Interview with Ben Chase, Florida's new Director of NIL Strategy

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — As a self-imposed deadline neared to hear back about a dream job, Ben Chase began to plan out the ultimate college football road trip. When he didn’t hear back about a Name, Image, and Likeness job with the Florida Gators, he decided to hit the road.

Chase set a world record by attending 77 games during the 2022 college football season. He saw 115 teams (including the Gators’ season opener against Utah) and drove his white minivan — nicknamed Betty White — more than 60,000 miles zig-zagging across the continental United States (all 48 states, he noted during our interview).

Chase, who was sleeping in his car most nights last fall while pushing Betty’s transmission — which needed to be replaced during the trip — to its absolute limit, got the call from Florida about that job he’d applied for months before. Now, in a questionably clean shirt, while using McDonald’s wifi somewhere in the middle of America, he was interviewing for a chance to come back home.

Chase graduated from the University of Florida in 2013 before attending law school at George Washington, which was a top-20 law school at the time. He is a licensed attorney in the state of Florida and has experience in the NIL space. He’s a fresh voice, a 33-year-old who has helped launch NIL collectives for seven programs while working for Blueprint Sports.

He has a passion for the NIL space, experience in the ever-changing landscape, and a love for his alma mater. He plans on using all of those things to help Florida excel in creating opportunities for its student-athletes on campus and educating potential boosters and donors.

This week, Gators Online had a chance to interview Chase — who was naturally in his car driving across the country from his old home in Tuscon, Arizona — on the way to Florida. He’ll begin his new job at UF this Monday, January 23.

Q&A with Ben Chase

What will your role be in this new position?

Ben Chase: From what I understand, my role is to maximize NIL opportunities for all student-athletes at the University of Florida. To help Marcus (Castro-Walker) wherever he needs me. If I help roll out something to all student-athletes, help Marcus build it out for the football team as well. With Gator Made, everyone in and around the football facility, I’m there to support them. I can also be a second set of eyes on anything we’re doing there. 

My role is coming in and probably being the education leader for alumni, fans, student-athletes, and administration. I’m going to be at it for everything that happens in all sports, especially football.

How will your experience with NIL legislation and starting collectives help Florida continue to adapt and adjust its NIL strategy?

Ben Chase: I think it’s a situation where a rising tide lifts all ships. I could call tomorrow the Director of NIL at Kansas and ask how they’re doing something. I could call the former coordinator of NIL at San Diego State — she has her own website and NIL network now. She’s pretty tapped in and one of the leaders in the industry. We also have Kristi Dosh who is in our corner — she’s a Gator teaching law at UF. She’s someone I can lean on and have befriended in the community. 

Since I announced the position I’ve gotten a whirlwind of NIL companies that are following up with me now. One of the things I did in my old position (with Blueprint Sports), I was basically the gatekeeper for decisions and opportunities to go to our CEO. I was the one that, ‘oh, this doesn’t make sense for us,’ or ‘have we thought about this?’ I think it’s one of those things where I will look at what’s going on across the board but we have to keep in mind that every state has different legislation. Louisiana, Ohio, Idaho, and Tennessee, their state laws let the schools help facilitate opportunities. They don’t really need a collective because the schools can help do those deals for the student-athletes. 

(The state of) Florida, from a legislation standpoint, I think is moving toward that because it’s a competitive disadvantage for us not to. Then Title IX stuff comes up. If they have someone on staff that is doing deals for student-athletes, where is the equity piece? That’s a lot of where my role will be. Make sure we’re doing our part on all sports.

If the state of Florida does make a move to allow schools to help broker NIL deals how can Florida be proactive rather than reactive to this new legislation?

Ben Chase: It’s one of those things where it really will depend on our leadership and the decisions that they make on how we move forward. From what I understand, I believe that we still would try to partner with the groups that we have on GatorsNIL.com (Gator Collective, Fanatics, Campus, Brandr, MarketPryce, Catapult, INFLCR) to have that protection for potential TitleIX things. I do see it as I could go out and make a call to a local restaurant and say ‘our basketball team would love to do a deal with you, could we meet up and talk about something.’ Right now, that’s only third parties that could do that.

Outside of Louisiana, the SEC states as a whole have been very very conservative with NIL — the legislation. I don’t know if that’s trying to protect the players or what the reasoning is. I know players that have done deals that make significantly more than I’ll make. That’s ok. They add value to the school.

How much of the job is getting creative to find new opportunities vs. still educating potential donors about NIL?

Ben Chase: A year ago when NIL became a thing I was at a tailgate at UF. It was a high donors lot and I brought up NIL and they had no idea what I was talking about. That was a year ago. I think now if I went up to someone I’d say 50 percent know what I’m talking about. The people that are super tapped into athletics, the ones that pay for Gators Online or the ones that are on Twitter, that seems like it’s a lot of people but it’s not. As someone who traveled across the country to all these games and you casually talk about NIL, all they hear is what Nick Saban would say, “rat poison.” They don’t really understand it. 

To answer your question, there will be standard ways to communicate and then unique ways to educate. Gator Collective had a sponsorship with the school for the in-game ads (editor note: Gator Collective paid for the in-game ads through Leerfield). Syracuse, in the stadium, is selling NIL merchandise for players. Those store members need to know NIL too. It’s building from the ground floor. Florida’s done a good job of putting out the message, especially in the past six to eight weeks, about the opportunities. 

For my role, I wouldn’t be opposed to traveling to all the Gator Clubs and talking about NIL, if that’s something the team at Florida is ok with me doing. I’m going to be working 70-80 hours a week. I feel confident that we have the right bearings on what we’re going to do.

Why haven’t we seen more big corporations like Gatorade do deals with athletes?

Ben Chase: There are a few reasons. That’s true influencer marketing. Gatorade isn’t going to go out and do a deal just to do a deal. Also, if you ask any Gator fan, are you going to drink Gatorade or Powerade, what do you think they’re going answer? They already have the market of fans. That dollar is not really gaining them anything but a halo effect, which is a marketing tool that I have preached to local businesses that aren’t Gatorade. Every deal that is done right now is amplified across the country through aggregators and websites like On3. 

They are doing NIL opportunities with your actual influencers. Celsius just did deals with Bryce Young and Caleb Williams but Celsius has been doing deals with influencers on Tik Tok for a long time. You know why? Because they have a million followers on Tik Tok. Some of our athletes that, to us, our starting quarterback may have huge marketing value to us in Gainesville, but to the rest of the world … the Cavinder twins had millions of followers (on social media) before NIL. The last time I checked they had over 420,000 followers each on Instagram.

These student-athletes are going to get deals if they want to be creators or if they want to tell their stories. That’s not what everyone wants to do. They’re not all creators. Some just want to be students, they want to be athletes, and professionals. It has to be a joint opportunity. Gatorade isn’t calling Florida for a favor. Those deals are true marketing deals. The term NIL deal, outside of collectives, is a sponsorship. I don’t know how long the term NIL deal is going to last. In the sports world it’s everything, right? Most of these are just sponsorship deals to use your name, image, and likeness. 

Not only is it a value-strategic play, if Florida was in the College Football Playoffs I wouldn’t be shocked if Beats by Dre would have done a deal with Anthony Richardson to give the entire team headphones. That’s a very common thing to do right now. Winning will help. Winning draws eyes and at the end of the day dollars follow eyes.