Inside the rush to cash in on fleeting March Madness fame

On the TVs Thursday night, some dude named Jack Gohlke couldn’t miss, making Sean Ellenby and Sean Childers itch. Their employer, Campus Ink, had gathered to watch March Madness at a bar in Chicago’s Old Town neighborhood. The problem, though, after Gohlke hit a sixth three, then a seventh—then an eighth, ninth and 10th—was that Childers needed his computer. Ellenby needed to find a contact for Gohlke. And they were jammed, side-by-side, in a corner booth, stuck mingling when they had to work.

“Where’s your laptop?” Ellenby, Campus Ink’s director of marketing and communications, asked Childers, a lead graphic designer.

“It’s in the car,” Childers answered, then he eventually slipped out. That night, while the world buzzed about Gohlke and Oakland University upsetting the University of Kentucky in the first round of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, Childers watched the whole game back, marking down each of Gohlke’s shot attempts. By morning, he had designed two T-shirts, one of them featuring Gohlke’s entire shot chart. Ellenby reached out to the email listed in Gohlke’s Instagram bio, sending the mock-ups. One of Gohlke’s friends, who made the account for marketing inquiries, told Ellenby to ship a contract over.

That afternoon, Campus Ink, which sells name, image and likeness, or NIL, apparel, released Gohlke’s merchandise. Gohlke also posted a video for TurboTax, shot in a hallway at the team’s hotel.

This time of year, with so many eyes on college basketball, NIL deals are now a part of the tradition. Before beating Kentucky, Gohlke was a 24-year-old Division II transfer whom hardly anyone knew outside of Rochester, Mich. But since July 2021, when the Indianapolis-based NCAA changed its NIL rules, a player such as him can go viral on the court and then immediately make money off it. March Madness is an NIL economy all its own.

“For so long, there was all these marketing campaigns around March Madness, but it was every TV announcer and the mascots,” said Rachel Baker, who helps Duke’s men’s basketball players manage NIL as the program’s general manager. “And now, being able to do that with athletes, brands know how huge March Madness is and they want to get in on it. During the season, it can be kind of slow for our guys, and I think they get a bit antsy. We just tell them: ‘Trust us, the deals are coming.’”

Campus Ink is always looking for what they call hot moments: a buzzer-beater, a highlight dunk, a mid-major guard canning 10 threes against a blue blood. Buffalo Wild Wings does the same, though it’s specifically watching for players who force overtime (think its commercials with the button that extends games to keep everyone at the bar). In the first week of the men’s and women’s tournaments alone, Buffalo Wild Wings did marketing deals with Grambling State’s Jimel Cofer, Northwestern’s Brooks Barnhizer, Kansas’s Zakiyah Franklin and Gohlke, who forced overtime before Oakland fell to North Carolina State on Saturday in the round of 32.

Jacob Schmidt, who runs Northwestern’s NIL collective, was in an Uber to LaGuardia Airport when his phone buzzed. A rep for the agency VaynerSports, contracted by Buffalo Wild Wings, asked whether Barnhizer would be interested in a deal. It just had to happen fast. Within 30 minutes, Barnhizer texted Schmidt back. Schmidt put the junior guard and the Vayner rep in a group text. The six-hour turnaround was one of Buffalo Wild Wings’ fastest ever. Then Franklin, a guard for Kansas’s women’s team, got her wings within four hours, the delivery facilitated by a bar near the team hotel.

A perk, aside from free wings and a little cash: Each player gets to pick their flavor.

“I’m kind of a dry rub guy,” said Barnhizer, who chose buffalo dry rub. “Not into a lot of sauces.”

“For us, the weekend was about meeting with potential donors, with people who have given money, telling them what it’s gone to and how it made that first-round win possible,” Schmidt said. “But getting to also help Brooks land that deal, that was pretty damn cool.”

These NIL deals are not for much money. For smaller brand deals, players will sometimes just get the product as payment, with maybe enough to share with their teammates. When you hear about players making six or seven figures a year, they either have major brand partnerships—Caitlin Clark with Nike, Angel Reese with Reebok—or are receiving a de facto salary from the donor-funded NIL collective that supports their school. Still, though, for lesser-known players, it can be important to strike while the March lights are hot. Gohlke will never be more famous than he was this past weekend. Barnhizer and Northwestern were bounced by top-seeded Connecticut on Sunday night.

At bigger programs, where NIL deals are more common, players and staff weigh the value of an offer against the opportunity cost at a critical point of the season. Baker, who worked for Nike before joining Duke’s staff in 2022, said the Blue Devils would not engage in any NIL activity between this past Thursday and Sunday, when they were in Brooklyn for the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament.

On Thursday, Raid, the insecticide brand, posted a social media campaign starring Jeremy Roach, a senior guard for Duke, and Darianna Littlepage-Buggs, a sophomore guard for Baylor’s women’s team. Yet Baker explained that Roach shot his part in his campus apartment three weeks ago. Same went for a photo shoot for SKIMS, Kim Kardashian’s clothing line, that featured Duke guard Jared McCain, Connecticut center Donovan Clingan and Arizona guard Caleb Love, among others.

Last week, in the lead-up to games, Goldman Sachs announced an NIL campaign with Reese, LSU’s star forward. Adidas launched a campaign around Hailey Van Lith, an LSU guard. With anything for TV—such as Clark’s Xfinity commercial—a lot of planning is involved. But for point-and-shoot iPhone videos, companies often ask players to send something within a day. Everyone is capitalizing on fleeting moments.

“It had to happen really fast because they wanted to get it out there,” Barnhizer said. “I don’t know if you saw it. The pictures were not great quality.”

But once Duke arrived in Brooklyn, NIL didn’t exist, even if companies were to reach out about McCain or big man Kyle Filipowski. Among her many jobs, Baker makes it so Duke Coach Jon Scheyer doesn’t know or hear about NIL deals until he sees them on the internet (if he does at all). She sits in basketball meetings to learn the players’ schedules. She works closely with the players’ agents, deciding what is worth their time.

Baker considers herself a buffer. She is used to saying no, mindful of how much the players are juggling. After dominating at Barclays Center, Duke heads to Dallas to face top-seeded Houston in the Sweet 16 on Friday, whereas some teams play Thursday. That leaves the Blue Devils with little wiggle room.

“Don’t tell Coach Scheyer that we could maybe, possibly do more deals,” Baker said with a laugh. “We’ll see what pops up.”