The University of Kentucky’s deal with JMI has been heavily scrutinized since its announcement.
Now, we have some details on how JMI is impacting UK’s recruiting efforts.
In an extensive report by KSR’s Jacob Polacheck and Jack Pilgrim, it was made clear that the JMI deal is making recruiting more challenging than it needs to be.
The biggest issue? JMI wants to own athlete’s NIL rights, something not seen at other schools.
In talking to sources, JMI, in conjunction with the UK basketball staff, is requiring
prospective student-athletes to sign away NIL rights that would normally be untouched at any other school. A highly structured brand partnership agreement is something uncommon at other schools, but it is something Kentucky has pursued in accordance with JMI, making this arrangement unique to the current landscape of college basketball recruiting.
“I will say that Kentucky is the only school I’ve dealt with that even has anything remotely like this in their contracts,” one anonymous source said
Another major issue with JMI has been the lack of clarity on the overall deal. Ever since it was announced in August, UK has refused to talk about the deal outside of the initial press release (and an uninformative scolding by Mitch Barnhart).
The lack of transparency extends into the actual NIL deals being offered.
Apparently, UK and JMI are unwilling to provide a clear picture of NIL information to prospective recruits.
Kentucky has shown a lack of clarity in NIL conversations this cycle, according to sources directly involved in high-level recruitments. KSR talked to someone involved in a recruitment this fall who said that Kentucky was unwilling to give “direct answers” on NIL, while other schools were more transparent.
Another source mentioned the lack of clarity in NIL as a big issue in another recruitment. It wasn’t just the total NIL number, but the distribution between revenue sharing and organic NIL, which has to be passed through the Deloitte-developed platform NIL Go, that was unclear.
It would be really helpful for all parties involved if someone at UK would talk more extensively about the JMI deal and how it will help the school navigate the NIL landscape. But to this point, we’ve all been left with more questions than answers, leaving fans to wonder if UK is in a position to keep up with the rest of America, or if the school is going to fall by the wayside when it comes to high-level recruiting for men’s basketball and football.
