Country Roads Trust update brings good news for WVU, athletes
I’m sure most WVU fans are rooting for the Country Roads Trust venture that helps Mountaineer athletes in regard to name, image and likeness (NIL) deals.
We’re certainly proud at Wheelhouse Creative LLC to be helping with the Trust team.
Yet I was like many Mountaineer followers interested in an update of the Country Roads Trust voyage. We know it was started by co-founder Oliver Luck and Ken Kendrick. We know Stephen Ford, who previously worked for WVU athletics multi-media rights holder Learfield, was brought on as COO and Amanda Mazey was brought on as Director of Social Engagement. We’ve even seen Trust athletes at events like the charitable Polar Plunge and the meet-and-greet on Wednesday at the Green Turtle.
But how is it going behind the scenes?
Well, on Wednesday I reached out to Ford – and found out some very good news for WVU fans and, especially, Mountaineer athletes.
“We’ve secured a little under $2.5 million over five years,” Ford said. “We launched not even two months ago, so that’s huge. That’s an average of about $500,000 a year.
“Now, we’d like to have 20 of those, so there’s work still to be done. But our biggest focus is showing activity to student-athletes that aren’t on board yet as well as to companies around the state. We’re at work; we’re here to stay; we’re grinding.”
There are a lot of moving parts. There’s recruiting. There’s raising awareness, donations and corporate partners. There are the aforementioned events. And all is to be done above board in a manner that mirrors WVU’s objectives and guidelines.
“We want to show we’re doing things the right way,” Ford said. “We’re following compliance. We’re making sure the student-athletes are aware of things like the taxes.”
He paused before restarting.
“The big six-week picture is we’ve been building the plane as it’s flying. We needed to get out there though for WVU. We needed to show prospective student-athletes we’re here. We needed to show those in the transfer portal we’re here. And we’re not going anywhere.
“I feel we can be a $5-10 million a year collective. We have big plans on how this will shape up over the next five to 10 years. We want to attract the top student-athletes to WVU.”
I asked Ford how money will be dispersed to the athletes. Remember, this is not only all new to WVU, but college athletics as a whole.
“If a company specifically wants to work with a student-athlete, we’ll go to that student-athlete and fill them in. Then the company and I will negotiate a fair-market value regarding obligations, whether that’s an appearance, the use of name, image and likeness on commercials, TV spots, digital, social media or if they’re using the student-athlete’s individual platform,” Ford said.
That’s a key point for athletes. Sure, you can take any deal that comes along on your own. But with Country Roads Trust, you get a seasoned negotiator to help.
“My background is negotiating multi-media rights deals for the university and athletic department with their marketing assets,” Ford said. “We’re doing the exact same thing here for student-athletes. We’re here to make sure they are getting fair market value for their time and services to promote those businesses.”
Sometimes a company, like Advanced Heating and Cooling, just wanted to help and did so for the first few athletes to join Country Roads Trust. The athletes that attended the Polar Plunge were paid for their time out of the general raised funds.
“We’re going to be coordinating with charities and community-action events all over north-central West Virginia and the state,” Ford said. “We’ll be putting together a calendar of events we can shoot to our athletes so they can raise their hand and say they want to be part of such-and-such event. We’re going to find ways to get everybody involved, including corporate deals, but it’s starting with community first.”
The best part for WVU is Luck and Kendrick moved swiftly to form Country Roads Trust. Many around schools nationwide are having to catch up. Yet we’ve also read of boosters throwing big money to top prospects across the country.
“The way we’re handling it now is prospective student-athletes will be able to see the number of deals we do, the average money of those deals and the total money of those deals,” Ford said. “I can show them what we’ve done with our current athletes. I cannot go and negotiate deals with prospective student-athletes. No one really can. Is it happening? Yes. But we want to be able to use our overall numbers as our main recruiting pitch.
“Neal Brown can tell an athlete for the upcoming football season we’ll be doing $2 million in NIL deals and an 18-year-old might want a piece of that pie. Same thing in basketball. If we do $2 million in basketball, well, there’s only 15 kids. That averages out pretty well per athlete. The lightbulb is going to go off. That’s how we feel we’ll keep up.”
Ford continued.
“Neal Brown will be able to walk in to a kid’s home and showcase that our top guys made six figures last year, etc. That will only grow. We’re in the first six months of Country Roads Trust. We want to give Neal Brown and Bob Huggins some firepower when they go into these kids’ living rooms.”
Ford is building Country Roads Trust while it flies, but, he said, it’s built to last.
“There are always going to be bumps,” he said. “We’re still figuring this thing out as we go. I feel, though, that since our launch we’ve progressed day after day, week after week. We want to make sure we’re thoughtful in our processes to get better. We want this to be a long-lasting enterprise. And we can build an empire for WVU’s NIL.”
To check out Country Roads Trust’s website, click here: https://countryroadstrust.com
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Mitch Vingle covered sports in West Virginia for 38 years. Follow Mitch on Twitter at @MitchVingle and be sure to check out the rest of Wheelhouse Creative’s website for your marketing and advertising needs. If interested, call us at 304-905-6005.
