COLUMBIA, Mo. — Talking about the nitty gritty of name, image and likeness while seated in the back of a golf cart parked next to a Missouri preseason football practice, Brad Larrondo is perched between two parts of the college sports world that he knows well.
Larrondo is the new CEO of Every True Tiger Brands, the marketing and branding agency tethered to Mizzou athletics for NIL purposes. The agency, which isn’t like the NIL collectives seen across most major university athletic departments, is what makes MU’s model stand out in modern college sports. Every True Tiger is behind the MU-branded cookies, pizzas and ice cream available in grocery stores around Missouri.
And Larrondo has recently migrated there from the Missouri football program.
Previously, Larrondo was an assistant director of athletics at Mizzou, also carrying the title of director of football external relations and recruiting. He has worked closely with football coach Eli Drinkwitz — the two first met when they overlapped at Boise State nearly a decade ago.
Just after starting his new role, Larrondo sat down with the Post-Dispatch in the aforementioned golf cart to talk about what makes Mizzou’s NIL operation successful, how the onset of revenue-sharing will impact it and what fans misunderstand when it comes to compensating athletes. Answers have been edited some for clarity.
P-D: What prompted you to move from the football program to , and what did that process look like? What excites you about the change?
Larrondo: Well, I would say that, in the world we’re living in right now in college athletics, NIL is such an instrumental and critical component of how you build programs and make sure that you’re competitive at the highest level. I’ve got a background in external relations, fundraising, marketing, sponsorships and then obviously the internal, working side of roster management and recruiting within a high-level football program.
Being able to be representative of what that takes for coaches and be able to assist them, whether it’s football or any other sport in our department, along with my external background, my ability to get out, make relationships, meet people and create effective branding and marketing campaigns really is what was attractive. It’s certainly one of those areas that is so critical to a program’s health that I just felt like I could make an impact in that way, continue to build what we’re doing at Mizzou, continue to keep all of our teams and athletes, that experience, that competitiveness to win championships, keep that rolling.
P-D: What will your day-to-day work look like as Every True Tiger’s CEO?
Larrondo: I think there’s really three or four main components of it. First and foremost is, as an NIL branding agency, we need to make sure that we have ironclad, buttoned-up contracts with the student-athletes that are on NIL, that they are performing activities to receive those payments. And then at the end of the month or whenever they get their payment, that they are able to be compensated for their name, image and likeness that we have the opportunity, through the contract, to utilize and to promote — and to help them build their brands. So operationally, you’ve got to make sure all those things are dialed in with compliance, how we’re doing that, that they complete their activities and that they receive their NIL payments.
From there, you also want to be able to look at other revenue-generating opportunities. Are there some other businesses or individuals that want to get involved with NIL and utilize student-athletes in that regard, for their name, image and likeness, and how do you go and do business development that way? °Őłó±đ°ů±đ’s an educational component of it. We’re doing a disservice to our student-athletes if we don’t also teach them things that go along with how NIL works. That can be everything from financial literacy to how to do their taxes to how they use social media. They’re all in an entrepreneurial stage and they’re in some ways running their own business, so how do you put them in a position to be successful, brand themselves, make those connections and be able to utilize that — not just right now but down the road when they’re done playing their sport at Mizzou or they’ve graduated from Mizzou and then move on to a professional area. How do we make them more professional?
And then I think the last component is: How do we get the word out about what Every True Tiger is and what it means to Mizzou athletics, the University of Missouri, the state of Missouri and what we’re trying to do, how impactful NIL can be for the student-athletes and how they can participate in that if they desire to do so. A lot of it is some of that, the PR, the community relations that you try to do in getting that Every True Tiger message out there.
P-D: Why is the “Mizzou model” for NIL so respected in the industry?
Larrondo: First and foremost, you’ve got all-in buy-in from university leadership, from what the state legislators were able to do with the legal side of it — the laws of the state of Missouri — so you’ve got some synergy that way, from state leaders to university leaders. And then the coaches understand the importance of it with their sports and how it can impact the student-athlete experience and the recruiting of athletes to the state of Missouri. We’ve figured out a model that has been really, really good.
°Őłó±đ°ů±đ’s some things that you have to continue to evolve with the model so it can become even more self-sustaining. We’re very fortunate that we have top-level people that have put some emphasis on what NIL means to the student-athletes of Missouri. How can we go out and execute it and utilize their name, image and likeness of these student-athletes, not only to develop their own business opportunities but also be able to promote things that can drive revenue for Missouri athletics, that can promote different activities around Missouri?
And becoming more of a branding agency than just a collective that’s out there collecting money and then distributing it. It’s much more tactical and strategic on how we approach how we’re educating and developing these student-athletes and utilizing NIL as an opportunity for them to really get what the true meaning of NIL is, which is brand yourself, align yourself with a project, a company, an opportunity, and then complete the work that does that and get paid for that.
P-D: Do you see that model evolving as revenue-sharing takes effect across college sports?
Larrondo: I think there’s a lot of unanswered questions about how that’s all going to come down. °Őłó±đ°ů±đ’s a lot of things that still have to play out. I don’t think that the toothpaste is ever going to go back in the tube on what this is, so you’re constantly looking at and studying and trying to strategize on where does NIL fit with revenue sharing? How does revenue sharing in its entirety fit within what athletic departments’ visions are? How does that affect an Every True Tiger Brands or Collective A, B and C from other schools? Where does that all go? I don’t think we have the answer to that.
I think the one thing we do know is that it’s coming, and you know it’s going to happen. Even if there is revenue sharing plus NIL and you put it all into one category, student-athletes are going to be able to continue to benefit and receive compensation for the use of their name, image and likeness. You have to be prepared to set up a system that helps execute that in the best way, compliance-wise, legally, and that they’re maintaining the activities that they do to earn that money. That’s what we’re trying to do every single day is make sure that we run a very clean operation that understands the objectives for educating our student-athletes, what they have to do to be compensated and how that fits in with the coach and roster management in this day and age of revenue sharing, NIL, transfer portal, all these things that are happening — and also be able to go out to their field, their court, whatever it is, and put a competitive product on the floor. That’s a lot for a head coach to have on their plate.
P-D: How does the $22 million revenue-sharing cap compare to how much is already out there in the NIL universe for a school like Missouri?
Larrondo: You see that kind of number, and that is a big number for any school to have to adjust to. There are probably situations or things you read about where there are some large NIL deals, but by and large, most schools are probably not approaching that kind of money from strictly going NIL.
Now, when you throw revenue sharing into it, that is a sizable amount of money going back to student-athletes, and then when you have the potential of NIL on top of that and how it all plays out, you’re going to see that over the course of the next two, three, four or five years, that number could be over $22 million.
Not every school is going to be able to do that. Schools are going to have to figure out what’s the best model for them and how do they get to the point where they can still be competitive in the marketplace and the league that they’re in. Everybody forgets that’s a cap. That’s not a floor. You’ve got to figure out where that cap goes and what you can do and how you can make it work.
That’s where, collectively, between Tiger Scholarship Fund, Mizzou Sports Properties, Every True Tiger, the revenue-generating sources that are in and around and surrounding Mizzou athletics, how do we help crack that nut? How do we make it sustainable so that we can have success with these student athletes on and off the field?
P-D: Contracts have been a subject of conversation, at least outside of the industry, with ways that the transfer portal could be worked into them or clauses, , about fines for athlete arrests. Are those pieces that are in contracts now? That you’d like to see? What do you see as the path forward there?
Larrondo: Every school is going to be different on how they approach things. I think you have to be very careful with how contracts are written up and what they’re doing because the No. 1 concept is: You have to have the student-athletes as an independent contractor to be able to perform the activities. That doesn’t necessarily mean they are employees receiving benefits or anything that way because they are not — they are independent contractors, and they’ve got to be able to perform the activities and duties in order to receive the compensation.
That’s the No. 1 thing for us at Every True Tiger is that we’re able to set that contract up, they’re able to execute the deals that are put in front of them. They do it, we upload it, we make sure that all of it is handled accordingly and then they receive their payment. All the other stuff in between it, those are things that are pretty private, things that we don’t really want to get out into the open, and honestly, we’ll have to continue to face and deal with over the next 12, 18, 24, 36 months as you see some of this evolve and where does that landscape end up at.
P-D: °Őłó±đ°ů±đ’s of the NCAA establishing a clearinghouse for NIL deals worth more than $600 to in order to vet those arrangements. Good idea? Bad idea?
Larrondo: Everybody’s trying to put guardrails around how this works. Any time you try to put guardrails, there’s going to be some people that like it, some people that don’t. °Őłó±đ°ů±đ’s going to be unintended consequences that come up.
I think that at the end of the day, the NCAA is trying to figure out how they can properly monitor this type of deal. If schools are doing it the right way and these are actually legitimate opportunities and student-athletes are completing the tasks that are assigned to it and they’re through businesses, they’re through corporations, they’re through legitimate things — just like we’re doing with Every True Tiger, just like our model is set up — then it really won’t have an impact on us that way.
P-D: Last question. What do you think is the biggest misconception out there about Missouri and NIL?
Larrondo: Well, I think it’s really just educating people. A lot of people hear those three letters, N-I-L, and they kind of have a basis or an understanding of it. But the reality is sometimes you’ll read stories about crazy things that are happening and the amount of money out there, and that’s not always the reality. That’s a small percentage of what happens in this.
A large percentage of it is probably, 95%, 98% of these student-athletes really value their educational opportunity, getting a scholarship, being able to participate at a high, high level in the SEC in their collegiate sport — and also be able to monetize themselves through their name, image and likeness and do it the right way and do it so that it helps them earn a little bit of money right now, which is the intent of the rule change.
Also, those connections help set them up for life. I think being able to tell those athletes’ stories, the impact it can have them as student-athletes, anywhere from 18 to 22, 23 years old at a very critical juncture of their life where they’re trying to set themselves up, they’re trying to build their future, that’s the real beauty of what NIL and the true intent of it is. And realize that there’s a lot more stories on that end than some of the wild ones you see out there on Twitter or in the media.
