DALLAS — When she is facilitating name, image and likeness (NIL) deals like the one a few months ago between University of Texas softball players and Walmart, the irony is never lost on Sarah Fuller. She is just a few years removed from being a college athlete herself, one who earned national acclaim from becoming the first female to play for a power-five conference football team. She ...

Vanderbilt's Sarah Fuller kicks off in the second half against Missouri at Memorial Stadium in Columbia, Missouri, on Saturday, Nov. 28, 2020.

Hunter Dyke/Mizzou Athletics/Getty Images North America/TNS

DALLAS — When she is facilitating name, image and likeness (NIL) deals like the one a few months ago between University of Texas softball players and Walmart, the irony is never lost on Sarah Fuller.

She is just a few years removed from being a college athlete herself, one who earned national acclaim from becoming the first female to play for a power-five conference football team. She remembers, one November night at Vanderbilt in 2020, watching her social media following explode from 1,400 to 200,000.

Hailed as a “trailblazer” and “pioneer,” her story attracted widespread attention — she even introduced Vice President Kamala Harris in a video message for an inauguration event. It uniquely positioned her to capitalize on newfound fame by monetizing her name, image and likeness.

One problem: The NIL era didn’t start until July 2021. Fuller missed her NIL moment by seven months.

These days, the Wylie, Texas, native is Chief Athlete Officer at NOCAP Sports, which works with more than 60 schools, offering a suite of services that ultimately help put money into pockets of college athletes.

“I felt it firsthand being taken advantage of by your university and the NCAA,” Fuller told The Dallas Morning News.

“So my goal every day is to wake up and help support athletes. To make sure we’re putting the athlete front and center of everything we do, and making sure those funds go back to support athletes,” she said.

“That we’re bringing them good NIL deals, that they understand what kind of deal they’re getting into. That’s the biggest thing for me, getting to work with these athletes and bring them opportunities I wasn’t allowed to have.”

Fuller is a prominent example of a growing number of former college athletes — most of whom missed all or part of the NIL era — who now help lead companies that benefit athletes in this new multibillion-dollar paradigm. A memorable NCAA commercial in recent years said there are more than 400,000 student-athletes and most “will go pro in something other than sports.”

They have indeed.

They are now founders, executives and advocates. They say they are driven to help create pathways for athletes in a landscape long on financial opportunity but devoid of guardrails. Several with ties to Dallas-Fort Worth — including Fuller, Austin Elrod and Landon Goesling (TheLinkU), Jonathan Hoeflinger (Athletic Estate) and Ethan Barr (PlayerData) — have either founded or work for companies carving out unique niches in a chaotic industry.

Goesling played basketball for Coppell High and then played and served as a graduate assistant at the University of Houston. Now chief revenue officer for TheLinkU, Goesling said he will never forget the first NIL deal he facilitated for an athlete, pairing a dog kennel business with a starter from a prominent program. When he called the athlete to inform him of the deal, the player, home with his mom, broke down in tears on the phone, telling his mom, “Mom, I got an NIL deal!”

“I was like, holy cow, I’m here to change kids’ lives,” Goesling said. “Fast forward four years, we have student-athletes that have had NIL deals with companies and are working for those companies now.”

Scores of former athletes are deeply entrenched in various corners of this new world, including Opendorse’s Blake Lawrence (Nebraska football), FanWord’s Christopher Aumueller (Nebraska tennis) and Mit Winter (William & Mary basketball).

Winter is a Kansas City, Mo.-based college sports attorney whose practice focuses on representing athletes, agents, universities, NIL donor-funded collectives and businesses in the NIL space. He encounters so many athletes and families, he said, who have zero experience dealing with demands they confront in this new ecosystem, including complex NIL contracts.

“Knowing what I was like as a college athlete, and knowing what I didn’t know at that time, I’m motivated to ensure athletes are making good decisions and properly taking advantage of the opportunity and short period of time they have as a college athlete,” Winter, who was named one of the 80 most influential figures in the NIL space by Silver Waves Media, told The News. “College athletics provided a lot for me, so I hope to help athletes have that same outcome.”

Aumueller is CEO and founder of FanWord, an AI-powered storytelling platform that helps school communication teams write feature stories, game recaps and other digital content. He told The News it started as a passion project, telling the stories of college athletes beyond what people see on TV.

“If you’re a softball player from a small town in Nebraska,” he said, “you may impact and inspire other little girls to follow your footsteps. That has a ripple effect, especially if you do it for thousands of athletes.”

Continuing to be a voice for athletes

The call came the day after Fuller and her Vanderbilt soccer team won the SEC championship in 2020. Ken Masuhr, an assistant soccer coach, asked if Fuller would be interested in trying out as kicker for the football team, whose special teams unit had been ravaged by COVID-19-related opt-outs and quarantined players.

Fuller had never kicked a football. But she passed up a Thanksgiving trip home to try out. On Nov. 28, she became the first female to play in a power-five game at Missouri. She trended on Twitter. Her kickoff was the SEC Network’s most viewed tweet in its history at the time.

Then came the Tennessee game on Dec. 12, when she kicked two extra points. All of a sudden, her kicks, her name, her story went viral. Brands, including Amazon, reached out through direct messages about financial opportunities.

She talked to Vanderbilt’s compliance office and “they shut it all down.” At the same time, she saw T-shirts selling bearing her image.

“There was nothing I could really do about it other than sending like a cease and desist [letter],” Fuller said. “I couldn’t make any money off of it at that time.”

Before long, she delivered the video message at “Celebrating America” to introduce Harris, being featured alongside Bruce Springsteen, Justin Timberlake and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. She received signed jerseys from NFL players. She attended the ESPY’s award show, where she was recognized.

She transferred to the University of North Texas, where she earned her MBA and finished her soccer career. She was permitted to monetize her brand at that point but missed the opportunity to maximize her most lucrative NIL moment from her football experience. At North Texas, she said she made enough money to “get off my parents’ payroll.�� She signed with the agency Wasserman and secured deals with companies such as Altra Running Shoes and H&R Block, whose campaign, “A Fair Shot,” was aimed at addressing gender disparities in NIL deals.

Now, Fuller believes the work she and NOCAP Sports are doing is critical because it addresses the biggest problem in college sports: donor fatigue. NOCAP, whose clients include Pittsburgh, South Carolina and Florida State, works with universities that put the company in touch with their alumni business owners. NOCAP essentially audits services the business is using, such as credit card processing, insurance, etc., and will switch them to NOCAP’s service providers. They save money, which can then flow back to the university or to athletes in NIL deals.

“Hey, you don’t have to write another check,” Fuller said of the message to businesses. “We’re just going to save you money.”

She remains a voice advocating for athletes. In particular, since typically 75% of a school’s revenue-sharing dollars flow to football players, Fuller has seen the current model be “super unfair” for female and Olympic sport athletes. She said she has daily conversations with universities that touch on a common theme: How can we pay our female athletes and still keep our star football and men’s basketball players amid salary cap restraints?

Fuller’s sentiments about ongoing fissures in college sports reflect growing concerns across the industry that the current financial model is unsustainable. Among campus leaders, TCU Athletic Director Mike Buddie recently told The News that the best financial structure moving forward entails welcoming college athletes to the negotiating table to collectively bargain financial parameters.

To that point, Fuller was among the former athletes who opted out of the landmark House settlement. She is a named plaintiff in another high-profile antitrust lawsuit, Fontenot vs. NCAA, which is led by former Colorado football player Alex Fontenot and seeks compensation for former athletes who competed before the NIL era and further changes to the industry’s business model.

“The NCAA does a good job of spewing their propaganda,” Fuller said. “When you’re in the sport and you’re seeing all those things, it’s easy to believe it. I want to continue to be a voice and an advocate for athletes and ensure they have their rights for years and years to come.”

Teaching schools ‘how to be a business’

Elrod never envisioned he’d found a college sports company that works with more than 30 schools.

He grew up in the D-FW area, played quarterback for the University of Houston and earned his MBA from Dallas Baptist University. In 2022, he founded TheLinkU, which works with athletic departments to generate what he calls “above-board” dollars for athletes beyond the $20.5 million salary cap threshold that schools are allowed to share annually with athletes.

“The need is extreme, and it’s urgent,” Elrod said. “The chaos that exists is tremendous. ... That is why I’m doing what I’m doing now. Because it’s moving the needle in a very complex space, and there’s a lot of opportunity from a business perspective.”

Elrod has a portfolio of non-sports companies that include Elrod Enterprises, Elrod Interiors, NCSC Pest & Wildlife, Coeur d’Alene Cleaning Services and Elrod Land & Cattle.

Early in the NIL era, he received a call to start Houston’s first NIL collective and said he applied his grassroots startup mentality. Then came seven-figure deals and media attention. Soon, coaches and administrators called asking, “Hey, could you consult for us and teach us what you’re doing at Houston?”

That gave birth to TheLinkU, which now works with schools such as the University of Arkansas, Texas A&M, the University of Mississippi and others. He says it fills a void in a space that lacks any semblance of infrastructure.

The company offers schools several services. Its NIL technology platform provides campus leaders with their own digital dashboards, helping compliance officers with contracts and athletic directors with revenue generation data.

TheLinkU also matches their national partners with a school’s donor-led businesses. For instance, if a local car dealership has a rat problem, TheLinkU will connect their pest control partner with the dealership, which pays the pest control company and a portion of that goes to the university to support NIL.

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Jonathan Hoeflinger, founder of Frisco-based Athletic Estate, said many college athletes are making a lot of money but spending that money just as fast.

Juan Figueroa/The Dallas Morning News/TNS

“We’re trying to bring this whole process into one ecosystem, from a technology standpoint, and then rolling our sleeves up and driving new revenue that is recurring revenue,” Goesling said. “If you read about NIL, people sometimes have a bad taste, but there’s a right way to do it, and we take pride in doing it the right way and providing value to all parties.”

With schools’ alumni lists, corporate sponsors and “all these different ingredients, they’re surrounded by some of the most elite businesses, elite brands, elite products, but they’ve never learned how to position that properly,” Elrod said. “We teach them how to be a business.”

Scores of schools are searching for dollars above the so-called $20.5 million salary cap to help entice elite athletes to come and stay at their universities. Texas Tech billionaire Cody Campbell and SMU Athletic Director Damon Evans told The News that operating above the cap is a requisite to fielding a competitive football team.

Athletes can receive dollars above the cap as long as the NIL deals are for a valid business purpose. Elrod said above-the-cap dollars TheLinkU is helping to create come from local businesses — not donor contributions — and are within parameters allowed by the College Sports Commission as valid business deals.

“We bring deals to the 1 percent of athletes that are already going to have NIL, but we’re creating real NIL opportunities for the 99 percent of athletes who Nike isn’t calling them to do it,” he said. “We’re making a meaningful impact for female athletes, for Olympic sport athletes at a time where they desperately need it.”

He said he has more schools interested right now than they can take on.

“It’s a grind in this space, a 24/7 grind,” Elrod said. “And then you add in the ever-changing landscape — we’re poised and ready to attack.”

Setting athletes up after their playing days

After his football career finished at Reedley College — where his team won the 2002 junior college national title in California’s Central Valley — and then at Arkansas State, Jonathan Hoeflinger heard about the phone calls.

“‘Hey, I’m struggling over here. Can you help with a cell phone bill?’ ” Hoeflinger, who lives in D-FW, recalled. “Former teammates were struggling financially because they were so accustomed to being in a system where everything was set up for them.”

Oren O’Neal, his former Arkansas State roommate who later played with the Oakland Raiders, talked publicly about the struggles of transitioning from sports to life.

“When those athletes leave the team, they need a place to go, and we’re that place for them,” Hoeflinger, an entrepreneur and investor, said of his company, Athletic Estate. “It’s a safe haven.”

The News first met with Hoeflinger at The Star in Frisco in October about his company. Since then, he’s met with scores of stakeholders across the collegiate landscape and crystallized its mission and message.

Once the tectonic plates in college sports began to shift at the beginning of this decade, opening up financial opportunities for college athletes, Hoeflinger realized he needed to create a model that could build value for the athlete while they’re in the game, that could then transfer to value that could pay them for a lifetime.

He said many college athletes are making a lot of money but spending that money just as fast, which equates to a failing grade for financial fitness. He created a model that helps athletes build out an annuity, he said, that allows them to create income that multiplies over a lifetime.

Athletic Estate is working with more than 50 athletes, most of whom are college players, he said.

In a lengthy interview in February, he took big swings at the current financial system in college sports, saying it’s no surprise athletes are struggling to handle money. Look at their schools, he said, pointing to data that shows the majority of schools, regardless of where they are on the financial hierarchy, spend about as much as they generate.

“Talking to leadership at a university is very difficult because they’re used to a model that is, ‘Will you donate to help support the building fund? Will you donate to help us go get this athlete? Will you donate?,” he said. “That’s the model. And then we’re going to spend everything we got. We’re going to come back to you next year and ask again. ... The system isn’t just broken. I’m saying that schools are broke.”

To that point, NIL consultant Bill Carter posted on LinkedIn: “This is the new math for college athletics. Schools aren’t just managing NIL anymore. They’re managing NIL plus revenue sharing plus massive capital projects plus rising operating costs — all at once.”

College sports is the great startup of the decade, Hoeflinger said, and schools have been playing with old-school rules in a new world. He said they are “faking” revenue sharing because donors, rather than schools, are footing the bill.

He added: “We are teaching financial illiteracy to our athletes, who are our next set of leaders.”

Giving high school recruits a ‘leg up’

Ethan Barr’s college career bridged two different eras: pre-NIL and post-NIL.

The Flower Mound native played linebacker at Vanderbilt in 2020, before the NIL age arrived. When the era began, he said, the school was slow to adjust. Barr made four figures from NIL in Nashville. After graduating, he transferred to the University of Central Florida, where earnings increased.

After spending time in sales for a marketing and branding company, Barr, 23, recently jumped at the opportunity to become the southeast account executive at wearables company PlayerData. The Scotland-based company, founded in 2017, has a client list that includes more than 50,000 athletes and 1,500 teams globally, including the University of North Carolina women’s soccer team and at least 20 North Texas high school teams, including Allen, Southlake Carroll and Highland Park.

“It’s a different space now,” Barr said over coffee with The News. “High school athletes need a leg up now. With the transfer portal, recruiting is not heavily geared toward high school athletes now. That is definitely my motivation, giving back.”

The product, which is worn like a vest, provides data that company executives feel reduce the chance of injury and provide a broad spectrum of easily accessed metrics, like top speed and acceleration, to high school coaches and players. As a result, Barr said, it maximizes scholarship opportunities for athletes, which, in turn, helps create NIL opportunities.

“We’ve seen it,” said Luke Bonner, PlayerData’s head of marketing who played basketball at West Virginia University and the University of Massachusetts. “There have definitely been high school players who have been recruited as a result of their GPS data.”

Bonner said Texas has been the “hottest high school-level market. High school sports in Texas are a beast, really something unique.”

Bonner, the brother of former NBA player Matt Bonner, said the recruiting landscape is more challenging now than when he was in high school. Many college football and basketball coaches prefer to fill their rosters with established players from the transfer portal rather than take chances with high school prospects. He said the data helps athletes understand where they are physically and better positions them to maximize scholarship opportunities in a new age.

Ben Slingerland, a former Georgetown University soccer player and now head of North America sales for PlayerData, called the wearables space saturated, laden with a technology for virtually every athlete’s needs. “But some companies have lost their product innovation in the wearable space because they’ve become a little thin across the board,” he said. “PlayerData has found its niche — they’re doing one thing, and they’re doing it really well, and that’s wearable tracking.”

Jessica Brodsky, PlayerData’s chief commercial officer and a former lacrosse player at Lafayette College, echoed that sentiment. One differentiator with the product, she said, is that competitors’ products may be too complicated or sold at a one-time cost and it “breaks a year later, it’s like the Bic Pen model.”

While at Vanderbilt, Barr recalled, strength coaches talked about how much time it took to break down data with the wearables the players used. One of the differentiators, Barr said, is how accessible the data is with PlayerData.

Another memory Barr had from his Vanderbilt days is the national headlines a teammate attracted late in the 2020 season: Sarah Fuller.

Because college athletes were not permitted to benefit financially that year — eight months before the start of the NIL era — he knows Fuller missed out.

“She would have benefited heavily,” Barr said. “Her publicity was insane. She did miss out on a big opportunity there. The timing of it wasn’t great for her.”

An ‘ever-changing landscape’

As the college sports landscape has continued to evolve in recent months, Fuller has also spent time lobbying against the SCORE Act, a bill that would give the NCAA its long-sought antitrust exemption. Those who oppose the bill say it would give the NCAA power to further limit athletes’ ability to maximize their compensation.

Like a growing number of campus leaders, Fuller is among those who believe athletes need to be in the room when college leaders make rules, and that it’s time for discussions about what it will look like to have athletes at the negotiating table.

“I can’t imagine being an 18-year-old getting thrown into this kind of money,” Fuller said. “College sports essentially are professional sports at this point. So if you get signed to a big Division I program, you should know what you’re signing up for.”

After missing out on her NIL moment from her barrier-breaking football days at Vanderbilt, she shares the motivations of a growing number of former athletes now with companies striving to help current college players navigate a whole new world.

“I could have made some really good money around then,” Fuller said. “It’s an ongoing [thought of], ‘I missed out on NIL.’ But now I get to help pay out athletes every day for something as simple as an Instagram reel. So that’s a really exciting thing to be able to help them kind of navigate this ever-changing landscape. This is a place I need to be.”