Here’s a novel way Kansas Jayhawks basketball players are cashing in after NCAA title
Kansas walk-on Chris Teahan had just finished a pre-game meal in November when he decided to make a quick walk through the Rally House store in Allen Fieldhouse.
That’s when he saw it: His caricatured face — with red mullet and mustache — on a $36 shirt in the front display.
“I was sitting there like, ‘I don’t think anybody will buy this,’” Teahan said with a laugh. “And obviously I was wrong.”
Teahan understands how much so now.
The senior guard is one of many KU men’s basketball players monetizing from this season and their recent national championship run in a unique way — one not possible before this season — thanks to the NCAA’s new name, image and likeness rules.
And while there are many avenues for KU players to earn some extra cash through name, image and likeness (NIL) — some players, for example, recently did a public-relations outing for Raising Cane’s — KU appears to be ahead of the curve when it comes to licensing revenue and getting money to players from the sales of widely available NIL gear.
The key is a relationship with Lenexa, Kansas-based Rally House, which handles all retail for the KU athletic department and has the aforementioned store in Allen Fieldhouse. When new NIL rules were officially passed last summer, Rally House was in position to act right away while other retailers hesitated because of logistical concerns.
“It really was a huge opportunity for us to get in there,” said Jeff Grantham, Rally House’s director of licensing and brand development, “especially with the basketball team.”
Rally House, in essence, entered into an agreement to create KU shirts that were double-licensed. The shirts would bear the KU Jayhawk logo, with a percentage of sales going to KU Athletics. Each would also feature a player’s name or likeness, with a separate and equal portion going to that player.
This started with the popular “shirseys,” shirts that look like Kansas jerseys and include a player’s name and uniform number. Rally House now sells individual shirts for every men’s and women’s basketball player. Grantham said the company is looking into creating KU football shirseys, as well.
The most important part for KU’s basketball players? They receive a cut of every T-shirt sold with their name or likeness on it.
While contract details between the parties are not publicly available, Rally House offers the potential for KU basketball players to make hundreds of dollars per month in passive income through the sales of such shirts. Those figures are currently going strong, given their popularity in the wake of KU’s NCAA championship.
NIL expert Darren Heitner, founder of Heitner Legal and a sports law professor at the University of Florida, told The Star he believes the type of association that KU basketball players have with Rally House has substantial upside.
“Even though the athlete is not earning 100% or anywhere close to it on sales, I do think that it is absolutely scalable,” Heitner said. “If you consider the amount of apparel that’s purchased, school by school and nationwide, even getting a small percentage of that can be significant. I don’t think it’s anything to scoff at.
“Certainly for the most prominent athletes, it may not be their biggest source of revenue coming out of NIL, but it has real potential.”
Grantham offered this glimpse into what the arrangement looks like now, and also what it could become. Rally House recently hired an illustrator to draw caricatures of KU players for certain Jayhawks shirts. The store then released four new shirts following the team’s national championship victory. Available on the Rally House website, they include an Ochai Agbaji-centered version and a team-title edition, with all 18 players on the roster represented.
Grantham reports those sales have “exploded.” Three of the four versions sold out of initial production and have been re-ordered, with the 18-player caricature shirt emerging as the best seller.
The day after the national championship game, Grantham said, Rally House set a new single-day company record for website sales — topping the day after the Kansas City Chiefs won the Super Bowl two years ago.
Grantham said that in talking with Collegiate Licensing Company — a business that manages licensing royalties for college programs across the nation — he was told KU basketball has the most product available in the NIL marketplace of any collegiate program. That includes football powerhouses like Michigan, Ohio State and Notre Dame.
Players ultimately receive money from those sales with help from 6th Man Strategies, the KU-based NIL collective run by Matt and Ryan Baty that is not affiliated with KU Athletics.
Rally House shares its sales data with 6th Man, which then distributes profits from the shirts to the proper players. The money from shirts with multiple players on them is split among teammates through a formula, and 6th Man also works with a Nebraska-based company called Opendorse to ensure that the earnings are properly reported for taxes before they’re given to the athletes.
The setup means each player has the chance to make money based on his own popularity. For instance, Grantham said Teahan’s shirt — at one point — was among the most popular KU offerings sold by Rally House. So while stars like Agbaji and Remy Martin would appear to have a leg up on sales compared to other teammates, that might not always be true if a reserve like Teahan grows his stature in other ways.
Teahan said KU players receive their payment each month through the Opendorse app, as players are asked to accept the money in that platform. The cash is then deposited into their bank accounts electronically, with Teahan saying sales from his shirt had made him a “good chunk of money for a college kid.”
It also seems logical that KU’s coaches could use this new tool in recruiting. With that Rally House store in Allen Fieldhouse, Kansas men’s coach Bill Self and women’s coach Brandon Schneider could easily show prospects how current KU players are publicized in the area. They would also make it clear that any future athletes at KU will immediately have individual shirseys with their name on them available in stores, earning them a kickback for each unit sold.
6th Man Strategies co-owner Matt Baty said players seeing their names on merchandise at Allen Fieldhouse and local stores is “something you are not seeing at other schools across the country.”
Grantham has enjoyed another aspect of this new line: the ability for families to support their loved ones. He said he sold multiple “Dajuan Harris” KU shirseys to Harris’ family members at the Final Four in New Orleans — they wore them in their first-row seats in the Superdome — while Agbaji’s parents were frequently shown on TV wearing caricature shirts bearing their son’s image.
Teahan, meanwhile, said his shirt had been an especially popular item among his young nephews, who range in age from 8 to 10.
“They all think it’s the coolest thing ever,” Teahan said. “So seeing them rock it is definitely a special feeling.”
Teahan said the Rally House arrangement was first set up with KU’s basketball players in a meeting with 6th Man. Teahan and his teammates signed contracts with Rally House, though they also had the option to negotiate their own terms at the beginning, if they believed that was necessary.
For the most part, though, Teahan said he and his teammates were relieved that 6th Man had done the legwork with the initial Rally House agreement while coming up with the players’ proper value.
“Obviously the Rally House (deal) was a great success,” Teahan said. “I mean, I see my shirt out all the time, and it’s really cool to see my own face on it and see my name on it, and something that ... it will live on forever. So it’s been a really cool experience.”
Grantham believes this is only the beginning. After such a promising start, he said Rally House will continue to look into other NIL product categories. The model in place for KU now could also be replicated and expanded to other college teams.
He also has lofty goals for KU’s still-nascent foray into the NIL marketplace: “We think we can grow this well over a million dollars in total sales.”
Heitner, meanwhile, expects to see more of these types of connections between third-party retailers and student-athletes as NIL evolves, saying they make “perfect sense.”
“I think it’s absolutely one of the more reasonable, justifiable and expected types of relationships and sources of revenue that was expected for players coming into these rights July 1 of last year,” Heitner said. “It’s just taken some time to develop.”
