Using corporate dollars to entice student-athletes is the goal of this new Temple NIL initiative

The inclusion of name, image, and likeness deals in college athletics has continued to create a clear divide between the haves and have-nots.

Locally, Villanova is leading the pack with NIL coffers estimated in the millions to entice big-time college athletes to not just come, but to stay on campus.

» READ MORE: Big 5 to add women’s triple-header to 2024-25 season; men’s event returning to Wells Fargo Center

But other local schools are catching up. St. Joseph’s and Drexel are among those that have announced either the launch or addition of NIL collectives, which serve to lobby for funding and opportunities for student-athletes.

The latest to do so was Temple, which announced the launch of the Owl Elite Fund last month, an NIL initiative spearheaded by Temple alumni Jackie Dansak and Lou Parisi, the latter a former track and field athlete who has experience in sales, marketing, and branding. This latest initiative marks the fourth NIL-centric venture to benefit Temple, aligning with other initiatives like Built on Broad, Owls Club, the TUFF Fund, and an NIL store the university launched late last year.

So what’s different about Owls Elite Fund? Two words. Corporate contributions.

In the aftermath of the announcement, Parisi sat down with The Inquirer to put it all in layman’s terms, including the goal of making Temple a competitive destination.

A: I’ve been going back to Temple and doing some guest lectures and speaking to the athletes in different ways, some recruiting, some mentoring. That’s been my way to give back my time. But when this started, why not find a way to give back in more than just my time, but an initiative that [will] make an impact for the athletics teams that are so near and dear to my heart? I owe a lot of my career progression and success to what I learned from that community … that’s what really got me excited to do this with Temple in particular. NIL is changing every day, and I want to be a part of a collective that helps Temple athletics remain competitive.

A: I looked at it in a couple of different ways. One, there’s an education opportunity for athletes. What is it, and what does it mean for them? Especially if they’re not in a big conference and they’re maybe not in a traditional revenue-generating sport, how does it affect those athletes? Because it does in massive ways. But it all starts with education, right? Right. And the other piece for me started with what does it mean for them after they’re educated from a brand alignment standpoint? Traditionally, football and basketball are your revenue-generating sports.

There [are] huge opportunities there. Temple has been a laggard for a little bit in that space. So when I decided to really lean in and get this started, there was an opportunity to help and make an impact. I have 10-12 years [of experience] in [business-to-business], sales, and marketing space and business development experience. So I felt like we have the learning that can be applied in a way that gives [Temple] a leg up — or at least help close the gap.

» READ MORE: La Salle brings back David Miller to lead recently revived baseball program

A: So let’s take a look at the collectives already doing great work. You’ve got the TUFF Fund, which has been established for quite some time really focusing in on the donor relation space. You’ve got the Owl Club, which has been in the individual contribution space. But then there was this void from a B2B or business corporate sponsorship opportunity. And that’s where the Owl Elite Fund will come in.

A: So I think you need to see it in what’s being done with the TUFF Fund and the huge opportunity there, especially when you talk about community impact and community engagement, right? I mean, that’s an amazing space to be in. And it’s a space that right now if you think about it, for a larger corporation, even a mid-sized enterprise business, they’ve got a bucket of donation money and community impact money that is there for that type of initiative — depending on their strategic goals.

But our fund is going to look at corporations with marketing budgets and lean into an untapped bucket. Most companies look at success as consistency and as a “what’s the return on my investment?” We can show them. We can say, “We’re going to run a campaign for 6-12 months or over the course of a season, through a couple of different platforms in the campaign” and show here’s how you benefit as a brand; here’s how our athletes and our programs benefit from your involvement.

Our goal is to find the brand, start that conversation, and start to make that match to the athlete, to the team, to the entire collective, because at the end of the day it’s really going to be based on the satisfaction of those two parties.

A: We’ve had great conversations with [founder] Andy Carl and the TUFF Fund, and the Owl Club as well, and how we’re all going to work together and complement each other to approach businesses and ecosystems that have different buckets and different initiatives that they’re trying to accomplish. But the ultimate goal for me, for this collective, is to put Temple on the map where it deserves to be as a city school. Yeah, you have Drexel and Penn, but Temple has always been that gritty, entrepreneurial, we don’t care what other people say type of university. We plan [with the Owls Elite Fund] to make an impact and prove to the masses that our name deserves to be on the map.

» READ MORE: It’s time to retire the idea of the ‘amateur athlete’ | Editorial