Penn State punter Barney Amor goes undercover in NIL activation
If you’re a Penn State football fan and someone asks you who’s your favorite Nittany Lions player, you better find out if a current player is actually the one asking the question. With the help of the NIL collective Success With Honor, Penn State punter Barney Amor recently filmed a video compilation where he interviewed fans in the RV lot and asked them who is their favorite player.
He later shared the highlights in a video he posted on Twitter.
However, most fans didn’t recognize Amor when he was wearing a Geisinger Health sweatshirt as part of the paid promotion rather than his usual Penn State gear.
“Who’s your favorite player?” Amor asked two fans wearing Penn State apparel.
Both men said Penn State coach James Franklin.
“OK, good, safe answer,” Amor responded. “That’s two for Coach Franklin. What about the punter? How can you make him your favorite player?”
“Barney!” one fan responded.
The other said, “We love Barney.”
The first fan said Amor will become the third former Penn State punter to start in the NFL.
“This is what we like to hear! This is what we like to hear,” Amor said, wrapping up the interview. “I’m Barney Amor.”
There were a variety of reactions when Amor revealed his identity.
“That’s you?” one father asked, smiling. He then brought his son over to meet Amor, who held a football for the boy to successfully kick through miniature uprights.
“Are you the punter?” another fan asked, catching on quickly. He then pretended to tackle Amor.
One woman recognized Amor from when she took a selfie with him previously.
“You look like him!” she said. “You are Barney!”
“That’s a wrap. Looks like the name’s getting out there but I still have some more work to do,” Amor said at the end of the video.
Success With Honor helps Penn State athletes like Barney Amor with NIL opportunities
Amor’s latest video followed one captioned “I’ve got some work to do…” in which he asked various Penn State students about their fandom, before asking about the team’s punter.
This season, Amor has punted 37 times for a 44.6-yard average. He has had 10 punts that traveled at least 50 yards. He has pinned Penn State’s opponents inside the 20-yard line 17 times.
At the end of his second video from the RV lot, Amor teased a future video.
It’s an example of viral, organic content turning into a relatively seamless sponsorship opportunity with the help of the NIL collective Success With Honor. The phrase NIL collective is a catch-all term that applies to various organizations, ranging from nonprofits to marketing agencies, that facilitate NIL opportunities for athletes.
Success With Honor is one of the NIL collectives that the agency Student Athlete NIL (SANIL) powers, along with other collectives such as Crimson and Cream at Oklahoma and Knights of the Raritan at Rutgers.
Success With Honor has partnered with the Chamber of Business and Industry of Centre County. The collective offers a tiered subscription model with subscriptions ranging from $100 to $1,500 per month.
Subscriptions allow businesses and organizations to partner with athletes for a variety of services, such as social media promotion and in-person appearances.
“We’re allowing businesses to subscribe directly to the collective,” SANIL CEO Jason Belzer previously told On3. “It’s a first-of-its-kind program that allows brands and organizations to receive immediate, turnkey, benefits for advertising, marketing and promotional services with student-athletes at major universities.
As of August, Success With Honor had signed agreements with more than 150 Penn State athletes across the university’s 22 athletic programs.
Some of Success With Honor’s other partnerships and activations include athletes volunteering for the voting initiative All Vote No Play, Canadian billboards for international athletes and the official Success With Honor Show hosted by John Brenkus.