Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - Review of big Iowa football recruiting weekend plus what Iowa is doing for NIL

Episode Date: June 28, 2021

The Iowa football team had a huge recruiting weekend this past weekend. Where do the Hawks stand with big-time recruits now? There were also some big announcements for name, image, and likeness laws which we break down on the show including how the Iowa Hawkeye athletic program could benefit.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!Built BarBuilt Bar is a protein bar that tastes like a candy bar. Go to builtbar.com and use promo code “LOCKED15,” and you’ll get 15% off your next order.BetOnline AGThere is only 1 place that has you covered and 1 place we trust. Betonline.ag! Sign up today for a free account at betonline.ag and use that promocode: LOCKEDON for your 50% welcome bonus.Rock AutoAmazing selection. Reliably low prices. All the parts your car will ever need. Visit RockAuto.com and tell them Locked On sent you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You are Locked On Hawkeyes, your daily podcast on the Iowa Hawkeyes. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. Welcome back, Hawkeye Nation, to a Monday morning episode of the Locked On Hawkeyes Podcast, your daily podcast covering your Iowa Hawkeyes on the Locked On Sports Network. After you get on listening to our awesome show, though, go check out the Locked On NFL Draft podcast. Join NFL Draft host Trevor Sikama and Benjamin Solot for recaps and analysis of the 2021 NFL Draft and a look ahead at next year's future first round picks.

Follow the Locked On NFL Draft podcast on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcast app. And on today's show, we do have a lot of recruiting talk, but we also have a lot of name image likeness because some additional things kind of popped up this weekend. I want to make sure we're covering that. The July 1st deadline is very quickly approaching and the NCAA has an interim policy. So we're going to talk about that as well on today's show. Again, we are here every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, so stay tuned for that.

We'll be back on Wednesday and then on Friday, and we'll let you know when we get back into the regular season schedule. We will be dropping episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. That being said, let's get into the show, though. Let's kick it off with recruiting. As you all know, this weekend was a very big weekend in Iowa football recruiting They had several official visits and a couple unofficial Including Xavier, who apparently had a very good time with the Iowa Hawkeyes And you cannot fault Iowa for continuing to try there Even though it does look like he might be leading Ohio State

Regardless, it seems like it was a pretty good weekend overall And Iowa made some great progress the couple things before I get into some of the specific recruits I would say first of all if you're out there freaking out about this recruiting class just calm down a little bit no need to panic yet I we've talked about this before it's tough I get it I I want to be a little bit worried too because we don't have as big of a class as we normally have and we have you know uh compared to the rest of the big 10 not a very good class I I totally get it right but at the same time we have to appreciate what Kirk has done

in the past right now Iowa ranks 14th in the big 10. We only have five commitments. But things are going to start trending up very, very soon. But it kind of, I mean, being honest, there's a couple reasons why we're here at this point. First, it's the fact that they haven't had the opportunity to make visits. And Iowa loves to get people on campus. They prefer to get people on campus. They want to make sure these players, these student-athletes are coming here and want to be at Iowa and know everything about the school.

That's the first thing. Second thing, it does appear that Iowa is dealing with some general concerns around racial bias. There have been supposedly there have been prospects who have not really even given Iowa a look because of it. There's also been prospects who've really wanted to take an official visit to make sure there are no concerns there. And then third, and this is not a reason why it's a small class, but it doesn't help when you look at last year's class with Deuce Hogan committing so early he was really able to do

a lot of the recruiting for the class and and deuce is a very vocal leader and this is nothing against any of the guys in the 2022 class but when you get that quarterback it does it does help a little bit from a recruiting perspective and iowa has not really zeroed in and landed their quarterback in fact or the last quarterback they offered just committed to Michigan State. So they're definitely working on it. They are just not able to identify that. Nevertheless, Aaron Graves and Caden Crawford have been huge proponents of Iowa for quite some time as they have both been committed for quite some time.

Jack Dotzler is definitely working on Andrew Keller. Cale Crow, he clearly has always wanted to be an Iowa Hawkeye, and so has Jaden Montgomery. And you can see them on Twitter getting very excited about potential prospects and saying, you know, come to the Hawks. For example, Jaden's up in Wisconsin. He's familiar with Carson Hintzman, a four-star recruiter who seems to be leaning Wisconsin.

Jaden's on Twitter saying, let's go to the Hawks, baby. Let's join the swarm. And Carson is a guy who was on the visit this weekend and apparently had a very good time. There is a chance for Iowa to swing some of these guys. One of the nice benefits of having the last official visit day or one of the last official visit days is the fact that they are able to be that kind of fresh in their mind

recruiting aspect. So big stuff there. As far as some other guys, I know Ashton Craig was a guy that I was looking into. He is committed to Notre Dame. There are several other players, though. And, again, we talked about the quarterback, but a couple guys probably going to be committing very soon. We talked about Micah Riley-Ducker is going to be committing on

July 7th. There's a couple others who are going to be committing over the course of the next couple weeks, so I do expect this class to grow relatively soon. And it very well could start today with a kicker. We have Drew Stevens, a five-star kicker who's basically picking between North Carolina State and Iowa. Went to Iowa this week and had a fantastic visit he is now announcing his commitment today at 12 p.m i can only assume eastern time so 11 a.m central time and hopefully that is him going to the iowa hawkeyes continuing that fantastic special teams tradition um that i know kickers aren't usually something to get super pumped about but this would be a really big opportunity for iowa to be able to land a five-star kicker like him.

There's also, again, we talked about the quarterback. Iowa's still trying to figure out what they're going to do from a quarterback perspective. It's a little bit worrisome. They haven't exactly found out or figured out who they're going to be going to. Carson May appears to be the guy right now. But previously, they were looking at a now Michigan State commit And again, big time recruit But they got in very, very late And were not able to make any progress with Caden Hauser

Who has committed to Michigan State Again, hopefully Iowa can get their quarterback soon Get Carson May in there But as of right now They they are hot on several prospects' trails. Again, I think they're going to be in that 10 to 12 range by mid-July. I know I've pushed that back a little bit, but everything coming out of here so far is that they had phenomenal visits. All the players spoke very, very highly of Iowa, and I do expect them to get several of those players committed. Again, Micah Riley-Ducker, Andrew Keller are guys to watch out for.

A couple of the linemen, Christian Stokes had a good visit, and Aiden Lowry. I mean, these are guys who Iowa has been on, and they're really down to one or two teams, and Iowa is one of those two teams, which is always good to at least be in that position. Now, can Iowa close the deal? That will be the key question here. But again, more to come on the recruiting front for Iowa. Trust the process. Trust what's happening.

Coming up on segment number two, we're going to get into some name, image, likeness, and then talk about a few players that we feel like would have really benefited from name, image, and likeness. That's all coming up on segment two of the Lockdown Hawkeyes podcast. Before we get into that though, betonline.ag is the fastest and the easiest way to bet on all of your sports action. Baseball season is in full swing

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Head over to the website or use your mobile device and get a free account today and get a 50% welcome bonus on your first deposit when you use the promo code LOCKEDON. That's betonline.ag, your online sportsbook experts. All right, y'all. We have talked a lot about name image likeness, and we're going to do it again today. This is not going to go away anytime soon because it is a very, very big part of what is happening. We talked about recruiting on segment one. You better believe Iowa is talking to these recruits about how they could benefit, their personal brand could benefit from name,

image, likeness rights. Now, we haven't gotten a ton of information. The coaches haven't spoken significantly about it. Tyler Barnes, director of recruiting, has not spoken a ton about it. But players that have been to Iowa in the past month have heard from the Hawks about this. They have heard about how their personal brand could help. So before we get into any of that, I want to talk about the actual legislation. And then I want to get into how Iowa is handling this and what this means for the Hawks and whether or not I think it's an advantage. And we'll talk about some players as well. But I'm going to quickly read through kind of the main working document.

So it says, let me see. Yeah, okay. Institutions are obligated to apply and report potential violations of NCAA legislation governing the prohibitions on pay forplay and improper inducements and other legislation that remains applicable. With the assistance of the national office, as appropriate, institutions ultimately have the responsibility of certifying eligibility. If circumstances suggest additional review of appropriate institutions would be required to complete due diligence of the appropriateness of the name, image, likeness activity, institutions should establish, maintain, and distribute their institutional policies governing NIL activities. For questions related to the application of state law, institutions should seek guidance from legal counsel or appropriate state governmental agencies.

For the student-athletes, refrain from accepting compensation in exchange for athletic performance or participation as an inducement for enrollment. Adhere to applicable state laws. Follow the institutional policies. And the prohibitions at this point are NIL agreement without quid pro quo, e.g. compensation for work not performed. NIL compensation provided or offered contingent on initial or continued enrollment at a particular institution. NIL compensation contingent on specific athletic performance or achievement, e.g. financial incentives based on points scored. Benefits provided to student-athletes that are inconsistent with institutional policies, e.g. benefits or arrangements not available to the general student body.

So very vague, but they put in basically guidelines of what cannot happen. And I think that was good because you do not want those situations where there is a pay for play type of situation. Now, that being said, that is gonna be a very, very, very gray line that is gonna be tough to follow.

But what I think this really allows it to be open to is the fact that now players do have the ability to market themselves. They have the ability to post something on Instagram and say, here's the new workout drink I'm drinking. You should all try it. Right. So I think that'll be really interesting. Clothing lines, I think are going to be a huge one for some of these players as well. And I was getting in on the mix. They created the flight program and that's a pretty big deal. Basically what they said is F.L.I.T.E. is a cross-departmental effort that creates and oversees NIL educational programming for Hawkeye student-athletes.

The program equips Iowa student-athletes with the tools necessary to strengthen their NIL potential. And why this is important is the fact of two things. A, again, there's going to be some gray lines here, and there are going to be some issues that is going to pop up, and the NCAA is probably going to crack down on some of those gray line issues. So from a program perspective, you want to make sure you're giving your student-athletes the best possible situation from an NIL perspective while also not allowing them to be put in legally compromising situations

or legally compromised situations. So that is huge for Iowa. I think when you look at it on paper from a recruiting perspective, as a parent, you can feel comfortable knowing that you're sending your kid to the University of Iowa and they are already working and have a program in place. And then finally, the fact that this legislation is going to probably change significantly, even over the next three, six months, one year. The NCAA doesn't have their stuff figured out, which it is what it is. They haven't figured out exactly what they want to do, and they're not going to. And this is going to be a work in progress. It is going to be kind

of an evolving door of what's happening with NIL. And Iowa does need to be on top of that, especially from a compliance perspective. You want to make sure you are educating your students. You're also making sure that they are not straying away from what is appropriate versus what is not appropriate. And again, this is huge. We already see Iowa athletes doing big things with this. Jordan Bohannon, a guy who I know some people are very frustrated with for whatever reason, Jordan Bohannon is already working on this today. He has the standpoint.

The standpoint itself is now going to be providing some compensated opportunities. They have a Patreon account where you can get merchandise. You can get some additional bonus content. And I'm not here to market the standpoint. I'm just trying to talk to you about what NIL means. Jordan Bohannon can now make money off his podcast with his co-host, Zach Cohen. He's also selling a shirt. He has some merchandise that he's going to be selling that says, thanks for the memes,

which is obviously an ode to when he did the shoe autographing at Iowa State. And he's calling it J30 Apparel coming July 1st, and the shirts are selling for $33.33, so an opportunity there. Jaden Ironman, they call him the Riddler, one of our top wrestlers. He also posted something saying, watch out, July 1st, coming soon. To me, that means, especially those players who aren't, or those student athletes who aren't able to make a lot of money or any money in a professional career doing this, this is going to be really huge. Jaden Ironman can easily take advantage of that.

He has a very noticeable, recognizable name in the wrestling world. Spencer Lee, he could be making so much money off of his shirts talking about excuses are for wussies versus Hawkeye Heaven trying to make money off of him. Keith Duncan, he is not playing professional football right now. He hasn't even got a tryout as far as I'm aware. But he could have been making money while he was in college. He could have been making money as a freshman after hitting that game winner over Michigan. he was in college. He could have been making money as a freshman after hitting that game winner over Michigan. These are just opportunities to compensate players in areas where they may not have always been compensated in. Caitlin Clark is going to benefit huge from this.

Megan Gustafson could have benefited huge from this. Our phenomenal track and field teams, Iowa track and field is definitely popping off and they could be hosting camps. They could be going, doing some coaching for it. They could also be doing some, you know, uh, merchandise, some, some advertising and stuff like that for different running companies. I mean, there is so many opportunities here for some of these athletes. And I know, again, it's going to be more, you know, people like, uh, Ricky Stanzi in the past would have gotten probably the most money, right? But this is not a bad thing. This is still going to be an opportunity for some of those other student-athletes to make some money.

Even if it's not as much as the star quarterback, they are going to make some money. And I saw some people online talking about, well, positions matter, especially in football. Absolutely. The positions who have the most notoriety are going to get the most money. That just makes sense. You're more marketable. But I would also argue Iowa provides an opportunity to market other positions outside of the quarterback. Now, if you were to go to Clemson, you're going to be the star quarterback is going to be the star. He's going to be the main player. At Iowa, yes, the quarterback is a focal point, but he is not the only point.

I could argue that on the team right now, the top five players who could benefit from name image likeness would be Tyler Goodson. It would probably be Tyrone Tracy Jr. Tyler Linderbaum. I would say probably Torrey Taylor. And then maybe, I'm trying to think here, I would say maybe even Zach Van Valkenburg for a defensive end.

Those are two offensive linemen. There's no quarterback there. Heck, Matt Hankins could probably do some things. I think Kayvon Merriweather is a very outgoing guy. All these players could benefit, but right there, there's no quarterback there. And I know Spencer Petras has some struggles, but there are some opportunities there.

Tyler Linderbaum could be making money despite the fact that he didn't go pro. He wanted to stay at Iowa. So to me, it just opened up a world of opportunities there. Tyler Linderbaum could be making money despite the fact that he didn't go pro. He wanted to stay at Iowa. So to me, it just opened up a world of opportunities there. But we're going to continue this conversation on segment three. I do want to take a quick break and give you an announcement from one of our sponsors of the show today. You've heard me talk about it before, but Built Bar is the best tasting protein bar on the market today.

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recommend you go do so. Go to BuiltBar.com and use the promo code LOCKED15 and you'll get 15% off your first order. Use the promo code LOCKED15 for 15% off at BuiltBar.com. All right, y'all, we are back for our third and our final segment of the Locked on Hawkeyes podcast. We are continuing our talk about name, image, and likeness. When we were wrapping up segment two, we were just talking about the fact that there are players right now who can make a really big impact utilizing name, image, likeness. When we were wrapping up segment two, we were just talking about the fact that there are players right now who can make a really big impact utilizing name, image, likeness.

We see Iowa players already doing so. And Jaden Ironman and Jordan Bohannon, we see recruits posting stuff about name, image, likeness, and the fact that they're open for business. It sounds like recruits are also asking coaches about this because they want to know what can the program do for them. Now, a couple things. I think Iowa is actually in an advantageous situation here.

And I should say this. I think Iowa's in an advantageous situation for two reasons. The first, Iowa does not, and they're going to need to obviously adapt. I get that, right? But Iowa has never been a program who has recruited with that kind of mentality. And I, and I say that kind of mentality. I mean, um, they are looking for, they are looking for guys who care more about football

and development and looking for high character guys than guys who just want to make some money. for high character guys than guys who just want to make some money. Now you can be a high character guy, love a football, want to work hard and want to make some money. I'm not saying you can't, but I'm saying I was looking for the guy who cares more about football than they do about their name, image, likeness with the understanding that that might come in the future. Right? So I think that doesn't, that is not going to hurt. Iowa doesn't change their approach. A lot of the guys that are recruiting, I don't think those are guys who are going into schools and saying the number one priority for me is how much can I benefit from playing here. That being said, the reason number two why I think this is actually advantageous for

Iowa is the fact that there are no professional sports teams in the state of Iowa. And the Iowa Hawkeyes have a lot of brand loyalty among Hawkeye fans. Hawkeye fans are there for everything. They love all the sports, especially even non-football, non-basketball. So Iowa fans get up for their Hawks. And I,

this, I don't think this is causing any controversy. Iowa, the state of Iowa is a Hawkeye state. There are more Hawkeye fans in the state of Iowa than Cyclone fans. That is a product of the fact that Iowa has been successful in several key sports for a long time. It's just the way it is. The University of Iowa is the main university in the state of Iowa.

And the fact that there are no pro teams, there are no pro teams within, heck, four hours of Iowa City. And I'm kind of pushing it on this. The drive to Chicago might be four hours, right? That is huge for Iowa Hawkeyes. They are able to get any deal up and down the eastern part of Iowa. Yes, they might not be really big time deals, but you can still make some money talking about some items for some local places. You better believe that Josie Jewell could have been promoting a lot of things in Decorah. You look at some of these other guys, especially these Iowa-born guys. Tyler Sash could have made bank back in oscalusa you know tyler sash could

have made bank doing a lot of uh promotions just how uh how fun he was to watch him play he could have made so much money in his time at college maybe tyler sash doesn't go pro a year early i mean these are the things i'm thinking about, right? When you look at what name image likeness does, it gives players compensation for what they do, for their brand, for their personal brand. And when players are making that tough decision between whether or not to go to the NFL or not, they have to be factoring in the money. I think of a guy like TJ Hawkinson. He was really on the edge of whether or not he wanted to go to the NFL.

He ultimately chose to go to the NFL. He couldn't pass up the money. Now, he might not have been able to make, you know, five, six million dollars a year on name, image, likeness, but you better believe he could have made some darn good money his senior year of college or redshirt junior year i should say he was the john mackie award winner he made some pretty amazing plays he was the face of iowa to an extent that year that is a huge opportunity for him and that could have really changed the direction of the program desmond king would have been huge coming back that senior year after an

all American type of year. He could have hosted football camps. He could have sold some gear. He could have sold some, you know, gear with him making some pretty cool interceptions. Imani hooker, same thing.

Josh Jackson had some pretty phenomenal interceptions. He could have sold some, some gear there as well. I think merchandise is going to be a big opportunity here. Some clothing gear or clothing deals are going to be really big. And then obviously you have the Instagram, Facebook ads, whatever it might be. I am encouraged by what Iowa is doing. And I think it is going to put them in line with a lot of these areas. And the other thing I want to say too, is we've heard former Iowa athletes say quite a few things about you know the fact that other schools

are giving money to players I don't think a lot of it's happening in the big 10 but other schools are giving money to players or boosters if you listen to ball don't lie the podcast with Johnny Manziel and Mike just Mike the the rapper they you know he's talked about how much money he got when he was playing at Texas A&M now Iowa does a really good job of managing that and you know granted I don't know everything that happens you know behind the scenes right but Iowa does a really good job of managing that but this opportunity to kind of open the gates for autographs and merchandise and that kind of thing allows Iowa to compete on more of a level playing field than they have been in the past against some of these big time schools, some of these schools in the South, some of these schools that are giving money in McDonald's bags, right? And I know that is clearly explicitly not allowed as according to the NCAA draft name and there's

likeness regulations. But again, I think that's going to be a really interesting gray line where you still can make money just by playing, right? Like you can do something kind of small and make money for it. We've heard stories about people working at car dealerships and, you know, only actually working an hour, but getting paid $10,000 because they were just standing by the cars. And that's actually a real thing I've heard from actually a Big Ten school. So I think this really gives Iowa a leg up actually, whereas some people probably look at this and think, wow, this is really going to hurt the Hawks.

I think this is going to be huge for Iowa. As this information continues to come out, we'll definitely keep you posted. Again, as we see players start to get more deals deals we'll be talking about that as well and kind of how they can continue to capitalize on it as you all know if you've listened to the show before I'm a huge proponent of it and I'm really excited to see how this impacts the Iowa Hawkeyes athletic program in the future that will do it though for segment three of the show and ends the show for today if you liked this episode give us that five-star review and subscribe wherever you downloaded this podcast at and follow us on a Facebook,

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