here and has access to a lot more opportunities than I think he would have been offered at Oklahoma.’’
In addition to the newfound power, Williams is enjoying the freedom of expression.
All eyes on Williams
Williams showed up for an interview with USA TODAY Sports wearing pink nail polish and a black heart on his pinky in anticipation of Valentine’s Day.As a freshman at Oklahoma, he wore nail polish and distinctive designs on game day. To coincide with national suicide prevention week from Sept. 4-10, for instance, he had his nails painted to display the suicide prevention hotline phone number.
His mother was a nail technician, Williams explained, so he adopted the tradition for which he has caught flack.
“People always have their opinions and things like that,’’ he said. “I could care less what their opinions are on it.''
One professor's opinion: There are clearly limits on this new power among college athletes.
Moore, the history professor at Grand Valley State University, said the power available to Williams and other top college athletes through NIL deals will not “dismantle a multibillion system.
“They’re just getting theirs on the side, but they’re not changing the system,’’ Moore said. “Like the university, USC, is still going to make a ton of money and not have to give (Williams) any.’’
Moore said he was hopeful of more fundamental change in college athletics during the protests that followed the murder of George Floyd – in particular, when Pac-12 football players threatened to boycott the 2020 season.
But Moore noted the movement lost steam and failed when players like quarterbacks Justin Fields at Ohio State and Trevor Lawrence at Clemson said they wanted to play.
“The bigger athletes shut them down,’’ Moore said. “I think they really had a chance to really change the system in 2020 and things went back to normal. And I don’t know how you get back to that ... They’re always told you’ve got to play to make it to the next level. ...
“Maybe that’s all (Williams) wants.’’
Williams says he wants to help his offensive linemen get NIL deals.
Wants to win a national championship before he plans to leave USC after his junior season and enter the NFL draft.
Wants to distinguish himself on and off the field.
“I’m a male that paints his nails in funky designs, and I play football,’’ he said, “so I don’t really mind pushing things a different direction.’’
Just how far can he push things and affect the future of college sports?
Said Huma: “I guarantee you other athletes are paying attention.’’
