Louisiana State College ahead Angel Reese bested Iowa and Caitlin Clark throughout the March Insanity match on Sunday, serving to LSU win its first-ever girls’s title.
Reese, a 2023 unanimous first workforce All-American who averaged 23 factors and 15.four rebounds per sport this season, was the most effective gamers on the courtroom, and went viral for doing the well-known “you may’t see me” gesture — a transfer that Clark did earlier within the match, which has come to be seen as Clark’s signature.
Whereas Reese’s “you may’t see me” taunt has sparked dialog, Clark mentioned that she didn’t even discover, as a result of she was too targeted on the sport.
For her half, Reese says she was simply being “unapologetically” herself.
“All 12 months, I used to be critiqued about who I used to be,” she mentioned throughout the postgame information convention. “I don’t slot in a field that y’all need me to be in…So this was for the women that appear like me, that’s going to talk up on what they imagine in. It’s unapologetically you.”
And all through this 12 months’s match, Reese has undoubtedly elevated her profile — each on the courtroom, and relating to sponsorships.
Reese was named the Most Excellent Participant on the Remaining 4 after setting an NCAA single-season report along with her 34th double-double towards the Hawkeyes.
Reese has extra 1.7 million followers on Instagram and TikTok mixed, and he or she has gained greater than 300,000 Instagram followers over the previous 4 days alone. And each time you refresh her web page, it looks like she’s gained one other thousand followers.
Her presence on the courtroom and on social media have made her a sizzling commodity for sponsors. Reese has one of the crucial spectacular NIL (“title, picture and likeness”) portfolios in the complete nation, and he or she posted sponsored content material on her Instagram web page with manufacturers like Wingstop WING, +2.29%, Bose and Sonic throughout LSU’s March title pursuit.
Reese and different faculty athletes have been in a position revenue off their title, picture and likeness since 2021, when the NCAA modified its insurance policies.
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Reese, whose nickname is the “Bayou Barbie,” has 17 completely different NIL sponsors, which is probably the most amongst any males’s or girls’s faculty basketball participant, and the fifth-most of any collegiate athlete, in keeping with an NIL report by Sponsors United.
Reese additionally has sponsorship offers with manufacturers together with Coach, Amazon AMZN, -0.85%, Elevating Cane’s and Banter by Piercing Pagoda. In keeping with NIL monitoring website On3, Reese makes about $392,000 from her endorsements per 12 months, and that was calculated earlier than her nationwide title victory.
Ladies’s basketball ranks behind solely soccer and males’s basketball in complete NIL compensation, in keeping with knowledge from NIL firm Opendorse, a know-how firm that connects athletes with manufacturers.
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However the brand new NIL guidelines in faculty athletics have come underneath hearth currently. Throughout a Congressional listening to final week, a subcommittee of the Home Committee on Vitality and Commerce heard testimony from faculty directors, a present faculty softball participant, and a college president on issues with right now’s NIL guidelines.
“The present NIL chaos means student-athletes are left to fend for themselves,” mentioned Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Republican from Washington’s fifth district. “And people on the prime of their sport should work out tips on how to maneuver via a a number of of brokers, collectives and excessive greenback contract gives all whereas sustaining their educational and athletic commitments.”