Northwestern's Boo Buie signs NIL deal with Epic Burger, receives namesake meal
After its second-ever NCAA tournament appearance, Northwestern got a big boost when leading scorer Boo Buie announced his return. The Wildcats have a sense of optimism heading into the 2023-24 season, and the star guard is capitalizing in an epic way.
Buie signed an NIL deal with Chicago-based Epic Burger. Under the agreement, fans will be able to buy the “Boo Buie Burger” at two of Epic Burger’s 11 Illinois locations – one in Evanston, near Northwestern’s campus, and another in Skokie. It’s a “secret menu” option, which means you have to ask for it by name when ordering.
The Boo Buie Burger features pepper jack cheese, bacon, pickles, barbecue and Epic sauce, as well as an onion ring on top to represent Buie’s No. 0 on his uniform.
“Teaming up with EPIC Burger has been a fun way to kick off the season,” Buie said in a statement. “With EPIC Burger close to campus, so many of us students meet up with friends and love the burgers, fries, and shakes. Creating my very own burger has been a blast. I hope everyone likes it.”
Buie was a driving force behind Northwestern’s run to March Madness last year. He led the Wildcats with 17.3 points per game to earn first-team All-Big Ten honors. He tested the NBA draft waters but ultimately decided to return to Evanston for another season.
Now, he’s putting his name out there in the NIL space. Buie also has a deal with Limitless NIL, and now has a namesake burger.
“EPIC Burger is honored to work with Boo,” said David Grossman, president, and CEO of EPIC Burger, in a statement. “He’s a great kid on and off the field and we’re thrilled that he loves our food.”
Northwestern is taking ‘aggressive’ approach to NIL
In December 2022, Northwestern launched its first NIL collective. TrueNU is one part of the Wildcats’ approach to NIL, and head basketball coach Chris Collins told On3 he thinks there are some opportunities to be “aggressive” with such close proximity to the Chicago market.
“We feel like we’re in a good spot,” Collins said at the Chicagoland Media Tip-Off Luncheon last month. “We’ve tried to be aggressive, we have things in place for our players. Having Chicago, having this market. Having the resources at Northwestern, the Kellogg School of Business, which is churning out the top entrepreneurs out there. So, I think we’re in a good spot.
“I think we’ve tried to lean on those people and kind of see how we can be even more creative and help our guys the best [we] can. That’s the name of the game. We want them to be great players and get their degrees, and then maximize their time while they’re in college to make as much money as they can.”
Before he took over at Northwestern, Collins spent 13 years as an assistant under the great Mike Krzyzewski at his alma mater, Duke. While there, he saw players gain popularity without the ability to profit off their name, image or likeness.
That’s why he’s in favor of the NIL efforts over the last two years, and he noted the impact it’s already having on the recruiting trail.
“I’m very happy for the players,” Collins said. “I’ve always said – I mean, I was at Duke for so long. I saw the merchandise coaching a guy like J.J. Redick and everybody in every arena’s wearing his jersey, and he’s getting nothing from that. I always thought that was wrong. And I think it’s great that these guys. The amount of time they put in and a big business that college athletics has become, they should have the right to be able to make money off their name, their likeness and all those things.
“I think we’re still just working through it. I’m for it for the players, but there is an effect. Now, you’ve got high school kids, they want to know not only playing time and not only environment and not only that. It’s another bullet point in the recruiting process that they want to know. What are my opportunities going to look like? What do you see in that space? It’s just something else in a recruitment that has become a major part of these kids’ decisions.”
What Boo Buie’s return means for Northwestern
On the court, Boo Buie’s return is a welcome one for Northwestern. The Wildcats made it to the NCAA Tournament for just the second time in school history.
This year, the goal is to avoid what happened after the last tournament appearance in 2017. Northwestern went 15-17, including a 6-12 record in Big Ten play, to miss out on the postseason. Collins said they want to avoid that step back this time around.
“The season we had, as well as the way he played individually, he was hungry to try to do more with his legacy in the program, and a big part of that is winning,” Collins said of Buie. “… I think the guys that are coming back, they understand the magnitude of what they did last year and how special that was. But that’s over. And now, we have a chance to kind of stay hungry for more.
“We’ve never gone back-to-back. We came in second place last year, but we’ve never won a Big Ten Championship. We’ve never won a Big Ten tournament. We’ve never been to a second weekend of an NCAA [tournament]. There’s a lot of things in program history that are still out there that I think are goals for these guys as they come back.”