The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) recently altered its rules surrounding college athletes’ ability to receive endorsements, sponsorships, and brand deals. While previously athletes were not permitted to make money off of their identity, as of last Thursday, that has completely changed.
College athletes are now allowed to make money; they may be compensated for their name, image, and likeness, as discussed by Boston.com. With the NCAA’s new changes, athletes may profit off of their own personas by entering into sponsored Instagram posts, advertisements, videos on YouTube and TikTok, and more.
In light of this news, Barstool Sports, an extremely popular sports and pop culture blog, has released an online application form for Division One collegiate athletes. By filling out this form, athletes may become Barstool-sponsored athletes. The application requires students to insert their email, name, school, sport, Instagram and Twitter handles, as well as their address and merchandise sizing so that the company may send them gear to represent on their personal social media accounts.
According to Golfweek, Barstool Athletics is not asking for athletes to sign exclusive contracts, but rather the company simply wants to help athletes “amplify their own brands” now that they may profit while competing in college.
The Barstool Athletics Twitter account published the online application on July 1. Over the past week, their Instagram account has reached almost 170,000 followers, and has featured over 600 new Barstool collegiate athletes from schools across the United States.
