Helping student-athletes turn name, image, and likeness opportunities into a marketable brand is the goal of the new Penn State Brand Academy. Former Nittany Lion and NFL running back and longtime education administrator Omar X. Easy ’01 Com, ’11 MEd, ’12 PhD Edu was appointed in February to lead the academy. In a recent chat with the Penn Stater, he discussed how the academy has already made an impact, and its plans to help Penn State athletes navigate the ever-changing NIL landscape.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
PENN STATER: What will the Brand Academy provide, or what is it already providing, for Penn State student-athletes?
OMAR EASY: We have three pillars that we focus on for athletes, and it always starts with the education of NIL, or managing the monetization of NIL. Then we look at financial competencies and making sure they understand and know what that looks like and how to set themselves up for the future. And it explores entrepreneurship and startup opportunities for athletes. And the reason why that’s such an important piece is that these athletes are walking entrepreneurs. They’re getting money—tons of money. Back in my playing days (Easy was a running back for the Nittany Lions from 1997-2001), that wasn’t the case. So it’s important for us to educate them, and the fact that they are entrepreneurs, and they’re Omar Easy or Jeff Rice Incorporated, and getting them to understand those main components of what this new landscape of athletics look like is where we go about it.
PS: How much of it is on a team-by-team basis, versus individuals who want to come in with specific questions?
EASY: We have done listening tours with our teams. We have gone and talked to teams just to introduce the Brand Academy, as it’s a new initiative. And we have scheduled appointments with individual athletes who want to come in and talk about how we could enhance their brand and just kind of let them build out a plan. They’re coming with an idea as to what they want to do. How can we help them tease this out, or help get them to a place where they can get sponsorship? In many cases we’re just giving recruits a lay of the land as it relates to NIL and Penn State’s approach to NIL.
PS: Penn State wants to be the best in everything. How do you do that in something that’s constantly changing? What are you doing to stay ahead of the curve?
EASY: I think just implementing this Brand Academy, this wing of Athletics and Invent Penn State entrepreneurship is one way of being creative, innovative. And now we can take all these pieces and dominate this landscape. I think this is a step in the right direction, for sure. And I felt and still feel like we’re kind of behind our competitors in this space. There are these numbers being thrown out there about how much money certain universities spend. That’s one part of it, right? And then the other pieces are the governing rules and laws statewide, that allow other universities and other states to move the needle forward and ahead of where we are. So we just want to be very creative in how we approach this, be innovative in how we look at this, and be intuitive as we go across the landscape.
PS: We’re getting closer to the day when schools are going to be able to facilitate these NIL deals directly. (Editor’s Note: As of July 1, schools in Virginia were able to do so after a new state law was passed.) If that happens, does the Brand Academy shift from an educational tool to an organization that can help maximize that process between schools and athletes?
EASY: I think the mission statement of the Brand Academy was always to maximize NIL. I don’t think we’re ever going to say we’re shifting away from the educational aspect. We are always going to educate, because without the education, we’re going to miss kids, they’re going to fall through the cracks. We’re always going to set the table foundationally from an educational standpoint. And once the NCAA decides to vote this in—I mean, this has been passed already that universities will facilitate deals with student-athletes. So we know that’s going to happen. It’s a matter of how far into that the Brand Academy foothold is. Will we be driving the bus on that? Or are we a part of working with our [multimedia rights] partners in those facilitations? We anticipate being very involved in that space because we have the foundation around the educational aspect of it to help personalize the brands of our kids. It’s going to happen, and we are primed and ready to get it going for sure.
PS: Is there a financial literacy component here? Once they’ve done their NIL deals here, maybe once they get out of school and finish their athletic careers and start their families, how do they take that money and make sure it carries forward and that they have good financial habits?
EASY: Being a person that’s been involved in education for a long time and having a Ph.D. in education leadership and administration, I look at the financial piece. I don’t really say financial literacy; I look at it as financial competency. Because we have to educate them in order for them to be competent in the finance of what they have. I want our athletes to be confident when it comes to finance. That’s a part of one of our pillars. We always want to make sure entrepreneurship and financial competency is a strong foothold. I’m planning to use our faculty around that part of it. They teach you stuff every day. We have folks in the business school and the law school that are dealing with contracts and with finance. Those are the folks I want to put in front of our kids constantly to educate them. We’re now planning our second event, which we call the Brand Academy NIL Summit and Financial Competencies. We’re going to get after educating them right from the jump.
PS: When you talk about a brand for an athlete, does that mean how they are perceived, how they portray themselves on social media, how they handle media opportunities, represent themselves at public events? The things beyond the NIL deals?
EASY: Most definitely. This is beyond social media. Yes, you need that presence. It’s part of it. And you need to have the media present. We want to educate them on how to build that brand and preserve that brand, but also enhance that brand. Because we want our athletes to be marketable. We want businesses to say, “I want to get involved with your athletes.” We want to educate them on that piece and make sure they understand, what is your niche? Who are you targeting? Where are you trying to build your brand to go to, and what’s the next step? Making sure we personalize those brands for those kids is very important to us. We’re going to roll out a Know Your Brand initiative, so we get them to do a survey so we know what their aspirations are, what their goals are. What are they looking to do? You want to be involved in podcasts? A lot of our kids want to be talking about “beyond the athlete” on a podcast.
PS: You wrote your dissertation [for a doctorate in educational leadership and management] on the amateurization of student-athletes. How will that research inform this work, and what does it mean to you personally to be on the front lines of that amateur model as it's changing on a daily basis?
EASY: I did my dissertation on the legalization of student-athletes and the myth that surrounds that. Where does that name “student-athlete” come from? Doing that study has helped me to have these high-level conversations, and these have been the conversations for decades. One of my research topics was about this case in 1958, I want to say, where a football player got hurt. And the university paid workers’ comp. As you know, when you receive workers’ comp, you’re an employee. And that was happening multiple times. That’s when they coined the term “student-athlete” just to preserve the amateurization of it. Because if that didn’t happen, you’d be an employee-athlete. That is one of my hangups with the NCAA as to where we are because I don’t feel like they have a good handle on this space, and it’s disappointing, because this is not something that should surprise anyone. It’s been going on for decades, so it shouldn’t be the court cases forcing your hands to do this stuff. If student-athletes are generating $200 million, how is it that you actually think you can preserve that as amateurism? When I was in school, my name, image, and likeness generated X amount of money for my university, but I couldn’t buy a bus ticket to go back to Boston. Athletes used to become ineligible because they took a suit or a car from an agent. There could have been a better way to roll this out to prevent the chaos that is right now.
PS: How do you leverage the Penn State football alumni network? On the one hand, you’ve got guys like Saquon Barkley ’22 Com, who are the 1% of the 1% as far as a brand. But do you also bring in some guys who say “I wish I would have done things differently”?
EASY: I have two approaches to that. In the spring, we did a symposium, and we brought in former athletes. LaVarArrington ’00 H&HD, Anthony Adams ’04 Bus, Haley McClain Hill ’18 Sci, who was a cheerleader here, and Jen Hudson ’15 Com, who was a national champion fencer. All those athletes went through college before NIL. They built their brands. They preserved their brands. Spice Adams talked to our athletes about how he bought his house just from endorsements. He said he hasn’t even touched his retirement funds. LaVar built his brand with the LaVar Leap and he continues now with his podcast, radio, FOX Sports, all this stuff. Having them come back and talk to athletes speaks volumes. My intention is to bring in a different group each year to talk to our athletes before the spring game. And one of our big initiatives right now is we want to address a space that has been needed. We want to roll out this initiative called the Wally Triplett Entrepreneurship Program this summer. My partners in Invent Penn State have a program where $15,000 is given to any student who applies and goes through the process and is awarded that money to build out their startup. So I’ve been working to try to get our athletes as a part of their programs. I saw that as a lack of access for our athletes, so the Brand Academy is going to roll up something similar to that. Our athletes will be competing against each other around how they can build their brand and do this startup.
PS: Your wife, Megan Hodge Easy ’10 Bus, was a four-time All-American volleyball player here and is now an assistant coach. How often have you sought out Megan’s perspective, both as a former student-athlete and somebody who is now coaching and recruiting current athletes?
EASY: Constant conversation, especially since she works with those athletes. Football drives most if not all universities in terms of revenue. It is what it is. But women’s sports is going to make a big dent in this space. It’s happening, it will continue to happen, because in many cases women are more marketable. I think that’s a space that our male athletes are going to have to dig into a little bit to see themselves as more public facing as opposed to female athletes. And recruiting has changed. For Megan, she’s one of the greats, so it’s a little bit easier for her to have those conversations and relate to parents. Parents want to see someone around their child that has done this before. She was a national champion, Olympian … she can walk in any gym and get any of the kids to play volleyball at Penn State because it’s like, “Well, I did it. There’s nothing you are going to go through that I haven’t done.” When I talk to [football] recruits that come here, I say the same things. “That was my locker, right there.” I fought every down that I played and I could have gotten more from it. But I’ve walked all of these spaces to the next level, was drafted in the National Football League, then came back and got the highest level of degree you can get. So when athletes come in, I say, “Let’s talk about your challenges. What are your thought processes?” I feel like we have the people in place to make a difference. It’s just making sure that we’re putting people in the right place to do the things they can do.
PS: What’s it been like for you and Megan to both be back here and raising your kids here and walking the same parts of campus?
EASY: It’s like a small city now. I feel like some undue pressure would be on our kids about how they match up to their father playing in the NFL and their mother being an All-American and an Olympian, one of the best Penn State has ever seen play volleyball. So they have some pressure on them, but I think it’s really just trying to get them to be themselves. I love being back here because I get to bring them to sporting events, have them get more familiar with what’s happening around us.
